Posts Tagged: charlotte engagement session photographer
Attention Brides to Be……….
We interrupt your regularly scheduled online shopping, tree lighting, card writing, baking, deep breathing and ugly Christmas sweater wearing for this brief announcement:
Tis ALSO the season for engagements, weddings and planning for the spring and summer wedding season.
Pixels will be shooting more winter weddings (in fact several this month), but we are keenly aware that when 2017 arrives and we all return to the regular day-to-day, there will be more than a few brides-to-be out there who will need to get organized and start planning for spring, summer and fall weddings.
Pixels has worked over the last 11 years with some phenomenal vendors, at amazing locations and for absolutely wonderful couples. If you’re engaged and are looking for engagement and wedding photographers who are creative, focused on you and your vision, can help shape that vision and then capture it for posterity, we hope you’ll give us a look.
We love our work – ask anybody. In fact, we ask our clients all the time and we hope you’ll check out some reviews of us on WeddingWire.com.
To note: June, September and October dates typically book quickly, so if those are months you’re looking into, quick action is the way to go. For those of you whose wedding or engagement we’ve photographed, we hope you’ll tell your engaged pals about us. Thank you all!
And now, back to that office party snicker-doodle recipe you’re downloading instead of working.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
The Hills & Valleys are Alive | 4 seasons for photos in the Carolinas
It’s taking ALL I can do not to bring up Vivaldi’s masterpiece, The Four Seasons. And now I’ve done it, so if you like any of the 4 movements, or Vivaldi or classical music, it’s now stuck in your head. You’re welcome.
Meanwhile, our autumn portrait sessions booked up (THANKS EVERYONE) and I’m reminded that we shoot year-round because we can. North and South Carolina provide an embarrassment of riches for portraiture, not just for nature photographers. Mountains, gardens, farms, barns, fields, streams, valleys, the Biltmore Estate, the Blue Ridge Parkway and any number of purpose-built resorts and views surround us. We find ourselves consistently tramping through the woods, climbing rocks, on ATVs and by moving water capturing memories. Here is a small sampling of locations in our distinct seasons. If you need a reminder of the dizzying array of options, enjoy. We’re here and we’re always ready!
Late Summer Wedding in West Jefferson – rustic, by the river and UP ALL NIGHT at the reception
Leatherwood Resort
Winter Wedding at Elkin Creek Vineyard
Sunset on Beech Mountain
Hoben family Summer outdoor portrait in Roaring Gap NC
One of our favorite Spring spots: an extravagantly beautiful orchard in bloom
And the same orchard peopled with the lovely Arnold family
Autumn Blue Ridge Mountain Club Blowing Rock NC outdoor wedding
Rain or shine…… love wins, right? Blowing Rock NC
Gorgeous Quinceanera portraits in a mid-summer field in Wilkesboro
Warm Winter bridal portraits after snowfall in Moravian Falls NC
Wedding at Twickenham House and post reception vista portrait in Jefferson NC
Charleston SC engagement portraits
Botanical garden bridal portraits
Engagement session at The Biltmore Estate in Asheville
From the back “porch” at the Biltmore Estate
A fairy portrait session – expecting mother and big sister wade in
Winter Family Portrait of the Allens at Chetola Resort in Blowing Rock NC
Summer engagement photos in the NC Blue Ridge Mountains
Scottish highland wedding – bridal portraits
Delicious Brock at his 1st birthday portrait session in Pixels’ Portrait Garden in Wilkesboro.
Ashley & Oscar engagement photos | 2 backgrounds, 1 God
There were years (in the many hundreds) when people married young. Maybe your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents did. No one thought anything about it and I’m not prepared to give a history lesson about why it worked or didn’t. Young brides and grooms, older brides and grooms…. we ALWAYS cheer for a strong marriage that lasts until Al Roker is talking about it on the Today Show.
These 2 below, Violet and Floyd, were married for 67 years. They were married young, were 21 and 22 in this photo, and in 2015, they passed away holding hands with their hospice beds pushed together. 67 years and together right until the last moment.
Who knows why some young marriages work and last, producing thriving families, smartypants kids, and reels and reels of memories? But they do. When we hear, “but they’re SO YOUNG,” as we have in our tenure as wedding photographers, we think, “but what if what they have is the big “IT?” We believe Ashley & Oscar have it. They are young, yes, but they have the depth, gravitas, self-awareness and sense of longevity – and they displayed it during our photo session.
They have “it” and IT is a shared belief in Christ and each other.
Ashley and Oscar met when her church took a trip to Mexico. When Oscar returned to school in the states, they started spending more time together and realized their similar dreams and feelings. Ryan and I have known them for a while. Oscar and Ashley’s brother Daniel were models for us during a prom shoot a few years ago. The Caudill’s have supported Pixels On Paper Photography and we’ve always appreciated their love and care for us. Now we get to return the favor as documentarians and friends.
I’ve never been around a couple, even twice their age, who were more grounded in faith, family and tradition. Ashley will finish the last of both her high school and college courses in December and then they will be married in NC. A honeymoon in Mexico is planned and Ashley will finally be able to meet all of Oscar’s family. We’re excited about the stories to come of how these families will blend into one and write their own new story with Him at the center. We couldn’t be more hopeful or proud or happy for them.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or NC high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio as well as the surrounding areas. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms. Contact us to schedule your portrait or wedding photography.
poetry and portraits | outside in blowing rock with haley & cody
“I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth’s empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.
Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy–and this poem,
no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.”
– Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage
Haley and Cody chose Blowing Rock (Moses Cone and Bass Lake) for their engagement portraits and it was then that we learned that neither of them was white hot with excitement about being in front of the camera. But their session was lovely because it’s hard to see a couple wander in nature and not think about Berry’s rustic and romantic poem “The Country of Marriage.” It’s hard not to think about all the unspoken things that make them them. Ryan and I contain a universe as a couple and so do these two.
Bass Lake was the first stop so we could get better sunset views for the second portion of the shoot at the fields around Moses Cone Manor. The location at sunset did not disappoint with the last shots coming as the sun went behind the mountains. There were lots of moments of laughter and picking on Ryan, which always makes a session fun (in my opinion).
Haley and Cody will be married in September 2016 at River Run Farm in Valle Crucis. Stay tuned to see the amazing farm with big open fields, barns and river-front wedding sites and these two, building a new country between them.
Jessica & Jason’s Linville NC Engagement Portraits
Robert Frost wrote that “anything more than the truth would be too much.” So how do you describe what you hope for when you tie your life to someone else’s? When we asked couple Jessica Reinhardt and Jason Clinton about what they were looking forward to on their wedding day, they told us, “That everything will change and nothing will change. We just want to be married. As long as we both are there, that is all that matters.”
These two were so much fun to work with because that “truth” of who they are elbowed to the front of the line no matter what we were talking about or doing during their engagement photo shoot in late spring of this year. While they love to hike regularly in Newland, NC, we wanted to capture their portraits in a spot that is as expansive and honest in its beauty as they are in their own skins. Speaking of hiking, Jessica can rock a pair of 3″ heels while he’s just fine in Wranglers and boots. A little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll??? Check! They told us that they didn’t want to look back at their photos and think, “this ISN’T who WE are.” 
The views in this special spot went for miles, with a gorge beneath, rock outcroppings scattered here and there and a lush forest with stone paths and stairs to climb. We had so much fun watching them together. When they get married this month in Rock Hill, we know that their wedding is going to be amazing and a showcase of that simple authenticity and cool that they brought with them during our day capturing them in the mountains.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden.Pixels on Paper photographs babies and kids, engagements and weddings, brides and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.