She dove right in… literally.  This first shot is in a stream.  It may look warm, but that water was freezing!

.. And she came ready.   I love it when a senior is excited about their session.  Molly is a natural.  We would pose her, then she would pose herself.  I don’t think we could take a bad picture of her.

The location she picked out was gorgeous.  If you want a unique session, then pick out a unique place.  Sure, there are places where we can take you, but try to pick a place special to you.  Here is Molly rocking the umbrella:

Molly is a senior at Elkins High School this year.  She plans on attending D&E and hopes to become a pharmacist. She’s a sharp gal, and I have a feeling she will do really well in pharmacy school.  She will make a great pharmacist.

All kinds of great places to shoot at this location.  Melanie had been wanting to do this type of pose for a while now and had been saving it.  Molly pulled it off really well.

I’m in love with these two pictures.  I almost blundered Molly to death with a dead tree to get this shot. Sorry about that

My favorite shot from the day.  I love the reds, I love how the tree trunk contours Molly’s body.  I love the soft light we were getting.

These boots were made for walking

I love fall portraits the most.  So many great colors.  Thanks for letting us capture your senior pictures Molly.  We had a great time and hope you did too!

So here we are, on top of Bickle Knob.  A little bit of a hike, but completely worth it.  I love the amazing people I get to meet and places I get to go doing photography.  A little over cast, but not overly windy.

I love the background we were getting.  Check out the mountains and the sky. The sky wasn’t overly blue or overly washed out.  Kind of makes me miss Pipestem, WV.  Spent a lot of time there during college.

Check them out! Are they perfect or what   We did some more traditional poses with them. I think if they book us for their wedding, we will bring out the fun

Down at the base of the fire tower.  I couldn’t get a bad picture of these two if I tried.

Jessica and Tim are both in their last year of nursing school. There aren’t many fields that I respect more than nursing… I think these two will be awesome in their field.  You can tell they genuinely care about people.

Tim had planned on proposing on July 4th, but was too excited, so he did it on July 3rd. They are planning on getting married on June 24th of next year.

One more from this great set:

Jessica and Tim: We had a great time. Thanks for letting us drag the little one along.

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Here are some sneak peeks from our session.

It was a little chili, but we had a great time!

She was just one of those girls – she was pretty inside and out.

I love barn wood, it makes for an awesome background. They tore this barn down the day after we took these pictures.

Check out the reflection on the pond. This was such a pretty place to come shoot!

Lets get started:  Dani was glowing the entire night.  Such a happyand  pretty Bride.

Greg, the groom: A very down to earth -well rounded gentleman.

A quick shot out side the church:

The first dance:

The Cake:

Coach gives his blessing:

That’s all for now. Dani and Greg: We wish you two the best – and have fun in Mexico – They have lots of Taco’s

On the drive up we were hit with a crazy rain storm.  We drove past it but knew it was heading towards Weston.  Shoot! We had planned on getting some great shots on the playground.  We were just able to grab these couple of shots before the rain hit.

Wesley was a super cute kid and a total ham!

Wesley on an uber-cool rocking chair and his new wheels!

Thanks again for sharing your special day with us!

Pictured below:  Water tower that was recently remodeled in 2005 … and Caboose at Whitaker.  If your are ever interested in an exciting getaway, Cass rents these cabooses for overnight stays.  We’ve never rented the caboose, but last year we did rent the wilderness cabin.  Cass takes you to the top of Bald Knob, drops you off and from there you hike to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.  no electricity, no running water and no cellphone.  Lots of wild animals. We need to do that again soon.  We’ve talked about taking a train to one of the switchbacks and hopping off… then hiking down to camp in old spruce.  We will see!

At Whitaker, Cass staff take a break and service the engine.  I caught them on their lunch break while walking around with my 50mm.  Wish I’d taken the zoom with me.  It’s really hard to find shots like these.  About 2 seconds after I snapped the pic the train was bombarded with with people interested in the train.  This is Shay #11.  My favorite is Shay #6.

And finally, just a shot of Whitaker Station. We couldn’t have asked for a better day. Beautiful skies.

This year we’ve booked a trip from Cheat River to Elkins – and I can’t wait.  Last summer we took the special commemoration trip from Cass to Elkins to celebrate the Elkin’s Depot 100th birthday.  So I’m pretty stoked for Steam to come back to Elkins.

The sun was just perfect -  nice and warm light.

You can click on any of these pictures to make them larger.  I recommend that.  They look better at 800x

Two little hams:

Too cute:

In other news, I’m going to start re-working the layout of the blog so that I can display 800×500 pictures. They look much better than the 500×333 pictures I’m showing now.

It’s official. We are fully booked for weddings. If we’ve been talking or working with you, you’re fine. If not, sorry. There’s not enough of us to go around!

The weather has finally broken and it’s starting to get nice outside.  We still need to rake leaves from last fall.  We went through all of our equipment today to make sure we were ready for the start of the season.

Here comes the green. Check out the water… Green too!

I think this year my primary lens is going to be the 50mm 1.2l.. I’ll keep it on camera and the 70-200 2.8l in the bag. Melanie will most likely end up shooting with the 24-70 2.8L and the 28-135. I find myself using one of my favorite lenses, the 85 1.8 less and less.  Kind of crazy really.  I used to shoot with it all the time.

I’m still digging the 5d mark II.    I plan on using it primarly and Melanie will end up with the 1d or 40d.

Peace out people! I’m going to get some sleep!

In other news, I took the remainder of the afternoon off to go trout fishing. Hey – If you saw our summer schedule, you’d want a break too! Anyways, I roamed around and found this beautiful lake “South Mill Creek Lake”.  Supposed to be pretty good fishing there too – I wouldn’t know – I stick to streams

The pictures above were taken with Canon’s 50mm 1.2 L Lens. I’m completely in-love with it.