Alright Chattanooga peeps, if you are anywhere near Chattanooga this weekend you need to come check out the Chattanooga Market!  It’s basically a giant farmer’s/artisan market with over 100 vendors of all sorts (food, beer, kids clothing, nic-naks, art and so much more).  Several reasons to check it out this weekend.  First, its NoogaPalooza, which is a three day music fest in Chattanooga so there will be a party!  Secondly, and most importantly, it will be the maiden voyage of Ivey Expressions, my wife’s purse/bag/tote business she’s been working hard on for the past 6 months.  Now I know that I might be biased, but she’s got some incredible things for sell this weekend.  She’s been working non-stop for the past three weeks building up some stock of some incredible bags, totes, purses, hipsters (I thought these were the v-neck, skinny jean kids at coffee shops, but apparently they are bags too?!), key bobs, etc.  I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty impressive.  So come down to the Market, hang out with the better Ivey and grab some sweet products from local Chattanooga vendors!

I met Amanda and Tim at a Bridal show last year.  I was excited when they told me that they wanted a special sunset shoot prior to their wedding ceremony.  We met on the Thursday before their wedding out at the lake and shot some pretty cool sunset photos.

Amanda and Tim got married at Patton Chapel on May 29th.  It was a sweet ceremony with lots of love in the room.

And then their reception….was a party!  It truly was a blast, and they danced till they got kicked out

Belated congratulations to the two of you!

So I got a little behind — scratch that, about 15 weddings behind — on blogging our weddings.  We had some pretty amazing wedding weekends this summer and I cannot wait to share those with you.  Keep checking back with the promise of catching you up on our summer of weddings (and please for the love of everything, fall, can you please hurry up and get here!).

Brooke + Tony

Brooke + Tony are perhaps the sweetest people you would ever meet (along with their families).  Tony has to be one of the most patient, loving husbands, and their love for each other is evident in their every interaction.  Delayed congrats to you guys!

I don’t usually put too many “personal” things on here.  I try to reserve this little blog for photos and wedding stories only.  You won’t find me rant or rave about particular movies or systematic beliefs, but I have to put a pause on all that for a special instance. So excuse this little interuption of the regularily scheduled programing for a pause for Donald Miller.  If you don’t know who this person is, you should get to know who he is.  He’s an author who provides an excellent, truthful look into Christianity and living our life stories.  His most recent work A Million Miles in a Thousand Years speaks to basically getting off the couch and living a life of adventure, no matter how big or small this adventure may be.  He’s currently providing a intimate seminar of this very idea, helping people to gain a clearer vision for their lives and making one’s “story” go from dredam to reality.  You can find out more about this seminar here and check out the video embedded below.  He’s also doing a contest to win a free trip to this seminar, which gives explanation for this blog post today.  So without further ado…

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I am of the privileged few who have the opportunity/dread of working for themselves.  It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to do, run my own business and be my own boss kind of thing.  Sure it sounds glamorous, but man, can my boss be a moody jerk sometimes.  The truth is though, I love what I’m doing and I’m doing those things that I love to do.  It is a dream job for me.  So what more could I ask for right?  The truth is, while I am loving the life I’m living, I know that there’s more to the story, I know that there’s more to my story, to the story God has for us (my family and myself).

See, I’ve had this longing for a deeper story for quiet sometime.  Like many I grew up with a culturally warped perception of “church” and “mission”.  Both entities must exist within a predefined American-appropriate box of correctness and historically “proven” methods.  A missionary is a person sent by a church organization to tell people about Jesus through authoritative tracts folded into a cube and fear inducing tactics that are meant to “scare the hell out of the natives”.  And while we’re at it, let’s make sure these “heathens” take on the essence and appearance of an American worldview.  After all, American Christianity is the only authentic Christianity right?  See, I want to live the story of the Gospel; I want to be a mission agent of God in a foreign culture—but not in this box!

The story we want to live is one of living alongside of the “heathens” of a different world and culture; not pounding Jesus into their skulls, but living Christ in their homes, cafes and markets.  My wife and I have been dreaming since we first met of our story together.  It is a big in-depth dream, but it’s feasible.  (After all if Inception taught us nothing it’s that dreams can be a least four levels deep!)  The dream looks like this:

We want to use what we have, what we love, and this exercise-in-passion enacts mission.  Our dream story is to open a Hostel in a country along the Mediterranean to (1) provide a service and hopefully enrich the community and (2) reach a diversely interesting and untouched “people group”–young tourists.  It’s common for students in European countries to spend months (or even a year) after graduating from school (our equivalent of high school) traveling the world, looking for a party and just seeing the world.

I have met some of these youth-in-limbo, no longer in adolescence yet having no established responsibility in this world.  Sure they are looking for a good time, but perhaps they are looking for themselves.  It’s evident they are seeking to fill up their passports with great stories of adventure and wild club scenes and maybe a little non-committal promiscuity along the way.  But maybe, just maybe they are hoping to find who they are in this world.  And hopefully for the week or few days they spend in our hostel they are able to see just a glimpse of Jesus in their interaction with our family and staff.  Just maybe we are able to plant a tiny seed of value and worth in their hearts that leave them longing for something more, longing to have a story of their own.

That’s where this opportunity comes into play.  I know this dream story of ours will come to fruition at some point in the near future.  We are working, dreaming and saving towards this.  What we would love help with is forming “actionable steps on making [our] personal storyline happen.”  We relish in the mere possibility of being able to attend this seminar and hope to be able to really learn from and focus our dream.  We really want someone outside of our dream to be able to speak into our vision and help sort out the complexities and steps needed to move forward.

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Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.

Our beautiful bride Heather at her reception last weekend!

I must admit I feel extremely blessed and fortunate to not only get to do what I love, but to be able to provide for my family by doing what I love is simply unbelievable to me!  Sure being a photographer sounds like a gloriously glamorous life.  I mean, all you do is take pictures and throw them on a blog right?  How hard can it be?  Truthfully, owning our own photography business has been challenging, stretching and at some points downright scary!  But it’s also been exciting, challenging (the good kind), fun and extremely rewarding.

There are so many aspects of it that I love (and like any job–some I can’t stand–such as deleting a mess of 2500+ photos down to @800).  The list of things I love is so vast that there could be a year’s worth of weekly blog posts covering those aspects (and there might be in the future), but I want to speak more generally about wedding photography as a whole.

One thing I enjoy, is sitting down with potential “clients” (I hate that the word clients invokes such a static relationship) and just hearing about their wedding plans.  And I love when these excited brides (and most often their mothers) come with a list of questions.  I’m not talking about the technical questions like, “do I get print rights to the digital files” etc.  I’m talking about the heart questions.  Recently I sat down with a beautiful bride-to-be and her mother-in-law-to-be and one of those heart questions came up.  It was one of those moments that kind of catches you by surprise and for a moment I was dumbfounded and unable to respond because it was such a perfect question, and one that no one had ever asked me!

“Do you love doing weddings?”

I sat there for a moment trying to answer the question, knowing that if I said no, there goes the booking.  It was one of those questions that lingered in my mind the entire week.  I mean I really had to have a heart-to-heart with myself!   I think it’s a question that EVERYONE should ask their photographer!  “Do you enjoy doing weddings?”  The sad truth is that there are many photographers out there who make the bulk of their income off weddings, who will openly admit to their photographer buddies that they despise, or at best really dislike doing weddings.  I think a lot of “new” photographers look at the wedding world as a gold mine.  Just look how many people pick up a camera and all of a sudden their wedding photographers.  Two things wrong with this–

#1 – picking up your digital rebel and shooting a wedding does not make you a wedding photographer.  Sure this person has great rates!  But let’s be honest, there’s a point where you do get what you pay for! (More on this later)

#2 – someone that doesn’t have a heart for weddings, but rather only sees weddings as a quick shot at some income will either burn out or trap themselves in a misery of “having to shoot yet another wedding” meaning you end up with a cynical, bitter and pretentious wedding photographer

Weddings are tough work!  They are at times extremely stressful…you just try being bossed around by granny every weekend! But they are so beautiful to be a part of.  How fortunate we are to be able to spend one of the biggest days of someone’s life with the people we get to work with!  How amazing it is that these people are entrusting us to capture and maintain their memories that will last a lifetime (both a stressful + rewarding trust)!

I say all this first to brag that I love shooting weddings.  I love the pressure, the excitement, the joy, the happiness, the smell of the flowers, and seeing the preparations.  I absolutely love watching the parents take a deep breath and sigh a sigh of “it’s finally here and done” after the couple leaves for their honeymoon, and yes sometimes I actually enjoy the drama.  But most of all I love being able to be with people when they are at their best, when they are at their happiest, and when they are at their most true self!  My point is this:

If you are photographer doing weddings and loathing every moment of it, if you do not look forward to the weekend–do yourself and your clients a favor–quit!

And finally, if you are a bride looking for a photographer, ask them this question… “Do you LOVE shooting weddings?”  and really listen to them, not just their “yes” but listen to their heart.  Trust me, while some may be phenomenal at taking photos, the last thing you want at your wedding is a pretentious, pre-Madonna photographer begrudging himself/herself through your special day!

Here’s to Life, Love, and Beauty!

Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth this past Sunday and entered our Flip Video Giveaway.

I am sad that not everyone won, but want to give a huge congrats to a Brandon Adkins!  After emailing him he actually responded with — “is this real?”  Man that would be one awful way to punk someone.  No Brandon, it’s real.  And for those of you who are curious as to how the winner was chosen, I decided to do it as fairly and as random as humanly possible.  Sure I could’ve put all 100+ names in a hat and drawn, but I wanted a more pure and innocent element to the random act of chance.  So, graciously allowing me to interrupt snack time, I recruited Zuri (our two year old) to do the randomized selection process for me via coloring.  You’ll notice that one of the names has prominent markings all over it, that’s Brandon!

Thanks for entering everyone and check back next week for another giveaway announcement.  You won’t want to miss this one!

Some of you blog stalkers might be thinking – “man it’s been quiet on Imago’s blog!”

You are correct, we’ve been busy with summer weddings and getting ready for Chattanooga’s bridal show.  With the help of my dad I designed and built a pretty sweet booth (in my own opinion).   We had a great turnout of people flooding through and it was great to meet so many potential clients for next year.  (and to those of you who booked with us yesterday, we are elated!).  We held a contest yesterday to give away an HD Flip Video and will be announcing that very soon.  Many, many updates and posts coming really soon.  We have a whole summer of weddings to blog about!

Rachel & Jordan were one of the first bookings we got here after moving here from TX last August.  Needless to say, we’ve been anxiously awaiting their big day!  They both have this incredible model look that makes any photographer feel like their job just got really easy.  It was a crazy hot day in Chatt on their wedding, so we made use of as much naturally lit indoor situations as humanly possible.

I LOVE that everyone in the wedding party wore Chucks — INCLUDING RACHEL, the bride!  How sweet is that.

And what wedding is complete without a groom’s cake topper set to the theme of Mario and his Princess Peach!  Oh the crazy awesome things you can find on Etsy.

We recently got to be a part of a beautiful wedding in Murphy NC at McGuire’s Millrace Farm. There was a fear all day of rain, but not a drop fell until the sparklers came out, I call that pretty lucky! Mandy & Drew were wanting to create a vintage-country feel to their wedding, and Millrace was the perfect locale for this (as you can see).
One of the things I always wish for is more time with the bride and groom throughout the day of the wedding.  There’s so little time in the rush of things, getting from one place to the next, guests waiting on you, etc.  That’s why I’m a BIG fan of the bride & groom seeing each other prior to the ceremony.  I realize and understand the value of the traditional idea of not seeing each other before hand!  That’s why it’s often a good idea to either sneak the couple away for a few seconds during the reception, or go somewhere after the reception and capture some more moments.

This, by far, is the greatest post reception idea EVER.  This was all Mandy’s idea.  I get an email from her asking, “would it be okay if after the reception you follow us to the cabin we’ll be staying in and get photos of us jumping on the bed?”

Are you kidding me?  That’s the coolest/funnest idea I’ve ever heard of.  (I think they might have broken the bed though   — and there was a moment when Mandy got a little carried away and actually fell off the bed.

“Wedding Photography Chattanooga TN”

As you may or may not know, we recently created our own photo booth for the Chattanooga area.  It’s an ‘open air’ photo booth that prints out photos for your guests on the spot.  It’s an excellent idea for a wedding favor.  Check out more info at aFotoBox.com