Park City still has snow even though the resorts are officially shut down for the season, and I have one final winter wedding to share with you!  Sophie and Aaron were such an amazing couple to work with!

We shot their engagement pictures up at Aaron’s childhood home in Park City while they were visiting a few months before the wedding.  Here are a few of my favorites!

As a photographer, I like my kid in solid colors, no logos or text or pictures on his clothes.  His two grandmas however, buy him shirts with big pictures of Bulldozers and trains on the front.  Guess which clothes he is insisting on wearing now?  Yup.  NO!!!!!! he screams at me when I try to dress him in the morning.  BULL BA DER!!!!!  He only has 2 shirts with bulldozers on it, and has taken this week to insisting on sleeping in them as well, so if anyone has any suggestions on where I can pick up some more, that’d be awesome.  Cause I think I’m starting to creep his teachers out, like they don’t know that he has more than 2 shirts in his closet.  OK, that is your Moment of Zen for the day, now on to the photography!

Mmmmmmmmm.  This is just yummy.  So I’ve been doing a new thing where i give a bride a list of movies, and have her pick one, and then I watch it the night before the engagement session and get inspiration from it!  This doesn’t mean props or anything, but simply how does the movie make me feel, and what kind of lighting styles were used.

Jani & CJ picked The Illusionist, and after watching it I felt a bit like I’d been watching a dream, and so that’s what I took away with me for their Winter engagements!  Enjoy!

Thanks guys!  I can’t wait for your wedding this fall!  Love, Pepper

In addition to having a fun shooting week, it is also tax time. I am very pleased to say that I am now DONE with my taxes!!! But it did mean that I spent about 20 hours this week going through things with my bookkeeper and explaining things and pouring over bank statements. Moving forward we won’t have to do that anymore, which is awesome, but it did mean that all of my sweet blog posts I had planned for last week didn’t get posted!!

So, to make up for it, a guaranteed full week of posts! You get a blog post! You get a blog post! Everybody gets a blog post! Technically it’ll be 8 posts in a row, counting Monday the 19th too! So enough with the apologies, you know I still love ya, and let’s take a look at today’s Album Monday column!

That, and my office was pitch dark.  I usually like it that way, I planned it so that my office is in a room with no windows, just some big skylights on the ceiling, so as not to interfere with any editing I’m doing.  But when the skylights are covered with snow in April, that’s just a little weird for my taste.  So, clearly someone is playing a big joke on me.  Here’ the good news though:  As long as there is snow on the ground, I can continue posting all of my winter weddings and no one will get after me for taking a month to do it!

So I’m on a steak right now for my winter shoots!  Maybe the snow will last a couple weeks and I’ll get all caught up! 

Heather and Mike were married in January, but we did their engagement pictures a few months prior to that.  [That's why there's no snow].  Even without the snow we did have some precipitation that day, and these guys were so good, they just kept on kissing for me until I got the shot I needed!  Stay tuned for their wedding pictures [which actually were in the winter] tomorrow!

So funny, so personable, and after dating for 7 years, so in love!

Even with a winter wedding and winter engagements, they were determined to not have wintery-looking engagement pictures.  So they wore warm-weather clothes and we headed to the downtown area, taking quick breaks whenever Nancy’s nose got a bit red!

They also brought along several different outfits, always a great thing for engagement sessions.

Thanks Nancy & Will!!!

Also, a very Happy 29th Birthday to my awesome kid brother – I love you Roderick!!!

Alright, the reason you’re here reading this post.  The hot couple against the red wall.  I don’t use this phrase often because I think it can be easily overused, but I’m struggling to come up with another word that really means exactly what I want it to, so I’ll just use my original word.

Nikki & Sohil are HOT.

And what burns between them is Passion on fire.  Seriously.

Check out the engagement session we did in the warehouse district of downtown Salt lake City.  It’s just HOT.

WOW.  I mean that.  Thanks guys!

We met up as a group shortly before Casey & Peter’s wedding day so that not just the bride and groom would get to know me, but the entire family with all of the kids!  Casey & Peter really wanted to focus not just on their love, but on the fact that this really is going to be a union of 2 separate families blending together.

Since the wedding and all festivities were to take place at Deer Valley’s famous Stein Eriksen Lodge, it seemed the perfect location for the pictures!  And for having never done anything like this before, Casey’s little rascals Lilly and Owen, along with Peter’s Delia and Jimmy, all did a fantastic job for me!  Here are a few of my favorite images…

Thanks everyone!  Wedding pictures soon!

She brought along 4 different ensembles, each one ith a different jacket, hat, scarf, you name it and she had it!  And not just for herself, she had gone shopping for Nick as well, and so each one of her outfits had a complementary outfit for him too!

I don’t know if it was because they were having so much fun with the coats, or having so much fun with me out in the cold, but we stayed much longer than I had thought we would and got some really fun pictures in the process!  I loved that they were absolutely up for anything I suggested [including rolling in the snow and making angels], and that they knew me well enough that they could tell I was joking when I suggested they dip their bare feet into the pond at Sundance with its freezing water!

[Actually, I think Sydney's words were "Pepper we will follow you anywhere - that means you go first!"]

Thanks guys, I had a blast, and you both kept me laughing so hard I barely noticed the cold! [Although i can see Sydney's breath in this last shot - brrrrrrrr!!!]

I am so excited for your warm California Wedding! 

]]> http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2010/01/16/sundance-resort-sydney-nick-winter-engagement-session/feed/ 3 http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/09/22/park-city-engagements/ http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/09/22/park-city-engagements/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:02:00 +0000 Pepper http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/08/27/anne-hodgson-engagements/ I was putting together the post for Anne and Jonathan’s wedding for tomorrow morning and realized that you guys haven’t yet had the chance to meet them!

Here are a few of my favorites from the engagement session we did about 8 months ago, it was a freezing day and I had already been out shooting and wearing the wrong shoes I had stepped into a puddle!

So before Anne and Jonathan’s shoot, we sat for a few minutes drinking cocoa while I took off my wet socks and double-wrapped my feet in dry linen napkins from the restaurant!

After I got all situated with my new ’socks’, we went out in the snow and the cold and played for the afternoon on Main Street!

Thanks guys!  I know how excited you both are for tomorrow morning, stay tuned…. 

]]> http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/09/22/park-city-engagements/feed/ 1 http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/08/26/lindsey-jims-engagement-session/ http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/08/26/lindsey-jims-engagement-session/#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:30:08 +0000 Pepper http://www.peppernix.com/journal/2009/08/20/lindsey-jims-engagement-session/ Lindsey and Jim both work for the Utah Symphony Orchestra and were guests at a wedding I shot of their friends, and told me when they booked me that they were so impressed with the friends pictures that they had to have me for their wedding day!  Already, I love them.

Jim is a total car freak.  It’s not that he loves his car too much [you know what I mean about some guys loving their car too much?] and with Jim is is not about loving the car.  With him, it’s that he recognizes what his car is capable of and enjoys it to its fullest capacity [and then pushes it beyond those limits!].  He gets together with a bunch of BMW enthusiasts and they race their cars.  Literally.  They take them to a track and push them as far as they can go.

And there’s something very romantic about that for me.  Here’s a guy who is willing to give everything he’s got to something he’s dedicated to, whether that be racing his vehicle, recording a new album, or worshiping his fiance.

The reason we started talking about cars was that they drove up to the engagement session in the cutest Mini!  I love Mini Coopers, and in 2007 I had one all picked out for me, ready to buy [my color: British Racing Green], and then found out the next day that I was pregnant, so if you’re wondering why I drive a Volvo instead of an awesome Mini Cooper, his name is Zen and even though he can’t talk yet, he still rocks my world more than a Mini could.

Anyway, Lindsey and Jim drive up, and here is this really fun prop for pictures!  But Jim isn’t happy that we’re taking all sorts of pictures with Lindsey’s car and not with his!  So…

… in between locations, they drove back home and switched cars!

Jim, being all tough.  Don’t be fooled, he is an absolute teddy bear!  Unless you try to mess with his car or his girl.  Then you get to meet Angry Jim.  And you don’t want to make him angry…

Right when we leave, Jim tells me the story of his mother’s ring.  Unfortunately both Lindsey and Jims mother have already passed on, but since he was young, Jim had decided that he would give his mothers ring to the girl he wanted to marry.  He confessed to me that shortly after leaving high school, he met a girl he thought was The One, and he asked his dad for Mom’s Ring to give to her.  Destiny had other plans for Jim, and he ended up not giving it to her.  After dating Lindsey for a while and helping her through the time of her own mother’s passing, he knew that he had found his soulmate.

He was talking with his Dad about her and that he wanted to marry Lindsey, and his Dad said “Well, I better give you Mom’s ring then.”  Jim reminded his Dad that he’d had it for years and been saving it, and that’s when his Dad confessed that he had not given Jim his Mom’s wedding ring but a different one, because he didn’t think the other girl was the right One.  “But” he said “Lindsey is different.  Your Mom would be so happy to have her in our family, and I’m delighted to have her as a daughter.  She’s amazing, and 100% worthy of this ring.”

Lindsey and Jim share this story with me and my assistant, and suddenly all 4 of us are in tears.  So that is why Lindsey gets 2 rings!

Lindsey, I think you are amazing and I am so happy that you have found the perfect man!  I have to agree with Jim’s dad that you are wonderful and I’m so looking forward to the wedding day!

Love, Pep