Hoooray!

I just found I had an image place in the first ever Brides Magazine photo contest. Here’s a link to the contest.

This pic here scored 8th place in the dancing category. Big honor! National contest in a national magazine, judged by at least 3 Pulitzer Prize-winning photogs. Sweeeet!

Would have posted this on my editorial site, http://www.nathanweltonphoto.com, but I don’t have a blog there, so I’m posting it here.

Just got the results from the 2007 American Horse Publications awards ceremony, which covered all stories and photos published in 2006. I shoot for Practical Horseman Magazine covering dressage, hunter/jumpers and eventing, among other things, and I shot a cover for them for their breeding issue. The cover won an Honorable Mention for covers, and that was in the largest circulation division. Cool beans!

The magazine also also picked up a third place award for a story called “It’s Equitation, by George” written by one of the editors there, Kip Goldreyer. That was another cover story I shot, and was an awesome experience. Can’t wait for Florida this year!

Each year we go to Florida for a huge annual horse show near Palm Beach, and we are just finalizing the agenda for this year. It’s a pretty fun week because we do a year’s worth of stories all at once, shooting and interviewing some of the big movers and shakers in the horse world. More on that next month!

Wow, this is just beyond cool. I got an email recently from Lara, whose wedding I shot over Labor Day in California. In it was a message from her mom. It’s about a zillion pages long, but here are some excerpts… This thing made my day! Here’s a slideshow from their wedding.

Hi Lara,

Another series I really enjoyed was the wedding party entering the barn through the large doors. Erica’s personality finally shows up. He did a great job capturing the personalities of the members of the wedding party. I really love the photo of our family that includes Leslie and Angela too.

Here’s another option for folks trying to figure out what to do about their album and parent albums. It can be difficult with so many choices, so I wanted to show what Elitia and Joe decided on: they made the Zookbinders Zookbook for their main album and the PhotoBook for the parent album. You can learn more about Zookbinders online at www.zookbinders.com.

When couples choose Zookbinders’ albums, I offer two options for parent albums. One is a duplicate of the main ZookBook, but in a smaller size, and the other is a new product called the PhotoBook. The PhotoBooks feature hard linen covers with wrap-around dust jackets that are custom designed from a photo. Since the cover isn’t a premium leather, the books are less expensive — and you can get a really unique cover to boot. Here’s the front of their parent book:

So the right hand side of the image will be what you see on the front of the book. The spine will be in the middle of the image, and the back of the cover will be the left side of the image.

Here’s a random spread from the inside of the album that utilizes a similar shot.

These two were fun. They called me in mid-September to inquire about shooting their intimate wedding in Aspen that was 2 or 3 weeks away. Their guest count was a total of four — four of their closest friends. Elitia was going to fly out from Denver but her flight was canceled due to a storm, so she had to drive all the way to Aspen in a hurry. She made it in time and they had a cool ceremony in the Hotel Jerome. We all cruised around downtown Aspen afterward, and Elitia, psyched for anything, just braved the snow in her dress. She didn’t even want Joe’s jacket because she didn’t want it in her pictures. Brrrr! I was sporting a down parka!

Happy Turkey Day!

Hope everyone’s doing well. It’s album design time and I’ve been putting together albums and albums and albums and albums. Here’s one I figured I’d post so you all can get a sense of what they’re like. This one’s from Amy and TJ’s wedding this past August in Estes Park. They chose a really awesome PictoBook, which are available in metal or wooden covers. Theirs was a metal covered album that will look something like this:

Black leather binding, aluminum cover, and a nice cameo on the side. The PictoBooks are awesome. Check them out online at www.pictobooks.com.

Here are a few spreads from the album, too.

Sorry, more dorky house maintenance stuff. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum!

A few days ago we had 20 windows in our living room, which was annoying. And then we started putting them in, and things got even more annoying. I’m surprised I can type right now given the times I’ve turned my thumb into ground beef with the hammer. Yeeouch. 10 down and 10 to go.

The guy who sold us our house didn’t tell us about the leaky roof and the leaky windows, so as we installed the windows we also had to reframe a bunch of them because the leaks had rotted the wood away. I have absolutely zero idea what I’m doing but at least I’ve got some mad style points. Dig the hat?

Once we ripped the old windows out, we built new window frames.

… And then we stood back and observed our handy work. The guy who looks like he knows what he’s doing is our buddy Alex.

Alicia, who took these pictures, is psyched to do all the trim work on the inside of the house. That’s a good thing too because I don’t have the patience to do all the little details, and she does. So I’ll keep tearing 8 foot holes in the walls and she’ll make it look nice afterward. Cool deal.

We also installed a new patio door in the basement, which required us to replace a sagging, 7-foot header. We had to jack up the house with a couple of huge posts and go to town. Here’s me and Jim and the gaping hole in the wall…

More later!