Dan & Anne

Photos by Anne Almasy
Design by Dan Almasy

Every year I donate my photo skills to one of my favorite Atlanta youth organizations, the Spivey Hall Children’s Choir. This year I was especially excited to be asked to photograph the kids on concert day (usually I only shoot at rehearsals), AND to photograph the audience during a performance!

If you’re not familiar with the choir, be sure to check out their brand-new website, designed this fall by Dan, and chock-full of photos by moi:

This photo, of two of the kids holding hands while they sing, is one of my favorites…

What do you do when you leave an entire bridesmaid out of the wedding party picture?  Like, the whole girl.  Gone.  Not in photo.  Huh?

Okay, so I didn’t “leave her out.” I’m not actually sure WHAT I did with her. All I remember is the several minutes I spent nudging each guy and girl into his or her very exact spots… “A little to the left — no, not that much — 6 inches to your right. Good. Now you step back a foot. Now you step a little closer to her… a little closer… perfect. Now YOU…” and so on and so forth. Seriously. I swear I did that. And I could see every beautiful face just perfectly through my lens.

Then SOMEHOW between Nudging and Taking-the-Picture the bride’s SISTER disappeared. I would like to blame it on the wedding party and say that they all shifted from their assigned spots when I sneezed, but I’m actually pretty sure I did something DUMB and moved MYSELF into a place where Bri was… well… just no longer part of the picture.

Of course I didn’t KNOW she was no longer in the picture because I couldn’t SEE her.

FOR REAL FOLKS! THIS HAS NEVER EVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE!!!

And of course when I started editing and saw what had happened I thought I was going to DIE.

Instead…?

I called on my live-in Photoshop genius (aka, Dan) to “FIX IT!” (Imagine me crying and slapping my forehead repeatedly.)

I can tell this story now because A) Jason and Elli are our friends and I think they’ll love this story, and B) because Dan did, in fact, fix it.

A glowing Bri is now in the picture, blended seamlessly among the hotness of the other bridesmaids and groomsmen.

So this post is here to serve three purposes:

1.) To give a shout-out to my fantastic husband, without whose Photoshop skills I would be in very sad shape right now.

2.) To give Jason and Elli a laugh.

3.) To give the collective photography-team-of-us a pat on the back for having the combined skills to make a rockin’ picture. Even if it’s not quite what originally came out of the camera.

Cheers.

When I made Jessi and Brad’s engagement photos a year ago, Jessi told us, “I really like trees.” Seriously. Those were her words. Which is awesome because *I* really like trees! And not in a silly, tree-hugging way. I just think trees are beautiful.

So anyway.

When Dan started creating a cover for Jessi and Brad’s book, he remembered what Jessi had said, and he went with a warm fall color and (what I think is) an awesome tree form. I think this flows so well with the overall fall-ish-ness of their wedding celebration in October, and with their personalities.

And how fitting that I photographed Jessi’s ring on this picture of a tree!

Here are a few more spreads from Jessi and Brad’s 80-page book… Enjoy!

Their decor was AWESOME! This page is almost like a little Inspiration Board — great ideas for anyone planning a fall wedding.

And you might remember the first dance shot below… it was a winner in the latest WPJA contest!

It’s a fun challenge to design an album using someone else’s photographs!

What, you say? Someone ELSE’S photographs? How did this happen? (Are you sensing a long story and a plethora of links ahead?)

I was, in fact, asked to create the album by our friends Eric and Renee Ellis, who own Swing Studio. They’re also the creators of our fabulous online proofing app SimplePhoto. (If you’ve ever looked at one of our client galleries, you’ve seen SimplePhoto!)

No, these aren’t THEIR wedding photos; the photos are of two dear friends of theirs, Cristina and Andrew.

**The photographs were all created by the talented Sheridan Cupp, who works out of Asheville, NC.

I stuck with what I know best when laying out the book — clean lines and some sweet negative spaces — , and Dan gave me another beautiful cover with one of our favorite shots from the couple’s wedding day. (LOVE the carriage shots, Sheridan!) And, seriously, Dan has the most gi-normous assortment of handwriting fonts I’ve EVER seen. It’s awesome.

I really enjoy album design, and putting this book together was just as fun as working with our own images! If there are any photographers or album-less brides and grooms out there who need a little album design assistance, shoot me an e-mail! I’d be happy to take on a few more projects like this!

We just finished creating Jana and John’s coffee table book, complete with nearly 170 photos! WOWSERS! We love the challenge of putting so many images into a clean layout with lots of yummy white space!

Oh, and fun news: Jana and John’s wedding has been selected for publication by Bride’s Atlanta magazine! We’ll be sure to post photos once it hits news stands.

Here are a few of the layouts from the book, beginning with Dan’s awesome cover…

This is only the second senior book I’ve created, but I already love it! Laying out photographs in book form is really fun for me, because it allows me to craft a personality out of a set of images. Individual photographs are great, but collections of photographs are SO exciting to look at! (Maybe that’s why we have like 8 million coffee table books on our shelves…!)

My favorite part of building Christina’s book was that she has gorgeous, red-gold hair, and bright eyes, and her clothes were all bold and bright as well. Pulling colors from her own outfits was a lot of fun as I selected the background for each page.

I’m excited about the other senior books I will get to create before the year is out! More to come…