Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, fun, safe and relaxing New Year celebration! 2007 has been my best year yet, and I thank all of you so much for your support, friendship, business and opportunities. I'd love to see all of you in the coming new year, and I can't wait for 2008 to top even 2007!

To my friends, family, clients, colleagues (and all of the wonderful places those relationships overlap):



I hope that 2008 is your best year yet!

xo
Jessamyn

Home Again, and AGWPJA contest placing!

We are back from all of our traveling, getting ready for Christmas and unpacking, and catching up with our kitten, families, and friends. I'll be back in the office for "real" on Wednesday afternoon, but for now I just wanted to say Merry Christmas... and to share that this photo of beautiful Meeghan getting ready for her wedding placed in the AGWPJA - that's the Artistic Guild of the Wedding PhotoJournalist Association. I had never entered images in the Artistic Guild contest before so my mouth dropped open in surprise when I saw this! I didn't even remember which photos I had entered!




There is so much great work in these contests that it's an honor to place at all. Here are some quotes from the AGWPJA's website which I think fit my work pretty well - more so than just straight photojournalism (which isn't necessarily "pretty" enough):

"The Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association is a distinct division within the Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA). The [AG]WPJA focuses strictly on the artistic and "fine art" aspects of wedding photojournalism... [AG]WPJA members are international wedding photojournalists, who excel both in creating outstanding images through a documentary approach, and in the art of post-production processing of wedding photographs. In a nutshell, [AG]WPJA photographers take great candid pictures, enhance them using the technology available, and deliver museum-quality images from your wedding day."

I love it!

Have a lovely holiday and a great week!

Off to NYC

Devon and I had a lovely work/ vacation stay at the Villagio in Yountville last weekend, and tomorrow we are up way early to go OAK-JFK, all the way to NYC to shoot Corinne and Geoff's wedding! We'll be gone until Christmas Eve, then will celebrate the holiday with our families, and I'll be back with lots more photos and stories after the 26th.

Meanwhile, since I don't want to just leave you with photos of us (though there are always more to follow as I photograph us on our travels), here are some shots of lovely Baker Beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge, from several months ago.

Happy Holidays, and have a lovely weekend! Wish us luck on our pre-holiday travel madness...

xo
Jessamyn





This little guy would NOT stop digging - he was totally obsessed:



This staircase with people jogging up and down is on my list for a stock shoot - anyone feeling athletic? Let me know if you'd like to model for me.









This was back in October when I went to SF to photograph Amber and Philip's honeymoon photos. It was an absolutely amazing sunny fall day, and I'm looking out at the clouds today... hoping spring comes early!

Happy Anniversary To Us!

Devon and I are heading out to the Napa Valley to photograph an awesome surprise party (more on that later) in a bit, and we'll have the wonderful luxury of staying there for the rest of the weekend to celebrate TWO years of marriage! You hear and hear and hear, "where did the time go?!" but now that I'm seeing how quickly it really does fly... I'm scared, and grateful. It seems like so recently that we were married at SF City Hall in a wonderful, romantic, private ceremony.





(photos by Sara Sanger)

I love you, Devon!

New Wedding Pricing Sheet!

I just finished my brand-new pricing brochure for wedding packages! Please check it out here as a pdf and here as a jpeg to tell me what you think of the new packages and layout. I feel really good about what's included in each level - I'm making more options available (and I'm always a sucker for customizing something just for you) - and I'm loving the new design.




Next on my list are totally new portrait packages and a product pricing redesign!

Alicia's "Trash the Dress" Session

Last weekend I was thrilled to photograph Alicia trashing her wedding dress - except it's not her real dress, and she's not married yet. She contacted me to do some pre-wedding Trash the Dress bridals with a wedding dress she got on ebay! I love it!



We went out to Sugarloaf Ridge Park off Highway 12 near Kenwood and Sonoma. I had never been before, so it was a fun exploration together. We were lucky enough to have a gorgeous, sunny crisp winter day, and we hiked down a dark, leafy trail to a small creek and waterfall. Alicia was amazingly game for all kinds of odd poses, including laying in a bit of mud, traversing a fallen tree, letting her dress drag in the waterfall, and even doing a backbend!

This shot was taken with a Vintage, 1920s 4x5" camera that I have, on Type 55 Polaroid film - so cool! This was one of the first shots I tried and that's when I knew we were in for a wonderful portrait session.



I mean, seriously, look at this gorgeous woman!



Although we obviously want to trash the dress (hence the name), when I do one of these shoots, that's not so much the goal - it's just that we went to collaborate on getting gorgeous bridal portraits without worrying about making her uncomfortable, dirty, or tearing the gown. I am still really careful to make sure the subject is comfortable, warm enough, having fun... but it's just amazing when I have a bride who's willing to do things like balance sideways on a stone wall in the winter.



Another 4x5 Polaroid shot that I adore:



One of my favorite images:



My kooky idea - since I couldn't make her cartwheel down a steep, slippery hiking path, why not try a backbend?



Alicia has absolutely gorgeous skin:



And loved lying in the mud! Anything for the shot! :)









Some of these remind me of the Cure song "A Forest":





Some of the aftermath (it got even dirtier after our steep hike back up):



Alicia, you made a fabulously gorgeous model for this shoot, and was so much fun to get to know and work with. Thank you so much!

PS Alicia wrote me:
"Wow you are quick! I triple puffy heart these :-) These are so cool, exactly the style I was looking for! They look way better than I thought they ever could...you are amazing!!! Thank you so much! I can't wait to see the rest but these are so great!!!! Thank you, thank you!! The waterfall ones are my favorites :-) (although the back bend is pretty funny :-)"

Edited: Slideshow has been removed, 10/16/2008.

the Velvet Teen, the Moggs, more concert

A few weeks ago we went to a show where 4 out of 5 bands playing contained friends of ours! Normally I'm bored for at least half of a concert (short attention span?), but this particular night I couldn't even find time to dash away for a drink!

Here are some shots of Moggs, a rad husband-wife duo out of Petaluma:







I also took some photos of the Velvet Teen with their new lineup!

























It was a fun, wintry night!

the official launch of www.jessamynharrisphoto.com!

I'm so excited to completely and officially launch jessamynharrisphoto.com! I've been working on this site for a long time and it's finally done... which means I can get back to shooting new photos for it!



This site represents my editorial/ lifestyle commercial work - the shoots I do for magazines, newspaper, record labels, my stock agency, and so on. I'm planning a big marketing push for this in 2008. I'm going to keep doing weddings and portraits, but want to keep my eye fresh and sharp by working on more collaborative and assignment-based shoots as well.

Let me know what you think!

Thanksgiving 2007

We spent a lovely Thanksgiving with my husband's family in Santa Cruz. His parents both live down there, separately, and his sister, my good friend Alyssa, and her boyfriend recently moved to Orange County... so it's tough to get everyone together often, and they (we) are a close family. So it was great to be together!

I love my mother in law - I am truly lucky. She puts a magic touch in every detail - look at the beautiful Thanksgiving dinner table, and the beautiful gift box (it was Brian's birthday):









She also just got a new kitty, little Izzy - who is teeny tiny, shy, and so cute!





Brian never had pets growing up so it was rad to see them bond:



I love this photo! The way she's bending over just cracks me up.



We realized that Toni (Dev's mom) doesn't have any photos of Brian and Alyssa so I remedied that right quick with this fun, impromptu photo sesh:







I love the way Brian's peering over his glasses - very cute!





And I didn't want to be left out of the photos with my beautiful sister in law!



(Yes, we're looking "tuff" on purpose.)

Here's Devon with his sister and dad:



And Devon's mom with the rest of us!:



Cuties!



You may ask, "where is the photo of Jessamyn and Devon?". I asked that too, but Devon was helping cook while I just lazed around, so he had no more time to pose with me! Thanks honey!

One more shots of the birthday boy's awesome kicks (he had at least 4 pairs in the trunk of the car, and I think I saw him wear at least 3 of them in less than 24 hours!):



What an amazing family to be a part of.