More to come, be sure! Until then, enjoy.

At the end of August, I had the chance to fly out to Washington D.C. to see a good friend of mine from college get married. Even better, I got to see it through the lens of a camera! Kati and Mikey are a cute couple who are clearly in love and have lots of fun together, so getting good shots was easy. That always makes my day better, too!

Thanks for letting me share part of your special day with you, Mr. and Mrs. Mapa. Enjoy!

Every now and then, it’s good to forget about jobs and just shoot for fun. I get to do that when I go on trips and vacations. Another way I do that is to find a model, a sweet place to shoot nearby, and come up with something awesome together. That’s what happened a couple weeks ago with Solace, and I can say I’m really happy with the results. So, enjoy! You can also visit my Flickr or Facebook page to see more.

Rivers is my next door neighbor. His parents are good friends of mine. He is named after the leader singer for Weezer. He is also now 18 months old. Sounds like the perfect time for some portraits!

It’s always great doing a laid-back shoot with people you know (and like). We took Rivers to the park, and basically let him run around and do his thing while my wife and I photographed it. It works SO much better than trying to set them up in a studio for a formal portrait – especially with a kid that young. At the park, he’s having fun, enjoying himself, hanging out with his parents, and having a grand ole time. Even better, we had fun, too!

Also, I need to give props where they are due. The first 7 photos were taken by my wife, who is a fine photographer in her own right. While she was rocking out our normal camera, I was using a Nikon EM, a sweet film camera from 1979. Using film is a great way to get the creative juices flowing, and those photos turned out well, too! The last 3 here were on the film camera. This is a toy I’ll have to play with more…

When I was in high school, I had a love/hate relationship with my math classes. Math was definitely not my strong suit, especially more advanced classes like Trigonometry and Calculus. I really did not like having to learn new formulas, because it took me forever to figure them out.

Once I got the hang of the formula, though, math suddenly became a lot more fun! The tedium was gone, and I enjoyed figuring out how different methods and formulas connected and affected each other. It was great to plug things into the system I now understood, and find the right answer on the other side! Granted, I had to go through that process all over again each time I learned something new… but that’s not the point.

The point is – my photography blog has gotten a makeover! I spent the whole weekend tweaking with the CSS and the scripting, trying to figure out how to change colors, fonts, positioning, sizes, etc… lots of very tedious work, and lots of trial and error, but a lot like my math classes – once I figured out what line of code affected which part of the page, it was a lot of fun to be able to make things work!

All that to say, here is my new blog – I like it. It’s a whole lot shinier than the previous incarnation.

So, if you’re reading the blog from itself, enjoy!

If you’re reading this on Facebook or my other site, them come check out the shiny new photography blog at www.fiercelyalive.com/blog.

Coming Soon – A Day in the Park with a pretty awesome kid…

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog!

You’ll have to forgive me – my Facebook page has been my most current means of updating fans and clients, and that’s where I’ve been posting new work more often. Check it out: http://www.facebook.com/AndersonPhoto!

Anyway, to business! A little while ago, I had the opportunity to shoot Jess and Andrew’s wedding. It was really exiting because it was back in my hometown! I went to school with Jess and was friends with Andrew’s younger brother. Weddings are fun when they’re also reunions.

I just finished the awesome photos for Jess and Andrew’s wedding, and they’re great. They are a beautiful couple together, clearly are crazy about each other, and are all about fun artsy photos. As a photographer, it’s pretty hard to complain with that!

So without further ado, enjoy the slideshow!

So, on Saturday we were supposed to have a Trash the Dress session at a forest preserve north of Chicago. Three other photographers and I were up early, doing some scouting, getting our gear ready, and then headed to the restaurant where we were supposed to meet our model. Then we waited for her.

And waited.

And waited… for about an hour and a half.

Turns out that while driving down from Wisconsin, she got into an accident with an SUV, spent the day in the ER, and lost her phone in the process. Yes, she’s fine, thank God.

However, we didn’t know about any of this until she was finally able to get a hold of me that evening.

So, what do 4 photographers do with no model? Improvise! We headed back to the forest preserve, got out our gear, and just took turns modeling for each other. All things considered, I think we got some fun shots. Here are a few of mine:

A few weeks ago we grabbed some Josh and Cindy, some good friends of ours, and took them down to Lincoln Park for a couple hours of portraits. When Josh got a new job and they had to leave our church, we offered them this chance to get pictures of them looking cute and in love. Thankfully for me, they are so in love that it’s pretty easy to get pictures like that for them. Anyway, enjoy!

And, just a heads-up, I’m shooting my first-ever Trash the Dress shoot this weekend… keep watching for them to show up!

Hi everyone! It’s been a little while since I’ve updated. Life gets busy.

First of all, in case you haven’t noticed, the website has been resdesigned! I finally think I have found a format that I’m happy about, and that I’m proud to have it show off my work. If you haven’t seen it yet, go ahead and check it out at www.fiercelyalive.com.

In other news, I’ve been doing a lot of headshots lately. So, here’s a taste of what I’ve been working on. Thanks to Eric, Mike, and Megan. Enjoy!

The long-awaited slideshow is here! The pictures for this wedding are finally finished, and I feel like they definitely suit the laid-back mood of their wedding pretty well.

Enjoy!