Kristin & Jason's Wedding

This weekend we were up in the mountains for Kristin and Jason's wedding. Curtis tagged along with Jason and his guys for some fly fishing while I hung out with the girls downtown for hair and makeup.

It must have been Jason's lucky day because
he was reelin'em in left and right.



For the animal lovers out there, don't worry.
It was catch-and-release.



















Their ceremony was at Pretty Place Chapel and the reception
was at Victoria Valley Vineyards which sits at the base of
Table Rock Mountain (one of our favorite local hikes).



Kristin came up with the cake design and Kathy & Company
did an amazing job bringing her vision to life.



Kristin is so artsy-crafty she even made
this awesome moss ring-bearer pillow.






















Comparative Analysis Time!
(Don't worry, it's more interesting than it sounds)
Pretty Place has an amazing view but the challenge in photographing it is balancing the bright daylight that is on the mountain vista with the little amount of light that is under the cover of the chapel. As you can see from the first image, the outside is MUCH brighter than the inside. The only way to get the inside and outside balanced is with high-powered flashes. As you can see the second image is much more pleasing and takes full advantage of the beautiful view.









On the other hand, Pretty Place is a great spot because
there is enough room to move around unnoticed
and shoot the couple's expressions during the ceremony.























Talk about cake "CUTTING". Look at the size of that knife!

Emily & Curtis
Kismet Photography

Katie & Andrew's Wedding

Katie and Andrew actually booked us before we even met with them. She just called us up from Chicago where she was finishing grad school and said she had to have us! Talk about making us feel good :) We're so glad she did too because we've had so much fun with them.

With Katie being an opera singer and Andrew a percussionist, the entire day was full of beautiful music. There were several songs during the ceremony and Katie's sister, who was also a bridesmaid, even showed off her amazing voice.

Their reception at the Wyche Pavilion was classy and elegant and the weather could not have been more perfect for it. Their reception band, Puzzle, did a great job playing their favorite Sinatra tunes and some other classics. Katie's brother even sang a little Sinatra himself.

The newlyweds are headed to Napa Valley for their honeymoon and along the way plan to see, what else, an opera! We hope you guys have a great time and sip plenty of wine. (hey that rhymes) We can't wait to hear all about it.





Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Celerie & Clyde's Wedding

Last weekend we photographed Celerie and Clyde's wedding in Anderson. We first met Celerie when she was a bridesmaid at Andrea and Trey's wedding last summer. Celerie and Clyde are so much fun to photograph because it seems like they are always smiling and laughing together.

The newlyweds rode in a beautiful vintage Bentley to their reception at the very cool Arts Warehouse in downtown Anderson. Some of the highlights were the elegant decor, a sweetheart song by Celerie's sorority sisters and Clyde's favorite cheesecake flown in all the way from New York.

Here is a slideshow of some of our favorites. The music is from the couple's first dance.



Emily & Curtis
Kismet Photography

kismetphotography.COM Hijacked!

As you may have noticed, www.kismetphotography.com is not what it used to be. We have spent the last couple days in the 9th circle of hell! As mentioned in the previous post, kismetphotography.com has been down, along with our email, since the 6th. After digging a little deeper and spending the last two days on the phone and ripping our hair out, we find out that our domain has been hijacked by some cyber-squatter. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "cyber-squatter", they are social deviants whose sole purpose is to buy up domain names, like kismetphotography.com, and hope to extort thousands of dollars out of people who actually want to use them.

To make a long, horrid, tragic story short, what was www.kismetphotography.COM is now www.kismetphotography.NET. Whatever you do avoid www.kismetphotography.com as it is now a spammy search portal with pop-ups and gremlins that come to your house and steal all your left socks. But we're not bitter!

After staying up all night and hand-editing all the links on the website and this blog, the website is up and running in its new home at www.kismetphotography.NET.
Please be sure to update your bookmarks. Our email has also changed to info@kismetphotography.NET. We are sending an email to all of our current and past clients but please let family and friends now who may be trying to view images in the galleries or on this blog. Also, if you have sent an email to us since September 6th, we most likely will not receive it so please try to resend it to the new email address.

We have tested the site to ensure it is back to normal but if anyone finds anything not working properly, please email us at info@kismetphotgraphy.net. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

To end this on a positive note, we were so stressed by this yesterday that we decided we didn't have the energy to make dinner and had to go out to eat. We tried Gattitown for the first time because large quantities of pizza can make any pain go away! The food was barely edible but the best part was getting to take our frustration out on wack-a-mole and ski-ball! Despite the day we had, we had a lot of fun and laughed a lot. It just proves that no matter what life throws at you, if you can have a good laugh with the one you love, all the troubles melt away.


Curtis & Emily Snyder
Kismet Photography

kismetphotography.com Temporarily Down

We are having a world of fun with our web hosting company! As you may have noticed, our main site, kismetphotography.com, has been down since mid-Thursday and our email along with it. Our apologies for not getting back to you if you have contacted us in the last day or two but we have not been able to send or receive emails. Also, the images on this blog are hosted on our server so as you can see they are not showing up at the moment. We are working hard on getting this issue resolved but we must wait for the company to open at 6am PST.

Rest assured we will be seeking a new web hosting company immediately following this ordeal to ensure this does not happen again. Once again we apologize for the delay and we will answer all of your emails as soon as possible.


Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Erin's Senior Portraits

On top of weddings, we really enjoy doing Senior Portraits. We certainly wish we had something more than the school yearbook feather boa and one-size-fits-none tux pictures when we were graduating.

Most recently we did some for the sister of one of our past brides. We really feel like we're getting to know the whole family. Erin plays classic and electric violin so she brought them along. She's even in a band called Weather and they had a gig downtown recently. Our first rock-star senior!

Here's a few of our favorites.


























Erin,

We wish you all the best on your first year of college and your budding music career!


Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Kelli & Matt's Engagement Portraits

Last week we had an awesome time photographing Kelli and Matt for their engagement portraits. They're a super fun and creative couple who just happen to be Florida transplants like us. They arrived ready to go with outfit changes and a cooler packed with NEHI Peach Soda!





Emily & Curtis
Kismet Photography

Gaelyn & Jeff's Wedding

So we're a few weeks late posting about Gaelyn & Jeff's wedding but better late than never, right? Their wedding day was packed with so much fun we just had to share it. After all, how many grooms play paintball the morning of their wedding? Or should we say how many brides "let" their grooms play paintball the morning of their wedding! With fear of injury brushed aside, Curtis tagged along and got some great shots of Jeff and his guys "killing" each other.

The ceremony and reception were at the beautiful Ryan Nicholas Inn. We thought it was so neat that Gaelyn and Jeff got the Inn all to themselves for the entire weekend. Kim, the owner of the Inn, is great to work with and is a stellar coordinator to boot. As always, The Party Machine kept the crowd going all night. After their exit, we headed downtown and had some fun with sparklers.

Long time no post; Jessica & Joe's Wedding

Yes we realize it's been eons (or what seems like eons) since we made a post. By no means is that to say we haven't done anything blog-worthy. Quite the contrary. The last month has been a whirlwind of fun and excitement. We've had 4 awesome weddings, a couple bridal portrait sessions and designed several amazing wedding albums. Not to mention meeting with some wonderful couples about their 2008 weddings. Like we said, a whirlwind of fun and excitement.

We spent last Saturday with Jessica and Joe, an awesome couple that love pictures and are great to photograph. Their wedding was a lot of fun mixed with a little bit of a challenge. The challenge was we were not allowed to photograph inside the sanctuary at all during the ceremony. Fortunately, the sanctuary doors had beveled glass which allowed us to shoot the ceremony from the outside. We were able to get lots of great shots despite having to sit on the floor and shoot through glass. As a bonus the beveled glass made a beautiful, soft focus effect around Jessica and Joe at the altar.

Check out the slideshow to see some of our favorites.



Jess & Joe,

Any wedding where the couple plays Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" for their last dance and invites everyone to rock out with them, is one we will never forget. Thanks for being so great to work with. We can't wait to see you guys after the honeymoon.


Curtis & Emily Snyder
Kismet Photography

Virginia Road Trip!

On Monday we hit the road and headed for Floyd, VA to take Nina and Carson's engagement portraits at Chateau Morrisette. It's a beautiful winery with a lot of history. They took a tour and followed it up with a tasting of some of their favorite wines.

The winery grounds had so many neat spots.
We just love photographing in new places!

After driving 4 hours we really wanted to make the most of our time with them, so we headed to Virginia Tech where Carson is a grad student.

We couldn't believe how much Carson knew about the campus. He was like our own private tour guide. Once you step foot on the campus you'll start to notice a trend: there's Hokie Stone everywhere! All of the buildings are made from a beautiful limestone that you can only find at Virginia Tech.

The last shot of the day ended up being our favorite.

In talking with them we mentioned how we'd like to have more pictures of the two of us together so they insisted we get a shot to commemorate our first trip to Virginia...so here's one of us! After giving Carson a brief camera lesson and Nina working the backlight, it turned out great! Thanks guys!

Nina & Carson,

Thank you for making our first trip to Virginia so memorable. You were wonderful to work with and excellent tour guides. Thanks again for a fun-filled day and a stomach-filling dinner. Can't wait for the big day next weekend.


Curtis & Emily Snyder
Kismet Photography