Stacey Bode Photography

I love that no matter how long I do photography, I never run out of “firsts”.  I am beyond excited about my very first Cheeky Lamb boudoir shoot with a couple!!  This is the second, more sassy half of Tom and Julia’s engagement portraits.  I could not have asked for a more PERFECT couple to do this with.  Not just because they are both crazy gorgeous, but because they are relaxed and fun and smokin’ hot and silly and romantic and AWESOME.  I am a fan.  Also, there was tequila.  All three of us are connoisseurs of good cactus juice.  They were kind enough to help me break my no drinking on shoots rule.  I broke it before, during, and after, actually.  Woo hoo!

So, we hung out at their cool place, listened to music, goofed off, and here’s what we shot…

Meet Mo, the most tolerant cat ever.  Doesn’t mind jumping or sparkly outfits.

Both Mo and Julia got their nails did.

Tom and Julia, I totally adore you both.  Thanks for making another super-duper first happen for me!

Man, I do love a Day After shoot!  When it’s with a couple as fantastic as Steve and Christina, and in a town as awesome as Charleston, well that’s just a win-win situation.  The evening before taking these photos, they had a gorgeous beach wedding that couldn’t have been more lovely.  The following morning, we met up, strolled around, and took lots of pics.  Yay!

Now, you will notice that there are a lot of kissing pictures.  I just want to clarify that I do not glue my clients’ lips together to get good photos.  If I’d had a team of 2 gorillas, 7 ninjas, and a nun, I would not have been able to stop these two from smooching.  It’s kind of adorable.  How can you go wrong with a couple that’s so crazy about each other?  Seriously, I’m lucky to have had two such fabulous people in front of my camera.

This first shot was understandably requested by Christina and Steve.  That gorgeous chandelier is in the lobby of The Charleston Place Hotel, where we all stayed.  So pretty!

Y’all know I can’t resist a good sign!

Thanks so much Christina and Steve.  Your whole wedding weekend was just a phenomenal experience, and I couldn’t be happier for you.

Yay, Tom and Julia!  Good grief, I adore these two.  I’ve known them for a while now, and they are the swellest of the swell.  Tom is one of the nicest AND funniest guys you’ll ever meet.  He did a show called “Teddy Bears, Rainbows, and Milkshakes” for cryin’ out loud!  A roomful of people is always way better with Tom in it.  Julia is one of those gals you think only exists in movies.  She’s smart, kind, witty, and happens to be drop-dead gorgeous.

I felt like a happy little kid when I went to shoot their engagement pics last week.  We strolled around the park and the High Museum, and it was a total blast.  I love how easily they can shift from silly to romantic, and then back to silly again.  It’s also nice that they forgave me for shouting things like “Is that a bale of hay, or is it my birthday?”.  Man, I just couldn’t have asked for two more awesome people to have photo playtime with.  Now this is me shutting up so you can see some photos.

Stay tuned….this is only Part I of their engagement pics.  We’ve got some more photo plans.  Tee hee!

As if Sara and Scott hadn’t already earned their share of awesome points during their way cool Halloween wedding last year, they also now get credit for allowing me to get to know their friends Cassie and Keith better.  A couple months ago, I got a voice message from Cassie.  It was one of those messages that was so lovely and sweet that I probably kept it on my phone longer than I should have.  She was hoping that I might be able to photograph an event she was planning.  She and her hubby, Keith, were going to renew their vows in celebration of their 10 year anniversary.  What a fabulous reason for some photos!  I don’t throw around the word “blessed” too often, but I do feel really blessed that they wanted me to capture this day for them.  It was a beautiful event that included their two adorable sons, family, friends, food, and even a loud train that crashed the ceremony.

Here are some of the images I snapped, and there are more pics in a slideshow at the end of this post.  Woo hoo!

Cassie has one of the brightest, warmest smiles you’ll ever see.

It’s a cutie-pie sandwich!

I love this one of the boys spying on mom and dad.

Their celebration was held in downtown Acworth, which had some really charming places to take photos.  Yay!

Cassie put out some super pretty decorations.

I was a little obsessed with all the wonderful mirrors in the space.

The whole gang!  Gotta love people that are okay being a little goofy.

Keith and Cassie talked about how important their boys are to them, and presented both of them with a special engraved tag to wear around their necks.  So cool.

She brought a gift certificate that she wasn’t able to find on her original wedding day.  If I have the story right, I think she was pretty upset when it was lost 10 years ago….and I believe Keith found it on this day when they renewed their vows.  Isn’t that wild?!

The boys were so cute checking out the trains going by.

Thanks so much you two, and here’s to another fantastic 10 years!

To view a slideshow of more images from Cassie and Keith’s heartfelt vow renewal ceremony, please click HERE

Kip and Katie are two fabulous, patient, and photogenic models-slash-volunteers!  They are a super-cool engaged couple who are friends of Christa’s.  I’ve been mentoring Christa for (wow, how long has it been Christa?….) I think about two years now.  She wanted to do a bit of a lighting workshop, and Kip and Katie were kind enough to lend us their time and their gorgeous faces.  Thanks so much you two!  I asked Christa if she wanted to work with indoor or outdoor lighting, and we ended up doing a little of both.  Woo hoo!  Since I don’t do a lot of indoor engagement shoots, we had to pick a place that would be cool yet challenging.  What better place than Paris on Ponce?  It’s eclectic, quirky, fun, and full of spaces with all sorts of lighting variety.  Everything from bright lights, to really low light, to disco balls!  Great place to practice some techniques.  The folks who run Paris on Ponce were nice enough to allow us to briefly invade their magical space.  Thanks George and Judi!

Here are some of the shots I snapped while working with Christa on her flash and camera settings.  I hope she got some useful info out of our workshop.  I feel like on the day of our shoot, my head was in a million places.  At least I remembered to take my lens cap off.  So, at minimum I taught Christa to always remove the lens cap.  Very important and useful info I’m passing on.  Ground-breaking, really.

Here’s Christa doing her thing!  Sorry I didn’t get a better pic of her in action.

We got a little time in The Moulin Rouge Room.  My favorite part of shooting in there is bouncing my flash off the disco ball to get that spotted light effect.  Yay!

Then we took it outside where there was more cool stuff and some very dreamy natural light.

MANY, many thanks to our wonderful models Katie and Kip, and congratulations on your engagement!

Dear Mother Nature,

Please feel free to extend the autumn season as much as possible.  Thank you for your consideration.

Yours truly,

Stacey

We have seriously had the most incredible fall season this year, and I’ll be sad to see it go.  However, I’m pleased as punch that I got to snap some engagement photos for Hastings and Lee while the loveliness was still all around.  We headed to Grant Park, which seems to get bigger every time I visit.  It’s full of unexpected pockets of awesome.  These two fabulous people were super to hang out with, and I love how willing they were to participate in my goofy ideas.  Note:  See every previous post on this blog about how I have the BEST clients in the world.  So, here are some pics from our leaf-filled extravaganza!

Pets are always welcomed at my shoots.  We just had to get a few shots of Tate.  He is a little love muffin.

Most couples would rather wait until the end of their shoot to lay in the leaves.  They were into it at the very beginning.  See how cool they are??

We saw the most freakishly ginormous leaves ever.  I was glad to find one with a little hole in it.  By “glad”, what I mean is “I was utterly obsessed with this leaf!”.

Hastings had this cute idea shown below.  We talked about how it might end up being a “butt shot”.  I think it turned out showing more romance than butt.  Yay!

I kept thinking that Hastings had a face that reminded me of something in a movie.  It was this next image that made me realize it’s Princess Buttercup from “The Princess Bride”.  One of my all-time favs.  Hastings, you are a beauty.

I thought this one looked like an old-timey postcard.  Diggin’ it.

Leaves simply must be thrown.

I can’t wait to shoot the wedding of this uber-gorgeous couple in January.  Great way to start a new year!

Nancy and John are engaged!  Well, at least for another 10 days.  The big wedding day is just around the corner.  Woo hoo!  Back when I first met them, I was very drawn to the fact that they are creative, friendly, and so easy to talk to.  I’m glad we got to have some photo play-time before their big day, and Mother Nature was nice enough to keep the “r” word at bay.  For anyone reading this who doesn’t live in Georgia, rain has truly earned it’s 4-letter status.  Thankfully, it turned out to be a gorgeous evening with some dreamy light.  We strolled around, played, laughed, and even took a few photos.

Nancy’s lovely face hardly needs makeup, but I have to give a shout-out to my girl, Sloane, who worked her “natural look” magic.  Brilliant as usual, Sloane.

Every now and then, I come up with a little idea to experiment with.  I’ve been working on making some fun goodies to use in my photo booths.  I thought one of them might be fun for John and Nancy’s shoot, and they were kind enough to participate in my plan.

I hadn’t played with my Lensbaby in a while and thought I should dust it off and see what it can do.  It’s a little lens attachment that added the blurred effect in the next 3 images.  With pics of couples, I think it creates a nice “time stands still” sort of feel.  Nancy and John certainly seem to share some of those moments!

As the sun disappeared, we were treated to the most yummy golden light.

Only 10 more days to go!  I can’t wait!

It’s a bouncing baby blog!  I’ve been needing to add a fresh style to my blog for ages, and I finally have something that is more “Stacey” and less “Template #86″.  Old blog, I thank you and I hope we can still be friends.  It’s not you, it’s me.

Posts from my previous blog  (which I’ve always affectionately referred to as “Kenny Bloggins”) have already been added to this new one.  Yay!  I’m going to have to get a little post-happy to keep this new blog moving forward.  I’ve had so many fantastic shoots lately, and I can’t wait to have them up here on the interweb!

I can’t think of a better way to launch this here blog, than with a few shots from Matt and Liz’s day after shoot.  I’ve known Matt for years, and can’t express how thrilled I am that he found such a wonderful lady to share his life with.  They are a stunning couple, and truly good-hearted people as well.  These are just a few of the images we took, but soon I will be posting a fun behind-the-scenes video of their shoot that my hubby and I put together.  Another thing I’ve been wanting to do for ages.  My to-do list and I are in the middle of an epic arm wrestling match, and I’m totally gonna win.  Anyway, I had so much fun with the video, and it will show more of the pics from their awesome shoot.  It was really nice of them to let us invade their photo session that way.  So, here’s a little sneak preview…

We were walking through the parking lot, and couldn’t resist taking this pic.  They were married on the 15th of August.

I love happy surprises during shoots.  We wandered into Piedmont Park, and had no idea that there was a Pride event going on.  There were so many people there, which made for some cool images….and we made some new friends that you’ll see in the video later.

Thanks so much, Matt and Liz!

Woo hoo! I’m so glad my friends Evita and Michael were in town this weekend for D-Con! Not only did I get to hang with them, but we also finally got to do their wedding “day after” shoot. I guess a more appropriate phrase would be “four months and four days after ” shoot. We got to take lots of photos of just the two of them in their wedding “gear”. Both of their outfits were made by hand, and Evita made her dress! She’s incredible.

We needed a fabulous location with a special mood and style. I’ve known Evita long enough to be comfortable suggesting a cemetery. Well, not just any cemetery. Oakland is both historical and beautiful, and I was confident that we could get photos that didn’t appear to have been taken at grave sites. They were nice enough to trust me, and we had a blast. Then again, I could have fun with Evita locked in a gas station bathroom with rabid badgers.

Evita + Michael, you are awesome. Please find more reasons to visit Atlanta, and I’ll find ones to visit Charleston!

Sarah + Dan are a super-cool couple from New York, and I’m lucky that they picked me to shoot their Georgia wedding. They are the first couple who found me via Flickr. Yay Flickr!

Fortunately, they were in town a few days before the BIG day, and we were able to squeeze in a fun pre-wedding portrait session in Piedmont Park. They’re one of those couples that makes photo-taking seem almost too easy. There was also some really beautiful light to play with that evening, so it was win WIN!