Alexandra Roberts Photography :: Boston Wedding Photographer

Hello 2010

December 31st, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 4

I wanted to do an end of year post that is more about the year to come rather than the year that has just passed. As far as my photography business goes, 2009 was about getting it started. I have wanted to be a photographer since I can remember holding my mother’s minolta as she showed me how to use it at 6 years old. Now, at 27, I have decided to try even harder than ever to pursue my love of the art form and I started my own photography business in October of this year. So, you could say I am fairly new to this world. All I know is that I love photography and love taking photographs of people and getting to know their story. It sounds cliche to say “everyone has a story to tell”, but it’s true.

I’ve met so many great people in this short time and I am so excited to see what 2010 brings. For me, I want 2010 to be a year of me trying new things, busting out into a whole new world of photography that is currently unfamiliar to me. I kicked off the new year early by getting some friends together and doing just that.

I am typically more of a “natural light” kinda girl but I really wanted to take advantage of the season’s outdoor lights and try a portrait session with some off camera flash. I don’t learn very well from going to workshops and having someone show me how to use my gear or watching video tutorials. I need to go out in the field with some patient friends and just tinker with my camera until I get something I like. I have enough of a photography background where I know my equipment well, but when it comes to new ideas, nobody can teach me how to create what is in my head. That’s up to me!

Thankfully, I do have some really great friends who were willing to stand in the 20 degree weather here in Boston and let me shoot them and a kick-ass boyfriend to hold my light stand. This is Christina and Rob. Rob was one of the first friends I met when I moved to Boston 3 years ago and Christina is his lovely wife. They are from Texas!

boston wedding photographer alexandra roberts

Thank you to everyone who has helped me get to where I am today and it goes without saying, but I wouldn’t be here without your help.

xoxo

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South Shore Holiday Portrait Session :: Boston Family Portrait Photographer

December 21st, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 0

Today on the blog I have for you two adorable parents and their equally adorable twins! Meet Eva and David, a 1 year old brother/sister combo and their parents, Julie and Charley, of the South Shore of MA. We were going to have a mostly outdoor shoot in front of their beautiful new house but it was about zero degrees out. Luckily though, Eva and David have matching Irish sweaters/hats and we managed to get outside for a couple snaps. I played with the little ones a bit before taking my camera out and they were both happy and playful, but when I pulled the cam out, Eva froze and stared at me just like this for about one full minute! Isn’t she adorable?

Boston Children Photographer Alexandra Roberts

Once Julie mentioned those matching sweaters and hats I knew they were going to be insanely cute. As they bundled the kids up, I snapped this series of David. I laugh out loud every time I look at it!

They were so easy to work with, too! They didn’t fuss about anything and it was as though they were meant to be in front of the camera because they had what seemed to be an unlimited bank of cute faces.

I know what you’re thinking, “wow these chillins couldn’t be any cuter!” Think again! Here are a few other shots from our shoot.

Boston Family Portrait Photographer

Thank you for looking!

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Northampton Wedding :: Second shooting for Rachel Hadiashar

December 16th, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 3

This year I was lucky enough to shoot with wedding photography veteran Rachel Hadiashar of mergeweddings.com. I had followed her photography for quite some time and am a huge fan of her work. I’ll have to say, I was so nervous to shoot with her but the second I met her at this wedding, my nerves eased because she was so freakin’ cool! She is extremely fun to work with, smart, inspiring and I learned so much in those nine hours! She gave me some great industry tips and the wedding I got to shoot with her could not have been prettier. Here are just a few of the photos that I shot at this wedding:

© Alexandra Roberts Photography for Rachel Hadiashar

© Alexandra Roberts Photography for Rachel Radiashar

I’d like to thank Rachel for giving me the opportunity to work with her! What a great experience it was.

I love to know how you think my photography is progressing! Your comments keep me getting better and better. Thank you all for looking!

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Personal :: Surprise birthday excursion :: Asheville, NC

December 7th, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 10

For my birthday this year, Danny gave me something that I’ve been dying for! His idea was to take me to the airport on the Friday after my birthday (Dec 2) and let me choose any place to go for the weekend. Not bad, eh? We both love to travel and we were due for a weekend outside of Boston. It sounds much more exiting to choose a place right at the airport, but I did want to plan a little so we got our plane tickets on Thursday evening to fly out to Asheville, NC on Friday night.

I wanted to go somewhere in the southeast because I’ve never been and I am fascinated by southern culture. I wanted to eat boiled peanuts, hear people say “y’all” and experience the “southern hospitality” I’ve heard so much about. Here is a teaser image from our weekend!

Us:

Here are some of the highlights from downtown Asheville. I’ll try to explain most of them, as Asheville is so very unique!

First, there was a cute soap shop that sold fortune cookie shaped soaps in about 10 different scents. The cat is to symbolize the catwalk where delivery trucks needed to go to bring goods to the shops in the old days. The purple wall and monk was by a new Belgian beer place (yum!). There was a spice shop that sold maybe 40 different kinds of salt, and in the photo you see 4 or so different kinds of smoked paprika. Of course I had to snap a picture of Boston Way in Biltmore Village and a sign of the Biltmore Estate. We didn’t go here because they charge $60 a person just to drive up to it. No thanks!

This place was my favorite in all of Asheville! It was a double decker buss/coffee shop! It is called “Double D’s” and I highly recommend a visit to anyone passing through. They even had a live musician playing on the top floor! How awesome are the tables?

After we had seen the sights of Asheville, we wanted to go see some of the nature around town. We headed to Chimney Rock to climb to the top and work off some of those calories consumed in town. All of these photos were taken in Chimney Rock, NC.

All in all we loved Asheville. The town was about 10 years in the future as far as being environmentally friendly. Everything seemed to run off solar panels and there were recycle bins of all types all over downtown. Tons of coffee shops to just hang out and not a Starbucks in sight! All of the shops had signs on them saying “locally made here in Asheville” and all of the restaurants had the same. There was live music happening in every pub on Saturday night which is something we’re not used to here in Boston, or they charge you $20 to get in. We just roamed the streets and found ourselves in and out of places at night. “DW” from Tupelo Honey Cafe helped us find things to do because we went to Asheville with zero plans and no knowledge of the city. He was great! Also, Tupelo Honey Cafe’s food was so good, I highly recommend it. Even the police officers were friendly, asking how we were doing as we walked on by. In Boston most of the time I am scared to look a police officer in the eye for fear they will start yelling at me for no reason like they typically do.

I leave you with one last photo. As we drove back to Charlotte to catch our flight back to Boston Danny saw this house on a hill and immediately pulled over because he knew that I would love it. What do you think?

As always, thank you for reading!

xo

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Erin + Elliott :: Engaged!

November 24th, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 5

Meet Erin and Elliott. They are quite the couple, as you’ll soon see through these photographs. These two are the perfect pair – Elliott is an insane chef and Erin hosts the best gatherings in town. They love to travel and are currently planning their summer 2010 wedding on an island in the harbor.

We started out their shoot at the Summer Shack in Back Bay. Erin wanted to get a shot of the two of them wearing bibs and holding lobsters for their “Save The Dates”, and I thought that was the cutest idea! It goes along with the theme of their wedding so nicely.

Erin and Elliott have an adorable engagement story and I hope I get it right here. They were at a Boston Red Sox game when the jumbotron started to do it’s work in the 7th inning stretch. I believe Erin looked to Elliott and said “I’m going to ask you to marry me on the jumbotron one day” and moments later Elliott was taking the ring out of his pocket and proposed on the spot! Perfect timing if you ask me! We then of course had to get a couple of snaps at Fenway Park.

Then we headed over to The Fens for some pretty nature photos. I love the tall reeds that are throughout the area. I hear they are ripping them down though, which makes me sad! I love this picture of them, her eyes look so beautiful with the water (puddle) behind her.

Thank you Erin and Elliott for giving me the opportunity to shoot you two! Thank you for putting up with my silly ideas and being so fun to shoot. Oh and not to mention lookin fabulous.

You can check out the full session of photos here. As always, I love to know how you think I am doing so feel free to leave comments!

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Three photographers, four dogs!

November 22nd, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 6

This weekend I had the opportunity to meet, shoot, and be shot by two lovely ladies and their dogs. I technically met them online, on Twitter! They are Meredith of &Unlimited Photography and Stacey of Cold Nose Photo.

My brother sent me a link to some of Meredith’s photographs a few months ago because she is a pet photographer and gets great shots of dogs and their owners. Who doesn’t want to spend all day looking at photos of cute dogs? I loved her style and so we started talking through tweets. I know, I know. Meredith and Stacey had already met in person and also initially met online.

It was so so so fun to hang out with other photographers. We met up at the Fells Reservation in Medford, MA. We bring Emma here quite a bit, and it was awesome for her to have some friends to play with this time!

Here is Meredith and Orvis!

And Stacey, Brewer, and Bromley!

I have a whole new respect for pet photographers. It’s SO hard! The pups are never looking where you want them to be looking and are usually distracted by whatever bird or squirrel is passing by. Both Stacey and Meredith have some great techniques for keeping the dog’s attention that seem to work really well! Meredith cracked me up so much because me and Emma were posing and I hear her make this sound I can only describe as a “chirp”. It definitely kept both Emma and my attention.

When you have such beautiful women in front of you, it makes the job easy! Here are a couple portraits of each of them.

And here is a shot of the girls hard at work!

I hope we do this again and often! For more images from our adventure, head over here.

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Allison + Rowboat :: Boston Portrait Photography

November 17th, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 5

I introduce you, my lovely readers, to Allison and Rowboat. That’s right, her dog’s name is “Rowboat” or “boat” for short. Allison is such a beautiful person inside and out! She is always full of laughter and entertaining me with her hilarity! It was *so* fun working with you two!

It was such a beautiful fall day in New England, all the leaves were perfect. We started out at a football field to let the Boat run around for a while.

Allison got right on the ground, even though it down poured the night before and the leaves were all wet. Rowboat was being so cute that she couldn’t resist playing with him!
She is so pretty!

And this one is my absolute favorite!

Which one do you like the best?

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Personal Post :: My real-life penpal and our experience with the big C

November 8th, 2009 :: Comments are awesome, you should leave me one! 6

I thought I would write a personal post today for you, my kick-ass readers! This weekend was a particularly special weekend for me. I met a woman who I had never met before, but have become very close to over the last year via email and who I consider to be one of my best friends. Her name is Jessica and she lives in Atlanta, Georgia which is 1000 miles away from where I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jess taught a class called “environmental sustainability” at Oregon State where my boyfriend, Danny, attended college and eventually had Jess as a teacher. They weren’t friends at school, but Jess had a couple of questions about Hillel that Danny ran and contacted him.

Last fall, Jess emailed Danny to see how he was doing and catch up. They talked and Danny found out that Jess’ father had stage IV colorectal cancer that radiation and chemotherapy had done nothing to fix. As some of you may or may not know, I lost my mother to brain cancer just 3 years ago. Danny knows that I am always willing to help people and so gave Jess my email just in case she had any questions or wanted someone to scream at who would understand. I got an email from Jess and we’ve never stopped talking. We shared our experiences, helped each other through tough memories, laughed, cried, you name it!

It’s been nice to know someone who I can call and gush over a cute bride/mother interaction that I see during a wedding. Jess can listen and not say anything at all and that means the world to me. She doesn’t feel bad for me, she just gets it. Almost anyone who has been forced to have their mother or father (or both) ripped away from them 4o+ years before they were supposed to knows what I mean.

On August 28th of this year Jess’ father, Tom, passed away. Last Thursday was her birthday, so we thought we should meet in person on her birthday weekend. I had a photo shoot on Saturday and so Jess and her boyfriend, Travis, flew up here to see us. It was so great meeting you in person, Jess! I only wish we lived closer together. Both of them had never been to Boston before so we took them on a whirlwind tour!

We hit up Faneuil Hall of course where Jess tried an authentic cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and Boston Creme donut.

On Sunday (today) we went for a nice walk in the Harvard Arboretum and showed off our ever-lingering fall leaves.

It was so great to finally meet Jess (and Trav!) in person. She has made a difference in my life and I am so happy to have been able to connect with her. I can only hope that I’ve helped her in the same way that she has helped me. It is nice to think that if my mother and Jess’ father are looking down on us, they are proud of this connection that without their encounter with the big C, would never have happened.

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