Vint-edge work by Ed Eckstein

Easton's Cosmic Cup on College Hill makes the best cup of coffee in the Lehigh Valley and also encourages local talent by inviting them to use wall space to display their work.  Cosmic's owner, Troy Reynard, is actively involved in the community- locally and globally-and encourages painters, photographers, musicians, poets and writers into his cafe.

Photographer Ed Eckstein has vintage work displayed at Cosmic Cup on College Hill . . . 

as well as new work in historic downtown Easton across the street from the Easton Arts Building on Ferry Street,  just a few steps from Sette Luna Restaurant.  Check out his new website at www.EdEckstein.Com

Deployment Photos

The winner of my Macungie Bridal Show gift certificate asked if I could take some photos together with her fiance, a Marine, who was going to be deployed to Afghanistan right after their wedding.  I was more than happy to do it and got to hear about how he surprised her by showing up on Kutztown's campus with some of his buddies (in uniform) with her favorite color roses and an engagement ring!  

Their time together right now is all-too-brief.  He'll be leaving for Afghanistan in about one week for a nine month deployment.  These images will become even more precious during their time apart.

What a sweet couple they make and how very much in love they are.

Photos are powerful in so many ways.  A recent UCLA study showed that just looking at photographs of loved ones can make you feel emotionally and physically better.

I am so grateful to him for his sacrifice and service to our country, and wish him a safe and secure return home to his new bride.

  

Easton at MOMA!

Lehigh Valley legendary photographer Judith Joy Ross has work from her 1988 series of portraits taken in the City of Easton on display at the Museum of Modern Art 's current exhibition Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography.  During Sal Panto's previous term as Mayor, he and sculptor Karl Stirner spearheaded grants for artists to do work in and about the City.  One of the images from that body of work, shown here on the cover of Ross's MOMA book, is included in the exhibit, along with several portraits from her work at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.,  her portraits of Hazleton, Pennsylvania school children, and members and staff of the United States Congress.  The exhibit will be on display until March 21, 2011.

I was excited at the prospect of seeing the Cartier-Bresson retrospective and if you can't make it into MOMA, check out the online catalogue of images by Henri Cartier-Bresson. 

The performance artist, Marina Abramovic, has a first-of-its-kind retrospective of a performance artist and is at MOMA everyday from March 14th to May 31st in her piece entitled The Artist is Present.

Wedding at St. John UCC Church of Farmersville, Pennsylvania

On this past windy weekend I photographed the wedding of a bride whose family has attended St. John's UCC Church of Farmersville for seven generations! 

The wedding was celebrated at the beautiful stone church built in 1846, the successor to the original German Reformed Church.  The bride's grandfather still remembers the day when Pennsylvania Dutch was spoken in the house. 

The groom had his eye on his bride from the first day she arrived at Wilkes University.  It was required that all football players were on hand to assist freshmen moving their belongings into their dorm rooms.  He proposed to his college sweetheart just before she graduated.

A Wedding in New Jersey's Historic Hunterdon County

The weather on May1st felt more like July 1st for this New Jersey wedding in The Historic Locktown Stone Church.  It was built in 1819 by the Kingwood Baptists and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.  The church gave the village its name, after an 1839 dispute in which the congregation attempted to lock reformers out of the church.  The reformers responded by installing their own lock and the town was afterwards dubbed "Locktown".

This handsome couple met in the Dominican Republic while working together.  He was a Haitian doctor who needed help with translation, and she was a multilingual Colgate graduate.

The bride's relative is the chef and owner of the upscale Harvest Moon Inn Restaurant, nestled in one of the finest examples of Federal architecture in the state, where the reception was held.

The bride and her father did an unusual father/daughter dance to the delight of the crowd.

The Green Sergeant's Bridge is the last public covered bridge in New Jersey.