An Oleg Cassini Gown & Manolo 'Blahntastic' Shoes!

If these names mean something to you, you've been doing some serious clothes shopping.  The bride last weekend looked stunning as she walked down the aisle with her high school sweetheart at Our Lady of Queen of Peace Church in Gilbert, Pennsylvania.  She recently graduated with her Doctorate in Physical Therapy and he's a member of the Temple Police Force and doing graduate studies in Criminal Justice.

You can tell that this bride is a fan of  long-term relationships because she's known her maid of honor since kindergarten and her other bridesmaids have been close friends since high school and roomed together at Temple University. 

The weather was perfect for their reception at Woodstone Country Club in Danielsville.

Citizens of the World

This delightful couple started out in West Africa, lived in Paris for a while and settled down in Forks Township.  I'm really looking forward to photographing their international wedding at the Bank Street Annex in Historic Downtown Easton this summer!

Morgan Hill Birthday Celebration

How many images do you have on your laptop/desktop that you've been meaning to print and place into an album or scrapbook?  This past weekend I did what I love to do... capture relationships between people and immortalize those moments in a sequence of images that evoke memories of that day. Click on the cover to see the photos inside.

Carol Hall's 9...

By Armen Elliott Photography

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Chemistry Captured

The spark between people is fleeting and difficult to capture but sometimes in the right environment and under the right circumstances a photographer gets lucky.  This past weekend in Alburtis, PA this young couple forgot about smiling at me and saved their most authentic smiles for each other.  Those are the sweetest smiles of all...the ones lovers give to each other.

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.

Gnarly Bark-ing Beasts

Lafayette College's campus is home to a matching pair of magnificent 100-year old Japanese cutleaf maples. So when I discovered that my latest photo subject liked trees and climbing, I had to show him my favorite trees and get this 'Avatar-like' environmental portrait.   It looks like he's high up in the canopy of a tropical jungle.  I also suggested that he check out the North Summit Climbing Gym in Wind Gap...the people there are kind, cool and knowledgeable.

Lafayette's five-year plan to reduce cars and turn its hilltop campus into a pedestrian-friendly academic haven is already underway. And work has begun on the walking and sculpture trail along the Bushkill Creek leading toward the Silk Mill Project!

Slipcases, Suds & Other Sustainable Stuff

After much surfing and searching, I found a craftsman in California who can build elegant slipcase covers for my big leather wedding books!

There are twenty fabric colors to choose from as well as seventeen leather colors.

The colorful glowing blocks below are actually bars of all natural, vegan soap ("Zeep Soap") made by Lehigh Valley native, Lindsay Falcone. Lindsay uses a combination of plant-based butters, essential oils and natural herbs to make her soaps.  There are no preservatives, chemical fillers or artificial scents that can irritate your skin.

Zeep Soap is available online and makes great favors or gifts .... and smell delicious, naturally! 

The title of this blog entry is Sustainable Stuff ... is it possible to attain enlightenment about sustainability in 20 minutes?  Just watch this video.  It's the smartest 20 minutes you'll spend today!

Terrific Tile Wedding Favors!

If you're looking for something unique for your wedding guests to take home and would like to support local artisans, then check out these personalized handcrafted tiles by Starbuck Goldner Tile in Bethlehem, PA.  Yes, they can send your tiles wherever you plan on getting married.

These are just two of the commemorative wedding keepsakes they've created.  Choose from dozens of designs or have one created especially for you! (click on the photo to see it in greater detail)

Renae Mendall & Company at Bridals by Sandra

Renae Mendall & Company will be creating complimentary "updos" for customers of Bridals by Sandra in Nazareth beginning at 11:30AM this Saturday.  It will give brides-to-be a preview of the "total look" with hair and headpieces too!

Here are some photos I took from a wedding day 'Hair and Makeup' session at the salon for all the bridesmaids and a very cute and curious flower girl.

Arshille Gorky Retrospective in Philadelphia

I was lucky enough to see the Arshille Gorky retrospective exhibit on its last day at the Philadelphia Art Museum.  Gorky holds a place in art history as the last of the great surrealist painters and a pivotal precursor to American Abstract Expressionism.  As a teenager he witnessed the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent death of his mother.  His iconic self-portrait with his mother is shown in the museum's pamphlet for the exhibit, displayed above.  After coming to the United States in 1920, he studied art, worked and befriended the artists Max Ernst, Andre Breton,Wifredo Lam and Yves Tanguy.  He was a prolific painter and, following a series of personal tragedies, took his own life at the age of 46.

The process itself of creating art is fascinating to me and so it was with great interest that I heard about his artistic influences and his "self-imposed" apprenticeships to masters like Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and De Chirico. I really liked seeing his preliminary sketches displayed right next to his finished paintings, which made the artistic process much more transparent.

I usually resent being funneled into the gift shop, but this time I noticed an album by Hasmik Harutyunyan and the Shoghaken Ensemble which performed at Lafayette College's Williams Art Center. They also were playing my favorite Armenian flute music, performed by Djivan Gasparian.  I thought I heard it playing in the background of the self-guided audio tour of the exhibit.  So mournful, so beautiful...

Learning to be Creative

Monty Python's John Cleese thinks Ken Robinson's book Out of Our Minds is "Brilliant" and you will want to take a few minutes to watch the author himself talk about education and creativity.   It is both thought-provoking and will make you laugh out loud.