Krystyna & Paul – Spinellis Wedding

There are some changes coming up for Heather Littlefield Photography regarding weddings. I promise it is all good things to come! I will post more about it soon once some details are finalized, but for now, enjoy another great George Street wedding on the blog! This time it’s Krystyna & Paul’s wedding at Spinelli’s in Lynnfield, MA, with their ceremony at a church before. I love Spinelli’s, they have awesome food! Anyway. I love weddings with cultural backgrounds and customs, and this one was Polish. They did special things at the ceremony and during the reception! They also had confetti cake. I was sad that my shoot shift was over before I was able to get a piece 🙁

Shayna & Gene – Hellenic Center Wedding – Ipswich, MA Wedding Photographer

Here’s another fun wedding I shot for George Street. This one was at the Hellenic Center in Ipswich, MA, which is actually right nearby me. I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty awesome when venues are close by. It makes the drive home after a long day not so bad. I’d never been to the Hellenic Center, but once I looked it up online I couldn’t wait to get there and see it, and shoot great photos. It was so beautiful! Had we not gone with a seaside Gloucester wedding for our own, I would have loved having ours at this venue. That’s how pretty it was! The other cool thing about their wedding was that their officiant was the same one we had for our wedding. I walked up, said hi to him and told him he was our officiant, and he remembered our wedding 🙂

Shayna and Gene were an awesome couple, and she looked absolutely stunning in her dress. They had a very short and sweet ceremony, and then it was onto the party, and what a heck of a party it was. The dance floor was full all night!

Promises to Keep Wedding – Jen & Ben

I’ve been shooting some weddings for a company called George Street Photo to fill in a few of my open dates. It’s been great working for them while I build my clientele, and I have even more weddings coming up! They are pretty awesome and let you share the photos, after a certain period of time of course, but not a bad deal at all! This is from my first wedding with them. It was held at Promises to Keep in Derry, NH. It is a beautiful venue with everything right on site. You have space for the ceremony, lots of cool spots for photos, and a nice reception hall. The food was pretty good too! It’s on the smaller side, so it probably wouldn’t fit a big wedding, but if you’re having a smaller sized wedding, I think it’s perfect!

The bride & groom are Jen & Ben. They had a Vietnamese ceremony before their traditional ceremony. I’ve always been fascinated by other cultures and their customs, especially wedding customs. Seeing Jen in her traditional dress was really cool! After the first ceremony, she changed into her wedding gown, and the party continued. Here are some of my favorites from the day!

These favors were chocolate covered coffee beans, yum! I even got to take one home 🙂

I usually start my days with the groomsmen when I’m not a lead shooter. These guys were cool. They met through online gaming and have been friends since they were kids!

Nancy & Joe – Fort Revere and Nantasket Beach Engagement

Nancy and Joe found me as a referral through a mutual friend. Let me just say again, all of my friends are awesome for sending all these amazing and fun couples my way! I am shooting their June 2015 wedding at the Tirrell Room in Quincy. I can’t wait! They decided to take advantage of my engagement photo deal, which I will be posting more about soon, but basically I offer $100 off the Deluxe Engagement Session when you book your wedding with me. That’s a pretty awesome deal 🙂 Their locations of choice were Fort Revere and Nantasket Beach!

Anyway, back to the session. Nancy & Joe got engaged at Fort Revere in Hull, MA. It’s an abandoned military fort, now a park, that overlooks the water. It’s absolutely beautiful and the views are breathtaking. We all know I love a good landscape! I had never been down that way before, so I was excited when I checked out photos of the area. We started at the fort and took advantage of the different landscapes and backdrops it offered. They were even up for one of my creative ideas to use one of the graffiti covered halls inside the fort. It’s awesome when a couple is up for non-traditional ideas. It makes their engagement session stand out! They were also patient while I tried a an HDR shot to capture the colors of the sunset. Even more awesome! (Check out the last photo to see the HDR!)

After that we headed to Nantasket Beach, which I had also never been to. It was so pretty there. We lucked out and had beautiful weather too. The original shoot date was actually the day before, but the thunderstorms that arrived that day quickly squashed that. Luckily we had set the rain date for the day after anyway. After Nantasket Beach, we stopped by one other spot to catch the sunset, and it sure was a pretty one! We had such a fun day of shooting, and I loved exploring a new place I’d never been to 🙂 Now onto the photos. Enjoy!

Click on any photo to see the large version.

This is the graffiti photo I was talking about. How awesome did this one come out? It’s one of my favorites of the day!

Lobstering in Rockport, MA

I like to share some non-wedding photos and stories now and then. I think it helps my clients see a more personal side of me, and not just all weddings all the time! My family has some pretty interesting history on all sides. On my Dad’s side, his cousin Bob is a Lobsterman up in Rockport, MA, and so are his sons. He’s more into building and selling handmade traps now, but still goes lobstering in the warmer months. He also takes family and friends on little day trips around the cove. I had been trying for the last few years to go on another boat trip with him, but working full time and our schedules not matching didn’t make it easy. Now that my weekday schedule is a bit more flexible, we set a day a few weeks ago where my husband, stepson and I went up to Pigeon Cove in Rockport, and had a great time out on the Spirit with Capt. Bob Morris!

Check out some photos 🙂

Captain Bob doesn’t just take you around the cove, you also get quite the history lesson about sunken ships, old military and family!

We ended up bringing 7 of these guys home, and my husband is the only one that would eat them…

There are a lot of rules and regulations to follow when lobstering. Capt. Bob makes sure to educate all of his guests!

This is a female lobster full of eggs. You have to use a tool that’s almost like a hole punch to put a notch in her tail and send her back to the ocean floor.

Traps going back in the water. Every part of lobstering has an efficient system. These are lined up in a way that they all go right out by themselves after the first one goes.

My husband learned how to band lobsters. He was very excited about it!

Measuring with another specific tool. Lobsters that are too small go back in.

And how could we not take a cruise by Motif #1!

I hope you enjoyed some photos from our little trip. It was so much fun!

Juliana & Jim – North End Engagement Photos

Juliana & Jim were referred to me by a good friend for their wedding photos. Referrals are awesome and I love them, so please keep sending them my way! All of the clients that have been referred to me so far have been wonderful, and I can’t wait to shoot their weddings.

Anyway, Juliana & Jim’s wedding isn’t until next October, but they are having an engagement party this year to celebrate with friends and family, so they chose to do an engagement session as part of the celebration. They wanted something different for their photo location so I suggested shooting in Boston. After some brainstorming, we decided on Boston’s North End.

We arrived on a Friday evening and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. It was a warm, breezy day with just the right amount of sun and clouds. We started off at Copp’s Hill Terrace, and eventually made our way through the North End to the waterfront. I had a great assistant, Dino Rowan Photo, who graciously dragged my granny cart full of equipment and took some behind the scenes photos. Afterwards, Juliana, Jim & I shared a pizza dinner. Not a bad way to end an awesome session. And ladies, I highly suggest getting your makeup done before a session if you can. Juliana comes from a family of cosmetologists and her makeup was flawless! It really shows in the photos too. Of course they are a gorgeous couple and I love all of their photos!

His last name is Fiore, so we had to stop here! I tried to get a photo of them under the sign but sadly, the tree growth was too much, so we just did a few shots in front instead 🙂

And thanks again to Dino Rowan Photo for all of the help! Here’s a pic of me in action 🙂 Check out my awesome leather camera harness from Holdfast Gear. They have great camera accessories for us photographers who are always on the move. It’s great to get home from a wedding or photo shoot and not be sore!

Happy Birthday!

Today is my birthday but with all that’s going on, it just seems like another day. I have the Beverly Arts Fest tomorrow and I am ready for it to happen. Preparing for it has been way more stressful than the 2 weddings, a commercial property and engagement sessions I had in the last couple weeks!

Since I’ve decided my birthdays stopped at 29, here is a picture of our “Little Princess” Crystal on her June 1st Birthday. She turned 4 🙂 I decided to have a little fun with the cute chair my mom sent, and the little rhinestone crowns I bought a while back for this very purpose. I think I’ll be ordering a print of this one to hang up!

35mm Film Fun!

As I posted before, I had gotten some old film cameras as a Christmas gift. Since then, my collection has grown and I’m loving it! My mom has sent me a few more, some working, some not. A friend and former co-worker of mine (hubby still works with him) passed his film cameras and accessories to me as a gift. One of them is a beautiful Yashica Electro 35. I still have a roll of film in it that hasn’t finished. I also got a Minolta SRT-100 from my mom recently and just loaded some film into that too. The Cosmic Symbol camera she gave me for Christmas finally hit the end of it’s roll last week or so. I came across a photo place in Danvers, MA called The Finer Image, that develops film. I lucked out finding a place 5 minutes from home and I don’t have to send my film out to be developed!

I had a little trouble winding the film. It’s been a while since I used a film camera, and the ones I remember had an auto rewind! The guy at the film place showed me what I was doing wrong, so hopefully next time I’ll know better and not lose any exposures trying to hand wind the film. I had popped open the back and lost a few photos, but for the most part the photos came out pretty decent for a camera that has no focus indicator or exposure meter. You could measure and use a light meter, but I decided to just be lazy and guess 🙂

Anyway, on to the photos. I hope you enjoy! I plan on using one of the better film cameras for some upcoming weddings if my brides and grooms are open to letting me experiment 🙂

Stone Mountain Arts Center Site Visit

Busy time is quickly approaching! Starting on May 25th is my first wedding of the summer season, and I have either a wedding or another event every weekend through the end of June. Then a week or two break before starting up again in July, but I’m ready to work! It’s been a quiet couple of months after all of the awesome couples I met in the winter and spring. I still have plenty of dates open for the end of this year and for 2015, so if you’re still looking for a photographer for your wedding, be sure to book your date soon!

This past weekend I took a trip to the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine to do a site visit. It is a beautiful venue, definitely a little hidden gem. Thankfully my GPS found it without a problem. It’s a very cute and rustic barn with another room where they hold performances. It’s a great venue for the non-traditional bride and groom and I can’t wait to take some amazing photographs. The couple will be getting married on a really cool stage with lots of twinkling lights. They love music and are incorporating a lot of neat little things into their wedding day, which you’ll just have to wait to see after the wedding!

The wedding isn’t until August, but I decided to go up since the couple was going up that day anyway to finalize some things with the wedding coordinator. It actually worked out great for all of us to sit down and go over the plan for the day. Now we are all on the same page and I have a feeling this wedding day will go very smoothly.

The trip up and back was a beautiful scenic drive through New Hampshire, and I even stopped for a few photos on my way home! I would have stopped for more, but had to get home to my pups since the Husband had his own video shoot all day and they can’t be left home alone too long. Here’s one photo I shot of a pretty little bog/pond with some beautiful mountains in the distance:

I just got my dream wedding lens (the 24-70 2.8 for those who are wondering) so I’m thoroughly enjoying shooting with it and not having to return it to a rental company. My ultimate dream landscape lens is the Zeiss 15mm 2.8, but I need to book a lot more weddings before that happens, or you know, win the lottery 🙂

Beverly Arts Fest 2014

When I’m not shooting weddings, I really enjoy shooting landscapes and cityscapes. I’m excited to announce that my non-wedding photography work has been accepted into the Beverly Arts Fest in Beverly, MA for this year!

The event is on June 14, 2014 (the day after my birthday!) from 10 am to 4 pm. It’s held on Cabot St. in Beverly, which is the main street in our small downtown. They shut down about half of the street for the day. There are lots of other artists and vendors, food and more. It’s a great day and fun for the whole family. I will have my own little tent space with some of my fine art photos for sale. It will be mostly photos in and around Beverly, and some of my Boston photos as well. I will be out shooting as much as possible to add more awesome photos to my inventory before the big day. I hope to see you there!

Here are just a few of the photos I will be featuring for sale! Locations featured are Boston, Obear Park in Beverly, and Lynch Park in Beverly.