Katy & Eric - December 27, 2008

Click here to view Katy and Eric's virtual pre-designed album. The shopping cart icon will work once Katy and Eric have seen all the pictures first and release them for you to view. Event key is Katy's maiden last name to view ALL the pictures.

2009 Demo Slideshow

Here is a compilation slideshow from all 10 photographers at Studio J from 2008. The bulk of the images are from Judd Sather Photography. We are excited to announce that we can handle up to 4 weddings per date this year! We already have 14 weddings booked for 2009 (two dates double booked already) and two weddings for 2010! Email us for availability and new pricing info if you're interested in us capturing your wedding! All our collections this year include the CD of negatives to print photos on your own.
Click here to watch the slideshow larger in a new window.

Happy Holidays!

It's a little know fact (not any more) that I design holiday cards with the same first-class look our wedding clients enjoy. Here are a couple examples including my family's holiday magnet (on fridges everywhere once we send them out!). A bride just emailed me and called me a workaholic! After back-to-back 7am-midnight workdays these last two days I guess I deserve it... it is amazing what you can get done 16 hours in one day! Let us know if you want some sweet holiday cards next year! -Judd

Chelsey and Jesse - December 20, 2008

Click here to be notified when Jesse and Chelsey's pictures are online, and receive the $10 gift certificate!
This was the last wedding I will shoot until May and what a way to end the season - the 43rd wedding in 31 weekends and we get a major snowstorm and crazy slippery roads on the way down to Red Wing! The day started out at this cool bed and breakfast where the women were getting ready - totally decked out for the holidays with gigantic snowflakes falling outside the windows. After my brain caught up with Chelsey's ultra-fast rate of speech, I was able to get some really cool shots in front of the window including my favorite shoe shot I have ever taken (below). We had to grab umbrellas for the bridesmaids for the snow shots since the snowflakes were so big and wet - the reason you only see one umbrella is because Chelsey broke the first two she tried to open! :) Groom Jesse (aka the American Assassin ultimate fighter) and Chelsey didn't see each other before the ceremony so we got out of the limo and pretty much walked right down the aisle in this small country church in the middle of nowhere. There was this crazy looking wolf-dog that almost attacked video guy Joe. I love the regal look of military weddings, the saber arch, the discipline, etc. Jesse got word a few weeks ago that he is being deployed for a year to Iraq Jan 9 (5 days after they get back from their honeymoon). We shot two weddings of Army officers in the Red Bull company that were deployed for 22 months and came back last summer; Jesse we'll see you when you get back and thanks for your service to our country. We are turning around these photos in a record 2 days so you two can enjoy it together for a few days! -Judd, Amanda, Joe, and Kristina

Click here to view their album larger! The shopping cart will work once Jesse and Chelsey have seen all the pictures first and released them.











Here's their highlight video!

Valerie and Doug - December 6, 2008

Blustery day! Should calm down nicely tonight to get some cool shots in the fresh snow. Click here to see their virtual album pre-design!
OK, best man Larry gets "Slippery Finger of the Year" award for dropping Val's engagement rock just before the ceremony. There was quite an awkward moment at the time to exchange rings as there was Doug's ring. Val's wedding band, but not the diamond engagement ring... Larry's face was bright red as he dug in his pockets but no one really knew why. I was up near the front of the church to get a cool angle of the unity candle and I noticed a ring on the floor, slipped it to the pastor and all was well. I'm pretty sure Doug, Val, and Larry were sweating bullets for 10 minutes or so though. This was easily a top 3 wedding stories ever - I'll enlighten you with the other two in a week or so. This was another fun referral wedding - about 12 clients that were guests, and I took a shot of 4 women at one point and had shot 3 of their weddings. Zimanski did his "Staying Alive" dance with the unusual gusto again, Froi cut the rug and quoted Caddyshack as usual (and gave a fantastic toast revealing that Doug actually happily went to a Dido concert with another guy), and Horner drank quite a few beers as usual - all on par with other weddings we've captured. We all froze at a stop at Hamiline (Go Pipers!) before the reception, but I got the ladies to show some leg in 10 degree weather - fantastic! There was this cool blue-lit christmas tree we got a few shots at, and how about that snow angel?! Can you say "rental tux"? Excellent. Last thought: everyone should have the hot chocolate bar they had - great idea Val! Well I guess if you're getting married in the heat of summer then the hot chocolate bar doesn't work quite as well... -Judd, Jessi, Allie, and Aron







Here's their highlight video!

Denise and Mike - November 29, 2008

Click here to receive the $10 gift certificate for Denise and Mike's Wedding! This is going to be a blast - many surprises in store... I think my food coma is over from Thanksgiving, so I should be good to go. :)
I'll post some shots soon, just up at 5am Sunday morning here with one of the kids and had to blog about this wedding...
Just when I thought I'd seen it all we get whips and daggers at the reception! To quote Mike, "Denise said no to an Indiana Jones-themed wedding, but not an Indiana Jones-themed reception! Cue the Indy outfit (hat, jacket, whip), Indy ice sculpture, Indy groom's cake with cake topper, entertainer Johnny Pheonix doing a bit with Denise "mind reading" and snapping a blue feather out of evil twin (best man / cousin) Al's hand with an Australian bullwhip. Oh, I almost forgot: they cut the cake with a familiy heirloom authentic German dagger taken from a World War II battlefield, complete with nazi insignia - creepy cool. Truth is stranger than fiction; Mike and Denise get the award for "most uniquely themed wedding reception - ever." Joe is showing off the "Grizzly Adams" caricature of us; just a slight resemblance I hope. The artist lives in a country shack near Red Wing - cool. Denise and Mike, thanks for the memories and stores; I'm pretty sure I won't see another Indiana Jones ice sculpture, home-made ball and chain, or WWII dagger for cake cutting! -Judd and Joe

Julie and David - November 22, 2008

Click here to view Julie and David's pre-designed album! The shopping cart icon will work once David and Julie have seen all the photos first and released them for everyone to see - enjoy!
Some things are pretty predictable at weddings - namely the chicken dance happening at some point. But today was something entirely unpredictable: 82-year-old Grandma Betty in a full chicken suit just for the dance - the picture speaks for itself. This was a fun wedding for me as Julie is my second cousin so it felt like a really dressed up version of our family reunion this summer when we turtled the catamaran. After the ceremony, we asked the limo driver to take us to a park and he took us to Wayzata high school for some fun shots on the playground climbing wall. Since when do high schools have kid playgrounds and climbing walls? -Judd and Aaron

168331...

Here was my weekend (only my second weekend without a wedding since July):
1. Breakfast and start getting a ton of work done
2. Lunch, keep cruising, getting on top of things, all albums designed
3. 2:13pm: watch "blue screen of death" appear on the only PC left in the studio
4. Have a few afternoon beers, vow to never buy a PC again
5. Spend the next 48 hours transferring 168331 files (mostly 2008 weddings) to both macs and new server
6. Monday night: have a few more beers re-installing and configuring software, catch up on e-mail, design some Christmas cards

Great news! We have a triple backup of all weddings and amazingly lost ZERO FILES - your images are safe with Studio J!

Public service announcement: if this ever happens to you, just take out the hard drive, buy a "hard disk enclosure" for about $60 at Best Buy and your drive will function like an external drive. Also you can buy a cool software called windows Parallels Desktop so you can run both Windows and Mac software on a Mac - cool. We are now an all-mac studio! And, silver lining was we got the studio and digital files all cleaned up and re-organized while everything being transferred.

Anybody think the mac logo should be Think Different(ly)? Pretty sure that's an adverb but I'm just a photographer... :)

DJ Sharp - UST Homecoming

We're expanding to shoot more portraits and commercial gigs in addition to our bread-and-butter wedding portraits. So, new guy Aaron and I pulled a double-header after Stacey and Jett's wedding and shot the UST homecoming dance to get some cool shots for the production campany Epic Events that organized the show. Bed and breakfast wedding in the afternoon; college dance in the evening - that won't happen very often! -Judd

Stacey and Jett - November 8, 2008

Where do I start? How about "most unique shots at a wedding ever?" Stacey and Jett have been together 15 years, love Stillwater, so decide to get married at the Aurora Staples bed and breakfast. 30 people in the living room, cake and champagne in the dining room, and sleigh ride complete with REAL reindeer down to the Minnesota Zephyr train for dinner (heard that train is going out of business for real this time so go while you can - food is tremendous). What a quaint and fitting wedding day for Stacy and Jett. As Jett told me when taking shots in the roof of the Stillwater Library, "You can take the boy out of the woods, but you can't take the woods out of the boy!" I think he was just wishing he was deer hunting... Here are some of our favorite shots: Amanda got the "celebrate" reflection, Libby the flower girl carrying Stacey's dress (and subsequently drinking the last drops in a champagne glass - maybe it was sparkling cider!), the deck of the Stillwater library and interesting reading there, and a shot of Stacy and Jett through the reindeer antlers - truly unique (have you ever seen a ring like Jett's?! -Judd, Amanda, and Joe
Click here to view Stacey and Jett's virtual album!








Here's their highlight video!

Fall Colors and New Logo!

There are still some colors outside on our two acre outdoor studio! Below we were going for the "cheesiest engagement picture ever" in the leaf shot with Jeff and Janet. And the Sletten boys took a break from throwing leaves to get this great family shot. I may have told a few of you that we are going to launch Judd Sather Photography soon - any thoughts on the new logo? These are the finalists - caps or lower case? Email me if you have an opinion - thanks!