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!