It's More Than A Memory: A picture is a poem without words....

A few months ago my sister-in-law (Erin) was looking through some of my pictures and volunteered her services as a guinea pig. She offered to do a trash the dress session with her wedding dress. She had been married for a few years and the dress was just hanging in a closet (like most wedding dresses do). She had one stipulation; she had a location picked out where she wanted the photos taken. She told me it was a church in Gary. She said it was really neat. Not thinking too much about it, I nonchalantly agreed. Little did I know, this wasn’t just some random church. This was a photographers dream! A run down church that looked like it was out of a horror film (interestingly enough they are/were filming a few scenes of the new Nightmare on Elm Street at this church). So we planned a day to do the shoot. Erin and her husband Cary came over the night before the shoot, and my wife did her hair. Trashing the dress pictures had to have a just slept on hair do to go with it right???

Day of the shoot:

Cary and Erin picked me up right on time. Off we went to Gary (about an hour drive, give or take a few trips around the block and driving in circles). Talk about nervous energy, all 3 of us were so excited and ready to capture some amazing shots. As we drove by the church Erin shouts, “There are people working there”. She was right, as we drove up there sat a huge crane, a truck full of studio lights, little guys with head sets on, and security everywhere. No way, No way could there be people working at our awesome photo shoot location!! Well there were, there were those stinkin Hollywood movie producing folks. Shooting scenes from a dream sequence in Nightmare on Elm Street. Wouldn’t you know, the weather was absolutely perfect! It wasn’t too hot, wasn’t too cold, the sun was shining, and there were those big cumulous clouds everywhere. Perfect for taking pictures or shooting movies it seems. So we had to reschedule our shoot…

3 days later we returned to the church and this time there was no movie crew. The beauty of this church and a bride (yes she’s still a bride) in a wedding dress, just sent my photographic mind into overload. I probably could have shot for a month and still not captured all of the beauty in the place. There were only so many hours of daylight and usable light, so we just might go back and give it another go… But for now, these are a few of my favorites….