2014 - IN REVIEW

For those of you still hanging around at the end, let's start with a high-five for being able to process all those images. We are well aware that this little annual tradition of our images in a yearly review format is entirely too big. Believe it or not, this is a highly edited version of some of our favorite images for the year. I suppose that's what happens when we shoot more than 50 weddings in a year, not to mention even more portrait sessions. There is just so much LIFE and LOVE that we get to witness! It's such an honor, guys. Now you get to read our little acceptance speech of gratitude. First of all, none of these photos would be possible without the beautiful clients we get to have in our Summer Street family. Their lives and love are our constant inspiration, and without that we'd just be taking photos of pretty things with no substance. Next up, our team of dedicated photographers. Of course Matt and I started this whole crazy business, but we've picked up Chuck and Abby along the way as our sensationally talented Associate Photographers, and much of what you see above is their talented work as well. Next up we have the privilege of working with some of the finest in the industry as our second shooters and assistants for some weddings; Ashley, Katie, Deb, Bella, Dan, Olivia, Ellie, Jean and Vina - your talent behind the lens is clearly phenomenal and we're honored to call you peers. We are hybrid shooters (film and digital) so we have to thank our talented film lab, Richard Photo Lab, for their expert work in the dark room. This year we hand-trained a new talented digital editor as well. With the influx of a new market in the Midwest, Matt and I needed back-end support to help us deliver beautiful, consistent images to our clients in a timely manner, and we knew bringing an in-house editor to help us would be just the thing. Laura is now part of our team and has been an integral part of our back-end this year and helps all our images become what you see on our site. Talk about a talented group!

We have captured love in many places this year. From sandy beaches to historic estates. Ornate houses of worship and cathedrals in the woods. Childhood homes and mountain tops. All across New England and the prairies of the Midwest, we've gotten to step back and capture lives full of love. We've been able to tell their stories through photos that they will cherish for years to come. We are completely honored to call this work, and we toast to you all for supporting us along the way. Here's to 2015!

*In the mood for more photos? Previous years in review: 2011, 2012 (part I, II, III), 2013*

Favorite Photos from 2012 - Lifestyle

Gathering photos for our end of the year recap is not an easy task. It involves searching through each and every shoot, wedding and personal folder to gather some of our favorite images. When I first started, I had gathered over 700 images. Narrowing down from there was not an easy task, so rather than relentlessly selecting *just the right photos* I decided to adopt the mantra "done is better than perfect." So, you'll be getting not one, not two but THREE separate blog posts today categorized into three types: Lifestyle (see above), Engagement and Wedding. We'll post all three today - so get ready for a lot of photos! It's been an incredible year filled with photography, so we hope you enjoy a small recap of the hundreds of thousands of times we clicked our shutter this year. The above photos include many personal projects (from Paris to Guatemala to the Badlands of South Dakota) and also a few snippets from the senior, family, baby and head shot clients we get the honor of photographing each year. The majority of these photos were taken on film, which is our preferred method of taking personal photos since it forces you to slow down and think carefully before you take the photo - something you don't always get the luxury of on a wedding day. We hope these photos make you as happy as they make us!

Six One Seven Dance Collective

There are some days that I feel the need to pinch myself. From as long as I can remember,  my dream in life has been fill my days with good things: family, good food, beautiful friends and lots of art. These are the things that light me on fire and ignite the best parts of who I am. The fact that I get to make art for a living still blows my mind and there isn't a day that goes by that I feel incredibly grateful for this gift. As many of you know, dance is my first love. I've been dancing for over 20 years, have traveled around the country and world training and performing and have a BFA in dance. For any dance major, the ultimate goal is to be able to incorporate dance into your life post graduation in any way possible. We unfortunately live in a time and place where arts funding is limited making jobs very difficult or nearly impossible for many extremely talented dancers. I knew this going in (and out) of my college program, but somehow knew it was all going to be okay and that if I was pursuing something I loved more than anything that I would learn things along the way that would make it work. After moving to Boston from Minnesota I never once regretted my decision to study dance - even though the free lancing dance world can be exhausting and you live on close to poverty level salaries. When photography came into my life, I realized that it wasn't necessarily dance itself that has me in rapture - it was creating art. Now my days are filled with lots of weddings and beautiful love stories to document, but I still get to dance. It's a beautiful thing and I'm beyond grateful. Three years ago I started a small dance company here in Boston in hopes to have a deeper and more meaningful relationships with dancers and choreographers. When the company started, I had no idea that it would be where it is today. No, it's not an international success with dozens of funders or scholarship programs or national tours. In fact, I'm sure that many people in the Boston Dance Community don't even know we exist. Instead it's grown into a beautiful space for dancers to share bits of themselves and their lives and for us to create art together to address these snippets of our collective perspectives through performance. It's a beautiful group of women who are open and honest with each other and have hopes for making our world a better place simply by being better people. These women inspire me every week to live bigger and take risks. Once I year I convince them to allow me to photograph them - and once I year I feel the most exhilarating surge of excitement combining my two creative pursuits. Aren't they beautiful?

Antigua, Guatemala

We thought we'd unveil our trip to Guatemala for Kelsey and Danny's Wedding over a few days on the blog, so today we're starting off with some personal travel photos from our fast and furious trip to Antigua, Guatemala. We arrived on Friday and had a portrait session with Kelsey and Danny, shot the Wedding on Saturday and flew back on Sunday so we had limited time to explore the city on our own (we couldn't really afford the time off during peak wedding season because it would slow the workflow down too much) but we had a fantastic trip with the time we did have as personal down time. Some highlights included wandering the streets to see the Spanish colonial ruins, (which were caused by a series of earthquakes in the 1700s) visiting the food market (aka - a maze) that boasted delicious looking fruits, vegetables, live chickens and other delicious things US customs would have never allowed us to bring home as souvenirs, and the fresh avocados (I may have ordered the same thing twice in three days because the avocados were so good). I couldn't help myself when I saw the barber shop donning the same name as our handsome Guatemalan groom. We left feeling excited to return someday to explore more and grateful for the opportunity to share in such an amazing country, culture and wedding. Tomorrow we'll be sharing Kelsey and Danny's Engagement Photos - stay tuned!

Florence

We've got one more Parisian photo session to share with you, but first we thought we'd take you to a different part of Europe.  A few weeks back we showed you photos from our honeymoon in Paris, and today we are back to show you a few shots of the city of Florence.  After we were in Paris for a few days we stayed in Tuscany for a week, and while we thought we might spend more time in Florence, the weather was so warm that we could only manage one day exploring this ancient city.  One of our favorite things in Florence was the Mercato Centrale, where all kinds of wonderful and delicious food is sold.  We're still savoring the truffles that we bought there!

Six One Seven Dance Collective Underwater

We thought you might enjoy taking a peek at a personal project of sorts...not that looking at couples in love ever gets old. Kendra has a Dance Company in Boston called Six One Seven Dance Collective and they are preparing for a show in June. We decided it might be fun to do a non-traditional photoshoot for their upcoming show, as well as cross off a personal photography goal of ours: shooting underwater. Special thanks to the pros at LensProToGo out in Concord for mentally preparing us to trust the underwater camera housing that we rented from them especially for the shoot. (that thing looked like a submarine!) Since Kendra also dances in the company, I (Matt) was the primary photographer for this shoot. For any photographers looking to attempt this in the future; be sure to bring along ankle weights, good goggles and a lighting rig to shine into the water. We did this in an indoor YMCA community pool, so there was very little natural light. Also be sure to check out Kendra's company and come to their show in June!

Paris

We don't often share personal photos here, but we've been meaning to get around to editing the 3,000 photos we took on our honeymoon last summer to France and Italy. With this being a slower season, we have a bit more time to share fun little things like this! (And who doesn't love taking a five minute vacay to Paris?!) We'll be showing you more in the coming months, region by region. Paris is up first. Oh how we love Paris. Actually, love is an understatement. It's everything wonderful: food, history, art, food, architecture, shopping, food, city walks, food.....Did I mention food? :) Ironically we didn't take that many photos of the food we ate.....a task we plan on remedying on our next trip. We did manage to take photos of most other things. There really aren't words to capture our true feelings on Paris. We'll keep it short and simply say, if you've never been you have to go.  It's pretty much our heaven on earth.

2011 - In Review

2011 has been a truly amazing year. I think we will always remember this year with great fondness, as we ate, breathed and slept all things wedding. With the early part of the year leading me (Kendra) into the transition of being a full time wedding photographer, to the middle of the year when we got married ourselves (which has given us SO much more to truly relate to our clients and know exactly how they feel) to the end of the year when we shot 26 weddings, 42 engagement sessions (amongst other non-wedding related work) and got to meet the exciting bunch of 2012 Summer Street couples. With all of the wedding talk, gorgeous rings, adorable proposal stories and sweet moments, the funny thing is that we still can't get enough. There is something deeper than just a 'wedding' that keeps us artistically motivated. It's you. Getting to know our clients and having the honor of telling their stories makes us tick. We've never felt so at home. We say it a lot, but we truly feel blessed to have this job. Here's to each and every one of you who 'liked' something on our facebook page, commented on a blog post, encouraged us in our buisness, and trusted us to document your event. We are nothing without your support, and we can't wait to share 2012 with you!

Thankful

As I sit here and start to gather my thoughts on one of the most beautiful holidays, a recording of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" plays in the background of my computer. For those not familiar with the old hymn, the first four lines are so telling for today are: "Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise." I am nearly brought to tears in the amount of gratitude we feel for getting to call this our job. Not only are we blessed to have such a creative and engaging career, but the people we get to share it with make it what it is. Today we are thankful for our clients. Each and every one of them. From the families we get to photograph, to the seniors brimming with excitement as they embark on their journey to adulthood. And our weddings clients. How we love getting to know their love. You've gotten to see a few of our awesome 2012 clients through their engagement sessions (and there will be plenty more in the spring) but for a moment we'll focus on our 2011 clients.

It has been an immense honor to capture their love. We are humbled by your willingness to share it with us.

karen and blair

claire and andre

danielle and jared

abena and edwin

maggie and seth

carolyn and sean

sarabina and andrew

jessica and shaunt

bianca and mike

marisa and andy

jennifer and edward

lauren and neil

maglen and louis

ly and kieran

marie and mike

cathy and andrew

katie and john

sarah and chris

liz and jimmy

 lauren and jay (their wedding is in december!)

and

alyssa and mark (another december wedding, no photos of them yet but you'll see them soon!)

We are so so thankful for our past, present and future clients. Thank you for letting us capture your lives!

Contest Winner

As promised, we are giving away a free photo session in celebration of our new website. The entry details were posted here and today is the day to unveil the winner! In the effort to keep it as fair as possible, we used a random number generator for the comments and counted from the top commenter down to pick a winner.  

Drum roll please.........

Congratulations to Jacquie!

Thank you to everyone who entered! Stay tuned for another adorable engagement session later today. Happy Friday everyone!

New Website!

  Welcome to the all new Summer Street Photography website!!! We're delighted you stopped by, and we hope you take a moment to explore all of the new parts of our virtual home. It's still the same Matt and Kendra, but we've been working with some personal trainers of sorts to get our new site looking like a total and complete makeover. (psst....You'll want to read all the way to the end - there is a surprise down there as well! )

Let's start at the beginning. Meet Melissa and Jonathan, the master minds behind the Brooklyn based design firm, Makewell. They are getting married next June at her step-dad's farm in New Hampshire, and guess who gets to photograph it? Yep. That's us. Check out this too cute for words photo that Jonathan's brother took:

Photo by: Jordan Motzkin

Aren't they cute? When they contacted us this summer about shooting their wedding next June, I couldn't help but notice their work title line on the very bottom of their e-mails. Graphic designers you say? I clicked into their site. And fell in love.

And so it began. Our site was in need of something a little more cohesive and professional. A little more, 'design-savvy'. So We hired them. Well, actually, we hired each other. We started working on the new site in July, and now, almost four months later to the date, we have a new baby. A new, virtual baby that is. Melissa and Jonathan were amazing to work with.  We got to help with the fun stuff, but they really were the masterminds behind the entire site. We love that the website is now much more technically fluid and functional; incorporating our portfolio alongside our current work as well as has handmade details like Melissa's calligraphy in our new logo and other parts of the site.

In short, we couldn't be more happy. Read on for a few new features, and then go see them in action! (p.s. if you're my mom, remember these images below are just screen shots, and you'll have to go into the main site to see them in action).

Here's the home page. Happy.

Oh hi. It's us. Bet you didn't know Matt does Karate. Venn Diagram for the win!

Jessica's dress and Abena's perfume. Part of the Portfolio sections. See that little portfolio icon to the left of our logo? Let you mouse rest on that and a drop down menu of various portfolio goodies will appear for your choosing.

More portfolio. Claire. Pretty, pretty Claire.

The new blog! We'll still be posting all of our recent work here, so this part of the site will be constantly updated with our new work. See those cute little handwritten links on the side? All Melissa. If you click on categories, a little genie will show you the various post categories. Nice and tidy.

The thing we're the most excited about with our new blog is the 'See More' feature. We'll be posting a single image from our shoots, and then you can click 'See More' to see the rest of the shoot. If you want to 'See Less' you can, with a click of a button. Also, something that we really really wanted was the ability to expand and collapse the posts without leaving the main blog page. On most blogs, when you click 'See More' or 'Read More' you're redirected to a new tab or window, and then you need to hit the home button or the back button to go back where you were. Not here. You can expand and collapse as many posts as you like without leaving the page. Amazing. Totally amazing.

Our contact page. Pretty self explanatory. This is how we get most of our inquiries, so now we're comforted by the fact that there is a nice photo of Jay and Lauren in a field instead of just text. win win.

So fun huh? We are head over heels in love with this new little baby. To celebrate the new website's arrival we've decided to do a GIVEAWAY!

We will be giving away one photo shoot to a random lucky recipient! If you win, here's what's in it for you:

-A 1 Hour Photoshoot with Summer Street Photography

-You'll receive 50 edited images on a high resolution disk with a photo release to use the photos for personal use

-Can be used for an engagement, newborn, maternity, head shot, senior, pet or fashion photo session. If we are shooting your wedding in 2011 or 2012, you can also enter to win an additional hour of photography coverage on your wedding day. Don't want to be in front of the camera? Gift your sister a maternity session! Win an extra hour of photography for your friend! You can gift your prize as well as use it for yourself. Shoot must be in the Boston area - but we will also be in Minnesota and South Dakota this winter, so if you're out there, you're eligible as well. As always, if you live in France, just fly us out and we'll shoot all day for free.

-Here's how to Enter:

-Like Our Page on Facebook, or invite three friends to 'Like" Summer Street Photography on Facebook. Once one of the three people you invite follow through, you have your golden ticket. Then those people can enter the contest as well.

-Leave a Comment here telling us what your favorite part of the new site is

A winner will be drawn at random and announced next Friday November 18th - or when we reach 1000 likes, whichever comes first.

Now go explore the new site! And come back this afternoon, we'll be posting two more fun posts!

Featured on Style Me Pretty Massachusetts

Once upon a time, before Summer Street Photography was even a twinkle in our eyes, I was a hopeful bride to be. Let me go further. I was NOT engaged and started reading a new wedding blog called Style Me Pretty. It has just started and the editor, Abby, was the only author. It was quaint and beautiful, and suddenly I realized that weddings could be so much more than the banquet hall I worked at in high school where every weekend looked like the same wedding. Honestly, I went through a period of time after working that job that I hated weddings (not marriages, mind you) because they all seemed like a meaningless tradition that people did, "just because". I was convinced that my wedding would be very different if and when it ever happened. It was as though the stars aligned when I started reading Style Me Pretty - and I was hooked. Every day I'd visit the site and drool over all of the various types of weddings. Home grown, big and beautiful, beachy, vineyard....all types. Around the time I did end up getting engaged I had found a few more wedding blogs to add to my daily reading list and suddenly I was a blog reader. As the engagement went on, so did the list of wedding blogs. Dozens and dozens of wedding  blogs. Style Me Pretty remained my favorite since all of the weddings they featured withheld a strict standard of taste and style. The blog grew, and grew, and grew until now, where it is a huge wedding phenomena with a sizable full time staff and most all brides we work with know what it is and turn to it for wedding inspiration. Recently, they started an even more exciting adventure into having local blogs. They still have their main site, but they also have location specific blogs for areas like Massachusetts , California, Illinois, and even Australia - to name a few. You can imagine our excitement when we were featured on Style Me Pretty Massachusetts yesterday for Maggie and Seth's DIY Wedding in Maynard. Beyond words excited.

Oh, and can we just take a moment to say HOLY COMMENTS BATMAN? You guys blew us out of the water with your comment love! Thank you for showing your support! We are truly overwhelmed.

And for fun, here is the screen shot of the Style Me Pretty Network with Maggie and Seth's photo hanging out under Massachusetts:

And lastly, our mention on the Style Me Pretty's facebook page. Which we were flattered to see since not all of the local blogs get mentions!

We're not big into tooting out own horn, but we wanted to share our excitement with all of you and THANK you for making Summer Street tick. We couldn't do it without you!

Making Me Birthday Party

We thought it might be fun to share a few photos from an ultra fun Birthday Party we were invited to attend a few weeks back for one of our favorite Wedding Planner/Coordinator/Stylist/Extraordinaire, Phebe, of Making Me Planning and Event Firm. Her business celebrated it's first birthday, and what a great time it was! You may remember that Phebe was our wedding day of coordinator, so we have a very dear place in our hearts for Phebe and her business.  She hand baked almost every portion of her adorable dessert table. Her peach pie was divine, and the adorable cake in a jar favors she sent home with us were equally as good. This woman has talent for days! Thanks for inviting us dear Phebe...and we know year two will be even better than the first year!  

Bermuda - Off the Clock

If you follow our facebook page, you might have noticed some sneak peeks from Carolyn and Sean's amazing wedding in Bermuda. Bermuda! We were so excited to not only photograph our first Island Wedding, but also take a little mini vacation in a place we'd never visited before. While we are working on Carolyn and Sean's photos from their wedding, we thought that in the meanwhile we'd share a few photos from our time on the island when we weren't working. We stayed in St. George, which is the oldest city on the Island, so we were happy to see the sights and go snorkeling in Tobacco Bay, where there are parrot fish! Some of our highlights included visiting one of the oldest churches on the western hemisphere (as pictured), renting a scooter (the scooter man didn't trust that Matt knew how to drive and made him go around and around the parking lot before letting us leave) going snorkeling (obv.) and breathing in as much humidity as humanly possible. We enjoyed every part of this trip, and can't wait to share more of Carolyn and Sean's Wedding Photos!