It's Alive!!! ... Finally!

At last, after many hours of hard work and way too many cans of Coke Zero, the new Dave Watkins Photography website is live! It's a big change from the previous version of the site. The photos are now front and center, and much of the site has been simplified and restyled. Our goal was to make it a much more vibrant space - clean, quick navigation and lots of photos and galleries that will be updated often.

I built the site myself, with design input from Val. I'm by no means a web design professional, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Learning how to create well-made websites has been a tough road for me, but I love doing it because I'm constantly learning new things, and it's exciting to see the finished product.

Have a great week!

What an awesome wedding!

This past weekend Val and I were in Chicago for Paula and Nil's wedding. It was easily one of the most unique and beautiful weddings I've ever been to. There were a lot of things that made this wedding special. First off Paula and Val met a year or two ago at the UW and since then we all have become very good friends, so it was great for us to be able to witness them formally begin their life together. They are both wonderful people - I feel very fortunate to have them as friends.
Another thing that I thought was great was the unmistakeable blending of cultural flavors throughout the whole wedding. Paula and Nil come from very different cultural backgrounds, but they did an amazing job of mixing elements from both. From the spectacular food, which was completely vegetarian - even the cake was made with no eggs!, to to the mix of the live mariachi band and Indian music from the DJ, they took different elements and combined them to get all sorts of awesome colors, textures, flavors, sounds. It was really wonderful to be a part of that mix.
I could go on and on, but I'll leave it to the photos to tell the rest of the story.

What a foggy mess.

So Val and I were in Chicago this weekend for Nil and Paula's wedding - which was awesome! I'll have more on their wedding later this week.
On your way home though we ran into fog between Janesville and Madison, and we got caught up in the detour of traffic around the pile-up on the interstate. After thinking about it afterward though, I realized how lucky Val and I really were. We stopped for lunch just out side Chicago at a restaurant in a Mall. I partially wanted to go there so that after we ate we could take a stroll around the mall - you know, good for the digestion. Anyway, I realized that if we hadn't taken that walk we would have gotten on the road 45-60 minutes earlier, which likely would have put us right in the middle of that pile-up.
I really makes you stop and think when you realize how such a small choice can have such huge repercussions.

Headed to Chicago

Today Val and I are headed to Chicago for Paula and Nil's Wedding Saturday. Everything is being held at the Garfield Conservatory, which is a beautiful location, but it's also a challenge photographically, especially in the winter. Since conservatories are basically big greenhouses, they rely mostly on natural daylight for lighting in the facility, so they typically only have minimal artificial light sources. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that since it gets dark so early this time of year, the ceremony and reception will all be taking place after dark. I shot at "The Domes" in Milwaukee last winter and it turned out to be the most difficult shooting conditions I've ever had to contend with. I made it work, but it wasn't easy. We're going to scout it out this afternoon, so hopefully I'll be fully prepared.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Pierre and Anna

Thanks Pierre and Anna for a great new years party!