Laurel McConnell Photography » Announcements, Products, & Chat

I just realized I never posted these! Woopsies….

Last month, our beautiful city of Seattle hosted OSPW, a conference for photographers. A few of my friends (hi Steve and Shannon and Bill and Lori and everyone!) were the lucky organizers- I ended up leading a few shoots, finding models, and teaching some off-camera lighting.

Check out my super spunky clients Keenan and Dave workin’ it in Post Alley… I love this light.

These images come in the form of a very popular post-wedding phenomenon, the Trash The Dress shoot. I mean geez, you spend HOW MUCH on your wedding dress, just to wear it ONCE? So enter our version of the TTD session, we lovingly call it The Day After Session. Ingredients: one bride, one groom, a fabulous pair of shoes or two, maybe some props, a few pretty/gritty/funky locations not available on your wedding day, and viola.  A saucy fashion-inspired portrait session, with a hint of sass.

If your wedding pictures were oh-so-long ago, they didn’t turn out as you had hoped, or your photographer flubbed it (like miss Brittany here), then this is a great chance to get dressed up again and let your inner fashionista out to play.  And bring the boy, too….

Not only is Brittany the most comfortable little lady in front of the camera ever (and a gorgeous one at that!), but she’s a fabulously talented graphic designer and invitation maker as well!  Check her at at Dolce Design!

Thank you, Brittany, Keena, and Stacey, for being our patient models and puttin’ it allll out there for the whole city to see!! xoxo!

Another special thanks to Brady Woo of BoConcept for inviting us to shoot inside his gorgeously hip furnishings store in Pioneer Square! Next time you’re planning a party and need a location, or you are in the market for some awesome/urban/sleek/modern furnishings, skip on down to their store.  You won’t be disappointed…

If you’d like to book a Day After Session, give us a jingle- weekends and evenings are filling up as the sunshine is coming out of hibernation for the summer, so leave plenty of time to plan for your shoot!

Some of you know it as a “Trash The Dress Shoot.”  I like to call it “The Day After Session” with a bit of a fashion flair.

This last week while we were in Vegas for the WPPI conference, Steve, Bill & Erin, and I were lucky enough to have Amy and Bev indulge in our photographic whims while we dragged them all over Vegas’s famed Neon Boneyard Museum.  This is an AWESOME location that photographers look forward to booking shoots at every year come conference time.  It is where all of the neon signs of decades past (mostly circa 1950’s) go to retire their bulbs.  Sadly, it has been subject of entirely too much vandalism over the last few years- everything from graffiti to fire, but is still a unique place nonetheless (but it’s not a bad idea to be up on your teatanus shots before you go!!!).

A huge thanks to our showgirl Bev and my lovely friend and sometimes assistant Amy for getting all dolled up in the wee hours of the morning (check out her work, she’s got a great eye!), and a sincere thanks to Jodell at Bella Umbrella for trusting me with the newest addition to her vintage umbrella collection (it’s not even cataloged yet!)!

Contact us at info at mcconnellphoto dot com for info on your very own Day After Session.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be the day after your wedding, but it’s a great opportunity to get the portraits you couldn’t get on your wedding day!

There’s nothing like getting together with a bunch of great folks in your industry and having a great time when you love what you do.  A couple of weeks ago, something like 20 or 30 other photographers and I traveled across the water in the wee hours of the morning to meet up at historic Fort Worden to shoot until we dropped. I dragged some of my clients with me, Arica and Eddie, (okay, maybe not DRAGGED… maybe they wanted to go!) and we all romped around the fields, rocks, barracks, bunkers, and beaches and had a grand old time before passing out in one of the 100-year-old Officer’s houses that you can rent on the park grounds.

If you’re not familiar with the one of the latest trends in wedding photography, it’s to have your own fashion session a day or a week or a month or a year after your wedding.

In the industry, we’ve taken to calling them “Trash The Dress” sessions although our aim is not to trash your gorgeous couture wedding gown that you saved your weekly allowance for since you were 8 years old, but to go somewhere and make some really fun fashion inspired images that you normally wouldn’t be able to make on your wedding day because of time or location constraints. (and your dress will survive, unless you decide to go for a swim in a swamp!)

If you’d like to book a session like this of your own (whether you’re up for wearing your wedding attire or just pulling some fun duds out of your closet!) contact me so we can schedule something for you- summer is tight (as it’s prime wedding season!) so dates are limited!!!

Special thanks to Steve Smith for heading up this whole event-we all had THE greatest time and can’t wait for you to plan the next hoedown!  Wink wink!!

I looooove the desert. If you know me well enough, you know that it reminds me of where I grew up. So when I heard about this Leavin’ Las Vegas shoot the last day of the WPPI conference, I was so in.

The folks that put a name to the Trash the Dress trend (you know, the fun day after sessions that we can have after your wedding, where we can do stuff and try things that we normally wouldn’t on the wedding day??) and people from Don’t Box Us In planned a day of fashion models and real brides in Nevada’s Red Rocks Canyon. We got to shoot alongside photographers such as Mark Eric, Jason Domingues, Tana Huffman, Sofie Louca from Amorphia Photography, John Michael Cooper, Mike Fulton from Tri Coast Photography, David Beckstead, and Anne Ruthmann.

Here is a video documenting the Leavin’ Las Vegas Shootout from Patrick Moreau and our cinematography friends at Still Motion.

We had such a great time (me and at least nine others from Seattle). Not only did we take home some awesome images, but we also got some fancy sunburn patterns, scratches from the cactuses (Gerald wins that contest, he sat on it just like in the old Warner Bros. cartoons!), lil miss hottie Jenna from JFK Photography modeled among the pros, and more fun memories from Vegas!

So… you current and former brides of mine, give me a jingle and we can plan some Day After shoots of our own in and around Seattle! Or heck, I’m up for a road trip to the desert if you are!!