Sweet Frogs

A shoot with Melissa McDonald.

Man's Best Friend

Show your best friend how much you love them. Give them the gift of a photo shoot with an Eagle Eye!

The Bedtime Stories Band

I recently had the chance to get in the studio with the artists from The Bedtime Stories Band. Aside from having a ton of fun we came away with some great shots.

This band not only sounds good but now they look good!

Eagle Eye Photography Winner of the 2012 Brides Choice Awards

{Richmond,VA} – January 23, 2012 – WeddingWire, the nation's leading wedding Marketplace, is excited to announce Eagle Eye Photography LLc has been selected to receive the prestigious WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2012 for Photography!

The esteemed annual awards program recognizes the top local wedding vendors from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism within the wedding industry. While many industry awards are selected by the organization, Eagle Eye Photography%2c LLc was selected based on its stellar reviews from past newlywed clients.

Eagle Eye Photography LLc is recognized as part of the top five percent of wedding professionals in the WeddingWire local vendor community, comprised of over 200,000 wedding professionals throughout the United States and Canada. The Bride’s Choice Award recognizes the best local wedding vendors across 20 service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers, based on their overall professional achievements throughout the past year.

“WeddingWire is thrilled to honor the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community,” said Timothy Chi, CEO, WeddingWire. “Since the launch of the Bride’s Choice Awards™ program four years ago, thousands of outstanding wedding professionals have been recognized by the bridal community for their supreme service and dedication to the wedding industry. It is with great pleasure that we congratulate Eagle Eye Photography LLc for their continued professionalism and commitment to enriching the wedding planning experience for engaged couples.”

We are happy to announce that Eagle Eye Photography LLc is one of the very best Photographers within the WeddingWire Network, which includes leading wedding planning sites WeddingWire, Project Wedding, Brides.com, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Weddingbee. We would like to thank our past clients for taking the time to review our business on WeddingWire. Thanks to their positive feedback we were able to receive the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ for 2012.

For more information, please visit our WeddingWire Storefront today at http://www.weddingwire.com/biz/eagle-eye-photography-llc-richmond/eef33c551c8ded57.html. 

Genevieve + Casey

 

Nathan's Tree

The following story was written by a neighbor of my girlfriend's colleague. This colleague lost her son, Nathan, when he was two years old. The image you see above was taken this Christmas in order to help preserve Nathan's memory and spirit for this particular family. Every tree in this neighborhood is decorated with red and white lights by Nathan's father and fellow neighbors. As you will read in the story below, this beautiful tradition started with a single tree of red and white lights, Nathan's Tree.

"The White Lights"

Somewhere along the line, I lost the meaning of Christmas. When you are a kid, it is all about the toys and the cookies. But as I got older my credit card got me what I wanted, when I wanted it. No having to wait for the jolly fat man. The internet replaced Christmas cards and, as the kids grew up, no more cheery faces running down the stairs at the crack of dawn. So what became of Christmas? Is it in those old photos of me in my Dr. Denton's opening a present under that fake white tree we got one year? Or is it in my memories of going into Brooklyn on Christmas Eve with my dad to haggle over the price of a tree that would soon be left for the next day's trash? Maybe it was the year we all played cards and caught my 36 year old cousin Steve cheating at UNO...really, he was cheating. I suppose it was still all these things to me. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. I love shopping for presents and decorating the house. Lights on the outside and trees on the inside. Yes, I said trees. I am up to three trees. One for the fancy ornaments, one for the kid's goofy ornaments, and one for the family that has our memories on it...baby's first Christmas, a ball made from the ribbon of the first presents we gave each other, ornaments from the cities we lived in--the Brooklyn Bridge, the Washington Monument, Big Ben.

And the outside lights. This is where we separate the men from the boys. How many do you have? I have thousands. How big are yours? Well, we all have twinklers now. But that wasn't always the case. There was a time when Christmas light bulbs were big green, big red, big yellow, and big blue bulbs. None were bigger than the ones we had when I was a kid. We had what you might call an unfair advantage. My dad worked on the crew that put the lights up on the tree in Rockefeller Center in New York. The Rock tree is usually a 60 foot spruce tree or some other such real big tree. So the Christmas lights they put on that tree were huge, as big as my little kid hands. We use to outline the entire house with the Rock red lights. My dad would have to get up on the 20 foot ladder to do the job. And when he flipped the switch, you could see the house from space it was so bright. One year he actually blew out the fuses and knocked out the electricity on the whole block. So I have been a light man from a young age.

Light housing is not a simple task. There are rules. First, no lights with white wires. I am not even sure why they make lights with white wires. Maybe it is for those white stucco houses in New Jersey. Outside lights need to have green wire. Second, extension cords need to be brown or green. You can't use those orange heavy duty cords. Third, no bunching. Lights have to be well distributed. Fourth, plastic figures and blow up Santas are OK if you have little kids. If you have teenagers in the house, though, it is time to leave the blow ups in the attic. Lastly, Christmas is not a time to experiment with fads. Stick with tradition. Let the other guy put up snowflakes that spin and reindeer that fly. The official kick-off for Christmas decorating is the day after Thanksgiving. Starting any earlier is just plain cheating. No better than those people who leave their lights up all year round. Christmas decorating is a race against the clock and cold weather. If the weather holds, you can decorate right up to Christmas Eve. Anyone can string lights when it's a balmy 50 degrees out. The real decorating starts when the thermometer hits 30 and you can't feel your fingers anymore. These are the rules. They are well established and followed religiously by the faithful. It's a sort of decorating advent calendar. The first week or two are devoted to the outside lights. The third week to the tree and the fourth week to dressing up the inside. For many years these rules and this schedule provided order and comfort to our Christmas season. Each year a success and better than the last. I had it down pat. And it was good. But then something happened that changed everything. Now, some would say it was fate. Some would say it was the spirit of the season. Others would just say it was a Christmas miracle. Maybe it was all these things.What is clear is that it started simply enough and ended up almost as a spontaneous collective epiphany. We were all drawn to the white lights.

When I first saw all those trees with the red lights around the trunk and white lights swirling in the branches like a real life Dr. Seuss drawing I thought, whoever did this either has completely embraced the Christmas season or is unemployed. You have to understand that decorating is competitive. You have to keep an eye on the neighbors. And if they do a good job, you have to tip your hat to them. If they do a really good job, you have only one alternative...copy it. It was time to act and I took the only course possible. I went to Home Depot and bought every package of red and white lights they had. It was not easy getting those white lights up into the highest branches but with the help of a 20 foot extension pole, balance as graceful as a circus tightrope walker, and the paticence of St. Joe himself, they eventually went up. Every tree around the house was loaded with thousands of white lights. And when it was done, it looked good. There was something about those white lights though. The clarity of the light. Their simple purity speaking innocence and truth. At night, the lights sparkled like landlocked stars imitating the Star of Bethlehem a thousand times over. And then an interesting thing happened. Other houses began to put those twinkling white and red lights in their trees. Up the road and around the curves all throughout the neighborhood. Maybe everyone had the same thought or maybe they didn't want to be left out. Or just maybe one or two of them heard the story, like I did, about how it all started with one father in an act of love, decorating a single tree with white and red lights to shine on the soul of a beautiful child no longer at home.

Christmas is a time of joy and love for the birth of a blessed child. As I look on the white lights up and down my street, I think of the two babies that these white lights celebrate and the unity of spirit that weaves through trees. I love Christmas and white lights.

Leslie and William