Kristen Steele Photography

Nashville's Pictage User Group | Holiday Party 2009

Looking back over this past year, it has been such a blessing! It’s been one of amazing growth for me both personally and professionally. David and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary and he continues to be my main encourager and my business manager extraordinaire! Professionally, I’m expanded my photography business from mostly family and childrens portraits into the wonderful world of weddings!

I had the honor of photographing more than 10 different weddings and many engagement sessions too. I love getting to know the couples I work with and their families. It is such a blessing for me to be a part of their family on one of the best days of their lives.

I have cherished everyone that I worked with over this past year, both clients and other photographers.

This has been one aspect of my business that I didn’t anticipate and which was such a pleasant surprise: the support and encouragement from so many fellow photographers in Nashville. I started attending the Nashville Pictage User Group (aka “PUG”) in June and loved getting together with other photographers on a monthly basis to discuss all different aspects of photography. If you’re a Nashville PUG photographer, thank YOU for all that you have done for me: met for lunch at Moe’s, asked me to second shoot for you at weddings, given me advice on which lenses to buy and which ones not to and for all of your encouragement. I am thankful to be surrounded by such rich talent. My father always says, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” I know that’s true & I hope the tide keeps rising in 2010. (No, that’s not an Alabama reference, I’m still a VOLS girl.)

The fun photo below was from the Nashville PUG holiday party @ Gregory Byline’s studio & Gregory setup this great shot.

Tags: nashville pictage user group

Nashville Wedding Vendors | Meetup at Cabana

As Nashville Wedding Vendors, it’s great to take a break from work & get together and just have fun! Last week some of the finest Nashville area wedding vendors met up at Cabana in Hillsboro Village.

It was a great opportunity for some of us to meet each other outside of the virtual world (i.e. twitter, facebook & admiring one another’s websites!).

Thanks to Vickie Stanton of Bella Weddings for organizing this get together for all wedding vendors & I’m sure we’ll have many more to come!

Amy Thomas of Swizzle Events, Vickie Stanton of Bella Weddings, and Amy McNeil of 4th Leaf Studio started the night out with a Sweet-tini. Vickie described it as an “alcoholic Arnold Palmer,” and that sounded pretty good to me!

I started the night out by ordering some fries and I definitely didn’t read the menu correctly because this is what I got… I was expecting amazing cheesy, bacony fries like the ones at Outback but no such luck…

Vickie is seen here with Latrice of Bridal Opulence and Kristyn Hogan, one of my fellow Nashville PUG members!

Here is the fabulous Toni Smith of Celebrations by Design with her friend.

I was soooo excited to meet these two! Lorie Burcham of Crumb de la Crumb and Amy Thomas of Swizzle Events. I had been tweeting with both of them for quite some time before I met them! Lorie and her husband just moved to town & we are so glad to have another talented duo to add to the Nashville Wedding Vendor mix!

Eugene and Heather of 2Duce2 Videography
are just the cutest! This fabulous team of videographers is seriously changing how the wedding industry thinks about typical wedding videography. If you don’t know about them, go checkout their website now.

Michelle of Hartz Photographic, Sharon of Jonathon Campbell Photography and Amy are enjoying our fun time @ Cabana. I have really enjoyed getting to know both Sharon and Michelle at the Nashville PUG meetings for photographers!

I was delighted to see Bill & Deanna again of First Dance Pictures. We worked on Katie & Jon’s wedding together back in September and they did a great job.

Last but not least, here’s Vickie, Emily Humphries of Simply Yours Weddings and I wrapping up the night! I absolutely ADORE both of these women and have loved getting to know them both. I can’t wait til we actually do a wedding together! {Krystin Hogan took this awesome picture!}

Twitter is the way we’ve been organizing most of the Nashville area wedding vendor meetups, so follow up & come join us next time! See my list of Nashville Wedding Vendors on Twitter.

I thoroughly enjoy getting to know all of these vendors & am looking forward to our next meetup.

p.s. This is how our evening ended… I won’t mention who these belong to!

Tags: Cabana, Nashville Wedding Vendors

Featured on Simply Stunning Event's blog!

Checkout my most recent feature on Simply Stunning Event’s blog. Kristin Kaplan is such a wonderful wedding planner & such a joy to be around!!

Tags: Featured on, Kristin Kaplan, simply stunning events, wedding photography

Governor’s Club Family Portraits | The Givers Family

I loved photographing the Givers family at the beautiful Governor’s Club neighborhood in Brentwood, TN! We had a great time driving all over the neighborhood picking out fabulous places to take pictures.

I really love how they turned out, the leaves are fabulously colorful!

Tags: fall colorful leaves, Fall family portraits, family portraits, Governor's Club

The Pioneer Woman's Book signing in Nashville, TN!

From time to time I want to take a break from all the photo sessions & share some fun personal stories. Here’s is my recent venture with my fabulous wedding planner friend, Vicky Stanton of Tennessee Bella Weddings to meet The Pioneer Woman…

The Pioneer Woman. She’s a HUGE phenomenon in case you haven’t heard of her. I’m fascinated by her. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the sights I saw last night, after all it was a giant group of women, but I was. Ree Drummond (aka “The Pioneer Woman”) has become a mommy/cook/photographer blogging mega-star. She has thousands upon thousands of followers and it all started on a BLOG.

If you haven’t heard of her, go here to read her blog: www.thepioneerwoman.com.

I will admit up front, I haven’t been reading her blog for three years like the majority of women who turned up last night to Davis Kidd. In fact, I only recently discovered her when I Googled “Photoshop Actions.” That was a few months ago and I’ve been reading her blog ever since.

Now I’m a geeky technologist, a blogger, a photographer, a wife, a determined cook (I say determined because after I got home last night from the book signing I asked Dave how the Crock Pot recipe was I lovingly made for him and I realized I had fixed another dud, too-dry recipe… oh well, try again!) and a huge twitter/facebook-aholic so why was it so hard for me to realize that The Pioneer Woman had amassed a huge following? Because I had never experienced it first-hand.

The women in line knew EVERYTHING about her: the name of her best friend and sister who were there signing books too, about which cities she had already visited on her book tour, her husband’s pet name “The Marlboro Man,” the fact that Ree loves babies and will take pictures with them @ her signings… I could go on and on but I won’t. In fact, MANY women brought gifts to her (see photo below), as if she was little baby Jesus in a manger. I don’t mean that sacrilegiously, I promise, I mean that seriously because some of the women had that kind of devotion.

Checkout just how many women I mean…

So when she finally walked out, everyone was so excited, the energy was incredible!

She said a few words, explaining that she wasn’t going to take the time to chat beforehand because there were SO many people there! {Please notice the scene in the background which was SO typical of the whole night: a cute girl taking pics with her awesome camera, several onlookers including a bored man who was probably the wife of a fanatical fan. }

Checkout her stash of gifts beside her on the table, that was only after about a dozen women. One girl brought her a box of Gigi’s cupcakes, YUMMY!!

But Ree graciously signed EVERY single book that came through the line, even when a couple of women brought an entire BOX of cookbooks they had ordered off of Amazon!

The background of our book signing here in Nashville was much prettier than some of the other book signings she has been to!

So then I FINNNNALLLY got to meet The Pioneer Woman! I really didn’t have anything else to say other than, “I’m a photographer too! I love all your actions & your photography blog posts, thanks!” She was nice, signed my book & it was fun!

Apart from the sheer-phenomenon aspect of it, it was ridiculously fun! We were all standing in line together, waiting to get our fancy cookbook signed. I went with my wedding planner friend, Vicky Stanton of Tennessee Bella Weddings and we had a blast!

Tags: Booksigning, photography, The Pioneer Woman