At the end of July we took a trip with our good friends Mark, Candice and the cutest baby in the world, Wyatt. Mark & Candice invited us to hang out at their family estate in Speculator New York. When Candice said it was right on a lake we were there. These two have become great friends of ours over the past couple of years. You may remember their cute little faces from when we shot them here in Seattle last year.

Mark & Candice are also photographers and the four of us (plus Wyatt :) decided to do the unthinkable and get away for a week in the middle of crazy busy wedding season. The goal of the trip was just to relax and be together with no cell reception in the middle of no-where-Speculator New York. We played games, slept in, stayed up late talking, went sailing, read, took naps, had a couple camp fires, saw the most beautiful sun-sets and laughed A LOT. These two are our perfect travel-couple. Around them, things are easy and effortless and I am reminded of how sweet sharing life can be. A true friend is one that can pick you up during times of struggle, but also celebrate you in your successes. That is Mark & Candice. They are absolutley beautiful people that we feel so grateful to call friends. 

To be honest, we didn't get our cameras out much this trip because we just wanted to soak it all up, but I just thought I would share a few random captures of our sweet time on the lake with one of our favorite little families, The Brookes :) 

We're off to Maui today... anyone have any suggestions of things to do? We're shooting Saturday but are staying a couple extra days to explore :) Any suggestions welcomed.

Carmen Farrell is a great photographer from Toronto who met us in Upstate New York while we were there a couple of weeks ago for a six hour mentor session with us. We were in a super small town in Speculator NY and found a little place to get some ice cream, talk, and dig into Carmen's business. 

Chris and I were so excited about Carmen's family portrait focused business. We were immediately inspired by one of her recent lifestyle family shoots and this generated lots of creative ideas that I'm already seeing her run after. We brainstormed some different approaches to her business that will help her stand out in her market and chatted about the importance of paginating our work so that the edit reflects the type of things we want to shoot among a variety of other things ;) These are just a few snaps from our 15 minute mini session with Carmen. 

We are heading to L.A. today for Darby & Reece's wedding and then I'm heading to Moab Utah for a girls trip with some of my photographer lady friends for a week! If you want to keep up with some of our adventures you can check out the blog: http://marfatrip.com/