Handmade Wedding Photographer Giveaway

It's Tuesday. It's my Golden Birthday. And it's nearly Leap Day. So what better way to celebrate than to host a giveaway. Like a big one. BIG. I certainly don't need gifts, but you do!

I hope you're excited! I'm giving away a jam packed collection to the couple with the most DIY/Handmade flair. Is it you?

TO ENTER: send an email to meg(at)megruth(dot)com with a photo of the two of you, your story, and what DIY/handmade things you're planning for your big day. Oh and of course when and where!

WHAT YOU WIN: 6 hours of coverage by meg, 20 page 10x10 hand bound custom album, and a gorgeous case with a hi-res disc of images from your beautiful wedding day.

REQUIREMENTS: Your wedding must take place in 2012. The location must be either in the Los Angeles area, Las Vegas area or the Salt Lake City area. Wedding not in those places but still in the USA and know you could win the whole thing?! Then ENTER! And all you would pay is travel fees.

HOW TO WIN: The five finalists will be announced next Wednesday and then the voting will begin. And it will be very different from last year. Voting will go for a week and then the winner will be announced!

You've only got one week to enter or get your friends and family to enter! I'm always so inspired by your ideas and I can't wait to see what you've got planned! Contact me below to enter!!

Giveaway is now closed

Image 1 - wheat bouquet and feather boutonniere made by the bride, Image 2 - tutus made by bride's sister, Image 3 - Wedding gown and groom's boutonniere made by bride's friends, Image 4 - Centerpieces and mantle piece collected at thrift stores and flea markets, Image 4 - flower hair bow made by bride's sister and centerpiece made by bride, Image 5 - mad lib programs made by bride, Image 6 - fabric streamers made by bride's mother and envelope guest board made by bride, Image 7 - thank you speech bubbles made by bride.

Happy Weekend!

Aside from picking up a cold from Sir Luke this weekend is shaping up really nice. I'm working on getting the last details together for the styled wedding shoot I'm putting together for next week. There are SO many great vendors I'm working with in town. And if you haven't checked out their work yet you totally should

Consistently glamorous and on trend hair and makeup with Your Beauty Call

Unbelievable custom cakes from Gimme Some Sugar

Gorgeous personalized custom invitation suites by SHE Paperie

Image via Real Simple

Inspiring and romantic floral art by Layers of Lovely

An amazing selection and beautiful array of gowns from Bella Bridesmaids

Image via The Pink Book

Chic and vintage inspired handmade hair pieces by Pomp & Plumage

Out of the box and artsy event space at The Arts Factory with food by the Bar + Bistro

Image via Las Vegas Vegas

And a few festive DIY projects by yours truly!

It's bound to be fantastic! Stay tuned!


All images by megruth unless otherwise specified

Display Thursday: Scales

This entire week has been a whirlwind of information, inspiration, and a lot of socializing. There are an unquantifiable amount of things I'm going to be implementing in my business to make it loads better for you and I, both. I can't wait to share all the gory details. And believe me, MegRuth is getting a facelift, from surface to guts.

My entire goal in being a photographer is fulfilling my need to make beautiful stories and your need to retain memories for generations. It's taken me a long time to realize that. But now that I do, it's better for everyone, especially you.

One of my favorite classes at WPPI was the influence of cinematography on album design by Amina from Stillmotion. I love designing albums. Putting together the day in a relevant and interesting story that fits each specific couple is something I'm continually working at and becoming better. Sometimes you can think of a wall in your home like a page in an album. Below the smaller images lead the eye to the main focal point, which is the biggest and centered image. Letting you know that it is the climax of the story.

P.S. Love the well kept stack of books next to the couch.

Image via Design Sponge

This is another common scale arrangement in albums. A center image could be of an entire family or the bride and groom. The surrounding images? Either details from the wedding day or individual shots of children, kids with parents, the parents themselves, the family dog, or even details. All those small bits around the edge make up the whole in the center.

Image via bhg

The great thing about the scale of this image is that it's no centered. That uncomfortable placement actually makes your eye hover for longer because your brain is trying to determine why your so squirmy when looking at the pairing. Plus the colors (being opposites on the color wheel) working very wel together and lead to dynamic play between the two pieces.

Image via Design Notes

Do you play with scale in your images? Have you ever thought of your wall like an album page? Take a look at a magazine. See how they lay things out. How do those items relate to each other in their respective sizes and placement on the page. You'd be surprised how much it can relate to your walls at home!

MIA

I've been completely missing from this blog (and probably will be until next week) because I've been at WPPI. It's a huge conference here in Las Vegas for Wedding and Portrait Photographers International. I'm having a great time with new local friends and new out of town ones. One of my favorite moments so far was walking to my car and seeing this dude walking across the street. Creaky, screechy and all. I paparazzi'd through the trees on my way up the structure and snagged this. Only in Vegas...

STOP transforming!

See you next week!

Display Thursday: Kitchens

I've got some serious wall space in my kitchen that is crying for artwork. And since I'm substitute teaching in a Home Ec class today I thought it only appropriate at stick around food. Turns out high school kids are pretty awesome. Plus I know a bunch of them and a hug first thing in the morning is always a great way to start the day. So let's kick it off with a breakfast of champions!

And speaking of breakfast, I wish I had a breakfast nook. I love love love this space. Big full windows, a banquet and a tulip table? Yes, please. But the photos at the top of the wall, what a perfect extension of the moulding! Uniformity in frames and mats allows for a mix of artwork (perhaps kid art, family photos, or other artwork).

Image via bhg


Who says you can't utilize the cabinet housing your fridge as a canvas? I love how this family incorporated bins, note board as well as artwork. And all of it is coordinated by shades of teal. Perfection!

Image via Curbly


Even though this is much like the first image in arrangement there is a lot more space between the cabinets and the ceiling. They kept with the color scheme of the kitchen even in the artwork, black and white. I've got a chunk of space above my cabinetry and I think something like this would be perfection. A friend of mine asked me when we're painting my cabinets white. This friend painted hers last fall and is also six months pregnant. I think she's bonkers! That or she was really happy I made her chocolate covered, heart-shaped, rice krispie treats! Probably the latter.

Image via Design Mom

Do you have space in your kitchen for photographs? Would you put any there? Do tell.

Today

This weekend, was just perfect. I pretty much snuggled on the couch with Sir Luke the entire time. Blissful! Of course Ripley nosed into our laps almost constantly but how do you deny a face like this?!

This week I'm working on getting more details together for my styled wedding shoot. I'm so excited to share it with you in the next month. It's like putting together a wedding all over again. I don't know how planners/coordinators do this day in and day out! It's crazy!

I hope you had a marvey weekend and your week continues to be stupendous.

Display Thursday: Easy as 1, 2, 3!

This week several people came to my house when I was not expecting them and had to bear witness to the slob that I am... It was severely embarrassing but at the same time, eh. I go through crazy cleaning phases and then I just can't bring myself to put away the paper towels that I bought at the store last week. One such friend asked me what I was planning on doing with the two giant frames that are sitting on the floor against the chevron wall. And since they've been sitting there since Christmas and will probably continue to do so I thought I'd show you an EASY way to get stuff up on those walls of yours. 

New start my friends, new start.

ONE, although it may be the loneliest number that you ever knew is often all you need to brighten up a bland office wall or hallway. This room is likely anything but bland. This is the seating area of a bedroom. The image is perfect for the space and being the one lone piece for the large wall the scale of the image had to be huge as well. Keep that in mind when deciding to put one photograph on your wall. The bigger the empty space the bigger that one image should be. A tip: cut out newspaper to the size you think you want and tape it up on the wall. If the scale looks right you're good to go, if not, try, try again!

Image via So Haute

It take TWO to make a thing go riiiiight! Do you see where I'm going with this now? Pairs of images are really great on a wall together, especially when they play off one another. I really think if you only have two images on a wall they do need to tie in together. Whether it be from the same shoot, or the same person or the same color (or black and white!). I would also tend to do as is done in this image and keep the scale and shape consistent. 

Image via Emily Henderson

THREE's company too! I love how, in this attic space, they use the  wainscoting to align all the photographs. It's clean and simple and still makes a great statement on the wall. Plus I love that it creates some streamlined structure to the oddly shaped attic room.

Image via Houz

See! How easy was that?! 1, 2, 3! (The first time I typed that it was 1, 2, 4! Mrs. May would be so sad to hear I forgot how to count!) Get those pictures up on your walls my friends. Go on, do it!

Seeing Love: LaVey and Tyson Just Because Photos

I met LaVey for the first time at Katie and Ryan's wedding last year. She and Janine, of Your Beauty Call fame, did such fantastic work on the bride and her bridal party and were such fantastic girls that I had to know them for realz. I love them both dearly.

LaVey married her beau, Tyson, on 9-10-11 (cute!) and I totally missed out on the affair because I was photographing tractors and listening to two hours of polka music. Just normal stuff like that. I've been trying to photograph these two beautiful people for ages. And when I say ages I mean since last May. That's nearly a year my friends (in case the math escaped you). After some hemming and hawing over where our location would be, we went to quaint little Main St. in Boulder City. A-DOR-A-BLE. Seriously the cutest street ever.

Two words.

Candy Shoppe!!!

These two are seriously adorable. Plus they bought me a chocolate covered banana. So they can stay.

Can't wait for our next shoot! Yep, we've already got another in the works. Hopefully this time it will take less than nine months to do it!

Steampunk

I only recently learned what a steampunk is after I saw a feature on Ruffled Blog of a Victorian Steampunk wedding. Apparently it's been around since the 90s, but I wasn't in the know. Which isn't really that surprising...

I'm part of a little photo Facebook group and the fantastic Heather Baldwin found a local Steampunk Group called the Las Vegas Steampunk Tea Society and they were totally up for a photo shoot. There were a lot of us photographers there but there were even more steampunks, if you can believe that!

This is a serious hobby. They make their own props and clothes or combine their own creations with different finds from thrift stores or ebay. They'll build up outfits overtime. The clothing is unreal. But the real gems were their guns or hats or goggles or, yes, even the monocle. So awesome! I think I know what I'm going to be for Halloween this year.

See More Love

Vegas Fun

I don't often get down to the strip. But when a wonderful friend comes to town and says she'll carve out a wedge of time for me to share a meal with her, I am there like white of rice. Capree is a one of my dearest friends from college. We've known each other a long time (if I try and crunch the numbers it makes me feel old, so don't push it). She has an amazing blog about all things modern in design land. It's awesome, My Adventure is Your Advantage (MAIYA, for short). She's like a little sprite of joy and laughter.

I took her to the Wicked Spoon at the Cosmopolitan. She'd never been inside and I knew it was totally up her alley. As soon as she saw The Chandelier she was sold. Four stories of sparkling crystals? Um, yes please.

We had a great time. I was sad when I had to take her to the airport. But she's coming back, she promised.


When I heard about the Gourmet Food Truck Festival at South Pointe I wasn't too sure about how good the food would be. But upon arriving and seeing the endless lines of people at each of the twenty some trucks I decided I had made the right decision in dragging my friends out there. After making a lap around the trucks and waiting in two lines and deciding against the food we settled on Devilicious and got some seriously gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Take a look at the menu! I'm salivating again. I really should not be posting this on an empty stomach.

And what's a week without a walk with Ripley-dog? Because my community is still building (it was a ten year plan before the housing crash and I'm pretty sure at this point it's about 30 years). The farthest edge of our walk is an area that will one day be a giant park. Right now it's just rocks and and dirt. But someone in my neighborhood has taken to stacking rocks out in the wasteland. There's several sculptures. I love seeing them sprout up.

Have a wunderbar weekend!!