jessica + brian

The new Mr. and Mrs. Chandler got married in Wilmington, NC at The Balcony on Dock in August. I started out at Jessica's hotel room for her getting ready photos, then we all went to the wedding ceremony and reception at The Balcony. We were hoping to get to go to the river for some couple portraits during the cocktail hour, but the rain didn't let up for that to happen, so we rocked out the hall while the staff was doing the room flip.

pretty bride.


pretty room.


wwooOOooah. the bridal party.


the new Chandler family.






this reminds me of a 1950s bride and groom photo.




the groom's cousin presented a slide show.




i want to eat that chocolate one with the white icing dripping down the side. mmm.




pretty light. the windows throughout the room let in lots of natural light.


the balcony.


aaand she's done.




Studio 310 Photography

Happy First Day of Fall

See those pumpkins? They're for the October Mini Sessions. Studio 310 will be hosting Harvest & Halloween Mini Sessions Oct 30th and 31st. Parents and grandparents can bring in their kids in fall clothes or Halloween costumes for a quick, inexpensive photo session, and a quick turn-around on the prints. Contact me to book your session. Samples coming soon.

See that flag? Yea for college football—even when my team loses. But ECU has won a few games so far this season.

See that wreath? I made it.

See that potted plant? It's really a weed, but I like the way it looks, and its leaves open and close with the light, and it has pretty yellow flowers.

See that lock box on the door? Yep, our house is for sale. Contact me if you want details, and I can help set you up with a showing.

See those open windows? Yea for cool fall weather, and saving energy by letting the fresh cool air in the house. Mine are open too, you just can't see them.

Amanda Dengler

Belk Bridal Show

I had such a busy weekend, but it was all fun. It started early on Friday at 3:00 for the Raleigh Street Painting Festival. (That was so eventful it gets its own post.) I shot a wedding with April Saturday afternoon. It didn't even hit me til the next day that it was a nine hour shoot—probably because it was in Raleigh so we got home "early" at 10:30. That was the wildest wedding reception I've ever experienced. And Sunday after church, Jonathan and I headed to Smithfield for Belk's little bridal show.

They had a nice show with a few area wedding vendors and some nice gifts and give-aways. But I guess it was poorly marketed because the attendance was very poor. This was the first year I participated, and I'll continue to go to their shows because I think it was such a lovely event, and I want it to be bigger and better next time. One of the brides that attended the event had already booked my friend Brandi for her wedding day photography, so that was cool to get to make that connection. Even though I didn't get to talk to many brides, it was a great opportunity for me to network with others in the wedding industry. Other vendors that were there:

Casey's Floral & Catering Service. Casey's has locations in Princeton, Smithfield, and Four Oaks. They provided the refreshments for the show including a delicious cake.
Frankly Yours Garden Gifts & Antiques. The name doesn't really tell you what they do, but they offer traditional wedding day flowers, arrangements, and traditional decor like white columns, urns, and ferns.
Clinique. Part of the gift for attending was from Clinique. Nice. I got one too. I love their stuff because it's fragrance free and great for sensitive skin—or really any skin type. That's one of their big marketing pushes; they work to match your makeup to fit your skin type. Clinique is also really good about giving free consultations and letting you try their out their stuff before you purchase.
Jimmy R. Wallace Photography. A super traditional photography studio in Smithfield. If you're looking for 100% posed wedding day photography, Tim at Jimmy R Wallace Photography can provide it.

Next time I'll take some photos of our setup. The bridal consultant ladies at Belk had set up an area to look so pretty for the show. I took some big ol' prints, and Jonathan set up my laptop with a monitor on one of the tables to show a slide show of engagement photos, bridal portraits, and wedding day photos. Next time too I'll help more with getting the word out about the event.

I'll be posting new wedding photos in a couple days from a recent wedding I photographed in Wilmington.

Studio 310 Photography

stephanie + ryan

I photographed Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg's wedding in August. They were both so calm and excited at the same time--no crazy nervous stress for either of these two. The wedding ceremony was held at Kenly Missionary Baptist Church in Kenly, NC. Then we headed over to the Hinnant Family Vineyards for the reception. We also photographed Stephanie's bridal portraits there a few months ago.

The dress.


The bride.


The guys.


The ladies.


The ceremony. If I had to shoot from a balcony every single weekend, I might get tired of it, but it's been a year since I shot a wedding at a church with a balcony, so I enjoyed the change. Plus the wedding director was really cool about letting us move (discretely) around the church.


The new Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg.


The not-so-bad receiving line.


The flowers. I mean cake.


The rings.


The first dance.








The last dance. Stephanie with her dad.




The party.






Before the garter toss. I'm not sure if this kid was practicing or what.




The escape.


Studio 310 Photography

classes, workshops, seminars . . .

Whatever you want to call them, I've had enough for one week. I recently learned about Wake Tech's Small Business Seminars, and they're FREE. Wake Tech has a Small Business Center at their Western Campus in Cary, NC that provides training and assistance to new and existing business owners through workshops, seminars, and one-on-one counseling. They have free seminars each week at both their Western Campus and the new Northern Wake Campus. The seminars include lots of different topics including, marketing, sales, tax issues, business plans, legal info, loan info, and even selling on ebay.

Wednesday evening I went to a seminar about taxes presented by the NC Women's Business Center at Wake Tech's North Campus. They brought in a guy that works at the NC Department of Revenue and he spent two hours talking about tax. ahhh. Seriously, it was super straight forward and really helpful.

Last night I went back to the same exact room for a seminar about "Choosing the Proper Legal Form for Your Business." They brought in a lawyer that does business and international law to explain some of the different legal entities for business. (I'm not sure I'm even using these terms correctly.) It was info about corporations and limited liability companies and others, and figuring out what is the best for your business--for two hours.

I didn't figure out what was the best for my business, and neither did my friend Becca who went with me last night. We even stayed after the class to get some clarification, and he suggested we talk with an accountant. hmmm. But the class was very informative, and it saved me either a lot of time and frustration trying to learn that stuff myself, or a lot of money paying a lawyer to explain it all to me one-on-one.

So YEA! for free resources.

But wait, that's not all. Wednesday at lunch I attended the first "Downtown Smithfield Market Street Matters." The seminar topic was Banking and Investing for Working Women. When I signed up to go, I knew the food was going to be good, because we have so many good restaurants downtown. What I was very unsure about was the content of the presentation. I was half not knowing what to expect, and half expecting to hear sales pitches for loans from SunTrust, and sales pitches for investing with Edward Jones. I guess these names could be repalced with many other banks and investing advisors, but from my experience these two are good examples of companies that always seem to be trying to recruit business.

So what I did get was great. The lunch seminar was for female business owners and employees working in the Downtown Smithfield Business District. We met at the Lampe Training Center/Conference Room, and lunch was provided by locally owned Riverside Cafe. The event was sponsored by KS Bank and Market Street Advisors. They're going to host 5 more of these events. For this seminar, people from KS Bank talked generally, in a non-sales-pitch way about what they do and offer for businesses, but more for individuals. Then people from Market Street Advisors told us about the stuff they offer, and had a stock guy to talk generally about the stock market and investing. I thought the entire presentation was helpful to learn more about these local businesses. It's always good to know about your resources with insurance, investing, retirement, banking, etc. One of the many things I love about working with smaller businesses in a small town, is that I can go in and ask for help, and expect them to do their job and help me. I don't have to feel like I already need to know everything about what I want to do before I ask. Ok, that was a bit of a tangent there, sorry about that.

I also received a big red "Market Street Advisors" tote that I'll be able to use for groceries, with of course pens and business cards and flyers from various downtown businesses, but also a nice gift from Market Street Advisors, and a cute box of matches from Sam & Cate.

If you want any info about either the Wake Tech seminars or the Market Street Matters, let me know, and I'll help as much as I can. And, I'm doing a real photography post later today--with real Studio 310 photography. I promise.

Amanda Dengler

Studio 310 at Raleigh's Street Painting Festival :: Sept 19-21

I'm an artist, and photography is my medium of choice. Photography is definitely my absolute favorite, but I also enjoy painting with oils, drawing with charcoal and pastels, working with metals, textiles, and clay, and probably lots of others.

On Labor Day weekend, every year, the NC Symphony gives a free concert in the Raleigh/Cary area. Recently the Pops in the Park concert has been at Koka Booth Amphitheatre at Regency Park in Cary, NC. Before the concert, local businesses and organizations set up booths with free stuff, raffles, and activities for the concert-goers to learn about each business or what they support. At the event last week, my siblings, friends, and I ended up at the sidewalk chalk activity sponsored by Raleigh's Visual Art Exchange, and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. The sidewalk chalk attraction was to give the kids something to do, as well as promote the upcoming Street Painting Festival, called groundSPARK, in downtown Raleigh.

My sis and I decided to sign up for the festival as a team of artists. That phrase "team of artists" probably makes Emily laugh because she doesn't consider herself to be an artist. (although in kindergarten, another student asked her if she had taken coloring lessons. HA) We still haven't decided exactly what we're going to draw, but we do know it's going to be very colorful and graphic.

Here's the info from the ads: The 10th annual groundSPARK Raleigh Street Painting Festival will be held in Moore Square on September 19-21, 2008. Visual Art Exchange produces the festival, which last year had a record number of artists (over 400!) chalking for an intense 27 hours and transforming Martin Street into a work of art. 10,000 visitors came to watch the artists and participate in the many creative (and free!) components of the festival including People's Choice voting, The Scrap Exchange, and KidsCHALK. This year's festival will boast additional activities including a weaving wall, Image Slam, free face painting, and even a visit from the Chalk Princess. (not sure what a chalk princess is—we'll see.)

People's choice voting means you need to come vote for our work. We'll check in as early as we can on Friday and get started on our work, but before we go back Saturday morning I'll post a blog entry about our specific location. Or you can call me whenever. We will enjoy some visitors.

Here are some images, probably from recent years, that I swiped from the various websites promoting the festival. Despite the girl in for foreground of this first image having the same hair, build, and excellent choice in shirt colors as me, that isn't me. This will be my first year participating.




sponsors, producers, supporters, presenters, or whatever you want to call the groups putting-on this event:
visual art exchange
SPARKcon
united arts
City of Raleigh Arts Commission
Jerry's Artarama
Downtown Raleigh
The News & Observer
O2 Fitness

Amanda Dengler

Baby on (someone else's) Board

Let's just make that clear right right up front. Jonathan and I have no baby on board. I'm not posting this to give all (12) of you heart attacks.

I have a list of links in the right column of my blog that includes several family members' little businesses that they are marketing online. I'm going to start featuring them one at a time to introduce them to you. First up: my sis-in-law Ashley and her Baby on Board car decals.



Ashley along with her husband Todd (Jonathan's brother) are the parents to 6.5 month old Loralai. Ashley is a stay-at-home mom who enjoys expressing her creativity through writing and painting, and evidently helping her husband design Baby on Board car signs.

You can read Ashley's story about how these BOB stickers came to be HERE. The link is going to send you to Todd's web and graphic design web page, Yondershore Studios, but you'll be able to check out the story and purchase stickers in Pink, Blue, and Green.

These new and improved and super cute stickers are also available at the following retailers:
Aussie Island Surf Shop, Wilmington, NC
Hot Wax Surf Shop, Wilmington, NC
Sweetwater Surf Shop, Wrightsville Beach, NC

Amanda Dengler