2011 June | Kyle Hepp

June 30, 2011

If you have a hankering for more Sarah and Anthony, here’s their slideshow! By the way, I really think you should watch it. Obviously these are pictures that Seba and I took of a couple we really liked, so I’m totally one hundred percently biased. However, I had such a hard time narrowing it down to just a couple photos for their blog post, so I strongly feel that the rest deserve to be seen as well!

Click on the photo below to watch!

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June 29, 2011

Before we talk about this Lyon post, please take my quick survey. It’s four questions long and should take you about 12 seconds to fill out. Seriously. Should I have a newsletter or not? Because all these experts keep telling me “Si!” but I’m not sure if anyone would actually be interested in reading it. The newsletter would be exclusive content that I don’t publish on my blog or anywhere else, and what I have thought of is that it would be either photography or travel trips. Or both. Or something completely different if that’s what you guys want. Just tell me.

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We surprised ourselves by really liking Lyon, France. Obviously we were there for Virginie and Pierre’s gorgeous French countryside wedding. But we had given ourselves a couple extra days to explore the city.

Seba and I weren’t overly excited about going to Lyon, simply because we hadn’t loved Paris. It was bit and dirty and extremely touristy. Lyon still has quite a few tourists, but I think that they’re more French people taking a vacation within France, than tourists from around the world. Lyon is definitely smaller and also definitely cleaner than Paris too.

And wow, is it beautiful. There’s an entire chunk of the city that’s a protected UNESCO heritage site and walking around in that part of town is like stepping back into another time. But we’re not there yet, I’m getting ahead of myself.

That dark blob leaning against the pillar is me.

I did get the sense that people in Lyon were not the friendliest bunch. It wasn’t easy to talk to anyone. I don’t speak French, not even close, but I know enough to get by — and even so, it was reaaaaally hard to interact with the French in Lyon. They seemed very uninterested in talking to tourists or even being courteous to tourists.

There’s a lot of life out in the plazas and parks. Seba and I particularly enjoyed watching the skateboarders along the river.

That kid up in the air wiped out about two seconds later and started screaming. I didn’t take pictures because I thought he might be seriously injured, but I think he just got the wind knocked out of him.

Lyon is so beautiful, it seriously looks like a fairy tale.

Lots of green, lots of plazas everywhere.

For being such a large city (the second largest in France, after Paris, obviously), it was incredibly green and lush.

Looks like a good nap place to me.

There are two rivers that cross Lyon. One is the Rhône and the other is the Saône. I can’t remember which river we’re at here, but that’s looking towards the UNESCO part of the city.

In all the cities we’ve been to, I’ve been trying to take a few more street style type pictures. These guys were really drunk so I didn’t want to actually stop them and ask them if I could take a picture like I normally do.

Lucky me, they spotted me anyways I’m wondering if they were out for a bachelor party or something since they all had matching sunglasses.

I don’t know why but I love that next picture. Maybe I feel like it represents my trip to France — lots of French people laughing at me the whole time!

The city has a very eclectic mix of both people and architecture and design. I really found it fascinating. More on Lyon coming soon!

PS. Do you like the pics of randos on the street? I like taking these kinds of shots, but I know they’re not my forte so I could just as easily post as not post if people aren’t crazy about them.

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I am arriving after almost 24 hours of traveling (Slash being awake. For some reason I could not sleep at all on this flight). So as usual I’m asking for forgiveness in advance for any incoherence and/or typos in this post.

We photographed a wedding in Hershey, Pennsylvania. You might be underestimating Pennsylvania, but do not forget — the grand state of PA houses both the Hershey chocolate factory as well as Sarah and Anthony.

And they’re awesome. I’m talking about the bride and groom now, not the chocolates.

I emailed Sarah before the wedding to ask if she wanted to get together before the big day. But because we were flying in Thursday I knew she’d probably be hectic on Friday so I told her not to worry about it if they didn’t have time and that it was just to say hi so they wouldn’t have to worry about strangers showing up on their wedding day to take their pictures. She replied, “No worries. I trust Caroline. Unless you guys feel like you need to meet us!” And I wrote back the same thing — that I trusted Caroline would only recommend us to the coolest people and I wasn’t worried at all that we wouldn’t get along.

When I arrived the day of, I jokingly said, “Caroline, if we hate each other this is all your fault.”

But of course, we didn’t. I adored Sarah. Let me rephrase that in case you didn’t understand completely. I ADORED Sarah. The first thing that I realized about her is that she is the kind of girl who knows what she wants. That is quite honestly one of my favorite personality traits in people. Why? Because the reason someone can know exactly what they want is because they know exactly who they are and are confident in who they are.

I’ve watched dozens of brides get hung up on what other people think they should do — “My grandma wants me to carry her handbag, but I don’t like it. What should I do?” or “My mom thinks I should wear my hair down, but Fiance thinks I should wear it up. I’m torn!” etc. etc. etc. There was none of that with Sarah. She was happy to be herself and simply do her thing, even on her wedding day. People who are true to themselves are always happier. It’s a rule.

The other thing that I loved about both her and Anthony was how giving of themselves they were. They were both exhausted towards the finale of the reception — really, what bride and groom aren’t at the end of a wedding? Sarah had been up and on her feet pretty much since 7:30am that morning. But both she and Anthony still made sure to go around and talk to every single guest. All night long they made sure everyone was having fun. They made sure everyone had what they needed. They even made sure their vendors were taken care of.

Honestly, “nice” doesn’t even begin to describe them. Sarah and Anthony are amazing.