Judd Sather Photography Blog

Blustery day! Should calm down nicely tonight to get some cool shots in the fresh snow. Click here to see their virtual album pre-design!
OK, best man Larry gets “Slippery Finger of the Year” award for dropping Val’s engagement rock just before the ceremony. There was quite an awkward moment at the time to exchange rings as there was Doug’s ring. Val’s wedding band, but not the diamond engagement ring… Larry’s face was bright red as he dug in his pockets but no one really knew why. I was up near the front of the church to get a cool angle of the unity candle and I noticed a ring on the floor, slipped it to the pastor and all was well. I’m pretty sure Doug, Val, and Larry were sweating bullets for 10 minutes or so though. This was easily a top 3 wedding stories ever – I’ll enlighten you with the other two in a week or so. This was another fun referral wedding – about 12 clients that were guests, and I took a shot of 4 women at one point and had shot 3 of their weddings. Zimanski did his “Staying Alive” dance with the unusual gusto again, Froi cut the rug and quoted Caddyshack as usual (and gave a fantastic toast revealing that Doug actually happily went to a Dido concert with another guy), and Horner drank quite a few beers as usual – all on par with other weddings we’ve captured. We all froze at a stop at Hamiline (Go Pipers!) before the reception, but I got the ladies to show some leg in 10 degree weather – fantastic! There was this cool blue-lit christmas tree we got a few shots at, and how about that snow angel?! Can you say “rental tux”? Excellent. Last thought: everyone should have the hot chocolate bar they had – great idea Val! Well I guess if you’re getting married in the heat of summer then the hot chocolate bar doesn’t work quite as well… -Judd, Jessi, Allie, and Aron







Here’s their highlight video!

Blustery day! Should calm down nicely tonight to get some cool shots in the snow.

Blustery day! Should calm down nicely tonight to get some cool shots in the fresh snow.

Click here to receive the $10 gift certificate for Denise and Mike’s Wedding! This is going to be a blast – many surprises in store… I think my food coma is over from Thanksgiving, so I should be good to go. 🙂
I’ll post some shots soon, just up at 5am Sunday morning here with one of the kids and had to blog about this wedding…
Just when I thought I’d seen it all we get whips and daggers at the reception! To quote Mike, “Denise said no to an Indiana Jones-themed wedding, but not an Indiana Jones-themed reception! Cue the Indy outfit (hat, jacket, whip), Indy ice sculpture, Indy groom’s cake with cake topper, entertainer Johnny Pheonix doing a bit with Denise “mind reading” and snapping a blue feather out of evil twin (best man / cousin) Al’s hand with an Australian bullwhip. Oh, I almost forgot: they cut the cake with a familiy heirloom authentic German dagger taken from a World War II battlefield, complete with nazi insignia – creepy cool. Truth is stranger than fiction; Mike and Denise get the award for “most uniquely themed wedding reception – ever.” Joe is showing off the “Grizzly Adams” caricature of us; just a slight resemblance I hope. The artist lives in a country shack near Red Wing – cool. Denise and Mike, thanks for the memories and stores; I’m pretty sure I won’t see another Indiana Jones ice sculpture, home-made ball and chain, or WWII dagger for cake cutting! -Judd and Joe

Click here to view Julie and David’s pre-designed album! The shopping cart icon will work once David and Julie have seen all the photos first and released them for everyone to see – enjoy!
Some things are pretty predictable at weddings – namely the chicken dance happening at some point. But today was something entirely unpredictable: 82-year-old Grandma Betty in a full chicken suit just for the dance – the picture speaks for itself. This was a fun wedding for me as Julie is my second cousin so it felt like a really dressed up version of our family reunion this summer when we turtled the catamaran. After the ceremony, we asked the limo driver to take us to a park and he took us to Wayzata high school for some fun shots on the playground climbing wall. Since when do high schools have kid playgrounds and climbing walls? -Judd and Aaron

Here was my weekend (only my second weekend without a wedding since July):
1. Breakfast and start getting a ton of work done
2. Lunch, keep cruising, getting on top of things, all albums designed
3. 2:13pm: watch “blue screen of death” appear on the only PC left in the studio
4. Have a few afternoon beers, vow to never buy a PC again
5. Spend the next 48 hours transferring 168331 files (mostly 2008 weddings) to both macs and new server
6. Monday night: have a few more beers re-installing and configuring software, catch up on e-mail, design some Christmas cards

Great news! We have a triple backup of all weddings and amazingly lost ZERO FILES – your images are safe with Studio J!

Public service announcement: if this ever happens to you, just take out the hard drive, buy a “hard disk enclosure” for about $60 at Best Buy and your drive will function like an external drive. Also you can buy a cool software called windows Parallels Desktop so you can run both Windows and Mac software on a Mac – cool. We are now an all-mac studio! And, silver lining was we got the studio and digital files all cleaned up and re-organized while everything being transferred.

Anybody think the mac logo should be Think Different(ly)? Pretty sure that’s an adverb but I’m just a photographer… 🙂

We’re expanding to shoot more portraits and commercial gigs in addition to our bread-and-butter wedding portraits. So, new guy Aaron and I pulled a double-header after Stacey and Jett’s wedding and shot the UST homecoming dance to get some cool shots for the production campany Epic Events that organized the show. Bed and breakfast wedding in the afternoon; college dance in the evening – that won’t happen very often! -Judd