Some of you may or may not know, but Dustin knew his way around a camera far before I did! I actually “inherited” his old Nikon D50 when my daughter was first born and started tinkering around in order to capture moments I knew would pass by all too fast. Before I knew it, I acquired a hunger to learn all I could about photography and to continue honing my skills. Later on, I upgraded to a a full frame camera (after battling a steep learning curve) and from there, the rest was history.

Fast forward over a year later, and I’m gearing up to photograph Sam & Melanie’s wedding in Candler, North Carolina. Well, the opportunity arose for Dustin to tag along with me and second shoot, thanks to some amazing friends of ours who watched Austyn for the entire day. It might seem silly, but it’s just ironic to me that years ago, Dustin was always the one I went to if I needed a photo taken. Now, I’m running a photography business and he’s the one assisting me! :) He did an amazing job, and we had a blast together!

Anyway, I digress! I was originally going to hold off on posting Sam & Melanie’s Candler, North Carolina wedding at The Farm so that I could maintain my usual schedule of publishing on Mondays. However, since Sam is actually deploying THIS SATURDAY, I knew I had to post these as soon as I could! Melanie was so sweet and told me that she didn’t mind waiting until Sam had internet access later on so that they could both look at images together from afar… but that just wouldn’t do!

I have to say… I prayed mightily for snow at this wedding, but the only thing that ended up in the forecast was a 99% chance of rain! Amazingly, the rain stopped right before the ceremony and stayed that way the whole day. We were even able to do all of the portraits outdoors! It might have been muddy, but…well, you’ll see how Sam helped Melanie with that. :)

Enjoy!!