Raymond Siler Photography

So after six and  a half years I have finally come to appreciate my wife enough that I think it’s time to add her name to the logo. :) I mean I really love my name and its hard to comprehend all of the new complexities that adding the name “kelly” will bring to the logo. I mean all those ascenders, the double L’s. Ahhh.

Ok, all kidding aside. Kelly is an awesome photographer and a crucial part of what we do. And we absolutely love the fact that we can photograph couples, as a couple, and we think they should too. :)

And no, the logo above will not be our new one (though nothing says ridiculously awesome wedding photographers like a lightening bolt in the middle of our names), but you can keep your eyes out for the new official logo… which will be coming verrry soon (you know, just in case you want stickers, posters, or t-shirts of our names).

The off-season for us, as wedding photographers, is an interesting time. We shot our final wedding of the season in January and then we put our cameras away for a few days, maybe a week or two. It didn’t last too long, but we needed some time to be refreshed, to put on our blinders from what other people are creating, and to try to get our sense of wonder back.

We’re staying in our pajamas a little bit longer, we’re reading a lot, we’re going outside more. We’re in off-season mode, for the most part, but that doesn’t mean we’re not working on other projects and it especially doesn’t mean that we’re not using our cameras. In fact, we’ve been finding that we pick them up a ton more than usual and instead, we’re spending less time in front of a computer screen. We’re looking for beauty, we’re on a treasure hunt, were re-inspired.

Many days, our kids are our subjects. They’re great ones to practice on — they rarely sit still and they’re pros at ignoring the fact that a camera is present. A lot of the time, our iPhones are the cameras we have the quickest access to so we pull those out, which is great. And we used to use our back-up cameras to shoot our everyday, which worked fine, as well. But lately, we’ve been finding joy in using our best cameras and lenses to search for beauty and to create images.

It’s like we’re taking out our china for our everyday meals. And it’s wonderful.

Here are some recent images – from our unposed, raw, everyday.

We could probably write a book about our experience at the bread winners workshop with Jeremy and Ashley Parsons. Instead of doing that on our wee little blog, we’re planning to pour that energy into a big old thank you note to these guys because – when you feel like someone has given you the world – you don’t run out of words to say thank you.

We’ve been shooting weddings since 2006 and had yet to go to a conference or workshop before… quite honestly, we’ve been waiting and waiting for someone to step it up a notch and get a bit deeper than just how to use your camera or maybe even how to market yourself or become famous. Here’s the truth – there have been points in the last few years where those things were the highest priority for us, but there has been a lot of learning that has taken place over the years, so we have been left wanting more.

Jeremy and Ash are giants in our lives – people we have looked up to (from a “we only know about them online” distance) for awhile. But they willingly opened their home to us, total strangers, jumped down off the pedestal we had placed them on and related to us and accepted us as friends. I mean, when the icebreaker of choice is Dance Central 2, how can you not immediately love everyone in the room? And we did… we’re soo, so thankful for the new friendships we formed with the other incredible couples who shared this experience with us. (We miss all of you!)

Jer and Ash have an unbelievable ability to open their lives up to people and share the deepest parts of their hearts through their words. We were captivated by their love for each other and their energy and excitement for what they do. Do you want to know the secret to how they’re so amazing at what they do? It maybe has nothing to do with their camera settings… it’s because they know how to love people reallllly, really well.

Just know that it’s a massive understatement when I say this, know that I’m not at all exaggerating — these guys blew our expectations out of the water. Anything you may know of them online is even better in person. I don’t think one person who attended made it through the three days at the Parsons without shedding a tear (ok, lots of tears.) We’re changed people.

We’re still digesting the hundreds of thoughts written down in our notebooks and are still asking ourselves hard questions that will help us make changes to better reflect why we do what we do… so, at this point, it’s kind of hard to write out more of what we learned. But we will leave you with a few quotes that have helped us to process “why“ as well as a few images from our time at the Parsons that make us smile.

“Have you lost your sense of wonder?”
“We sometimes take ourselves too seriously and the people we shoot not seriously enough.”
“Happy photos are different than meaningful photos.”
“WHY… ? Ask yourself that question about everything.”
“Find joy where you are.”

p.s. I don’t know how we didn’t just steal baby Zion to bring him home with us – cutest kid ever. For real…

p.s.s If you want to experience even more of what it felt like to be at the bread winners workshop, go look at these beautiful documentations on Kevin + Heidi’s blog and Steve + Bernadette’s blog.

We re-scheduled this shoot with Tim + Rachel so many times so that we could get some snowy photos, but this winter has been so wacky. What it took was all of us deciding, you know what? forget the snow, let’s just plan a date. Then guess what happened… well, it snowed the day before the session. :) So we started off at the skating rink then made our way to some of Tim and Rachel’s favorite places around Madison. We love it when our sessions feel like we’re just hanging out with friends for an afternoon.

Kelly only fell in one snow bank, none of us fell through the thin ice, and our hands didn’t freeze too quickly. Success! :)

It’s amazing how fun – yet difficult – it is to look back on and choose favorites from an entire year’s worth of images. We did the math and realized we’ve delivered around 14,000 images to our clients throughout this year. That kind of a lot, right? Trying to search through those and decide on our absolute favorites is amazingly tricky. Yes, Ray and I are a team but we don’t always have the same preferences. :)

Over the past few days, we’ve focused on updating our portfolio (so go check out all the new/updated portfolio galleries!), but here is a very small selection of our absolute favorite images from 2011 – our top 10, we think. :) Every one of these images evokes some sort of emotion in both of us, even after looking at them close to hundreds of times.

Dear Rob, Kelsey, Ryan, Jess, Lindsey, Art, Adam, Annie, Robbie, Sarah, Greg, Jackie, Jason, Lane, Nate, Katie, DJ, Melissa, Billy, Kelly, Dan, Colleen, Pasquale, Chessie, Brian, Kristy, William, Leah, Matt, Mindy, Dan, Michelle, Nick, Gayle, Rich, Patty, Ryan, Miranda:

We’re so deeply grateful that you chose us to be a part of your wedding. We only have images like this because each of you invited us in and trusted us to do what we love.

Thank you. So much.