Checking Off Milestones: My Oldest Daughter, Brianna, is Getting Married Today

Mostly, this post is to let you share in our excitement and that sentence probably caught your attention with many thoughts potentially entering your mind.
 
Perhaps for those of you following this site from the early days, it is hard to believe that she is that old. Yes, the years really do fly by (every year goes by faster). This image was captured in 2003, the year TDP showed up on the web:
 

 
And now, my baby has become a beautiful young lady.
 
While the girls are taking care of many of the wedding's fine details, I am also involved. One of the requests of me was to assemble a set of pictures suitable for use in a slide show. While gathering those, many great memories were brought back and, as you probably guessed, I had a solid selection to choose from.
 
While on that topic, heed my advice: now is when you need to spend time with your kids and of course, make them feel special by photographing them constantly (and giving them that reason why). Only photographs (and videos) can keep them that age forever. Capture your times together and all of the special moments. Grandparents, you are included here – you get to photograph the grandkids when that generation shows up (I look forward to that day).
 
Answering another common question: yes, we love the incoming son and look forward to him being an official part of the family (he's been hanging around for years already). With him and his great family joining our lives, all of the parent wish list boxes are being checked here.
 
I know, the first question you really wanted answered was "Are you photographing the wedding?" Well, the official answer is no – there are hired photographers for the event. But ... I just might have (a few cases of) gear stashed somewhere handy. You know – just in case!
 
Then came the "Oh, can you just set up a camera to video the wedding?"
 
In what seems a blink of an eye, the kid is grown and moving on with her life. Fortunately, she is not moving too far. And, we have plenty of pictures to look back on.
 
The lead image for this post is a recent one, commemorating college graduation. It was a cloudy day and light green spring colors were still on some of the trees. I positioned Brianna under the shade of a tall tree to gain some direction to the ultra-soft cloud-diffused light and aligned with a distant tree of interest in the background. At 200mm, the f/2 aperture turns the tree into an interesting blur of color and Brianna pops from the background. Due to the color of the background, my eyes struggled to properly recognize the right color balance this image but, in the end, I opted to use the black cap and gown for a custom white balance.
 
The Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM Lens is a killer portrait lens and it has captured some of my favorite portraits of the kids. This is not an inexpensive lens, but the results can be priceless.
 
The girls are due home from their hair appointments at any time – gotta go!