Happy Monday, friends! These last two days were a rare June weekend off, and it was amazing! During wedding season, Matt & I get really excited about any “spare” weekends, and with a quasi-rough week, I really needed the time away from my office. So we went to a movie at 10am on Saturday morning (heLLO $5.00 movie tickets!), spent the afternoon lazing around, and then headed to Taste of Reston Saturday evening. All in all, amazing. It’s a crazy novelty, getting to live like the normal Monday-Friday folks during the summer!

Know what else is crazy? Getting to check off an item on my list of big goals– I’ll be back in France this summer from July 20-24! With an Anniversary Experience session in Paris and a shoot with a bridal designer in the works, I am SO excited to be heading back across the Atlantic. One of my newly-recognized dreams is to shoot more in the south of France as well, so who knows- I may take a day (or two) trip to Avignon or Normandy while I’m out there! I’m going to start stocking up on film NOW. (PS- if you want a daily dose of all things Parisian, make sure you’re following my 50 day series over on Insta!)

As always, lessons learned/events that transpired over the past week:

• Being outgoing and bold can have its perks- while we were at Taste of Reston on Saturday, I walked past a guy I recognized as Jonathan Thorpe (a big-time commercial photographer and all around awesome artist). So I turned around, asked if he was indeed…himself, and he was! Matt & I ended up bumping into them again a bit later and Jonathan actually critiqued one of my studio ballerina portraits for me- IT WAS SO COOL!
• I’m really hoping today’s not the day that Jonathan stumbles across my blog, because I sound like a teenager at a BSB concert ^right there^.
• Know what’s good? French-pressed coffee. Know what’s not good? Paleo’s version of French-pressed coffee. Sorry, but almond milk just doesn’t go well with a cuppa joe.
• I was in Manhattan a week and a half ago and decided to stop into B&H for a pack of film for my anniversary session that night. While I was there, I started remembering all the little notions I needed for business back in the office- a new card reader, a hand strap for my second shooter, even more film, etc. I didn’t want to lug everything around the city with me all day, but I also didn’t want to have to pay for shipping by ordering it online because I was LITERALLY in the store where everything came from. So then someone at B&H clued me into the fact that buying in-store means you can send items back home with no shipping fee. Cue: photographer on a shopping spree in a camera store. It was… unexpectedly expensive.
• But seriously, if you’re a photographer and you’ve never been to the B&H store in person, you HAVE to go! It’s magical!

And here’s another photo from France. Because I’m just so freaking excited that I’ll be back there in one month!

Oh, and HERE’s a preview from Rome! I’ll be blogging my Italy images later this week, so stay tuned!