An Alaskan Wedding

I shot a beautiful wedding a few weeks back up in Alaska, about an hour north of Anchorage in Wasila (see slideshow below). It was for some friends of ours, so I was both guest and shooter - a fun position to be in! I don't usually shoot weddings, but this one was a joy to photograph and even more of a joy to be part of. The sense of community and friendship was overwhelming. Brother-in-law tended the bbq and cooked the Alaska King Crab legs and steaks to perfection, whilst the best men shoveled hay onto the ground to soak up any melting snow. A best friend from down the road came a long with the sound system, his guitar and some incredible bear hunting stories - don't eat bear when the salmons running, you'll throw-up hardcore, so I'm told. Mums and dads prepared salads and tended to adventurous children. And a continual stream of people with stories like "I live just down the street by the fallen tree on the right, went ice fishing with Eric [the groom] a few weeks back" or "yeah me an Eric have been working tugboats together for a while now". They are folk that I can only imagine are some of Alaska's finest. In a state where so many of its inhabitants still have to fall back on the 'kindness of strangers' and who depend so intimately upon the close bonds of community it was an experience I shall never forget and a reminder of the 'good life'!

Some technical stuff:
I played around with a great piece of software to make the slide show below called Live Slideshow 3.0 (http://www.liveslideshow.com/) made by Totally Hip. Its an excellent application and both user and photographer friendly.

I don't know about anyone else but I have found trying to make slideshows of photographs hard. Not necessarily the putting together of them but making the image quality even remotely acceptable. Well here is one great solution (http://www.liveslideshow.com/) and its reasonably priced at $69.95, a nice find.