Jamie and Tyler’s engagement session

Jamie and I used to be roommates a few years ago in college, and I was so excited for her when I found out she was engaged! I got to take some engagement shots of her and Tyler the last time I was in Knoxville, and they were such a fun couple to work with! The photos turned out great; you can see Tyler’s sense of humor shining through in a few of them, and Jamie’s amusement. For all the photos from the session, check out erinrhatfield.zenfolio.com. Here’s a few highlights from the session:

What I’ve been up to this morning…

I woke up this morning to what sounded like a moving van being really loud trying to pull something. Then I hear, “Can someone call 911? We need an ambulance over here!” So I go outside to check it out.

A wreck, obviously. But I couldn’t quite figure out what had happened, until a man at the corner asked if my car was mine.

“Yes…”

A man had veered off the road onto the sidewalk, sideswiping my car in the process. He proceeded to continue down the sidewalk, tearing up all the neighbors’ fences, until he somehow swerved and came to a rest on the porch, two doors down from mine.

Turns out, the driver had some kind of medical problem and didn’t even realize he had crashed. His foot was still on the gas after he hit the house! A neighbor ran over, turned off his car and sat with him until the ambulance showed up, along with the rest of the cop cars and even a few firetrucks.

My mirror was halfway knocked off, and the left part of the bumper smashed in. But, still drivable. And, thankfully, nobody was hurt. Aside from the ailing man, my car and the neighbors’ fences, anyway. Just waiting for the final report to be filed now, so I can get my poor little car fixed up! So much for going to the gym this morning…

I posted the photos on Facebook as I was taking them, and leave it to one of my friends to see the silver lining in the matter:

Caitlin’s graduation pictures

Caitlin is graduating from the University of Tennessee next month, go Caitlin! I met up with her and her roommate, Moriah, for a graduation portrait session. Unfortunately, she didn’t have her gown yet, but we still got some great pictures in the UT Gardens and around campus. She and Moriah are avid Vol fans, and were so excited to let their orange spirit show! So, congrats again to Caitlin. To see all the pictures from the session, go to erinrhatfield.zenfolio.com.

Jenny and Will’s wedding

I had the pleasure of photographing Jenny and Will’s wedding a few weeks ago on March 5! The day was a little rainy so we didn’t get many outdoor photos, but the ceremony was beautiful and the reception was great! The theater next to the reception in downtown Maryville had “Congrats Jenny & Will” on their marquee, so that was a fun added element to a few pictures! Anyway, here’s a few highlights. For all the photos of the big day, go to erinrhatfield.zenfolio.com.

Jenny and Will’s engagement session!

During my trip to Knoxville in late January, I met up with Jenny and Will for an engagement photo session! We had to do some quick work because of time constraints, but we set up downtown around Market Square and along Gay Street. I absolutely love how they turned out!

Jenny even forwarded me a little praise she received for the photos – they were “so artistic and had the flair of a photojournalist, rather than just flat photography.”

So thank you, Jenny and Will, for being great to work with and photograph, and I can’t wait for the wedding in March! Here’s a few from the shoot:

** I just got my weddings and engagements section of this site up! Hint, hint: click here, or on the “Photos ‘n Such” tab above.

My beef with Twilight

Here’s the thing. I talked my roommate, who never has watched any of the Harry Potter movies, into going to the midnight premiere of The Deathly Hallows. Which she enjoyed to a certain extent, as far as someone who doesn’t know the background can enjoy it. She went back and watched the first movie after that, and the sight of 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe was somewhat of a shock to her!

Emma Watson has the most stunning change in my opinion, I absolutely love her pixie cut! But, I digress. Back on topic! Since my roommate went to see The Deathly Hallows with me, I would, in turn, watch Twilight with her.

As my understanding goes, there are four books. The first three books have been made into movies, and the fourth is being split into two movies, for what I only can assume is the same reason The Deathly Hallows is split in two – they are both huge books so there’s a lot of storyline, and, ka-ching!

I just finished watching the second movie, New Moon. I would like to go ahead and preface what I’m about to say with a few good things:

1. Taylor Lautner, the actor who plays Jacob in the series, is gorgeous. He’s not really my type, per se, but I could look at that six-pack of his I saw in New Moon all day.
2. I’m not sure if a scene in New Moon actually was shot in the Pantheon, or if it was just CGI. Either way, pretty awesome.
3. The movie is entertaining, in a similar way that Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series is entertaining: Just don’t think about it too hard, and you’ll be fine. Mindless reading, mindless movie. I’ll watch the rest of the Twilight series, just because, hey, why not?

At the same time as I enjoyed the movies, I also just wanted to turn them off every so often and just give up on the series. For those of you who don’t know, here’s what I know in a nutshell:

Edward Cullen and his family are vampires. Jacob and others of the Native American variety are werewolves. Bella, an odd, stoic high-schooler, moved to their town by chance because her mom was remarried to a minor league baseball player who traveled a lot. She needed stability, so she moved in with her father. The Cullens are nice vamps who don’t feed off humans. They have an truce with the weres (who typically hate and try to kill vamps) that so long as they don’t kill a human, they can live in the werewolves’ turf.

Confused yet?

Here’s the fun part: Both Jacob and Edward are oh so in love with Bella. Bella is just oh so in love with Edward, and claims she loves Jacob, but she says Edward always will come first. She wants Edward to “change” her, or make her a vampire, too, and Edward continually refuses because he doesn’t want her soul to be eternally damned.

There are plenty of other little subplots through the movie, but I think I covered the basics. It’s enough explain why I don’t really care for the movies, anyway.

PLEASE. Enough already! Edward and Bella have known each other for, as far as I can figure, maybe a year, tops. Jacob, on the other hand, has known Bella since she was little, but essentially met her the same time as Edward, when she moved back in with her father.

Edward loves Bella so much, he breaks up with her and disappears, thinking she would be safer. He then wants to kill himself when he thinks that Bella has died. He’s a 100-something-year-old vampire for Christ’s sake, who’s acting like he’s a tween who just discovered he liked girls. And the same goes for Bella!

Bella loves Edward so much, she has nightmares when he leaves her. She ditches all her friends and sits along in the cafeteria at school, and she sits in front of a damned window for what appears to be three months straight in the same clothes. Come on, I know this a really minor point but seriously, whoever shot that scene really could have at least changed her clothes for each month. To represent how heartbroken and lonely she was, she sat in front of her bedroom window and they twirled a camera around her three times. Each time the window went by, a new month was displayed at the top of the screen and she has a new scene to look at outside her window. They went to the trouble of changing the scene outside her window, so why didn’t they go to the trouble of changing her outfit? She’s wearing the same thing the entire time!

And since Bella loves Edward so much, she can’t love Jacob as much as he loves her. So she puts him in that oh-so-dreaded “friend zone,” and then gets upset when he’s not around to coddle her. Jacob loves Bella so much, but just can’t be with her because he’s afraid he’ll hurt her, being a werewolf and all.

HOW CAN THEY ALL LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH????????? I know that’s excessive question marks, but seriously. I’m sitting and thinking “WTF” almost constantly throughout this movie.

If this excessive, underlying theme could just be a little toned down, that would be great. I might enjoy the movies more, in that case. I just really can’t deal with this disgustingly immature and overwhelming love triangle. I’ll stick to my Harry Potter, thank you.

Not to say there is not any of that present it the Harry Potter movies. No, there’s definitely a little something something going on between Ron and Hermione throughout the series. But, it doesn’t take the so in-your-face approach that Twilight has, it has more of a natural flow to it. Whereas in Twilight, it’s just like BAM WE ALL JUST MET YET WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF EACH OTHER.

If you want to kill some time, by all means watch the movies. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Favorite Postsecrets this week!

There’s two, I couldn’t decide. I like the shells one, just because it was incredibly sweet, and though I didn’t like the message of the other one, it’s incredibly creative. I guess I just couldn’t compare them very well, since they’re so different! Anyway, enjoy.

 

Facebook: The new lost and found…for runaway hamsters.

That title must have you wondering, right?

I find myself at home on a Thursday evening, doing laundry and packing for my trip to Trinumeral Music & Arts Festival I’m leaving to attend tomorrow. Ho hum. Let’s log on to Facebook and take a break from the festival prepping. And what do I see when I log in?

My friend Stan has found a hamster, how funny! So I comment:

What a coincidence, this hamster Stan found looks just like Brandi’s! I know her hamster gets out often, wouldn’t that be funny if it were hers?

What do you know…it turns out it is hers! I am absolutely cracking up at this point. I just logged on to Facebook and found my friend’s hamster. What are the odds? Brandi, however, is already at Trinumeral. So I messaged Stan my number and told him to call me so I could come save her! He calls, and I get over to their house in about 15 minute’s time, still giggling about the situation. I get to the apartment, and there’s Lizzy!

How exactly Lizzy got from Brandi’s apartment on the second floor, into the one essentially two flights down in the basement around the back of the house is a mystery. But thank goodness she’s safe!

Next problem: Brandi’s at Trinumeral, how do I get Lizzy back into the apartment? I put Lizzy in my car; trying to climb on a roof with a hamster in my hand was not a good option! Luckly for me, Brandi had left a window open. So a crawled in the apartment through the window (thank goodness no cops drove by!), walked back downstairs to get Lizzy from my car and placed her back in her cage. She’s back home, all safe and sound!

I secured the door of her cage with some twisted paperclips, I couldn’t find any duct tape. Hopefully that will suffice! However, she’s quite the little Houdini. So I check all other openings of her cage, just to be safe! Locked Brandi’s door back and climbed back out her window. I scraped my knee on the roof climbing down, but nothing major – at least Lizzy was found, safe and sound, and back in her home!

Fifteen titles. Fifteen titles for Roger Federer.

“Congratulations, Roger. You did it.”

Those five words I absolutely hated hearing out of Pete Sampras’s mouth.

“Seven years you let me have this record.”

I remember last year at Wimbledon, he was getting close. I could just breathe a sigh of relief that Nadal won, because that kept him one step further from the title. I was hopeful Nadal would with the US Open too, but scratch that – Federer’s too good. He’s up to 13 now.

Federer has a fair shot to win at any given tournament. His getting to 14 in 2009 was definitely inevitable, but I thought that maybe it might take at least another year before he got to 15. Nadal won a tight 5-setter at the Aussie Open against Fed this year, pushing it back yet another tournament.

Roland Garros – of all the Grand Slams, this is the least likely for Federer to win. Nadal’s got a pretty strong monopoly on the French, so I wasn’t too worried about that one. Oh but hey, Soderling beats Nadal in a freak of nature round of 16 match, pretty much handing Federer his first French Open title. Cut the 14th notch in his belt, the Fed train is one away now.

And finally, we get to Wimbledon 2009. Now, Wimbledon to Roger Federer is as Roland Garros is to Rafael Nadal, so I figured this one would be “the one” for Federer. Although, last Wimbledon he did lose the title to Nadal for the first time since 2003, so I had a little hope that it might not happen. But I wasn’t going to kid myself – I knew those odds were slim.

Usually I’m glued to the tv the last weekend of Wimbledon. However this year I was out of town, camping kind of off the grid for a few days. No tv, which means no watching the final, which in turn means no finding out who won until a few days afterward. I can’t say I was surprised to find out Federer had won, but it made me sad. That’s 15. He’s beaten Pete’s record only seven years after it was set. After downloading and watching the final though, I’ve got to say I was actually surprised by Roddick. I’m not exactly his biggest fan, but he really pulled out the stops that day. That was an epic final, both players were on the tops of their game and were fighting hard to win it.

So there it is, 15 Grand Slam titles. Kind of weird to say. I can dislike the man, but I can’t deny he’s got skill. Pete can’t deny it either, as quoted above. But he said in a recent interview that at least he know that had they both been playing together in their prime, it would have been an entirely different ball game.

I think I would have had my fair share of wins, and he would have had his fair share of wins. We have similar temperament and contrasting styles of play which would have made for a great rivalry. Our rivalry potentially would have transcended the sport.

Seriously, if only. You’ve got to wonder sometimes, I guess it’s the same with any sport. What would it be like, if all the greats from the different decades could play together, at their prime? Who would come out the victor? I would personally love to be able to see Federer, Sampras, Agassi, Lendl, Laver, McEnroe, Becker, Borg, Courier and any of the other greats I’m forgetting right now to kick it and play some kick-ass tennis together. Most anywhere you look when these men are compared, Federer comes out on top. But you know, I like to think that’s not really true. Different times, different styles – who knows really who the “best” is.

Which leads to the next question: who’s next? There’s still a good few years out of the Federer/Nadal rivalry. But Murray’s got potential, and so does Monfils and Cilic. Perhaps the ever entertaining Djokovic? Or maybe my boy James Blake will step it up and get on top, but that’s mostly just wishful thinking. Only time will tell, but the outlook looks good for men’s tennis.

Just a little something amusing from The Onion

Browsing through The Onion (America’s Finest News Source, don’t ya know?) earlier, I came across this — a video report about a dorm fire, reconstructed through student’s photographs and video recordings. This is pretty hilarious, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!