My wife and I took a much needed trip to St. Thomas and St. John from April 21-28.  We both needed some time away from work.  I had been slaving in the office for months doing Wedding Albums and a few Weddings here and there and my wife had been doing therapy for many clients.  We both had a bit of burn out going on.

The whole reason for the trip was that my friend Chris was marrying Melanie on Magen’s Beach in St. Thomas on Monday.  My wife and I arrived on Saturday at the Bolongo Beach Resort  and immediately went to happy hour.  We started our trip out right with a few rum punches but not too many.  Others had too many and were carried to bed. 

St. Thomas is a nice island and has some great spots.  The transportation and the roads are a bit difficult.  There is a good mix of things to do on the island and beyond.  We stayed at the Bolongo Beach Resort which turned out to be a nice place to stay.  The rooms were OK, not luxury by any means, but clean and the people were very friendly.  The beds are REALLY bad, at least ours was.  We had a nice view of the ocean, all rooms have a view, and we also could see the pool.  There are a lot of activity possibilities right on the beach.  Two restaurants and a swim up bar will keep you full.  I think that I would give the Bolongo a 2-3 star rating.

We had some nice snorkeling right around the rocks in Bolongo Bay.  We saw turtles, lobster, snappers, grouper, rays, and thousands of various fish.  The visibililty was kind of poor because of the rain we got mostly at night.  It was still at least 40-50 feet of vis when you got away from the beach.

If you go to St. Thomas eat at Latitude 18.  This place is right on the harbor in Red Hook and is a small place that has a particularly friendly staff and wonderful food.  We had some of the best seared tuna that I have ever had, and I have had a lot!  The mahi was great and all of the appetizers were good.  We had a large group go and we all had great meals and a wonderful time.  They had open mic night and we watched many locals jamming out.  It was grand!

The Wedding was great on Magen’s Beach.  Unfortunately it was overcast and grim but I used my infrared camera and got some great shots.  The diffuse light was nice on the face but the water behind them was kind of bland.  Here are a few images…

We had a nice dinner after the Wedding back at the Resort with all of the 34 people who came down.  Great food and a really fun time.  I had a couple roomates there from college and Chris(groom) was a good friend in college too.  We always have a nice time together.

The three beaches that I recommend on St. Thomas are Coki Beach by Coral World, Magen’s Bay Beach, and  Saphire Beach.  Contrary to what all the literature says, the shopping in St. Thomas is not that great of a deal.  The prices are very similar to shops in the US.  Dinners are pretty pricey and cabs are a rip off.  You drive on the left there but the steering wheel is still on the left, a bit different at first.   My wife would keep reminding me to “think left,” and I later found a shirt that has a jeep and “think left” on it.

Wednesday we moved over to St. John.  This island was more of our speed.  We like hiking, swimming, snorkeling, and just having our own little space sometimes.  In St. John we could do all of this. 

We started out with a wonderful dinner at Shipwreck landing by Coral Bay.  What a wonderful meal with LOTS of food.  My wife and I both ordered tuna and the waitress looked at us like we were crazy.  Well, as it turns out, we were crazy because it was mussels and tuna, like a dozen mussels and two large seared tuna fillets.  We waddled away in pain after our meal, but with huge satisfied smiles on our face.

Our lodging was in the Concordia Eco Tents near Coral Bay.  We didn’t know what to expect and they turned out to be GREAT.  We had a very nice place on a cliff with wonderful views of Rams Head, Salt Pond, Salt Pond Bay, and the British Virgin Islands.  Here are some of the images

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This place was off of the grid so we had solar power lights and fridge, composting toilet that was very odorless and clean, and a solar heated shower which works great.  We had no AC but the constant breeze was more than adequate. 

Megan and I loved St. John and especially Coral Bay where they have wonderful food and lots of hiking trails.  We hiked a nice 6 mile trail on Thursday and got absolutely poured on.  It was warm rain so we didn’t mind and it felt good. 

We have lots of found memories from this trip and we may go back at some point.  We have a lot of places that we need to check out before returning.

I could talk all night about our trip.  I am going to let these pictures do the talking. 
Enjoy!

Does it look like we had a good time?  If you are wondering about the black and white images, most of them are infrared images that I took with my dedicated infrared camera.

Peace
Paul

Sorry for the delay in this blog.  I was out of town for a week.  I will cover my trip in the next blog.  This is about my wedding in the Detroit are with Miranda and Dave. 

The Friday Wedding went very well with us starting at Miranda’s parents house for a few “getting ready shots.”  I made my way to the church and prepared for the ceremony.  The couple did not want to do any shots prior to the Wedding so we planned on doing all the formals after the ceremony.  I captured some great images prior to the ceremony with the bride and groom anticipating the nuptials and the guests arriving and being seated.  The church was an older church but looked very modern inside and out.  I was impressed by the amount of light in this church.  Generally older churches are darker overall.

The day flowed very smoothly with us making images at a number of different locations.  I would grab the couple for a few shots when I thought that we would get a memorable image.

Upon being announced in the reception the couple went directly to the dance floor for their first dance and then on to their cake for cutting.  I suggested that they do this when I met Miranda because, on a friday Wedding, the night flows SO much smoother.  They got two of the events done right off of the bat and this REALLY released a lot of stress on them so that they could wander and chat with their guests most of the night.  I always mention this to my couples and let them make the decision.  I have seen hundreds of Weddings so I feel like a Wedding planner at times.

Here are a few images from the day.  Come back in a couple days to see the Wedding Album Design.  I will post a link when I finished it.  The images will be up online soon too.

For now here is a peek…

Hope you enjoy!

Paul;-)

This week has passed so quickly.  I am heading to Detroit for a Wedding today and off to the US Virgin Islands tomorrow.  It is going to be a long day and night since my flight leaves at 6:30am.  We have to leave our house at 4:30am.  That means that I will get about 2 hours of sleep after returning home from my all day wedding in Detroit.  Have you ever seen a zombie walking through the airport.

My week started off with trying to work on my Wedding images from last weekend and having computer trouble.  My desktop was crashing everytime I opened their images.  I thought that it had a bit against the couple but it turned out that my heat sink, which helps to reduce heat, came dislodged somehow from my motherboard.  I usually work on my computer myself but I could not figure out what was going wrong.  The computer guy soldered the board back together and I had it the next morning.  Needless to say, it set me back a day or so. 

Wednesday I built Judith and Paul’s rought Wedding album pre-design.  You can see it at http://www.paulretherford.com/judithpaul
They decided to go with a traditional album design with the mats and the images behind them as apposed to the flush mount where the image is the entire page.  The traditional has some design restrictions where the flush mount is open to the imagination.  I designed the album with ivory pages since they asked for an leather ivory album.  I use Renaissance albums and they will be getting a 12×12 album.

Brenda and Neal emailed me their second edit on their album.  You can see their album at http://www.paulretherford.com/brendaneal
Brenda really wanted to get the entire album but it didn’t fit in her budget right now.  I am working with her to design an album that will bring her back to her Wedding day everytime she takes a peek.

I had an email yesterday from a couple asking if I do slideshows of images from growing up for the reception.  I do these slideshows and you can email to find out pricing.  This is a nice touch to have while dinner is wrapping up or even at the ceremony while you are letting people out of the pews.  I always show an image slideshow at my events during the reception on my computer.  People are welcome to walk up to it and see images that I have captured during the day.  I am brave in that I show the unedited images. 

So, my brother is going to take us to the airport and then drop our car off for us on the day we come in.  What a nice guy.  I can’t believe that my car will not let me lock it and then put the keys back in the car.  I tried everything and this car will not let me lock the keys in it.  Can you imagine the gull of this car maker not letting me lock my keys in.   The dealer once told me that it was like $1000 for them to break into my car and get my keys if I locked them in.  Good to know that I can’t do it without two sets of keys!

Hey, why don’t you book a fishing trip with my brother out of Grand Haven, Michigan for a beautiful day on the water and some great fishing.  Most of the time you will pay for the trip in salmon fillets, of course we do not guarantee this but it happens alot.  I run the boat during most of the weekdays and he runs during the weekend.  Of course you will catch more fish during the weekdays since I am running it.  Check out brother brother brother’s website at http://www.catchabunch.com

Another thing for you to check out is my neighbors boy six month images.  She was funny when she called me, she said, “well, Andrew is having this fit problem that he SCREAMS when any man talks to him.”  She went on to say, “just don’t talk to him.”  Me being the likeable guy that I am, interested Andrew very much and he did not scream or cry but it did take a while for him to smile.  I decided to use backlighting for his images and they were all done at their house.  You can see some of the images at http://www.paulretherford.instaproofs.com
I took about 250 in all and they got all of the images on DVD in color and black and white.

Remember to see my website at http://www.paulshotmywedding.com

If you would like to trade links with me please email me and I can usually get your site linked in a day or so.  I do all of my website management.

I got to get on my tractor now and mow the lawn before leaving.  This will be the first lawn mowing of the year.  Lawn looks good.

Everyone take care.

Paul