A Christmas Card Adventure

We are in the process of taking down our Christmas decorations. I say, in the process, because we were supposed to complete the project last night, but the furthest I got was baking one last batch of “Christmas” cookies. As long as it’s seasonal, the calories don’t count, right?

I can’t think about Christmas this year and not think of our epic Christmas card. Our entire goal for this card was to make people laugh. I laughed so hard during the process of mailing these out that I burned enough calories for another cookie. Every time I picked up a card to address it, I’d look at the picture and just start falling over with laughter. Needless to say, it took awhile to get all of them addressed.

These pictures were all taken with a tripod and a self-timer. I’m happy to say that we, and when I say we I mean V, has perfected the tripod picture taking method. And just like our own portrait sessions, I do the majority of the directing. Although I’ve gotta hand it to Vitaliy on this one, he did direct us in the “serious running” photograph that we chose for our Christmas card. I also must add that this is a real orchard behind us, there was no photoshop involved in the making of this picture.

We loved them all so much that we decided to include them in the About Us section on our website. If you’d like to see more and hear how we met, you can click here.

man and woman running through the apple orchard in the fall
ukrainian kiss on the cheek
husband and wife dancing in the apple orchardcouple portrait in apple orchardserious expressions

Glancing Back

Starting out a new year is always very exciting. With the launch of Pictilio, this year is already expected to be an unforgettable one. Before we look too far ahead, we decided to take a glance back and remember.

As photographers, we like to look back and see how we’ve grown and then take note of what we want to work on for the coming year.

As we browsed through the images of the past year, the following collection really stood out to us. They represent the kind of images we love to create. And they are a reminder to us that we are beyond blessed to be able to document the sincere love and emotion that exists within each of the couples we photograph.

Cheers to an adventurous 2012! I’m expecting a wild and exciting ride.

P.S. We added a new feature to the blog. You can now click on the images to scroll through each one in a larger format. Enjoy!









Final Category: Relationships

It’s Friday! Woo-hoo! I won’t keep you long. I just want to introduce you to our last category for the blog: Relationships.

In my first post, I wrote, “We are on a mission to not only stay committed to one another, but to stay in love. This blog is dedicated to that mission. We hope it will keep our relationship accountable and we hope it will inspire yours.”

There is a world filled with people saying that if your relationship is difficult, it probably wasn’t meant to be. We want to say something different. We’d like to tell people that commitment isn’t old school. And that love isn’t easy, but it’s worth the fight.

Vitaliy and I aren’t claiming to be relationship experts. We simply want to share our lives in hopes that someone out there will resonate with it and join in the mission.

I’ll end with this. Vitaliy and I have had a rough week as husband and wife. For whatever reason, we’ve been bickering more than usual. That whole pizza story I told you about yesterday, we barely made it to the table to enjoy it. I guess there were too many cooks in the kitchen! Last night, I almost went to bed angry with him, which will inevitably result in me waking up unhappy too. But then I walked into the bathroom and found this waiting for me.

It was a small gesture. An “I’m sorry” written with toothpaste. It wasn’t very evident but I got the message and readily accepted.

Is it possible you missed a secret message recently? Or, perhaps you’re the one needing to leave one behind.