Minneapolis/St. Paul Cyber Monday photography event

Reserve your "Let it Snow" mini photo session today!

Your stomach is full from Thanksgiving dinner and your patience is wearing thin after tangling with competitive buyers over the weekend - sit back, relax and let the simple shopping begin.

Anthologie announces a special event to cure your retail woes. Our annual "Let It Snow" photo collection now comes in a smaller package. And on top of avoiding the massive department store lines this holiday season, our "Let It Snow" mini session provides professional and creative photography with valuable extras the big box stores simply can't match.

All of our photography collections include an image disc of all of the best pictures created during your session (not just a handful), and you can actually make high-quality prints from the files (not low-resolution, web-ready files). We work on location for a truly unique photo session and provide custom edits of your pictures. In addition, we work with you to create a fun and memorable experience catered to your family's specific needs. Best of all, for the insanely busy holiday shoppers, you can order reprints directly from Anthologie via your online proofing gallery, and have us send your cherished pictures to the front door of your family and friends!

Included in the "Let It Snow" Mini Photo Session:

• 30 minutes of custom photography at an outdoor location of your choosing

• edits and enhancements of your best pictures (typically about 50 total images)

• online proofing gallery posted for 30 days

• image disc with copyrights to reproduce your photos up to 4x6 inches

• web-ready image files with studio watermarks removed for convenient online sharing

Total Collection: $100

* CYBER MONDAY ONLY! Reserve your session by 11:59 p.m. today and receive a bonus file of your favorite (1) image as a high-resolution file capable of making prints up to 8x10 inches when you want, wherever you want!

Mini sessions must be completed by Friday, Dec. 16, 2011

Contact us to reserve your session today!

Celebrate fall colors with Anthologie

It’s our favorite time of year at Anthologie! It’s time to don your favorite hoodie, grab a hot cup of apple cider and bask in the brisk autumn air. Fall is the perfect time to celebrate family traditions (or start some new ones), like picking pumpkins, navigating corn mazes and collecting beautiful foliage. And now is the time to have us preserve those memories for a lifetime.

While you’re out enjoying the fall festivities with your family, let Anthologie do the work of capturing all the emotions of the day. Reserve your one-hour, on-location photography session by Oct. 7, 2011, for $150 and receive an image disc with copyrights to reproduce your images up to 5x7 inches (a $275 value). You’ll also receive the edits and enhancements of your best images — a mix of black-and-white and color processing — plus an online proofing gallery with no purchase requirements. All sessions must be completed by Oct. 31, 2011, and promotional pricing is valid for groups of up to 5 individuals. Please request a quote if you have a larger group.

Contact us to reserve your place today!

Hometown Love Affair

Engagement Gallery: Erin & Charlie Erin and Charlie grew up just miles apart, and even went to the same high school. However, it wouldn't be until after the two left their hometowns that they would come together. To honor their roots, we chose the downtown and surrounding rural areas of Dundas, MN for the couple's engagement photos.

ERIN FOLEY AND CHARLIE DONKERS

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What's always fun is discovering what's hidden in plain sight. Though Erin had grown up mere blocks from where the bulk of the engagement pictures were made, she and Charlie had never explored some of the locations where we held our session.

Erin and Charlie might want to switch careers to become models. Throughout our time together it seemed as though the couple does this sort of thing on a daily basis! They were so at ease and had such wonderful expressions. That being said, capturing the emotion of their wedding day will be even more exciting and is sure to lend itself to creating even better photos. I can't wait!

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Traveling Side by Side

Engagement Gallery: Amy & Corey

Amy and Corey are seasoned travelers despite their young age. The couple has enjoyed many vacations abroad, but their relationship has also traveled great distances since it began when the two were in high school.

After graduating from college, Corey was offered an opportunity to help expand his company's presence in Latin America, and the two were off to their new home in Mexico City. The couple then had the duty of planning a Minnesota wedding from South of the Border!

On a return visit home to Minnesota, I was able to photograph Amy and Corey at Excelsior Bay, a place where the couple would spend time when they were dating in high school. It was great to see how much love the couple shares for one another, and I think that really shows in the images.

Trash to Treasure

The wedding was over. My wife and I had returned from our blissful honeymoon. And yet, we were left with a dilemma: what to do with all of this wedding stuff?

You know - the flowers, the centerpieces, all the little personal touches we worked so hard to make special. Well, now that the wedding's done, we can't just throw them away, right?

If you're like me, you held on to the stuff knowing someday you'd think of something to do with them — anything but putting them in a glass shadow box (it makes me think of funerals).

Sometimes you have to wait a long time for inspiration to come along. For me, it was seven years! That's when I met jewelry designer Heather Lawrenz of Lawrenz Jewelry. She makes amazing beads, charms and intricate pieces of art all out of stuff most people would throw away. You wouldn't believe how beautiful she can make a discarded bottle cap or a spent A1 steak sauce bottle look.

After seeing her work and getting to know Heather, she mentioned to me that she can make a piece of jewelry out of old photographs — the wheels started turning. If she could take a three-dimensional object and turn it into a charm the possibilities were endless.

Finally, I knew what to do with all those boxes of wedding dodads taking up valuable shelf space in my basement.

With Heather's talents, I could have her preserve those memories in an exciting new way. I turned my box of "stuff" over to her and let Heather work her magic. (Of course, I photographed everything first, just in case I wanted to look at it later). Within minutes, Heather was taking pieces of the materials and constructing tiny compositions.

It was great to see the way Heather thinks and not to give her too much direction. I knew I could trust her to do her thing and the results would be spectacular. What I didn't expect were some of the happy accidents along the way, like when Heather realized the newspapers stuffed around the dried wedding bouquets to protect the delicate flowers were from the newspaper I worked at during the time of our wedding. In fact, the newspapers had some photos that stick out in my mind since they were from meaningful assignments.

"I'm going to use that as a background for one of these charms," Heather said.

I couldn't believe it — fishwrap to some, colorful interest to Heather, a significant memory for me — and now it would all be preserved on this hip piece of jewelry for my wife to wear every day.

And the best part, my wife and I could finally part with all that wedding clutter. Meaningful, yes, but clutter still the same.

If you want to have one of these ah-ha moments, definitely visit Lawrenz Jewelry.