Michael Tallman Photography Blog

Often when I am photographing a wedding, someone will ask me what I really like to take pictures of. The truth is that I love taking photographs at weddings - I really have a blast. But what about on my own time? I have a hard time answering this. In short, it depends. Sometimes I will have a concept for a series that I shoot for over a period of time. Sometimes I am just inspired when I find things, like this vintage photograph covered with years of crumbled plaster. I’m not sure how to properly explain that. Often I use my camera to simply keep a visual journal of my life. Lately it has been really hot here in Salt Lake City. The dogs I know just want to stay cool, and it doesn’t matter to them whether they jump in a lake or a plastic kiddie pool. They just want to get wet - this makes me smile every time. And no, I wouldn’t recommend getting your lens that close to a dog in a pool!

A happy anniversary to Ellie and Kebba; it was a year ago yesterday that they were married at the Blueberry Hill Inn in Goshen, Vermont. My family had taken a vacation at Blueberry Hill when I was about seven years old, so it was a trip down memory lane for me to go back more than twenty years later. They still leave their chocolate chip cookies out in a jar for public consumption and I will confess now that I ate the last several cookies while I downloaded my flash cards at the end of the night.

People came to Vermont from all over the world to celebrate with Ellie and Kebba - at least three continents had a strong showing as far as I know, probably more - and the energy was infectious. Ellie and Kebba are an amazing couple - they are literally saving the world’s children. They live and work in Malawi - Ellie works at an orphanage and Kebba is a pediatrician at the Baylor Pediatric AIDS Initiative clinic, one of seven clinics set up by the Baylor program in Africa. Kebba referred my wife Leah to the Baylor program, and Leah was able to finish medical school with a rotation at the Baylor clinic in Swaziland. Read more about our time there in the blog that we kept while we were there.

For the past week or so I’ve been making prints from my Young Heroes series for the upcoming Bush Fire concert at House On Fire in Swaziland. If you are in Swaziland the weekend of September 29-30 (I know, not likely), this should be a great event. The concert will benefit the Young Heroes organization of Swaziland. You can read more about my experiences making photographs for Young Heroes in the blog Leah and I were posting to while we were in Swaziland.

If you can’t make it to Swaziland for the show, I’m hoping to show these sometime this year at the Salt Lake City Public Library.

I flew back to Vermont last weekend to photograph Kristen and Greg’s wedding. On Friday I felt like I was underwater due to the humidity, but Saturday was one of those perfect Vermont summer days - blue skies, dry, windy and in the 80s. Just like the day we had for our own wedding a year earlier.

See more highlights from the wedding in the Slideshow.
It was a really fun wedding! Great families and a lot of really friendly people. It was good to see some old friends as well.