A few months ago, we secretly captured Andrew's surprise proposal to Kaitie. We had planned to photograph engagement photos the next afternoon, but Chicago decided to throw us one more blizzard... (totally unexpected, but it is Chicago, so it should be expected, right?) Luckily, the lovely couple recently rolled back through town and this happened!
I was two years old when I met Blake. Which, I guess if we're going to start doing math, makes him my oldest friend to date. Over 26 years of friendship. I mean, we saw Michael Jordan retire...twice. You don't go through that kind of heartbreak without coming out the other side knowing you'll be friends for life.
About two years ago, in the midst of planning my own wedding, I was thinking through who I wanted to stand by me at the end of the aisle, waiting for my bride to walk down and become Mrs. Nicodem. And the way I looked at it is this: life changes so much. You move, you switch jobs, you move again, you have kids, you have a midlife crisis and get intensely into fly fishing, and then you probably move again. And in each stage there will be people you meet, friends who come into and then fade out of your life. Because that's just the nature of this transitory beast. But what a rarity to have a friend that can look you in the eye (or stand with you on your wedding day), through all of that change, and say "I know you. The place you come from, the things that have made you who you are, the ups and downs of your life story...that's been partly my story too." And sure, there are whole months on end where you may not see each other, where those changes in life may widen the gaps of your communication. But it doesn't even touch the foundations of that kind of friendship because quite simply you've put in too much shared time and life for those gaps to matter. So I asked the guy who has been my friend since diapers to stand with me.
I often thank God that I married a woman I grew up with, for those same reasons. Marianne and I say to each other all the time "you are my Home," and on a very real level what we are saying is quite simply "I know you." That we are each other's safe spot; amidst the craziness and the transitions and the drifting through life, we belong to and can rest in each other. But it's also more than that. In a rudimentary way, "home" also encapsulates where we're from, and where we're from is the same place. It's small town, northern Illinois. It's having the same family doctor as each other since the day we were born. It's middle school band and high school dances. It's being able to say "hey remember so-and-so" and the reply of "yeah...do they still work at Jimmy Johns?!" Home is what makes us who we are, but it is also the place that we're always building for each other. And so we call each other Home because it's this crazy, beautiful fact that even before we became each other's place of safety, even before the love and the romance and the creating of life together, we were being shaped by the same place, the same experiences, the same story. In a way, it feels like we've always been sharing life.
And now I'll get to the point of all this.
A couple weeks ago, we got to hide outside of the middle school band room and watch as Blake proposed to his girlfriend Alaina in the place where they first met. We got to see over 15 years of incredible friendship become the promise of a life together forever. We got to see page one of the next chapter in their love story that started way before they even knew it. And the whole time my mind kept playing ping-pong between "it's about friggin time, we've all been waiting since we were thirteen" and then in the next breath "who would've thought in a million years...Blake and Alaina." Because that's the beauty of their story. It's a story so long in the making that we all saw it coming, but so good in its telling that we can hardly believe it came true.
And as we wandered around the town that has been all of our home since we were kids, Blake and Alaina, and Marianne and I, we got to take pictures of two people who in every way can look at each other and say:
"You are my Home."
Also, just to appease my curious mind: between the four of us (Blake, Alaina, Marianne, and myself), how many years of combined friendship are there? Some of the numbers are rough, but it's fairly accurate (we all knew each other in middle school, but some became friends in high school).
Blake + Andrew = 26yrs
Blake + Marianne = 13yrs
Blake + Alaina = 15yrs
Andrew + Marianne = 15yrs
Andrew + Alaina = 13yrs
Alaina + Marianne = 10yrs
With our powers of friendship combined, we have 92 years of joint affection. Boom.
Admit it: from the moment you are old enough to have a cognitive understanding of the passing world around you until you graduate college as a 20-something year old, there is one word that quickens the blood of every boy and girl in America:
SUMMER.
And for lots of us growing up, along with three months of no school and the persistent smell of sunscreen came the pinnacle of the season: Summer Camp. Endless mornings of horseback riding, mildly supervised afternoons of archery or swimming, and evenings on the stoop of the snack shop filled with making eyes and giggling over young, summer camp love. Who hasn't had their heart broken at the end of a week you hoped would last a lifetime?
And then there's Tom and Laura. For them, the summer fling just never ended.
We had a fantastic time photographing these two at the place where they fell in love, YMCA Camp Pinewood in Twin Lake, Michigan, and look forward to their Chicago wedding later this year!
Happy (almost) summer! For those of you who didn't know, we are halfway through our second year as college professors at Moody Bible Institute in downtown Chicago. Yes, most of the time we get mistaken for students when we're walking around campus. But it's true, for the last three semesters we have been the professors of "Intro to Photography/Photojournalism," and now the exams are finished, the papers are graded, and we're rolling our way into summer (little known fact: most teachers are more excited than their students about the dream of "Summer Break," we just don't let on).
More than just the basics of photography and the theory behind it, we love to give our students real, hands-on interaction with the work we do as freelance photographers at Nicodem Creative. From weddings, to portraiture, to senior photos, to family photos, and even beyond to the international side of our work as photojournalists, becoming a good photographer is all about the hours spent just shooting and processing, and the experience that comes with that. So usually by halfway through the semester we've put the tools in their hands that they need to begin shooting, and then we simply create a series of real photography scenarios for them to watch us photograph, and then participate in photographing themselves.
Our family shoot this semester was with our sweet friends Justen, Candis, and their little guy. It isn't easy to be in front of the camera and have 12 people watching you and photographing your every move, but this family rocked it! Here are some images from our class on family portraiture, hope you enjoy!
It's not every day you get to feel like paparazzi, as a photographer. Or every day that a dear friend sneakily flies into Chicago to surprise his girlfriend with a diamond ring. And so when both happen and you get the chance to hide out in the tall grass along Lake Michigan and take pictures of the proposal unfolding? It's a very good day indeed.
Congratulations Kaitie and Andrew, you are dear to us and it is a joy to watch your love grow. Now let's get this party started!
I wish we could take you with us sometime. Really, I do. Because I think that traveling to the heart of the "other," to places that grab us by our roots and pull us up, shaking the dirt off of what we've held as preconceived notions and letting us breathe in a little "broadening of experience," is what a lot of us need, quite regularly.
This last November we had the honor of filming in Bangladesh for roughly a week, hearing the life stories of those who have chosen to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in a country where Islam is the state religion. It is not a safe decision, but for them, it means everything. Rarely have either of us ever felt such a sense of joy in the people whose lives we were documenting, and as we work (now back at home in Chicago) to finish the video we are both humbled and grateful to be a part of telling the story.
And so, since we couldn't take you with us (and due to the sensitive nature of the work, we won't be able to post the finished video), this is our best attempt at bringing you along anyways: some of our favorite footage from our time in Bangladesh. Enjoy!
We take pictures, for the most part, to remember specific times and places. Capturing the moments that, years and even decades later, we can return to with photograph in hand. We daydream, creating these nostalgic, mythical places all wrapped around a single image.
A few months ago, Marianne and I were filming in northern Spain, working on a project for International Teams (a global non-profit I had the chance to work with a couple years ago). It's this beautiful concept that explores the way we treat, of all things, "exploration." About how we spend so much of our waking existence grabbing at the things around us, greedily trying to suck the marrow out of life, looking for meaning in the noise and rush. And what if we were to slow it all down, to pull out of the current, to look not outwards for meaning but quietly search inwards? To run away to the mountains and just listen. What would we find when it is just us and God? I love how T.S. Elliot puts it in one of his poems: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
And this is where my story begins. In the rolling green hills of Galicia, Spain, there is this tiny town along the route we were filming called Triacastela. Narrow winding streets, crumbled down buildings, moss growing on all the red-tiled roofs. We had stopped for a brief respite, and were strolling through the back roads of the town in hopes of an afternoon coffee, taking in all the hidden alcoves and tree-shaded alleys. And as we rounded a tight corner, I saw it: through the bars of a gated courtyard, this old bell tower, weather-beaten yet standing tall. A picture so beautiful, so peaceful and remote, removed from the everyday both in feel and in the mere fact that there is only one small vantage point by which it can be glimpsed. And yet, also so familiar. Because that exact bell tower hangs in black and white, a photograph blown up on our bedroom wall thousands of miles away. You see, two years ago I backpacked almost 100 miles of Spain's infamous Camino de Santiago, winding my way through Galicia to arrive in the town of Santiago de Compostela. And one quiet, exhausted morning on that journey, walking dazedly through the quiet streets of Triacastela, I had slung my camera up and shot a quick, afterthought of a photo. A photo that, years later when my travels were all over and I was married and living in the city and life couldn't be more different, I printed and framed in our bedroom, waking up to it every single morning.
And as I stood there I thought, how crazy, we so often find ourselves looking at pictures, desperately trying to remember a place. And here I am, in the total reverse, finding myself in a place I once stood, remembering a picture. With a rush, all of this emotion came flooding back to me, years of life gone by. I had no idea that I would ever be standing in this exact spot again, and in truth, I didn't even recognize the spot nor its significance until I stood in it.
Again, but for the first time.
We're excited to get to work editing this project, and can't wait to share it with you soon! Until then, here are some photos to give you a glimpse. All the best!
Can I start with a story? Or rather, a back-story.
Two years ago, a boy (Me, Andrew) and a girl (Marianne) sat at a dusty, wooden table in the heat of rural Uganda. Madly in love, and doing the work we loved, together. We had gotten engaged a few months earlier, but I was still on assignment as a photojournalist for another six months abroad, so we made do with occasional visits, choppy Skype dates, and a whole lot of dreaming of the future. Our future.
So we decided, right there and then, to start our own photography and videography business. Because hey, why wouldn't we want to spend every waking minute together, doing what we loved? And where better to make really important life decisions than the bush in Africa, exhausted and all sweaty? We drew up a logo, whipped together a site, and for the past two years have been living this crazy ride called Nicodem Creative.
And it has been amazing. Challenging, mind-blowing, joyful and tear-filled (mostly on my part).
But we realized, in the crush of it all, that with this gaining momentum what we really needed was some added direction. Like that first, tentative step out onto the ice, we've realized that it's going to hold and we need to decide what to do now that we're out on it. So we hunkered down for a few days this last summer, we dreamed, we schemed, we talked about where we've been and where we want to go, and we've come out swinging, ready for what's next!
So welcome to the new and improved Nicodem Creative. Take a look around, we hope you like what you see. But know this: while the surface has gotten a make-over, the heart behind it remains the same. To give the world around us its beautiful due, and tell stories that are truly life-changing.
We are Nicodem Creative. And we've started dreaming anew.
