Mark and Erika

I had the privilege of photographing one of my oldest and dearest friends last week. Erika and I have been friends since some time in elementary school when she got off the boat from Italy - I mean New York - and headed to FL. She and I lived just blocks away from each other and went through braces phases, big ugly hair phases, dumb guy phases, sneaking out the window phases (she made me do it) and everything in between. She always made me late for school. I would wait for her as she blow dried her hair yelling "NO MAH, I AM NOT CHANGING OUT OF THIS SKIRT!" or something like that, I really just remember the "mah" part. She reminds me that I was the one getting her into trouble while she protested and wanted to follow the rules. Which brings to mind that I think she stayed in while we snuck out. Goody two shoes. She swears I drove her (in reverse the whole time) the 6 blocks from her house to mine on several occasions. (I remember nothing of the sort.) We were cheerleaders together until we decided that wasn't cool anymore. Finally came graduation from high school -go scorps (insert feigned school spirit here and did you know I love parenthesis?)
Now she gives me her daughter's hand-me-downs and my daughter goes nuts over the Hannah Montana shirts. I am also a much better girl and have stopped sneaking out. Times have changed but I am blessed to still have Erika's friendship and to see her engaged to a great guy (who also went to HS with us but was too busy with lame stuff like sports.) She has been super weirded out about being on the blog as if "everyone" is going to see it. She doesn't get that only my mom and I look at this and I even have to call and say "Mom, have you looked at the blog?" She always says "No I'll look tonight honey." I'm not sure she ever does but part of that is because she keeps forgetting how to use a computer. She does love me, I swear.
Anyway, I think Erika's just being modest.

This one above was our favorite. We ended up ordering it in the color-ish version (up top) on metallic paper, mounted to a standout. Nice. I still like this BW one too.

Mark and Erika have tatoos. The serious ones, not like us lame-o's who got one little thing while backpacking through Europe and totally hate it now. Lame-o is my favorite word lately and I don't know why or how that happened. So, I brought in some haze here so you could see Mark's arm.

Erika's going to say she looks pale here and she's going to hate that I included one that shows her off so much. But the light is in the post processing and I like it because everything else here is DARK and also because she looks beautiful and Mark looks adoring.

I noticed I forgot this one above last night and duh when I love it so much.

Dark and moody but that's my girl anyway. I like this one.

This just in, my convo with mom this morning:
"Mom, I wrote about you in the last two blog entries."
"Really honey? How do I get to the blog?"
sigh.