Instagram

Instagram, a set on Flickr.

Well, this Blogger blog has treated me so well over the last couple of years, but she's tired and needs some rest.

Come on over to the new and improved blog! I will keep this blog up for the time being, in order to direct traffic, but will no longer be posting new content from here.

Say hello to the new

Kimberly Hurst Photography

Down. And out for the count.

It looks like "the switch" I've been talking about is going to happen some time between tonight and tomorrow, and over the next couple of days, I am sure I will have to fix and patch a few things. So, the dot com will be down for a period of time and my email might get really, really icky as well.

This here old blog, will be the only thing up and thriving through the changes.

But once kimberlyhurst.com is back up and running, a brand-spanking new blog will have been born. The brainchild of Nicole Balch of Making It Lovely and her design company Smart and Lovely and myself, it's totally rad and makes me giddy just thinking about it!

If you need to be in touch with me over the next couple of days, try my email address kim at kimberly hurst dot com. If I don't get back to you within a reasonable amount of time, you can try my old email address kimbermiller at hotmail dot com.

Let's hope this goes smoothly and I will be back in touch in a few days with a hot, new, updated website, a rad new blog, some sweet photos, and a lovely little slideshow.

Site Maintenance

Just a heads up. There is alot a-brewin' over here at Kimberly Hurst headquarters. A nice, new, updated website is on it's way as well as a new blog!! But there's a lot of moving and shifting of web hosts happening over the next few days. So, if you stop by for a visit to the main site and it's magically not there, try back later. Or, if you try and write me an email and it gets unanswered, please try and email me again. I promise, I am really not trying to ignore you, your email might have gotten lost in the vast ether of the internet. I won't be ticked if you email me a couple times. You could say I might even be flattered!

Anyway, there's lots of new and exciting things happening here, so stay tuned for all of it! As well as some photographs from a darling outdoor wedding in Rochester, NY this past weekend.

Our 2 year wedding anniversary

Where has the time gone? Can someone tell me, please? It's been two years since Kyle and I were married, and magically, it still feels so new to both of us! Maybe this newlywed feeling will never go away?

I knew Kyle before he knew me. We were both going to school at Rochester Institute of Technology and had a couple of mutual friends. I'd seen him around a few times, been introduced more than once, and for the longest time, if you asked Kyle "when did you guys meet?" He'd tell you a different version than I would. But that's just who he is. He now says he remembers the first time we met, but part of me thinks he might just be telling me to make me feel better (love ya, babe!).

Well, to make a long story short, I eventually left RIT to finish school at Hofstra University. One weekend, I went back to visit some friends and guess who happened to be invited to come along?

We sat across from each other at the table and chatted (and flirted) the entire night. We exchanged emails and phone numbers at the end of the evening, and I headed back to Long Island thinking to myself "Nice one Kim, give a guy your phone number who lives 6 hours away from you! Genius!"

I guess we were compelled to just, stay in touch. After a couple months of our phone and internet courtship, Kyle came down to Long Island to visit me. We spent that Saturday walking around the city. We crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge and that seemed to seal us to our fate.

Next thing I knew, it was trips up to Rochester, or weekend visits from Kyle to come see me.

That went on for three years.

I won't lie to you all and say our three year, long distance relationship didn't have it's ups and downs. It certainly did. But we really loved the great times, and somehow always worked things out during the bad times. There was a break-up (or two), but we always came back to one another.

We moved into Brooklyn with our dear friend Gretchen, and it. was. awesome. There was a fear that being in a long distance relationship for so long would leave us incapable of living together. But that was not the case at all! Finally, we could spend all the time together that we had always dreamed about!

There were a couple adjustments we each needed to make as you do with learning how to live together. I learned early on that Kyle has a "problem" with closing cabinet doors and drawers. Any kind of cabinet or drawer he opens, there is a very large chance it will not be closed. I've learned to follow him through our home and shut doors and close drawers as he moves along. It's actually gotten charming.

I will speak for Kyle and say that he has learned to adapt to plenty of my quirks as well. I will abstain from sharing them, but I am sure if you asked, he'd smile and let you know one or two.

So, at some point during all this, a question was popped in such an endearing way. And we were off on this 9 month chase to plan a wedding! It was such a lovely day. The best one in my life so far.

I love you husband, so very very much. You are my rock, my buoy, my friend, my divining rod. You keep me centered at times, as well as provide that little bit of adventure for a girl who otherwise would walk the straight and narrow far too much. Your patience is the stuff of legend, your encouragement is heroic. You make me laugh til my stomach aches. You got my back babe, and I got you. So very lucky in love.


*first photo courtesy of David Lyons Photography.

Julia and Darin

What can I say about Julia and Darin? I truly feel like I gained two new friends in getting to shoot their engagement portraits as well as their wedding. Julia, Darin, I had such a wonderful time photographing your union. Both of your families are some of the kindest people I've come across in a long time!

Enjoy your cruise and your photographs!

I got up early with Julia while she put on her makeup. It was such a peaceful and quiet time.



Such lovely shoes. And such tiny feet!



How adorable! Julia's ring bearer got a little touch up before his big moment!






Julia and her flower girls waiting for the ceremony to start.

Lindsey and Cassidy in the Daily News!

Lindsey wrote me an email yesterday to let me know that her and Cassidy had their wedding announcement in the Daily News. I just love their story. And it's still exciting seeing my stuff in print.

Thanks so much for sharing the news!

Have a Happy Long Weekend!

Kyle and I are outta here for the weekend. We are headed up to Rochester to see the Hurst side of the family!! If you email or call, I will try my best to respond. If you don't hear from me, I will be back in town Tuesday evening.

Have a lovely weekend! Hope your bbq, beach, or backyard plans are full of fun and sun!

My sister and her graduation party!

Some of you may know, while some of you may not. I come from a family of four sisters. No brothers.

There is me, of course.

Then there is my oldest sister Cori. Here she is with sticks ready for toasting some marshmallows.

Then there is my other older sister, Chrissy. Here she is with my brother in law, Jim!

Then there is my younger sister, Candice. Now, something of importance to Kimberly Hurst, Inc. is my sister Candice!! She's my assistant at weddings! So, this is a face you will see around with me at jobs every now and then. She's the most dynamite assistant a girl could ask for! She's truly my best friend, and I don't think I could rock weddings the same way without her. I just love her to bits and pieces. Well, the reason we were all together today is because Candice just graduated from Hofstra! I am so proud of my little sister, and she is on to tons of big things and adventurous roads ahead! I love you Roo!


Now, what would a family get together be without a picture or two of my niece and nephew?

There's Noah stirring up some crazy bubbles and also, my Mom is making an appearance! Hi MOM!

And then there's Olivia. Getting uber-gooey with a marshmallow!

Snail Races

Mother's Day was so very perfect and laid back. Everyone thought it was just the right kind of day and I think that's saying something. There was some bubble blowing, some coloring, tons of brunch food, relaxing, chatting, mimosas, and at one point the kids were outside playing in the grass and garden.

They found lots of happy little snails around the fish pond and my sister Cori had the coolest idea! Snail races!!! So, the kids picked their favorite snails and the finish line was drawn in chalk. Next thing we knew, these little guys were off and "running."



Not everyone was thrilled by their snails performance!



I have to agree. I mean, snails are not THAT exciting.

Slow and steady wins the race? I guess so.

Cut Shallow Radio

I thought I'd share a few images from the photo session I did this evening with my dear friend, John Rasmussen.
I met John 8 years ago. I had just moved back to Long Island from Rochester and applied for a job at the local Tower Records. I will remember this moment for the rest of my life...there I was, sitting in the hallway of the basement of the record store, taking a "test" that involved alphabetizing recording artists, making change, and some general music trivia type stuff. When all of a sudden, I hear a chair SCRAPE across the floor of the break room and a head pops around the corner. There was this guy asking me if I'd like him to help me cheat on the test.

I kindly declined the invitation but laughed nonetheless. Eight years later and we are still making each other laugh.

Anyway, if you know John, you know he can write. Exceptionally well in fact.

Recently he started a blog, and asked that I take a few pictures for him to use.


The blog is a plethora of his thoughts on music and movies...mostly music. Incredibly...dauntingly even, John has charged himself with reviewing the Top 100 albums of the last 20 years. Well, his version of the list anyway. He and I can hotly debate those included as well as excluded, and where they fall on the list in general.
I thought I might include the article from the first blog entry about his task of documenting his Top 100 albums so you could get the idea of what he is up to:

"“And here’s a funky introduction of how nice I am…”
-Phife (A Tribe Called Quest), “Check The Rhime”

It seemed apropos to begin this event with a quote from The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest, my favorite album of all time and also one of the 100 entries on this list. I’ve made many music-related lists over the years, playing into the nerd stereotype immortalized in Nick Hornby’s classic High Fidelity, but this is the first time I’ve undertaken a task of this magnitude. And of course, like most bad decisions, it’s all due to alcohol.

Some friends and I were out to dinner one night, and the booze was flowing. The Ladies had their red wine and the guys had their lagers. We got to talking about the stuffy lists proclaiming the greatest albums of all time, and how year after year, thousands of albums are released but the upper echelon of these lists always remain the same. There was a general confusion over why an album like Pet Sounds is so amazing that it's too good to rub elbows with modern classics like Loveless or Illmatic or Kid A. We all agreed that there was a sort of ageism going on; I’ve always held the position that there are just as many classic albums during my generation as there were during my parents’. Theirs just happened to be on the top of the charts. I would also add that Hip-Hop is still criminally underappreciated, especially considering it’s now one of the biggest and most influential industries in entertainment; I’ve heard people still dismiss it as if it was a fad, despite it being on the radio and charts for 28 years. Do you know anyone who was trying to dismiss Rock & Roll in 1984? No, you don’t. Anyway, I left dinner that night with a challenge, to make my own list of the greatest albums ever made, but when I sat down to do it, I found it was very difficult. I had a massive list of classics to play with and nothing to say that hadn’t already been said. What could I possibly offer up on Led Zeppelin or Van Morrison that would be relevant to you forming your opinion of their music? Shit, how many people at this point in history have never gotten the Led out? I don’t think grade school kids are reading this blog (Although if they are, that’s fucking awesome, and I hope this is the first time you’ve ever seen the words ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’; I treasure my memories of learning curse words).

Stuck with my dilemma, I scaled my start point back to 1976, the birth of Punk and Hip-Hop, but still I had the same problem. Albums like London Calling or Purple Rain or Bowie’s Low were still these museum exhibits that I wasn’t allowed to touch, just before my time and too big for me to handle honestly and with heart. Sure, I lived with Purple Rain, and Thriller and Born In The U.S.A. too, but I probably liked them because they were music on the radio and MTV, not because it was Prince or Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen. If I was going to be comfortable with my picks and write genuine tributes to these classic pieces of art, then I needed to work in a timeframe I was familiar with, when I not only knew the artists, but I cared about the artists and what they were (or weren’t) about. I could tell you how awesome The Beatles’ Revolver is, but it would be hollow cuz I didn’t live through it; I didn’t experience the earthshaking shock of hearing “Tomorrow Never Knows” for the first time when the rest of the world did. My parents played it for me twenty years after the fact. It’s like I know that Television’s 1977 debut Marquee Moon is one of the greatest albums ever; I own it. But I’ll never know exactly how mindblowing it was when it came out, and more importantly, why. Not really. On the other hand, with Radiohead’s The Bends or Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers, I can talk your ear off.

I picked 1987 for a couple reasons; first off, it was the year I started buying music on my own, with my own money. That’s a tremendous moment in a person’s life. Unfortunately, my first album, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet is ineligible, having been released in 1986. Secondly, it was a time of great change in music, as heroes of the underground got signed to major labels and started to break through to the mainstream. They shared airtime with the giants of Pop, thriving in the heyday of MTV, and with the emerging artists of Hip-Hop, which had just broken through on the backs of Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys.

So this is the unveiling of the fruits of my labor - one hundred albums that I have found to be classic for one reason or another. They have to be much more than “really good”. They need to be great or excellent or brilliant, inspiring or life-changing; they can be universally loved by millions or the treasured secret of a lucky ten thousand. They usually have meant something to the scene or genre which they are a part of. They could have taken something old and refurbished it for a new generation of ears. They may have changed and/or revolutionized an element of recorded music, from the introduction of a certain talented artist, to a guitarist’s new arsenal of sound, to a rapper’s use of words, elocution, or “flow”. These are the albums you’ve loved for years, or maybe they’re the ones you’ve been looking for and have just found. Enjoy.

Guidlines and other things to know:
- The time period covered is January 1987 to December 2006. As far as official release dates go, I'm going by the earliest availability, which usually means the US or UK release date. There are a couple exceptions, which will be noted.

- There are no anthologies or hits collections. Straight up albums, the way they were released...Well, there is one sorta exception, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

- Expect that the posts will be Not Safe For Work. There won't be any truly naughty pictures (unless you count the original cover of The Strokes' Is This It), but I routinely use bad language, and if I'm adding music videos from YouTube, I'll be looking for them to be uncensored...so have headphones."

It's been an incredible journey reading his album reviews. I urge you to add his blog, Cut Shallow Radio to your Bloglines, or GoogleReader, or whathaveyou.

He just reviewed Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation and has 4 more albums to go until #1 is revealed. He's super nice too, so email him and tell him your thoughts...also, tell him I sent you and that I said hi.