Thanks for stopping by! I’m a wedding and portrait photographer, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’m a transplant to Utah from Northern California, where I grew up skiing and enjoying the outdoors with my family. I moved to Utah to go to college (and ski) and here I am, 13 years later, married to a wonderfully supportive husband and have two cute, black Labs. I’m passionate about photography and life. I get really excited when I get a great shot (as many of my clients can attest) and I’m not afraid to act like a dork in public.

Check out the video below to get a taste of what an engagement session with me is like. Let’s go!

Video by Orton Films

My brother, Jared wants to hang some art on his walls. He wants to choose from my photos and have me make a gallery wrap canvas for him. I’ve been meaning to share, what I call my “pretty pictures” here for some time, so why not kill two birds with one stone (totally, no pun intended with some of the photos in this series). These are just photos from around my house and backyard. The forms, colors, and magical life of plants kind of fascinate me.
Back to my brother–he is my younger brother and he’s tall. Besides that, he’s a pretty impressive guy. He’s speaks fluent Spanish and runs a big, industrial laundry facility. He’s only 23. He’s also in school, working toward a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. From what I understand, he’s a pretty good skateboarder, too. I’m proud of him, as you can see. Anywho, here are the photos!

If you want a print or canvas gallery wrap of any of these, just drop me a line at melissakelseyphotography@gmail.com and I’ll send you the details.

A prospective out-of-town client recently asked to see photos of my albums.  Well, here they are for all to see!  Each beautiful wedding album is customized to fit the style of each client and crafted of the finest leathers, papers, and fabrics.

Deluxe Flush Mount Leather Albums.  These popular albums are a combination of a traditional leather album and carefully designed pages, printed on photographic paper and permanently mounted to thick stiff substrate.  This results in a durable album that is classic yet modern at once.  Many fun, funky, stylish, and timeless leathers and fabrics to choose from with lots of cover design options.  Go classic or get creative with your album cover.

Raw Linen Coffee Table Books with Embossed Personalized Cover.  These beautiful books are like a published, hard-bound art book.  Available in a variety of elegant colors with gorgeous marbled end papers (or basic black).  Available with Personalized Slipcase or Clamshell Box.  One image per page.  These books hold 100-300 pages.

Luxurious, hand crafted, silk matted wedding albums.  These heirloom albums are hand made with fine silk cover- fabrics and ribbon, and archival artists rag paper mats.  Photographs are carefully mounted behind mat openings.  Available with corset ribbon binding or plain binding.  Lots of delicious color combinations to choose from.  These are simply elegant and simply to die for!

Kristin and Justin were married at the 1st Presbyterian Church in a beautiful wedding ceremony in September and had a lovely reception at The Point. Here’s a sneak peek of the wedding photos:

Grey, grey, grey. I love grey…and, I love to spell it with an “e”, although I spelled it with an “a” for the title of this blog post. Why? So Google and other search engines can understand it. Sorry, getting a little technical for the general audience with that one. Anyway, check out the real point of this post below!

Wedding planning-gray is chic for wedding color schemes from Melissa Kelsey on Vimeo.

Anyone notice the nostril twitch at the beginning? Ha!

Note to self: get more sleep before recording a video blog post to prevent dark under eye circles and don’t wear hair like that again.

Photo by: Ingrid Sanchez of I Studio Photography

If you haven’t heard of the concept of Trash the Dress, you probably will begin to hear about it more and more now. Trash the Dress, which was begun by photographer, John Michael Cooper, has made it to the Today Show.

Trash the Dress isn’t about trashing the dress as much as it is about creating artistic, fashion-inspired images of a bride in her gown. I also like the term Rock the Dress, which can be a little more tame. These awesome photo sessions are ususally done after the wedding day, but even if you’re aren’t totally up for trashing your dress, you should definitely rock your dress. You can rock your dress during your bridal session before the wedding. Rocking the dress means having a fashion inspired concept, venturing into places where you might not normally feel comfortable taking your dress, but still keeping it pretty clean and completely undamaged. Besides, you can get the thing cleaned!

Rocking or trashing the dress can also include the groom. Sexy post-wedding shoots are perfect for this.

So, who’s game? Let’s do it!

It was kind of strange to find that a photo of mine from my blog, had made it onto two wedding planning blogs. Those of you that are familiar with wedding planning blogs like Wedding Chicks or Style Me Pretty are familiar with the idea boards they feature. Well, mine made it onto one of those idea boards. I wondered where all those photos came from! I thought they were submitted by photographers, but turns out, most of them are copied from photographer’s blogs. It kind of feels like someone took something from me without asking, but I’m also grateful and flattered to be on these blogs. As long as I’m given credit and a link for these instances, I guess I’m okay with it.

The blogs:

Bridal Buzz

Pearls Events

My photo is 2nd from the left on the top row.

Woohoo!  I made it on the Utah Bride and Groom blog.  Utah Bride and Groom is only the most awesome bridal magazine and wedding planning source in Utah. Mikey and Machel are such a great couple and I loved their engagement shoot.  Thanks for bringing that champagne along, Mikey!

Check out the full post at Utah Bride and Groom, HERE.

And…you’ll be seeing more of me on the Utah Bride and Groom blog soon, as well as in the magazine.  I’m so excited!
Check out wedding planning ideas, photos,  and information at www.utahbrideandgroom.com.

Hello!  So, I’ve decided to embark on this video blogging thing in addition to my photo blog posts.  I think it’ll be a neat way to connect with readers and clients.  It took about 20 tries to make a video that I’m okay with posting.  I hope to get better and say less “um”s and “uhhhh”s and “and”s.  Check it out!

Alli Miles was my photography intern this summer.   She’s awesome; dependable, smart, savvy, and talented.  Alli is the finalist in the Your Heart Out contest to win a coveted scholarship to film photographer, Jonathan Canlas’ photography workshop, Film is Not Dead.  Alli works so hard being a fantastic person, she deserves this.  Besides, her photograph of peaches entitled “Good Fruit” is beautiful and dreamy.  Alli is passionate about photography and improving her craft.

Please, please, pretty-please go vote for Alli at:

http://www.yourheartout.com/?p=6507

Alli Miles’ photograph, “Good Fruit”  (Photo #4 on the contest website)

Me and Alli shooting a wedding together: