Here on our blog this week we had planned on sharing a blog post that we’ve made about when and how to plan your Engagement Session and wedding. Given the current Covid-19 i..e Corona Virus AND the push for EVERYONE (including you- yes YOU) to self quarantine at home, we thought we’d instead share with you a video series that we made for a local Harpist 3.5 years ago that may calm your nerves.
Most of us who care about the lives of other humans (or do not have to be at work at a grocery store or hospital) and are able to be are home quarantine-ing with our pets & families. Because of this, we want to share with you some calming & educational harp videos that just the TWO of us made for a local harpist 3.5 years ago. We do not do video work often since we’re full-time professional photographers, but we very much appreciate our local vendors & small business owners. Anna Hagen is a local harpist who we met 4 years ago since we often see her alongside us at Wedding Expos & weddings in Michiana (she hails from the Goshen/ Elkhart area). Our couples & clients love her. We’ve shared our stories with each other from abroad, have enjoyed calming down to her harp music, and have even had a meal that her mom made at her parents’ own home for us. Her mom is a great artist who specializes in painting, so often when Anna is playing harp at a Wedding Expo, her mom will plein air paint scenes of the outdoors there right next to her. You’ll actually see in this video some of her mom’s handiwork! Her mom actually made the dress Anna is wearing AND had the smarts to cut a small hole in the top to hide the mic that we clipped onto Anna.
In the first video she explains her history of learning harp and going into self independent business as a professional Harpist (after & before her formal education at music college). In the second video Anna explains all of her own harps, what each different one is good for, and shows you how each one works. For both of these videos, Anna secured her college’s performance stage for a few hours. Due to this and her script that she wanted to stick strictly to, we didn’t have any time leftover for B-roll sadly (detail shots, transitions, etc) and due to our regular photography work we didn’t have much time to dedicate at all to the design work of the graphics, but… we hope that you enjoy anyway-! Without further adieu, here are videos that we produced, directed, video-ed, and edited of Anna and her craft-!
Thank you so much for stopping by to check this out this week and calm down with us over the sweet tunes of the harp. We’d so hoped that we’d be able to do a 3rd video of Anna during that “studio time” doing some current radio music of new hits, but we literally ran out of time at the concert hall. Either way, we hope that you enjoyed learning more about the harp & about one of our local wedding & event “vendors” i.e. local artists.
If you haven’t been staying up-to-date with the news and president’s daily tv appearances & announcements, for the first time in ANYONE’S lifetime (who is still alive) our nation of the United States & other nations are on lockdown due to this new novel 2019 Corona Virus from November/ December 1st. Currently we have over 2,000+ cases in the United States (many, many, many thousands more undiagnosed) and due to this we’re trying to ensure that our nation does not spread this further. It has already torn through China, Italy, France, and many, many more countries causing havoc and leaving folks to die alone in their homes due to the lack of that many hospital beds (and the fact that there is no “flu shot” yet created to help avoid it). Due to this, today our nation closed the border to Canada (other than for trade/ business/ Canadian residents) and Trump/ our government has cautioned folks to STAY HOME in quarantine and not be in groups over 10. The cases increase by 10% every 12 hours due to new tests to diagnose folks, so this isn’t to be taken lightly.
We are currently self-quarantined and have been for for the majority of the past 2+ weeks. We may be photographing in a few days, but other than that potentially, we will not be leaving our home as we already have all of the food, gloves, pet food, etc. that we need. Coming up this weekend we were scheduled to photograph a legal wedding in Chicago i.e. a small 15 person wedding in a church in the suburbs of Chicago. This is coming up in just a few days, so we’re basically playing it by ear since they want it to still happen. Grocery store workers are still working, those in hospitals and healthcare are still working, airports are technically still working, SOME states even have regular other stores opened, restaurants are still working with small staffs making delivery & To Go foods, and we’re just here self quarantining trying to safely tackle everything from now through May. One of our other 2020 wedding couples already reached out to us to tell us that their May wedding is extremely downsized. They cancelled their reception venue (The Brick) and will be having everything happen at their ceremony venue (which is luckily gorgeous) in 10 weeks with just their bridal party and immediate families. We’ve also heard that couples’ college graduation ceremonies are getting cancelled, so for some it’s a double whammy having to downsize or change any wedding plans on top of this crazy having to online learn in their last couple months.