Amanda and Adam: the day before 'I do!'

It seems like just yesterday that I saw Amanda's post on facebook that she was engaged!

It took a couple of months of still, before they let me take their engagement pictures (here), and by their wedding, they were pros at posing for the camera!



They even re-created the "zombie pose" from their engagement shoot, but I wasn't quite quick enough and got the end of it:



And a photo with Adam's parents:

Amanda's bridesmaids - quick portraits :)

I say it over and over again, I am that annoying friend who always has their camera out and is constantly snapping pictures here and there. Luckily, by now most people are used to it and will play along and give me a pose!

Here are some shots that I took while we (Amanda's bridesmaids) were waiting to go to the water front for some quick photos and the rehearsal dinner!

James is one!

James is one, can you believe it!? He's super cute with the brightest blue eyes!! I only wish I could have spent more time with him (and his parents!).

Bubble Fun

Over my Memorial Day Weekend Staycation, I didn't get a lot of time to play with my real camera, but I did get to take these pictures of Jenny blowing bubbles outside my house. I knew that I could do something with them, but wasn't sure what.

The full sun made Jenny very pale, the background very dark, and the bubbles... well, not very impressive. I used the sharpening brush in Aperture on each of the bubbles, and then used the burn brush to just burn the shadows to make the bubbles pop just a little more. It's ALMOST the effect that I would have gotten using the "eye bright" tool from picnik.com (my favorite tool for glossy surfaces).

I usually don't...

I usually don't share outfit photos that I take of myself on my photography blog, but I just really like this one!

did you see any horses?

Apparently that is the joke about Foxfields, and I didn't quite understand it until this weekend! I had an amazing time and took a lot of pictures. I'm sure most of them are junk, but I really loved this one from the time I took it. At least conceptually! I wish I hadn't shot it as wide open as I had. I mean, I love the blurry background, but I bet f3.5 or f4 would have gotten the same effect and the horse would be a little more in focus. Oh well, you live, you learn, and you can only capture life once. See, if I had continued to try to get this shot, I would have missed out on some of the fun that I had. :)

Bella and Pearl

This is Bella and her "baby sister," Pearl. When I took a week off from teaching swimming for spring break, I asked if I could come meet Pearl on my way home from work. She's just the sweetest puppy! I just happened to have my camera with me and thought that if I could get a good picture of Bella and Pearl, then I could give it to her as a gift. The problem is, it's hard enough to get a good picture of a kid, with all the moving around and wiggling, imagine adding a puppy to the mix! It was fun and I think it would be great to try some kid/puppy photo shoots in the future!

found in 'untitiled 7'

I like to pretend that I don't get posed shots of kids, but sometimes even if all you're doing is taking pictures of a kid being a kid, he'll end up in kinda a posed position.

I found this gem in one of my untitled albums in my aperture library (yes, I need to work on organizing). Not only is it a great looking, posed portrait, but I think it totally still looks like Rowan! My portfolio needs more than great pictures of Rowan, so as soon as swim season is over, I will be working on booking some portrait sessions.

family

This is my family. I snapped these when we arrived to Grand Cayman and were waiting for my sister's flight (though that is a long story!). I just love the way my mom looks at my dad. After being married more than 30 years, she still looks at him as if she's never seen anything so wonderful in her whole life. The smaller photo is of my Grannie. I am always told that I get a lot of who I am from her. She's stylish and strong. I feel like its such a great compliment to be compared to her. My grandfather, Opop, has been gone for a few years now. He was a fantastic man and looked at her much the same way my mom looks at my dad. I titled this post "family" though it could have also been called "can you please put that damn camera away?" My dad gets upset sometimes because I don't often let him take pictures of me, yet I am always snapping pictures of everyone else. I guess it's because I am a control freak and when it comes to pictures of me, I want to make sure they're good. I'm really glad I got these shots though! I guess I can always refer my dad here the next time he tells me to put my camera away. If I put it away, then I won't get great shots like this!

Terra Dog

This is my sister's first child, Terra Dog. It was also my nephew's first word. She's a great dog and pal to my sister and nephew. When I was talking with Alix about my new camera lens, she said she'd love some pictures of Terra. I plan on doing a proper family photo shoot with Alix, Rowan, and Terra, but I snapped these on Christmas Eve and thought that I might as well publish them. I love Terra's eyes are in the main image. She's got such soulful eyes! Hopefully we'll be able to get my sister's family together for pictures when Rowan get's back from Japan. He's going with his father and their family for three weeks, and we even sent him with his own camera! I can't wait to see the pictures that he takes!

Mermaids Exist

Here's another one from my vacation. These girls were swimming in the ocean with mermaid tails and I thought it was so cool! I wish I had a mermaid tail like this to swim with. I tried to capture a picture where they look like real mermaids. How did I do? ;)

50mm AF-S is on it's way!

I took this last year at Districts with my 50mm 1.8 AI lens. I love that with the cropped sensor 50mm lenses actually give you a 75mm focal length (compared to film/FX-DSLRs). Yesterday I spent about an hour debating in my head between the 35mm 1.8G AF-S DX and the 50mm 1.8G AF-S. On the one hand, 35mm would be easy when I am coaching. I would allow me to stand fairly close to the pool and still shoot a wide angle, but it would make it a little more difficult at meets, where I am further away. The 50mm is harder for coaching practices, but over all I think it was a better choice!

It's predecessors have always gotten great reviews, and I quite like the one that I have for my manual film camera, but it's tough to use with my DSLR, as I really enjoy metering and auto focus! I'm also so happy I waited until the 1.8 AF-S to come out this year. I almost jumped and purchased the AF, that won't auto-focus with my D5000. Anyway, I'm super excited!

swim and dive

I have been coaching swimming and diving for South Lakes High School for 7 seasons. Throw in my 4 years as a member of the team while I was in high school, and I've been part of the team for over 1/3 of my life. Over the last 3 seasons I have been working to take pictures during dive meet and I have learned two things for sure:

1. Herndon Community Center has the WORST light in the dive well
2. None of my AF-S lenses are really fast enough for indoor, action shots.

Now this doesn't mean I'm not going to keep trying to take dive pictures at HCC, it just means I'm not going to publish any on here until I have either:

1. Become super skilled at noise removal
2. Purchase a fast prime for dive shots! 

Hopefully both of those things will happen before the end of the season. For right now, I will leave you with this swim picture!

Vacation

While I look through all of my vacation photos, I thought I would share this one of Rowan's toes. I took a lot of pictures and learned a lot of things that I can't wait to apply and share.

Matt and Theresa's New Home

A few weeks ago I met up with Theresa and Matt to take some portraits outside their new home. I have to admit, the idea of wearing football fan stuff for a photo shoot never would have crossed my mind, but look how cute it is! The funniest thing was through out the entire session, Matt kept reminding Terri not to cover the Eagle with her hand.

Some things I learned from this shoot:

• When a client wants to create a collage, make sure that you balance the photos with one another for a series. I chose to do different versions of the same image with different warmth/coolness. It works individually, but for a series, I think they should all match. Lesson learned!
• Make sure to bring personality into the shoot. That is exactly what the football fan gear (jersey/tee) did! It was a great lesson!
• There is a place for focal lengths under 55mm, like by a front door! Because of the lenses that I have, I often just make due with leaving my 55-200mm lens on my camera and back up if I need a wider angle. This isn't always the best thing to do. I need to remember to think a little more about what I am capturing and remember to use all the tools in my kit!
• When doing walking shots, remind people to walk SLOWLY! Luckily I was able to remember this for this shoot!

I'm so happy to have been able to take these portraits! They look great and help to document and celebrate a wonderful event, Matt and Terri's new home!

First Look: Amanda and Adam's Engagement Session

The best thing about starting a business is that you can bully your friends into becoming clients! I believe the first words I said after "congratulations" to Amanda when she told me that Adam had proposed were "you have to let me do engagement portraits!" Fast forward six months and we finally got together for them!

Here's a first look at some of the pictures that we shot on Sunday. I was a little worried that the colours would be too drab now that all the leaves have turned brown and gotten crunchy, but as you can see, it didn't stop us from getting some great shots! And the benefit of waiting? We got some great Christmas shots too!

running

I really love running. In fact, most people use the word "runner" to describe me. On Saturday, after getting back from 9.75 miles with some friends, I headed with my camera to the Nearly Naked Mile to support some other friends. I was so happy I had my camera with me, because if I can't run, taking pictures is my next favorite thing to do!

I had seen some really great pictures after the New York City Marathon last year, as well as some spectacular ones from the Army Ten Miler this year. And I really wanted to try to get some images that were "good race shots" as well as some that make you feel what it's like to race. Basically, I did a lot of what the hired photographers there were doing (so that's good - I looked like I knew what I was doing!) and a lot of experimentation. While loading the pictures onto my computer this morning, I realized some of my mistakes and can't wait to try again.

Here's a quick preview of what I took though!

accidentally awesome

Have you ever done something that was accidental and turned out to be amazing? I know that I am supposed to be critical of my own works, but sometimes I just look at a picture that I have taken and think "wow, that is pretty good." This is certainly one of those images for me.

How it happened:

I was taking some shots of lego men during a photo walk for a photography tutorial guest post about high lighting your subject using a blurred background. When I was done with the lego men, we decided to go somewhere else and along the way had to cross the golf course. There was some discussion about if you had to get a release if you couldn't identify a person in an image, and I shot this.

To me, it really screams GOLF. Though maybe that should be FORE!

Alex at his football match!

I needed an escape a couple of weekends ago, after getting the news that my uncle had passed away. My friend Sonia was watching her son, Alex play football just down the road from my house, so I grabbed my camera and invited myself along. Poor Alex then had to put up with me taking photos of him during the break and after the match. Though he seemed like he didn't want his picture taken when I asked him to smile, he certainly was more than happy to show off with the ball when the match was over.

That's one of the things about kids, they really want to please adults, you just have to wait them out and work on their terms. I really enjoy taking pictures of children. They are actually my favorite subject! But I can see how they might intimidate some photographers. My best suggestion would be to just start taking pictures of kids being kids, and maybe after a few minutes ask for very simple things. Like "hold still and look at me, please" or "can I get a silly face?" Most of the time after a silly face, you get a really great, genuine smile!

Crickett

Meet Crickett! Let me tell you, this girl is awesome! Since I am one of those people that always has a camera with them, it's just perfect that I'm friends with a girl who's always ready to ham it up for the camera! These are the pictures that I snapped of Crickett while we were out apple picking a few weekends ago. I think that these shots convey the simple truth that sometimes it's not about the photographer or the composition, but merely the energy of the subject. Crickett is always good for some fun, energetic photos, she's even fun without a camera around! ;)