Miss Emmie

I've completely and totally neglected this photo blog. Since the advent of my Facebook Photography page, I have hardly posted a thing here. But I really probably should in case anyone every shows up here.

And this little Miss Emmie was so dang adorable I wanted to share her any way I could:



Isn't she amazing?

She, and lots of other new photos are over on my Facebook page. If you come on over there, let me know. Thanks for visiting!

Best Face of 2011 - I Heart Faces Entry

I've entered the I Heart Faces photo contest a couple of times and really enjoyed being involved. This week's contest is the best face of 2011. Whew, that's a tough one. A LOT of pretty wonderful faces have passed in front of my lens this year and it was a really tough choice. But I kept coming back to this photo of little Ian, it is just so un-selfcouncious and exuberantly happy. And of course, the eyes - I've rarely seen a human being with prettier eyes in my life.

 So head on over to I Heart Faces and check out all the wonderful faces hanging around there. And here's looking forward to the great faces to come in 2012.

May Flowers

This week on I Heart Faces, there are no faces. Well, no human faces anyway. I guess flowers can have faces, if you think about it. It's a non-judged contest over there this week and it's about May flowers and instead of posting one picture, we're allowed to post as many as we want.

I went out on a walk this morning when I should have been working. I got about a block away and had passed so many pretty flowers that I turned around and went home and got my camera and took it on my walk with me. So all of these were taken this morning either along the way or in my next door neighbor's yard. It was so much fun to shoot something atypical for me.

 

 

 

This was one of the last of my neighbor's tulips - a few weeks ago she had scads of them. That's the only trouble with tulips, they don't last nearly long enough. Anyway, I was shooting this flower that grows along the brick wall against the back of their house and because my macro lens has such a shallow depth of field when I shoot this close, the brick wall was completely out of focus - EXCEPT for this little piece of brick wall that showed up in the water droplet magnifying glass!

How cool is that?!

(Click the photo to enlarge it and see the tiny bricks.)

 

Can you tell that I heart my macro lens?! Sheesh, I love that thing. I'd been wanting a macro for a while and didn't feel like I could justify/afford a new one. One day I took a look on ebay for one and immediately found this older 60mm macro from an impeccable seller. So I bought it for $93 from a guy in Israel who shipped it to me suspended in a mile of styrofoam and bubble wrap. It is so much fun, and is even a decent portrait lens.

And even though I've never been a flower photographer, I feel empowered by my macro and happy with my little garden of flower photos.

For lots more may flowers, head over to I Heart (flower) Faces and check them OUT.

I Heart Animals

There's a pet challenge this week over at I Heart Faces and I couldn't resist entering. The hard part was choosing a photo to enter. Between my own 10 animals and working at an animal sanctuary, I have quite a few pet photos to choose from. But then I remembered this photo that I took a few weeks ago, and it's one of my all time favs.

Through my work, I recently got to go to Montana to help with some rescued horses. The owner of the foster facility, Michael, had a really, really great Maine Coon cat. He was big and fearless and uber-friendly. And he loved his person. I felt very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time for this one:

Photography is SO MUCH FUN!

So my last post was about my I Heart Faces entry. It was fun to enter and fun to look at the other entries and their blogs and appreciate all the talent and creativity out there. I never expected to win anything, but I liked the subject for this week's challenge - hearts - and was just excited to participate. I entered on Monday and all week I kept checking back in and looking at the other entries, but because I so wasn't planning on winning anything, I didn't check back in on Saturday morning when they announce the winners. My good friend Nan had to call me and tell me that I'd gotten 8th place!

So here's the photo, if you haven't seen it before. And this is what the judges, the fabulous Bobbi+Mike said about my photo, "beautiful color, nice use of a natural prop. simple and not contrived."

Thanks to everyone and their nice comments! I feel re-inspired by all the gorgeous photos I saw this week. And all the beautiful faces.

I Really Do Heart Faces

For quite a while, I've been following a cool blog called I Heart Faces. They have a weekly photo challenge, and I've been tempted to enter it more than once, but just never took the time to figure out how to enter before. The challenge this week is "hearts", so I went out yesterday and took a bunch of heart photos of my lovely live in model. And they turned out pretty nice, but I just kept thinking about this photo that I took in the fall. It has an accidental heart in it and that just felt like more fun.

 

Anyway, so here it is, my first attempt at I Heart Faces. It's kinda fun to finally participate. I love looking at the other entries, head on over there and check 'em out!

Jumpin' Back In

 Man, I've been so bad about keeping up with this blog lately! I guess that wicked busy fall and Christmas season kinda wore me out on blogging, photography, scrapbooking, or anything like unto it. I've had a nice long lull the last few weeks, but it's definitely time to jump back in. My good friend Kori had a baby a couple of weeks ago and I got to go take his pictures. Such a cutie, and such a good, good baby.

 

I got to try out my new Tai Pan Trading pot - in't it pretty? And the baby's not bad either....

Anything we did to him, he just slept through it.

So it was fun to play with a newborn again and I have 3 more sessions scheduled over the next week. Now if I can just keep blogging 'em.

"H" Family Photo Shoot

I photographed this little girlie last winter when she was brand spankin' new and there was 2 feet of new snow on the ground. We went out the other day in perfect weather and had a really fun shoot.

I loved this coat - great color and texture to photograph. 
This little kiddo really wanted to walk...

Dad found a bug to show her:

I've been really working hard lately - taking lots of photos for people. I can't promise anything, but I'll try to post some sessions when I can.

Isn't this a lovely family?

Back Light - Rim Light

I've been so stinkin' busy with my photography for the last several months that I have really had to prioritize things in my life. I used to always publish sneak peaks on my blog for each client photo session, but in order to actually spend time with my family, friends and horses, I've had to let the sneak peaks go - for now. 

One of these days, I'm going to publish a collage post of my favorite pics from each of my poor neglected, unpublished sessions. For now, I'm spending every spare minute just trying to get them edited, so that I can eventually get them back to my lovely, patient clients.

But I don't want to completely neglect my photo blog, and tonight I had a wild hair to post about my current photography love: backlighting.


Photography is a journey - it wasn't long ago that my comfort zone was window light and open shade, but now I've finally stepped into the light - and it's beautiful!


Morning light before the sun gets too high looks like this: 

and this:

Evening light in the last couple of hours before the sun goes down looks like this:



and this:

Sometimes with backlighting you get this amazing, dreamy haze. 

And you always get this little rim of light - rimlight - painting a glowing highlight around the subjects. Niiiice. 

 

I think it's fair to say that backlighting is my new photography addiction. And the beautiful thing about it? It's free and readily available for several hours every day.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

The Importance of Taking Pictures....

Photography is Like Horses

The thing about photography is that it's a lot like horses. (If you know me at all, you've probably realized that I can relate just about anything to horses!)

How is photography like horses, you might ask?
Well, there's no such thing as just getting a horse - upon purchasing a horse, you must now have: brushes, saddles, blankets, clippers, grain, Dodge Cummins pickup, horse trailer, Parelli training equipment, new tires for horse trailer, fences, hay, hay storage facility, hay cubes, a trailer for hauling and storing hay cubes, tarps, jumps, barrels, Parelli home study course on dvd, bits, dental work, vaccines, loafing shed, water barrels, new shoes - or trimming - every 6 to 8 weeks, parts for Dodge pickup, bridles, fly spray, etc., etc., etc.....

Well, photography is the same way - once you purchase your first DSLR camera, you must now have: lenses, new camera case, external flash, external flash stand, reflector, tripod, a telephoto lens, gray card, memory card, a better camera body, a new computer, full version Photoshop, Lightroom, PS actions, an external hard drive, a monopod, reflector stand, another prime lens, a wide angle lens, lens cleaning kit, photography website, photography blog, photography books, more actions, card reader, cds and dvds to burn photos to, a Pro Flikr account, etc, etc, etc.....

Get the picture? They're both addictive, they're both time consuming, and they're both a journey of never ending self improvement. They're also both very gratifying and worthwhile.

And very, very expensive.

And tonight, I found another lens that I just cannot live without - MACRO, BABY!

After purchasing my new D700 - which I don't know how I ever lived without - I figured I'd better hold off for a while on getting any more photography equipment, but I've always got my eyes open for the next cool thing. That next thing, for several months has been a 105mm 2.8 macro lens. Well, I mentioned to my friend and photography mentor, Molly, the other day that I was wishing for a macro and she said, "Hey, I have one of those you can borrow and play with" (or something like that). It turned out to be the exact lens I've had my eye on.

So today I got to play with it for a few minutes. It was a little strange getting used to, but it's amazing and I can't wait to play with it some more. Here are a few I got in the 20 minutes I was able to spend with it today:

Maddie's nose ~ I never realized before how wiggly my animals were and how hard it is to get them to hold still!


Fred was nearly impossible to capture this close up! Aaargh! This photo isn't as sharp as I would have liked, but he just WOULDN'T HOLD STILL.


The kids were equally challenging - Luke had a very hard time keeping his eye open long enough for me to meter and focus, and then he kept closing his eyes and rubbing them, which made them red. But I thought this was pretty anyway.


So thanks to Molly for letting me play with this a little bit - so glad you're a Nikon girl!

It was cool to try it before I buy it, so that I'll be confident in my purchase. And there's no doubt I WILL purchase it.

One of these days. But probably not for a while... Sigh.

DON'T say CHEESE! Please?

As a portrait photographer, I wish there were one message that I could send to the world and shout from the rooftops. But since I'd definitely break my neck if I tried to climb on any rooftops, and shouting makes my throat hurt, I'm going to shout it from my photo blog instead.

To all you parents out there:

Please don't teach your children to say "cheese" whenever you point a camera at them!

thank you.

Wow, it feels good to get that off my chest!

I've taken a lot of family portraits this year and almost every single time, there's a child - or all the children - who have been taught to do the 'cheese rictus' by their well intentioned parents.

Case in point:

(sorry about the quality here folks, this was cropped out of a large family group photo)

Has anyone ever seen this face before? I see it ALL THE TIME. Same smile, different day. And an otherwise adorable child turns into a grimacing little statue! Sometimes it's not quite so severe - often, they just pull back their lips, but their eyes are SO not smiling.

In this extreme case, I was trying to get the little guy to talk to me and interact and laugh at my jokes and he was so frozen in this face that I was afraid he would be stuck that way forever! He couldn't talk, he couldn't move - he just knew there was a camera involved so he went into automatic cheese mode. (And let me just say, that this was a LOVELY family and a good little guy who was just trying to do the right thing.)

So what should you do instead, you might ask? Well, my favorite thing is to say something that the kids are bound to think is extremely funny - translated: anything super-silly, slightly gross, or a combination of both, like "monkey boogers". I've even been known to tickle them, make muscles like Arnold, and do the hokie pokie. What we're goin' for folks is a spontaneous smile - even outrageous laughing is better than the deadly cheese rictus.

So give it a try and let me know how it goes. I'm out to change the world, one grimacing child at a time.

Flower Girl - pick your favortie edit

I love taking photos, I really love taking them. And then I love getting them up on my computer screen (yay digital!) and looking at them - and finding that one amazing image, that treasure of a captured memory that's just beautiful and exceptional and special. That's the reason I take photographs.

But the editing....

The editing is about to kill me (boo digital!). I've gotten to a point in my photography that individually, my images don't usually need much editing, thank goodness. But the sheer volume of the photos waiting to be edited can still be a little overwhelming. And very time consuming.

I need at least one day to get away from my editing, and that day is Sunday, of course. I've decided that if I must get on the computer at all on Sunday that the time should be used to work on my own family's photos, my personal blog and my personal scrapbook pages.

I bought Brynn a darling new dress on GapKids the other day - I just adore it. She wore it to church today and I couldn't resist taking her picture afterward. And I love this photo, it's one of those special ones - to me at least.

I brought it in to Photoshop and performed my standard edit: crop, a little unsharp mask, a smidgen of levels adjustment and a squeaky bit of curves, and this is what I got:


Pretty girl, don't you think?

(oh, and I burned the edges just a tad)

And then, because this image is just for me and I can go a little crazy with it, I decided to play with some of my favorite Florabella actions. Let me know - if anybody's out there - which of the edits you like best. Or maybe you don't like any of the fancy stuff and like the "normal" one best. I'm curious to know.

Ready? Okay.

Edit #1: Primrose ~ soft & feminine with a rosy tint....


Edit #2: Retro Lolipop ~ dramatic & colorful with a bit of 70's feel to it....


Edit #4: B/W Chestnut ~ (I LOVE the Florabella black & white actions, they're so easy and gorgeous! No more muddy black and whites for me.)


Edit #5: Wisteria ~ Dreamy and slightly hazy...

Edit #6: B/W Rain ~ Another lovely black and white action with a cooler tone....


Edit #7: Morning Glory ~ Sunny, bright and warm....


Is that too many to choose from? I actually could have done dozens more. Let me know which ones are your favorite. I'm so immersed in photo editing for so much of my life that I feel like I loose my perspective, so all feedback is greatly appreciated.

For my good friend Katie, because I love ya....

I've been so busy taking photos for people lately that I haven't had time to blog any of them!

My friend Katie had a baby a month ago and I went down and took newborn pics of her gorgeous little girl when she was a couple of weeks old. I told Katie how behind I was on my editing and that it might be a while before I could get the photos to her.

And Katie, being a good friend, totally understood. Except that every time I talk to her she tells me how excited she is to see the pics and that she just can't wait. And then today I talked to Katie on the phone and she said, "Can you pleeeese just send me one? I just want to see one so bad!"

So I stayed up tonight and edited a few to put up on the blog - because Katie's a great friend. So here's a sneak peak for you Katie. Congrats to your great family, you deserve to get such a gorgeous, sweet little girlie, and she's so lucky to have been sent to such an amazing family. Love you guys!





Not only do they have a new human baby, but new puppies as well. This little toot buppy snuggled right down in the basket with little Mayzie and went right to sleep.

My New Camera...... and my best model

To afford it, I've been selling off everything that isn't nailed down, including two lenses and my old camera, but I finally did it: I made the leap to a full frame sensor camera! The Nikon D700, and it's awesome!

My previous camera was a great camera and I'm very happy with so many of the images I've gotten with it over the last year and a half, but I really felt like I was ready to move on.

My friend, Molly, has let me "foster" her nice 80-200mm lens for the last while, but on my old cropped sensor camera body, it just wasn't very usable for me. But with this new camera, the lens is different, closer to the subject - a lot easier to use and the perfect focal length for portraits. Yay, since this is the nicest lens I have.

So I got the new camera on Wed. and played with it yesterday and today, and oh so conveniently, I have the perfect little model living in my house. I always say we're a match made in heaven: I love to take pictures, and she loves to have her picture taken.


I bought this pink hat this spring on a winter clearance sale and I haven't used it yet. Glad I remembered it today - cuuuute!

Taking a rest with some Russian Sage - I love that stuff and it's blooming right now.


One of the things I'm noticing already about the new camera, is that I'm not going to have to edit my photos nearly as much. And that's a HUGE reason to

CEL-E-BRATE!

Maybe I can get some of my life back that normally I spend editing.

Outtake alert!


I got a kick out of that one and wanted to include it.

This girl's so tan, she looks like she lives at the pool! Oh wait, she actually does live at the pool. Or on her horse or on the trampoline.

I think this one's my favorite:


Her hair is several shades lighter than it was 2 months ago. I've been calling her "blondie" lately.


Yep, she's my best model: willing, beautiful and confident in front of the camera.

And here's my second best model:


The last two nights while I've been playing in the yard with the new camera, Fred has climbed up on the kids' play house and watched intently while we shoot. From the exact same spot. I think he thinks he's a panther in a tree.... Good ol' Fred.

Well, good shooting times ahead. I'm looking forward to new adventures with my new partner in crime. Maybe I should give it a name, we're going to be very close from here on out.