Self-Portrait

I don’t usually post about my personal life on my blog. But this is photography related so I decided to through it up here. 🙂 This is my first project of the semester… can I say it is going to be a long semester!? Self-portraits are not my favorite, especially when the requirement was that I had to be the one taking them. It is a lot easier to play the roll of the photographer (preferably) or the model, but doing both was a challenge. So in the end I took some shots of just my face and made my eyes the focus. This might seem like an odd photo to some, but it eventually grew on me… so it give it some time. The background ended up being my favorite part! Everything you see was made from scratch. Meaning I took all of the photos and then used selection tools, masking, blending modes etc to have it all come together. Let me know what you think!

Love in Pink

Actions

I learned something really cool recently… called ‘actions.’ Oh the bliss of clicking a button and watching the magic happen. A lot of times the effect might not be exactly what I want for the image but I can easily go in and adjust certain layers to get the desired effect. My favorites for this batch was a HDR effect, black and white and a vintage effect. I also was able to use my good friend Camera RAW to adjust some exposure issues. Towards the end of the session it was getting dark outside so my lighting was struggling. I shot what I could and then Camera RAW helped with the rest. What style do you like best?

Wendy

Wendy is the beautiful daughter of Aimee and Nathan! Don’t you just want to squeeze that face? This post includes everything from fun edits, to no edits, to some basic edits. Hopefully I’ll get a few more in tomorrow! I would love to do more photo shoots like this. So please let me know if you are wanting to get ahead and get your Christmas cards done, or if you are needing to re-vamp your family pictures in your home!

Sisters

D.d. Murri and Shea Smith are the darling sisters I got to shoot this week! You could tell they enjoyed being with each other as they laughed, giggled, talked and teased each other. It was such a fun photo shoot!

Lighting has been the beast I have been trying to slay every photo shoot I do. I finally was able to penetrate the problem! I feel like these photos were some of my best lighting. The coolest part of this was that I was shooting in manual (which I hardly ever do!). But I had full control over what my camera was doing and what I wanted to capture. It was liberating! So what made this change? This also was the first photo shoot that I felt completely relaxed. I didn’t get nervous sweaty hands, I didn’t fret over everything. I had poses picked out (thanks to D.d. pinterest board!), my camera was charged, I was able to chat comfortably with those I was shooting with… the end result was wonderful! So I proud to say none of these photos had any edits done. Here’s the pure beauty of the Smith Sisters!

T&M Wedding (behind the scenes)

I was able to go to my beautiful cousins wedding this past weekend. Of course I brought my camera! I wanted to see what I could do with capturing the feeling of this beautiful day. Like most big events in life there’s tons of prep! I snapped photos of the Clare family in action as they put together this gorgeous wedding. I hope you are able to smell the flowers, feel the anticipation, and see the love. All of the photos are “out of the camera shots” with no to very little editing done. Hopefully I’ll get some editing time in and post those as well.

C&K Announcing Baby M!

Chad and Kayla are having a baby! I am so happy for them, and finally our kids will be able to have cousins. YAY! Kayla asked me to take a few shots of them and their ultrasound picture. We had a lot of fun! Of course I learned a few things, the most important being MAKE SURE YOUR BATTERY IS CHARGED! Thank goodness they are family or it would have been super embarrassing to have to plug in my battery for a few minutes. 🙂

Gabby & Izzy

These precious little sisters, get to start life out together hand in hand! It was such a fun and wonderful opportunity to capture this sweet relationship. You could feel of their tenderness. These babies came straight from heaven! I learned a lot at this photo shoot. One being, you need lots of hands when working with babies! It was nice to have both grandmas there to warm them up, switch out bows and to comfort when it was getting rough. I also had an interesting experience with lighting. Because they were young, we decided to stay indoors. Which is great, there’s always window lighting (which is beautiful!) Well Rexburg did not fail us, and it was a cloudy day. There was still just enough light, with the right angels and what not. I was really grateful for Camera Raw and the exposure setting, as I tried making the pictures look perfect. Here are just a few of my favorite! Feel free to leave comments, tips, etc.

Kirsten and Will

I was able to shadow Angie Cooper, as she shot Kirsten and Will’s wedding. It was such a  huge learning experience, in more than one way.

First, the fact that families can be forever through the sealing power of the priesthood, seemed to resound so true at this wedding! You could see the joy radiating from their faces as they came out of the temple. Here was a woman and man sealed together, ready to receive all the blessings are are entitled with that sacred ordinance. It is true!

Second, third and fourth. Is to BE PREPARED for anything! Gather all of your knowledge you can before hand, then go and be prepared for anything. (bad weather, different location etc.)

Fifth. I can do this. I needed some reassurance that I could do this; and I can. Not only can I, but I love it! I hope that emulates through as you scroll through the shots. With that being said, if you hear of anyone who needs a photographer let me know. I would love the opportunity again. 🙂

Will You Be My Valentine?

Valentines day was lovely! 🙂 I’ll let the pictures tell the story

The next part is our little bottle egg experiment. (Preston loves this kind of stuff) We tried for about 20 minutes to do it with a glass Coke bottle. That didn’t work out so well. 🙂 So we resorted to this plastic bottle. But hey it worked; and it was so much fun! These aren’t the best “photography” photos I’ve done. But the memories were priceless.