My First Attempt at Teaching!!!

Today I am PROUD to say that I have led two people into the world of manual shooting!!! YAY!!! It took one spiffy little powerpoint, a lot of crazy hand demonstrations, several ridiculous analogies, and two willing to learn students.

We started off learning all about the buttons on our cameras and what they did. We then learned about focal points and the rule of thirds. Once we got all that easy peasy stuff out of the way, we began tackling the three elements of exposure. After spending a good while LEARNING all about shutter speed, aperture & ISO we set off on a little backyard adventure to test out their new found knowledge. Hearing all the clicks of their camera dials and the little "uh ohs" and "wait, now what do I do?" made me giggle because it wasn't long ago at all that I was right there in their shoes learning how to shoot in manual. I remember having the exact same feelings and thinking it was going to be impossible. But it's not...and I am sooooo glad I took the time to learn and that I had someone willing to teach me (thanks ERIN)!!!

I hope they are able to take away the same amount of knowledge I was and can go forward shooting in MANUAL. Seeing some of the images they were capturing today, I would say they are gonna do just fine. I told them, like I was told, "practice, practice, practice!!" It's the only way to get better.

So here are a few pictures from our little adventure...
Thanks to Madison for being our little model for a bit :o)

Sooo...what happens when...

Soo...what happens when you have a three year old, a bright red pair of boots, one pair of pink pajamas and two totally uncoordinated backdrops (my fault...whoopsy)??? Haha...well the result in my situation is a whole lot of black and white images :o)

About 6 months ago I ordered a baby blue tin backdrop solely to do some newborn pictures of my son and I had this bright idea to get my boss to bring his daughter over for some practice pictures one day. On the day they were scheduled to come for pictures I had my baby blue backdrop and white floor all set up and ready with a super cute blue and white lace petti romper and tutu for her to wear.

Now lets flash forward about 20 minutes and meet IVY, the three year old daughter of my boss. They arrived at my house with Ivy ready to go...in a pair of pink pajamas and bright red boots :o) The plan to get Ivy into the petti romper...not happening. She was ready to rock those pink pajamas and red boots all day long.



After much persuading, begging, bribing, getting her dad to put tutu on and finally some coloring time we managed to get her into a blue jean romper with her red boots. Yes, you read that correctly...her dad...my boss...tutu...good times...good times :o)

So now I am thinking to myself what do I have that is going to match her bluejean romper and red boots?? I know...brown matches everything...wrong!! LOL. Ivy was as cute as she could be in her little outfit and boots but my brown damask backdrop was just not cutting it...but she was finally warmed up and ready to take some pictures. I knew that if i stopped everything to take down the backdrop and set everything back up that we were going to lose her...so what do you do?? Me...I said what the hey...let's take some pictures.




After some handy dandy black and white adjustments her pictures actually turned out to be super cute and I have this great little story to tell about the little girl in her pink pajamas and red boots who just wanted to color.

the.ONE DAY.workshop with Erin Rachel

Hello Everyone! It's been a while since my last post... I decided I would update everyone on the goings on of my life :o)

Today I had the opportunity to take part in the.ONE DAY.workshop taught by a great photographer named Erin Wilson. She was able to shed some light on a TON of questions I had. I recently started shooting entirely in manual mode on my DSLR... scary huh...I thought so too and was having a little trouble picking it up. Well turns out its not sooo bad :o) She was really able to connect to us all on a level at which we could understand and walk away from her workshop truly having learned something and for that I am extremely grateful!!! I would also like to take this opportunity to let everyone know just how good homemade cinnamon rolls are...SUPERB!!!

Below are some of my images from the workshop. Some of them are Straight Off Of Camera shots and some have a little editing done on them. Never before have a been able to post up a SOOC with absolutely NO editing done on it...talk about a time saver!!

Madison & Tyler

Today I did pictures of my little niece and nephew. They were soo good for me! Love them!!

Stephen's Senior Shoot

You guys may remember Lora from last year...well yesterday I had the opportunity to do her brother's senior pictures! Meet Stephen everyone...

Maternity Leave Here I Come!!!

Today I shot my last session before going on maternity leave :o( Don't worry I will be coming back...after all I am going to have to take Nicole's bridal portraits as well as her wedding in May. Nicole and Paul were such good sports today for their engagement session. I would like to thank them for working with me while I waddled around and took five minutes to get up from a squatting position LOL!! Sabrina and I thought their Texas/LSU pictures were fun to do (apparently there is a little rivalry there). Here is a tiny little sneak peek for their viewing pleasure :o)

SENIOR SNEAK PEEK!!!!

I had the opportunity to do Lora's senior portraits recently. She was really fun to photograph and her pictures turned out amazing. Here are a few teasers...