Vintage Records

Last night I spent the evening hanging out with my nephew listening to records. Yes, RECORDS. His dad has quite a collection of vintage vinyl from the 60's and 70's and as always I am intrigued by the photographic possibilities of the albums. We had a great time exploring the album covers and a great discussion of the images the artists used to use to decorate the album covers. It is so different now. When I was a child I remember getting my first record player it was like a little suitcase decorate like a pair of blue jeans. The first record I got was "Thank you for being a friend" on 45. It is so amazing to see how much technology has changed in my lifetime. I've had records, eight-track tapes, cassettes, CD's and now I just download from iTunes direct to my iPod. Wow! Photography is the same way. I started with a film camera with no automatic anything and then along came autofocus and autoexposure and finally digital cameras. I feel like I've lived through an amazing transformation of electronics.

Speaking of records, my husband reviews electronics and he just wrote a review about a USB turntable that you can hook up to your computer to import your old vinyl records so you can listen to them on your iPod. way cool. Check it out on Endless Years. Its near the end of the Father's Day Gift Guide.

This is my favorite photo of the evening. I'll call it "Dream a Little Dream". I have a little dream. I hope it comes true.

Traveling Birthday

It rained today. We got up very early to go to the airport and this is a photo out the window of the plane with the raindrops on the window as we landed. I love my little Canon point-and-shoot camera that has such a great macro function. I was only about 2 inches from the window when I was taking this photo.

It is my husband's birthday and all he wanted was to spend it with those he loved so here's his birthday photo with his nieces and nephew. Happy Birthday. I took some other photos so a scrapbook page will be coming in anther post but not today...i'm spending time with my happy family instead!

A Different Perspective

I went to the Rangers vs. Yankees game last night and I think it was the first time I've ever sat in the stands and looked at the game from up above. I'm so used to working the games and standing in the photo well with long glass that I got a different more artistic perspective of the game. Obviously I was there with my happy-snappy just to have some fun but I can't help myself, when I see a cool picture I have to take it. It's what I do. If you know me at all you know I love stars so when I saw that the grass surrounding the pitchers mound was cut in the shape of a star...well of course I was obsessed with getting a photo. I imagine you can't see the star at all from the photo wells and I bet it looks even cooler from an airplane. Reminder to self...look down at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington next time you fly.
This second photo is taken looking down on the visitors bullpen. I saw the cool shadows when I first walked up and I had to wait for the catcher to finish warming up the pitcher and walk away to get the photo I wanted. Patience is a virtue but they almost took too long to warm up! The shadows were just about to cover the "T" when they finally finished. One more minute and the photos not nearly as clean and nice.

His Wedding Details

Details, details. That's what it's all about, right? On your wedding day it's all about the little things that make it special. I've been shooting lots of weddings recently and I've learned to look for those special little things. Last weekend I was working with another photographer and he photographed the bride getting ready so I photographed the groom. I haven't spent a lot of time with the groom in the past because usually my husband does that when we shoot weddings together so I got my chance this week. As you can see the color for this wedding was purple. I found myself looking at the wedding from a little different perspective last week. His details matter just as much as hers do. 

The Bicycle Photo Part 2

Have you ever played with spot color? I love it. As with everything else in Photoshop there are about 10 different ways to make it happen and they all give you pretty much the same result. I played around with the photo of my sweet niece on her bicycle to highlight her and take away the distraction of the background. I left her shirt in red with the heart in color and added a vignette around the outside just to change it up. What do you think?

The bicycle photo

I forgot to post the photo of my niece riding her bicycle that I took over the weekend. You know the one I got my SLR out for that allowed me to get the nice moment between my aunt and cousin. Yes, that bicycle riding photo.

It's funny because I decided to get the SLR out and I thought she was going to ride the bike  down the street and turn around and come back. There was this nice little curve in the sidewalk so it was going to make a pretty composition but as we all know 5-year-olds rarely do what we expect. Instead she rode all the way around the block and came up behind me. I still like the photo. She has a fun expression on her face and the light is really nice. 2 minutes later and there would be no photo as the ISO was already pushed to the limit. Again...sometimes I get lucky!

Party Invitations

We had a pool party at my house today and I was inspired by this cute photo I took of Julia. Her birthday is coming up so I created a party invitation. The background is just something I made in photoshop to go with the polka-dots on the float and the popsicle sticks came from the Tropical Popsicle kit I downloaded from Peppermint Creative. The alpha and brackets are from the Splendid kit by Shabby Princess and my font was Pea Natalie by Font's for Peas.

Family

My family got together this evening for a little reunion. We had dinner and played outside with the kids. All girls...what are the odds? It was nice to see everyone since we are spread out across the country and rarely get together. I took this photo of my aunt and cousin after dinner when they decided to take a walk around the block.It's a nice moment and I'm glad I had my "real" camera out to catch it instead of my point-and-shoot. I took most of my photos tonight with a little pocket camera but I pulled out the SLR to take a photo of my nieces riding their bikes and I got lucky with the nice moment between my aunt and cousin. I'm lucky sometimes.This one I took with the point and shoot. I love the bubbles, Don't you?

Rachel's Senior Portraits

Every year the first day of class I have my students play an ice-breaker game where they have to come up with a positive, alliterative adjective that describes them. For example I am Shutterbug Sharon. Well today I got to take photos of Radical Rachel. She's an amazing kid who has been in my class for three years now. I think she's great and I've really gotten a chance to watch her grow both as a photographer and as a person so taking her senior photos was a treat for me. I think she will like them. We spent about an hour in the studio shooting and these are two of my favorites. We also did some fun ones with purple light but I like the tighter shots better that really show off her beautiful eyes. I love you Miss Rachel!

Birth Announcements

So yesterday when I posted that I was designing a Baby announcement as my status on my facebook page I got like a dozen comments congratulating me on getting pregnant...of course I'm not expecting which leaves me to wonder, who designs a birth announcement before they have a baby and why would people who had just seen me think I might be pregnant? Interesting.

So here are the other two birth announcements I designed. My friend didn't choose any of the
three, we used one of the photos and designed something completely different this afternoon. I'm not going to post it here until after she sends them out so that those of you that know Jen will be surprised. I like all three and I need your help deciding which is the best. Leave me a comment to let me know. It's so hard to decide which one I want to use to impress new clients :) I need to update the cards and gifts section of my website with some cards other than christmas cards and I think birth announcements will be good but I don't think I want to put them all in there. Anyone who knows me knows that I am the absolute worst editor of my own work. I always choose too many so help me narrow it down if you can. Thanks!

Speed Scrap

I participated in my first "Speed Scrap" this evening and it was very fun. My wonderful friend Mercedes has been speed scrapping for a while now so we got together so she could show me the ropes. Basically you get two hours to complete a page. While we were waiting to get started her daughter was eating some blueberries so i decided to take a picture of her messy face. I am a sucker for the little kid messy face. Then I decided to just make the page from the photos I took. I used a kit called Funky Love by Digi-Designs by Nicole for all the parts except the green string which is also by Nicole by from her Hello Easter Kit. Here's the finished page. Funny I already have like 8 comments on it in my "Gallery" at Stuff to Scrap. I never have that many comments on my blog :)

Birth Announcements

Do you remember the photos I took about 6 weeks ago for my friend who had a baby? Well I've been playing around with designing an announcement from the photos. I thought I would share it with you because I'm proud of it and I'd like to design more cards for people so I need some examples to show. I've done quite a few Christmas Cards but this is my first attempt at a birth announcement. I think it's really sweet. I changed my photo to black and white and popped the contrast a little then I used the may challenge freebie kit from Piggy Scraps Designs for the background paper and the frame. I also used a ribbon created by Vicki Parker from her Pink Coffee Cream kit. The Font I used is Geneva. I created several different cards but I'll save the others to post anther day. Enjoy!

Awards Ceremony

This evening I photographed the MISD service awards ceremony where my school district honors employees for years of dedication to education and hands out the teacher of the year awards. Very cool program. Our district has always had a lot of fun at these awards ceremonies. This year they had Four Day Weekend perform their comedy as the employees were recognized. I have some nice photos from the comedians and a few I like from our retiring superintendent. That's him waving goodbye after a standing ovation from the audience. Mr. Newsom was a wonderful superintendent and you could tell he really cares about the people in our district from the way he handed out the awards this evening. The second picture here is of Dr. Cunningham. He's a great sport and was laughing as the comedian took his retirement gift and asked if he could open it. I also caught this fun photo of a teacher giving a thumbs-up to the rest of the audience after she was called up on stage to receive her award by Four Day Weekend. She got a crystal vase. How very cool. I need one of those! 

Finally The last award of the night was the Secondary Teacher of the Year award and it just so happens that a teacher from my school received that honor. Mr. Ponce is an amazing teacher. He goes above and beyond for our school and for the kids. As you know I am a sucker for the emotional photo, the moment that tells the story and I think this photo really does it. He's standing between the other two nominees for the Teacher of the Year award

and as his name is announced they turn to clap and he looks down showing modesty...if it would have been me I would have looked more like I just won homecoming queen...hands on my face mouth open in surprise. I'm proud that I teach at Summit with Mr. Ponce, the Teacher of the Year.

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Busy weekend!

It's been a busy weekend! I photographed a wedding Saturday, a wonderful family portrait this morning and an amazing senior portrait this afternoon. WOW! I was also supposed to shoot a soccer game but the weather did not cooperate and the game was cancelled. 

Here is one of the photos from Mariska's senior portrait session at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. I love to shoot at the garden because there are so many gorgeous backgrounds and my job is even easier when I have a beautiful model like Mariska to work with. We spent about an hour and a half exploring the garden taking photos. She brought a few changes of clothes so now she has LOTS of pictures to choose from. This is one of my favorites. 

Family Portraits

I photographed a wonderful family this morning at the Fort Worth Water Gardens. When I first got there to meet them there were these crazy inflatables all over the place...I was a little worried that we might have a crowd because there was obviously an event planned but it must have been for later in the afternoon as we pretty much had the place to ourselves while we were there. Yea! We also lucked out on the weather and the light. It's been raining all weekend but it cleared up and was gorgeous outside this morning. It was cloudy when we first got there so we had some really pretty soft light in the beginning and then the sun came out so we could take some pretty reflection photos.

These are two of my favorites from the session. They chose to all wear white shirts and blue jeans which is really fun so I decided to take all the color except for the blue out of one while the other is that gorgeous reflection courtesy the sun. 

The McGough's were wonderful to work with I hope they like their photos as much as i do!

Flower Girls

I love the cute little flower girls, don't you. I decided to create a page on the flower girls from Markus and Kristi's wedding. I used a photo I took as the background instead of using a digital paper but I did use a downloaded alpha for the word flower and an action from atomic cupcake for the word girls. The alpha I used is PinkALicious from DeliciousScraps and I created the "girls" metal word using the font Honey and the CopperFilter action of Photoshop by Atomic Cupcake.

Gallery Night

My students hosted two gallery nights this year. The first one was hosted at Marty Seybold Gallery in Arlington, TX and they showed 32 photos. Only the advanced, i.e. second year, students got to show off their photography at this show because it is a small intimate gallery. The second show was much bigger. 206 photos. yes 206! all the students got to participate and we help the show at the school. We had 70 of the photos framed and on easels and the rest were hung on the walls. I was a little worried some of the photos would fall off the walls before the end of the night but they stayed up and our visitors were quite impressed with the students quality of work. All the photos were offered for sale in a silent auction and now that all the checks have come in I am proud to announce that my kids raised $1815 to donate to The Mansfield Education Foundation. I am so proud to see my students donate this money to the MISD Foundation since the Foundation has been so generous to them by funding several Innovative Teaching grants that I have written. This year alone my kids got two digital Rebels with CF cards and camera bags, a set of tungsten studio lights and the frames and easels for the gallery night all from the Education Foundation. Giving back feels good.

Puppy Scrapbook Page

I was inspired to make a new scrapbook page tonight while I was sending some of my files to Drew Hendrix of Red River Paper for him to use as examples. Have you ever used Red River paper? It is fantastic. I love their glossy surface. It has a nice weight to it that is a bit heavier than a lot of the inkjet photo papers out there so it really feels like a commercially printed photo.

So anyway, I had this photo of my puppy on my desktop and I've been waiting for a chance to make a page from it so I used this really cute black and white themed kit called Sweet Memories I found online at http://senidesigns.blogspot.com/ This designer is competing in a contest called "So You Think You Can Design" over at Digiscrap Addicts. There are a ton of talented designers competing and all the kits are free! You just have to register to download.

I don't normally just use one kit to scrap a page but I really liked how my photo fit with the colors and elements in the kit. I may go back and add some elements from another kit for a little pop of color before I print it but tonight I'm really liking the monochromatic look.

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The Lovely Lindsey and her gorgeous dress

The dress.

Lindsey waits for her guests to arrive.

A photo in the chapel before the ceremony.

The sexy bride photo we took after the wedding. I like it!

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More Wedding Photos

The Rings.

The Wedding Party outside the reception hall.

A fun photo under the veil. This was Lindsey's idea and I LOVE her expression!

Another cute one in front of the Chapel. It was fun to hear cars honking at them as they passed on Precinct Line Road. I also really like the wind blowing her veil. It makes the picture.

After the wedding we went to the Canal in Las Colinas and took a few more together photos.

Congratulations Kelly and Lindsey!

Kelly and Lindsey

I photographed the lovely Lindsey's wedding today. She was a gorgeous bride and her new husband Kelly looked handsome as ever. The wedding and reception were at the Northeast Wedding Chapel which was so easy since all we had to do was walk across the sidewalk for the reception. Here are a few of my quick favorites from the day. I'm sure I will post more later after Kelly and Lindsey pick their favorites for me.

Lindsey nervously waiting to walk into the chapel.

The kiss.

New Self Portrait

I haven't blogged in a few days because I have been so busy. I've taken portraits for Goodwill and photographed the Texas Brahmas Championship Hockey game. No it was not Lord Stanley's Cup but they did skate a cup after the win. I'll admit, it was pretty cool to shoot a championship game again. I love the emotion from the players and fans. Not many photos yet but as soon as I get my cards back from the team photographer you will be able to see the rest of my amazing pics.Today I took a new self portrait. It has my favorite things in it. My camera and my star shoes. Yes I know I'm a dork but I don't care those shoes are cool. I'm thinking of scrapping a page about my favorite things so I'll need more photos! Let's see photos of my puppy, my hubby, Chick-Fil-A, Bon Jovi, my macbook and Texas Tech. What else? I'll have to think about it and get back to you.

I worked on organizing my digital scrapbooking kits this afternoon. Now they are organized by personal use and Scrap 4 Hire Kits so that when people hire me to create beautiful scrapbooks for them I can show them the kits I already have that we can use without accidentally showing them a kit that doesn't allow for commercial uses. It was actually quite a lot of work but it's done now so that's a good feeling.

Lily's Senior Portraits

Today I photographed the beautiful Lily for her Senior Portraits. We spent about an hour this afternoon trying different poses with a borrowed cap and gown and her tassel. I think her pictures turned out lovely and I can't wait to see which of the 241 we shot she chooses to print. Here are two of my favorites. One with the tassel and one without.

Hockey

Ahhh. The playoffs are going on and the Ducks are playing the Redwings in the second overtime. How I wish I was there taking photos...The last hockey game I shot was in Janaury I guess, just before the FWST started content sharing with the DMN. Hopefully I'll get some sports freelance soon! Here's a photo from my last hockey game. I'm an addict. I love the skating and the collisions, the scoring and the fighting. This game was great, full of pictures to make! Maybe I'll shoot the Brahmas later this week. They are in the finals in their league.