Commercial

Today I worked on the set of a commercial being filmed. What an interesting day. Obviously it was very different from what I am used to but I loved the challenge. I could not use a flash, at all, not even when they weren't filming, and I had to limit my shooting to between takes so that the sound of my shutter would not be heard on the audio. It is pretty amazing to see the film crew transform a room into a mini studio with all the lights, cameras, and dolly tracks.

It was like you would see on TV with a room full of food for the workers to munch on and separate places for costume, make-up and props. There was even a hair and make-up person who was carrying around a bottle of "Sweat" to spray the talent with. It was very interesting to watch the whole thing come together.

I was there to shoot stills of the talent working with some local kids. I can't tell you who the talent was what the commercial was for but I can show you a few of my other photos from the shoot. Once the commercial is produced and being shown...i'll be able to post some of my other photos. For now...

You get a cool silhouette, using on of the TV lights.

And a photo of one of the local kids patiently waiting his turn on camera with the remains of the last group of kids strewn around him.

There were like 20 kids there today and I was quite impressed with how professional they were acting. They didn't ask for autographs and they took their job for the day very seriously. Some of them had done commercials before but most were new to it like me. All in all it was a fun day.

Birthday Party Scrapbook Page

Here it is...the page I made from sweet little Roman's birthday party on Saturday.

I had a hard time choosing photos for this one...there were so many great photos from the party! It worked out great for the page that Roman was wearing a yellow shirt, I think it works well with the yellow one and stars on the cake to go with the yellow "one" and stars on the page. Yes,I'm weird...I think about those things when I'm designing a page. I like all my colors, shapes and folnts to coordinate so that every element looks like it was chosen specifically for the page.

Do you like it? Contact me if you would like me to create an amazing scrapbook page from your party photos.

Doggie Scrapbook Page

I don't have a lot of time to scrap for myself these days but since I did not work today I decided to do a page. This is a page about my little dog Annie and her first trip to the Dog Park. She was not very social and stayed away from the other dogs there, but she loved being able to run without a leash.

I used the background paper, bulldog clip, bow, bones and hanging tag from the Best Friends Kit by Nicole although I changed the hues in the bow and clip to better match my photos. The paw prints are shapes from my photoshop library and the round journaling tag is by Shabby Miss Jenn's Remember When kit. Tails and Trails is the name of the park so when I went there I took a photo of the sign specifically for my page. Basically I extracted it from its background and made it into part of my paper. I like how that looks to give my page a little characher instead of just being a plain background. What do you think?

Birthday Party

Today's birthday party ROCKED! There were so many good photos to take because the awesome Mom had great activities planned. There were water balloons, pin the tail on the donkey, and a pinata. There was food and the most amazing birthday cake. Not only was there a big beautifully decorated cake to take pictures of, the grandma made a tiny cake just for the birthday boy to eat by himself. They had balloons, and cotton candy and a backyard full of wonderful friends and family members.

This is Roman. It was his first birthday party.

When you walked in the gate you were greeted with a bubble machine!

Roman loves balloons!

These kids really took it out on the train engine pinata.

This is one of my favorites. I love the kids sticking their fingers in the cake and the mom just smiling. She has such a great smile, I can totally feel her joy in this photo.

And this is probably my favorite photo of the day. Birthday boy and dad after eating cake. Precious.

I've got so many more awesome photos and I can't wait to see what the family thinks of them. Thanks to Taylor for coming out to help me take photos and thanks to Roman and his awesome family for letting me share this special day with them.

Rangers

Last night I got to shoot the Texas Rangers vs San Diego Padres game. It was great and for those of you who know me well...you'll be impressed I cut my take down to 10 photos. Yes, I only sent 10 photos from the game. That's a pretty impressive tight edit for me. ;)

Here's are a few pictures I like that didn't make the cut because they just weren't plays of the game. They are really nice photos and I like them a lot. It took all my willpower to keep from sending them.

First is Michael Young making an off balance catch where he ended up making a 360 turn to throw the ball back to first for an out.

Next is the Padres Scott Hariston making a falling catch in centerfield. I love the grass coming up around him.

Finally, this isn't a game photo but it make me look twice. The ball girl was doing flips on the field during the dot race and I just took a photo. Why? I don't know, sometimes I just take random photos to see what I get, and when I went through my take my first thought was, "What happended to her head?" It makes me laugh.

Last night was a lot of fun for me and I hope I get to shoot more Rangers soon! I'm off to a birthday party today. There will be a pinata and I can't wait! I'll post cool photos from the party soon.

Rangers Fireworks

I photographed the Texas Rangers Baseball game tonight and much to my delight there were fireworks after the game. Woo Hoo! I love the firecrackers. I did not know ahead of time that there would be fireworks so I was unprepared but I did OK without a tripod. I balanced the camera on a trash can with my fist under the lens to keep it angled up a little. F/8 at 4 seconds. What do you think?

Apparently the Rangers have fireworks every Friday night so next time I will be prepared with my tripod and a fisheye lens to get the facade of the ballpark from side to side. Oh it's going to be so cool!

Family Scrapbook Pages

I made some matching brother and sister pages from some pictures I took last week. They look really cool side by side in an album. I left the background plain white and used photoshop to extract the kids from pictures I took of them. Addisyn was taken from a group photo by the pool and Devin's was taken while the kids were opening presents.

Addisyn

Devin

I love these kids! They are fun to photograph! Do you need awesome photos and scrapbook pages of your kids? Contact me...I'd love to work with you.

Giving Gallery Video

MISD TV posted this video of my students presenting the check to the Education Foundation...it's pretty fun so I thought I would share it with you. Thanks Jerry and Richie for filming it and putting this together!

Website Update

Whew! For the last two days I have been redesigning my website. I've been shooting a lot lately and I needed to put some new stuff up so I decided to do a complete overhaul! After about 14 hours of editing photos, building slideshows, and designing pages my site went from this:

to THIS!

What do you think? I think it's cleaner and more contemporary and it shows more of what I do now. When I first designed my site I was still working at the newspaper and I really only had the time to shoot a few weddings, but now I have expanded into portraits, events and digital scrapbook pages. I really love the scrapbook pages, as much I love taking photos...designing the pages gives me a sense of satisfaction I just can't describe in words.

The new site has more photos, better slideshows, and updated pricing. Don't worry...if I quoted you a price before the redesign, I'll still honor that price. I even figured out how to divide the homepage photo into clickable links (yea me!).

Visit my site and let me know what you think!

More NASCAR

Yesterday I showed you my Kasey Kahne photos so today I'll share with you some of my other pics from the track. I did spend a lot of the day with Kasey but that doesn't mean I didn't have time for a few other drivers :) and some racing photos.

The road course is pretty cool. This part of the course is called the "Esses" and the drives have to snake through several s-curves before getting to a straightaway followed by a hairpin turn. I didn't shoot a lot of race action but I liked how when some of the cars hit this first turn the fire came out from under the car.

The drivers only pit a few times on this course because the race is only 110 leaps so I spent most of my time running up and down pit road waiting trying to catch as many drivers as I could each stop. This photo was a bonus as they pitted early int he race and the crew guy crawled all the way under the car...it just looks like he got smashed like the Wicked Witch of the East! It makes me laugh.

Kyle Busch's first pit stop. He took off while the front tired changer was still holding onto the car. I was standing right there and it was a little scary. The guy go back up but as you can see he got dragged a little ways before he got loose.

It was pretty hot in the pits.

Jimmie Johnson walking out for drive introductions.

Jimmie's second pit stop.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. being mobbed by fans for autographs.

Dale smiling right at me as he passed by on the parade lap.

Finally, a panned photo of Dale's #88 passing in front of his merchandise trailer that was parked in the infield.

Race Winner

I spent the day with Kasey Kahne...really I did. I photographed the race at Sonoma and my assignment was to hang with Kasey during pre-race and then shoot a few pit stops and go to the roof for the finish. I just knew I was with the winner :)

I even took my photo with his car during pre-race...i just had a feeling.

When he came out he was mobbed by fans for autographs. It always amazes me how much access fans get to the drivers at NASCAR.

Then when he finally got to his car I got a nice tight portrait.

Kasey with his pit crew during the National Anthem.

Kasey leading a restart after a caution near the end of the race.

Taking the checkered flag.

Celebrating with a burnout on the front stretch.

Finally celebrating with his temmates and cans of Budweiser in Winners Circle.

Birthday Party Scrapbook Page

I'm finally finished with the scrapbook page from Miss Julia's swimming birthday party.

I used a photo of one of the presents for the background and you can even see her opening that present on the page. Everything else is created by me except the font. I used Pea Carlisle from Fonts for Peas. I created the buttons by cutting out the different circles from the wrapping paper then applying several layer effects. I especially like the button I created with the photo on it. What do you think?

Bonus Wedding

This morning much to my pleasure there was an announcement made in the media center. "There will be a wedding in Victory Lane at 9am." BONUS! A chance to practice my wedding shooting skills and have some fun at the same time. There was a ton of media at the wedding a you can imagine, in fact there was more media then there were guests. I had to work to keep the other cameras out of my photos but I think I came up with a few nice pics.

First up, the bride and groom kiss under the winners circle sign as the brides daughter and maid of honor looks on.

My detail photo of the day. The groom holds his "Mr" champagne glass as he waits for the toast with his brand new wedding ring on his finger.

The bride and the black and white checked floor reflected in the groom's glasses.

The best man pops the champagne...victory lane style!

The maid of honor and the bride cheer during the family photos after the wedding.

Obviously this was not my wedding to shoot so I didn't have the freedom to set up any photos. I would have taken them to Gordon's car and shot a kiss photo in front of the car...that would have been a picture for them to remember!

NASCAR Qualifying

Friday I spent the day photographing NASCAR qualifying for the Sunday race. It was a little different because instead of focusing on the top qualifier like I would be if I were still with the newspaper, I was focusing on sponsors. It was a good challenge for me to make sure the sponsor was prominent in the image while still keeping a journalistic look.

Lowe's sponsors Jimmie Johnson.

Caterpillar sponsors Ward Burton. This is my favorite series of the day. I think the sponsor will like the tighter one, but I really like the bokeh in the background of the wider one.

Mark Martin sits next to his car on pit road. Most of the photographers were there shooting from the side but I like it from the front of the car with all the stickers on the fender.

Finally, this is a nice brightly colored photo showing 4 sponsors at once. Pretty fun!

The race is today so I'll be in the pits for most of the race and on the roof for the finish. I love the finish from the roof here...it's not a high grandstand so the photo is pretty cool when the winner does a burnout and jumps out of the car on the front stretch. I can't wait!

A Different Perspective, Part 2

Last time I posted about shooting from above I was at the Rangers vs. Yankees baseball game and I said I should take my camera out when I'm in an airplane to try to see the star cut into the grass around the pitcher's mound at the Ballpark. Well, I didn't get to see that but I we did take a nice trip over downtown Fort Worth. It's a pretty cool photo. I feel like Google Earth! HA!

This is one I took while were were circling in a holding pattern waiting to land in San Francisco. I think it looks like a cool abstract tree. I might use it as an example in my class next fall.