Cuteness

Once again, my grand intentions of blogging about various things in our life have been foiled by our life. The thing that's been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks--besides laundry, cooking, cleaning and volunteering--is editing pictures of a couple of the cutest babies ever!

A couple of weeks ago I did a photo session with my friend Leigh Ann's 6-month-old munchkin--the beautiful E. Claire, also known as Emerson. Leigh Ann is well-known among her friends for making fabulous gourmet cupcakes, so when she saw a cupcake costume for Emerson, it was a no-brainer. She then got the awesome idea to make cupcakes to match Emmie's outfit and use those in a photo session, so that's what we did! We attempted to make a studio with said cupcakes on their back patio, and while the light wasn't very good at the time of day we had to shoot, there were still a few good pictures. These are just a few of my favorites.




About the time I was almost finished editing all of Emmie's pictures last weekend, we had the pleasure of going to KC to hang with our friends Vikkie and Brett, at which time I got a few shots of their lovely family and sweet boys. It was great to spend time with them, and Vikkie fixed us a fantastic dinner, part of which I've already tried to replicate at home. I think the pictures turned out okay, and I'm in LOVE with little Abram's cheeks! He is the most expressive little guy, which I believe I mentioned back in May when I did my first session with them! Could these kids be any cuter?





Oh, and the rest of the family is pretty adorable too. :)


Speaking of adorable, I couldn't resist sharing this video I saw this morning on Petfinder. Holy cow. Cuteness overload.

Senior Session

Over the summer I spent several Saturdays walking with women from our church in the "Weekend Walking Women" growth group that I organized. One day as we were walking through Prairie Park in Lawrence, one of the women in my group mentioned that she thought it would be a nice spot to take her daughter's senior pictures. I inquired about the session they were planning, thinking that maybe we could talk cameras if she was a photography hobbyist like myself. I was horrified when she then said she was just planning on taking her daughter's senior pictures with her point-and-shoot camera. I immediately offered my free photography services, because the thought of a senior girl having less than desirable pictures to hand out to her friends (do seniors even do that in this digital age?) broke my heart!

We ended up not taking the pics over the summer because it was so ridiculously hot, but last weekend the weather was absolutely perfect and the leaves were just starting to change, so we headed to Rim Rock Farm just north of Lawrence. Rim Rock is the cross country course of KU, and since this senior is a cross country runner, she has run several meets there. Her coach called another coach, and pretty soon we had permission to shoot at this beautiful location. I had driven by there on a couple of occasions but hadn't ever actually been on the course, but it was absolutely gorgeous--just the perfect location for a photo shoot!

I had a great time with my friend and her daughter as we walked almost the entire course looking for beautiful picture backdrops and taking advantage of about every one we found. My subject was beautiful and sweet and a great sport, even when I know she was getting tired of smiling! She was also a great sport about just changing clothes in the woods and tolerating the two local dogs who joined us along the way. It was kind of a pain because they kept trying to get into pictures, but it was also kind of fun to have them as escorts all over the course!

I was pretty pleased with the pictures we got out of the session, because the light and the setting were just so great and my senior subject was just beautiful. Of course, as usual, I took entirely too many pictures and had very few bad ones to delete, so I ended up sending them a link to 130 or so pics to choose from, which they didn't seem very happy about! In fact, they didn't seem overly thrilled with the pictures at all, which was kind of disappointing. Well, I shouldn't say kind of--it was really disappointing! I wanted them to be thrilled with the results--someday I want my pictures to be worth charging money for!

Regardless, I thought my first senior subject was gorgeous and worth sharing. Here are just a few of my favorites, although there were many others that I absolutely loved. If you are on Facebook, you can see a few other of my favorites here! If you have a whole lot of time on your hands and a lot of patience, you might also be able to see the full set of pics here!

A Sneak Peek for Andrea

Last Wednesday evening I finally got the chance to do another practice photo session with my friend Andrea and her family. Even though I think the temperature was only in the 80s, it was so miserably humid outside I felt terrible for Andrea and her hubby and kids! We wandered all over the cute little Baker campus in Baldwin trying to find spots with good light and tolerable shade, and by the end of the evening I'm pretty sure we were all drenched in sweat. It was fun for me and I loved having the opportunity to practice, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't very fun for anyone else!

When I got home that night I immediately started culling and editing pictures with the intention of putting a few on the blog right away for Andrea and her family to see. But of course it got too late that night, and then the next several nights were busy, so here I am four nights later finally getting a few shots up for them to see! I'm still not entirely happy with my editing job on most of these, so hopefully I'll have time during the next week to get these re-edited and get some other good ones picked out of the bunch. Until then, here are a few quick uploads for Andrea and Randy and the adorable Olivia and Dylan!

Crossroads Dog Rescue

Since I'm on the subject of dog pictures, I wanted to share a few pictures I've had the pleasure of taking in the last couple of weeks. I mentioned back when I quit my job in November that I was looking forward to volunteering for a new local dog rescue I'd gotten connected with the year before. When they were just starting out they didn't have much that I could help with, but now that Crossroads Dog Rescue is a growing organization, they have lots of foster dogs who need good pictures for the Internets! I'm super excited to be able to help them in that way!

So a couple of times in the last two weeks I've gone to meet the founder/president to do pictures of their adoptable dogs. It's been so much fun to meet the pups and so exciting to feel like I'm contributing to the world of dog rescue again! They specialize in neonatal rescue, mostly taking in pregnant or new mothers with full litters, since newborn puppies have such a hard time staying healthy in shelter environments. The pups are raised in a healthy and safe home with lots of human interaction, and they generally get adopted as soon as they are old enough to leave their mom, who eventually gets adopted as well. In the less that two years that Crossroads has been an official rescue organization, they've saved and adopted out almost 100 dogs already!

As Crossroads continues to grow and add foster homes to their network, they'll have more and more rescue puppies and dogs to choose from, so check out their blog or Facebook page to keep up with all their adoptable furry friends. You can also contact them at crossroadsdogs (at) gmail.com if you're interested in becoming one of their licensed foster families. Oh, and check out my recent pictures of their adoptable dogs! Most of those pictured have already been adopted, so hopefully they'll have more pups for me to photograph soon!

Mike and Tiffany

Today I finally finished editing and uploading the engagement pictures I did two weeks ago for our good friends Mike and Tiffany. Mike and Chad met way back in 1990 when they played football together at Hutchinson Community College. They became good friends and eventually roommates, and a few years later Mike was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. Although we only met Tiff in the fall of 2009 when they started dating, I feel like we've known each other longer because we get along so well! She's super smart, amazingly talented and hilariously funny, and we're looking forward to their wedding in Florida next April!

I was way honored that Tiff and Mike asked me to do their engagement photos (along with a few family pictures with them and Mike's son Maddox), but I was a little nervous because I had only done kid/family/baby sessions before theirs. While I'm getting better at spotting good lighting for shots, I'm still terrible at directing people into poses that look normal and natural. Thankfully, Mike and Tiff had lots of ideas about what they wanted to do and poses they liked. Some worked and some didn't, but that's the beauty of digital photography--you can just delete the ones that look dorky!

Once again, during my initial round of editing, I had a terrible time deleting any. I ended up taking my favorite version of every pose--and there were a ton of different poses! Even when I knew that a picture wasn't one of my favorites, I still kept it because I was afraid it might be one of their favorites! I was glad I did, because Tiffany and Mike definitely chose lots of favorites that I wouldn't have considered! It's just interesting how different people have completely different tastes in poses and processing.

Speaking of processing, in this batch of pictures I ended up using a lot more "actions" in Photoshop than I normally do, only because that's what Tiffany really liked. She loved the black and whites and Pioneer Woman's "Old West" technique especially, so I did a lot of different versions of each of their favorite pics. In the end, this is the one that they choose as their official engagement photo!


While I think this is a great picture, I also think it's funny that it's totally not the one that I would have chosen as my favorite. For some reason I absolutely love the more candid shots--the ones where Mike and Tiff are less posed and more engaged (get it...engaged?) with each other are the ones I love. My point is, I think I'm forever going to be editing every picture in the bunch because I'm always going to remember this session when the "clients" chose completely different favorites than I did!

Regardless, I think there were a lot of good ones in the set. If you have a few minutes, take a look at them and let me know what you think!

A Plethora of Pictures

The last few weeks I've had several photography gigs, although I'm not sure if I'm really allowed to call them gigs yet if I'm not charging any money. Maybe someday I'll set up an actual business and website, but for now I'm content to just practice. It's fun for me, and I love to (hopefully) provide pictures for my friends that will adequately capture a special occasion or moment in time.

The disadvantage to taking so many pictures lately is that I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the editing and sharing of them! I take so many darn pictures at each session or event, it then takes me hours to go through and delete, crop, sharpen and color correct them. My biggest problem is that I have no ability to discern which are bad and which are good. It's like 99% of the time I can find something I like about almost every picture I take, and then I can't delete any of them! I have to go through the batches four or five times to figure out which ones aren't worth keeping, and even then I keep thinking that the ones I end up deleting might be ones that someone else would really like! I just really need to work on my discerning eye!

I'm so slow at this whole editing process that I just tonight finished the pictures I took of our friend Vikkie and Brett and their kids two weeks ago. There were just so many in the batch I liked, I could only narrow it down to 192 pictures! I know that's so ridiculous, and I know not all of them are worth printing, but I just couldn't help myself. Especially because of baby Abe, there were just too many absolutely precious shots. There were probably 100 different adorable expressions by him alone!

Here are just a few of my favorites. If you have a few minutes and have an interest, feel free to look through all 192 of them here!

Photography Fail

One thing that I've completely failed to do in the last few months is practice my photography skills. I've busted out the camera a few times here and there, but I haven't had time to plan actual photo sessions, which is really what I'd like to practice! This is of course partially due to the winter--it's nearly impossible to do photo sessions outside in Kansas in December/January/February/March. Now that April is here, I can finally start scheduling some practice sessions! I've got a session for some engagement pictures for our friends Mike and Tiffany on the calendar already, and I've talked to several other friends who are interested in doing spring sessions as well. I'm not sure that I could ever make a career out of photography, and I certainly don't feel ready to charge anyone money for my pictures, but I still love the idea of doing photo sessions for fun!

About the only time I attempted to take a few decent pictures over the winter was last month during a day with my little friend Eli. I brought my camera to his house thinking we might have some decent light in front of a window, but since it turned out to be a cloudy day the light inside wasn't really very good at all. I got a few shots that were cute, but overall I didn't feel like the "shoot" was very successful! It's kind of fun to look back on the pictures though, mostly because Eli has changed so much since last month! Since then he's had his first haircut, and his new blond curls are taking over the dark hair he had when he was born, which has finally almost all grown out!

Although the quality/photography isn't great, I thought at least his parents might enjoy a few quick pics of Elijah!

Baby Kate

During the last couple of days when I wasn't enjoying the company of our lovely houseguests Jake and Amber, I was busy editing the pictures from my first newborn photo session from earlier in the week. My friend Megan and her husband Chad had a beautiful baby girl a few days before Christmas, and since they hadn't scheduled any professional pictures of dear little Kate, I asked if I could come over and practice photographing their first born. Megan was kind enough to allow me to use her beautiful daughter as a guinea pig, since the few things I knew about infant sessions were from websites and not from actual experience!

Let me first just say that I have a whole new appreciation for the amazing talent of my friend Kelly--as if I didn't already idolize her photography skills. I mean just look at these pictures of newborns she's done. They're phenomenal, and I have no idea how she makes it look so easy. After looking back at her pictures, I don't necessarily feel great about my own, but hopefully my so-so pictures for Megan and Chad will still give them a little joy and give me a few shots for my practice portfolio!

The session didn't exactly go as I'd imagined, I guess because I thought Kate would be a lot more sleepy and posable than she actually was. She didn't really have an interest in being placed into strange and unusual places or positions, so we weren't able to be as creative as I'd hoped. Much of the time she literally had one eye open and on me, like she was very suspicious of what I was doing and why. It was too funny. She was so adorable and so alert and aware for only being 8 days old! It took a little more time and patience than I imagined, but we eventually got a few decent shots, although not in all of the outfits and poses we'd hoped for!

Before I share the full group of pictures from the session, I just have to share one small set that I just loved so much I turned them into an animated image. It's not so much that these were such terrific pictures of Kate, but I just loved the way she went from being clearly frustrated and uncomfortable to calm and peaceful in just seconds from the soothing touch and voice of her Momma. Megan is such a super mom already!


The full slideshow is probably entirely too long, I know, but I just have such a hard time deleting pictures after a session. I got this one down to about 65 pictures or so, which is pretty good considering I took over 200 pics and then edited those down to just over 100, including some copies with special Photoshop finishes that didn't make it into the slideshow. Many of those that did make it aren't really keepers, but I just thought some of the goofy and sad faces are just too precious not to share. She is an adorable little baby, although I'm sure my pictures don't really do her justice!

First Photo Session

Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure and honor of taking some family photos of my friends Pat and Kristin and their little baby boy Elijah. I was super excited about it but also a little nervous, because even though I've taken a million photos in the last few years, I had yet to take any pictures for anyone other than myself. Thankfully though, my subjects were beautiful, the weather was perfect, the setting was lovely, and the late afternoon lighting was great! Everything came together and my first photo session actually went pretty well!

I did a little editing of pictures Saturday night and then some more editing Sunday evening, and although I might still have a little more editing to do, I wanted to at least share the ones I'd picked out so far. I think they turned out pretty good! I put them into a slideshow using Windows Moviemaker, but I didn't have any tunes that seemed like a good match, so I ended up using a random sample song that was on the hard drive of my computer which is totally lame. I need some good ideas for slideshow music!

I had a great time on my first photo shoot and hope to take some more pictures for friends in the near future!!

The Landscape

This post isn't really about anything in particular--it's just an effort to share a bunch of "urban landscape" pictures that I took for my photography class. The assignment the week I was in LA was landscapes and urban landscapes, so I was in the perfect location to try and capture some good shots!

The first ten pics were taken as Chad and Eric and I walked up to the grocery store on Sunday evening (which is up Crescent Heights Boulevard to Sunset Boulevard), and then the rest of them were walking down Santa Monica Boulevard, which is just a couple of blocks south of Eric's apartment. The pictures aren't terrific, especially since I've run out of time for editing and they're straight out of the camera, but I think there are a few cool ones!



As you might have noticed, Santa Monica is an especially interesting street, with a ton of old Russian delis and bakeries mixed right in with the restaurants, clubs and porn theaters. I especially like the bizarre contrast of the sign all in Russian with Will Ferrell jumping over the top on some movie billboard. My brother's neighborhood is definitely a unique one--at least compared to ours!

The Getty

Considering the slow rate at which I'm blogging about our trip, it could seriously take me the rest of the summer to finish all the posts. This particular post took forever mostly because of the insane number of pictures involved and my obsession with tweaking every single one of them in my newish version of Photoshop. I seriously should probably get a grip and just post them as is, but at least it's good practice to help me figure out how this new program actually works!

Anyway, after we slept WAY in on the day after Eric's b-day, the family gathered together to decide what we would do for the day, and we decided to go to The Getty Center, home of the J. Paul Getty Museum. While I'm honestly not much of a fan of most museums (probably because I'm not much of an art connoisseur), I was really excited to visit the Getty simply because I'd heard all about the beautiful architecture, and I was super excited to have a cool place to take pictures. My photography assignment for the week was to shoot come landscapes and urban landscapes, and I thought this might be a fun place to do them.

The Getty campus certainly did not disappoint. The buildings were absolutely beautiful, the landscaping was phenomenal, and the view was flipping fantastic. I could have taken pictures there all day long, much to my husband's chagrin. Actually, the art was pretty interesting as well. While there were certainly a lot of paintings I didn't care much for or really appreciate, there were also many really beautiful pieces of work. There was also actually one entire gallery that was full of paintings by famous artists--famous enough that even I knew who they were! There was a Van Gogh, a Monet, a Renoir, and Degas, and a Cezanne, among others. Even though I'm not a huge fan of impressionism, it was still kind of cool to see a bunch of names I actually recognized!

There was another exhibit elsewhere in the museum that we also really enjoyed, but not because it was beautiful. It was a photography exhibit called "Engaged Observers" that contained several different photography documentaries. There were several photographers' collections that were intense and even horrific (lots of war and poverty) but also incredibly moving. They certainly weren't feel-good kind of pictures, but I was glad we saw them none the less.

My pictures probably won't do the beauty of the whole campus justice, but there might be a few that are worth looking at. The flower garden was especially gorgeous, and I don't do a horrible job photographing flowers since they are completely immobile. This is one of my favorites.


There was another bunch of pictures that was really more about being at the right place at the right time and nothing else. After a brief rain shower we went to the outdoor sculpture garden, and happened to capture this amazing view.


This was darn good luck for me, because I always go crazy for rainbows!

There are a whole lot more pictures from the Getty in the California album, so if you want to watch the slideshow, you can check it out here. Stay tuned for my next post, which includes one more great story about the Getty that ties nicely to our activity the next morning!

A Belated Welcome to the World

This post is long overdue--I mean like long long LONG overdue. It's one of those posts that came with an accompanying project that's just taken me forever to finish! Finally tonight I'm able to give a proper Chatter welcome to our most beautiful and adorable new friend, Elijah Peter! All the way back in May, on May 16 to be exact, we rejoiced with our friends Pat and Kristin about the arrival of this amazingly cute little guy, who actually arrived on the day his dad was supposed to walk down The Hill at graduation. Needless to say, Pat didn't walk in his graduation ceremony because Elijah arrived early that morning and quickly overtook graduation as the most important event of the day. The good part about Eli coming on that particular weekend was that all of his grandparents were already coming for Pat's celebration, so they were all able to see him in the hospital on the day of his birth!

After Eli's extended family vacated Lawrence, Chad and I headed over to Pat and Kristin's to meet the little guy for the first time. I can't even tell you how incredibly perfect and beautiful this little guy is! I seriously could have held him all night, and I most certainly could have taken pictures of him all night!

Speaking of pictures, that's really why this post took forever for me to get finished. When we first went to meet and take pictures of Eli, it was right after I'd taken all those pictures on campus that I later realized I couldn't work with since I couldn't open them in my old Photoshop program. Thankfully my friend Kelly pointed out that I could probably get the faculty/staff discount on the full version of Photoshop (which I did--thanks Kelly!), which is 80% off the regular price! So after a bit more research and some shopping, I picked up the full CS5 program, which contains Photoshop and several other programs!

It took me a couple more weeks to figure out how to maneuver my way around PS and deal with those RAW files, then some more time to download and figure out how out to use the two sets of Pioneer Woman's Photoshop actions (like macros that do a whole bunch of filtering/coloring/changing for you to give you a special effect), and then a few more evenings trying to edit all the pictures that I'd taken of Eli and his parents. Throw in the reunion planning and the two weekends since then that we've been gone, and well, you might actually see why this took me so long to finish!

Enough of my excuses though--it's time to see the most adorable little guy in Lawrence! Here are the pictures, with the original one first and then a second copy with one of PW's actions applied. They have names like "Seventies" and "Old West" and "Boost" and "Colorize" and are pretty cool. Unfortunately I didn't actually make note of which action I was using each time! Also unfortunately, the pictures were in fairly dim artificial light, so the first few weren't so good because I'd forgotten to switch to raw format. Hopefully there are a few in there that are decent though!



Is he not the most precious little thing you've ever seen? I mean seriously, I can hardly stand it. That hair and that angry little brow of his absolutely kill me. He just couldn't be any cuter!

Crazily enough, I had a doll when I was a kid that looked exactly like him, and I actually thought I still had it and was so excited to show Pat and Kristin. Unfortunately though, I think I must have given it away during the move, because I went to look in our stash of toys in the storage room and couldn't find it. Maybe someday a search of the Internets will turn up a picture so I can prove that their son is as perfect as any doll! Congrats my dear friends!

Oh, and for more recent pictures of the little guy, you can follow Eli's adventures on his blog, which he's been keeping since before he was born! ;)

Lovely Landscapes

Happy belated Independence Day to everyone! Our 4th was a little lackluster since the massive storm that rolled through in the evening put a damper on our grilling plans and firework watching, but overall we've had a super relaxing weekend. Having the day off today was wonderful! Not only did we have the day off of work together, but I also had the day off from my Monday night class--the photography class I started taking a few weeks ago at the arts center. To be honest, the class has been a little disappointing so far and I really haven't learned much, but I'm trying to make the most of it anyway. Our assignment over the holiday was to practice our landscape shots and our fireworks photography, both of which I've tried to do over the last few days. I think I captured a few landscapes from our house that were okay.




Unfortunately, since I wasn't about to take my camera outside in the rain last night, I tried setting up my tripod on the kitchen table, but I didn't have much luck at focusing through the screen onto the fireworks. This was the best shot that I got in about 10 tries.




Um, yeah, not so much. I'm afraid I may have failed that photographic assignment!