Anniversary Acknowledgement

Today I have to give a shout out to our good friends Heather and Grant, even though I know they rarely read my blog. I like to tell myself it's because they can only get a slow connection to the Internets out in the country where they live, but in reality I need to just admit to myself that some people just aren't blog readers! Sadly, I'm not much of a blog reader these days either. Since I no longer have a regular routine at my computer, going to Google Reader only crosses my mind about once a week.

Regardless of whether they see this post or not though, I have to say how proud and honored I am to have them as friends since they are celebrating their 20th anniversary today! How awesome is that? We have no other close friends who've been married for 20 years--in fact, they're our only friends who've been married longer than we have! I think it's pretty darn impressive--not to mention highly unusual these days!

Our dear friends were kind enough to invite us to celebrate with them this weekend with a stay in nearby Weston, but unfortunately we didn't feel like we could get a dogsitter for the night due to Celtic's health. I'm bummed we won't be there to commemorate this milestone, but I'm sure they'll still have a wonderful time without us! Congratulations, Grant and Heather!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

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!

Birthday #1

On Saturday Chad and I had the pleasure of attending our little friend Eli's first birthday party. His parents (our good friends Pat and Kristin) threw a wonderful monkey-themed shindig for the little guy complete with an incredible monkey cake and all sorts of other fantastic food. I got to be the official photographer of the event, and I'm glad I could help out in that way since Kristin had her hands full with entertaining guests and Pat was busy manning the grill. Although I haven't gone through and edited all the pictures from the day, here are enough to tell the story of his party!

There were some terrific decorations.

Kristin and her mom made an incredible (and tasty) monkey cake.

Eli was very excited to see his friend Lakin and hugged on her almost the entire day.

He wasn't terribly into opening presents, but he did enjoy playing with the new toys once they were open. I got him this baby blackberry and he immediately knew what to do with it!

Eli had a split second of uncertainty when first given his mini-monkey cake.

The uncertainty soon gave way to this...

...and to this...

...and this! It was a very impressive display of cake eating/playing!

Today was Eli's actual birthday, and this evening I enjoyed more time with the little munchkin and his family when I did his official one-year-old photo session. I came home and started editing right away, and after just a single pass through the bunch I found quite a few that I really like. I hope his parents like them too! I uploaded them quickly in low-quality just so I could provide a sneak peak today!

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!

Happy Boy

I really intended to blog about some other stuff going on in our life, but clearly I've turned the blog into Celtic Watch 2011. I just can't help it because my life and thoughts are so consumed with him. Last night was a fitful night for both of us, as I sat up ever time I heard or didn't hear him just to make sure he was still breathing and to give him a few pats. Although I went to KC yesterday to pick up a stronger anti-inflammatory medication for him, he still seems to be in so much pain and discomfort. He pants sporadically and is frequently so feverish you can feel the heat radiating off of him. I know his time with us is not long, but with that said, he's still such a sweet and happy little guy. Yesterday morning while we were enjoying the cool morning on the back deck, he got so excited and animated when he was ready to go inside. Since one of my regrets when Steeler died was that I had very few videos of him, I made sure I grabbed my phone and captured the joyful moment.



Speaking of his brother Steeler, I've told this to several friends in the last week, but I can't even tell you how much comfort it brings me to know that Steeler and so many other doggy friends (Pepper, Homer, Leo and others) will be waiting for our sweet boy when he gets to doggy heaven. Although I know it's so ridiculous, when Steeler died so suddenly I was further traumatized by the thought of him not having anyone he knew waiting for him when he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. My beloved grandmother was the only person who had met Steeler (she died when Steeler was about 2) who had already passed away, so I kept telling myself that Steeler was hanging out with her in heaven. It was such a silly thought, but it really brought me comfort, just as I'm so comforted now by the fact that Celtic and his brother will be reunited soon.