On New Years Eve 2010 I had the opportunity to shoot a wedding.  (A small intimate wedding, mind you.)  And I loved it.  Here are some of my favorite photos….

I was a big fan of that candle.  And believe it or not, the hand shot was taken on the brides lap.  Love the silk background.  Anyway… Enjoy!  Have a good day!

I’ve upgraded to a Mac, and in the process lost my bookmarks, and was too lazy to get the one for my login for this blog.  I’ve done it, and now I can start blogging again on a regular basis.  I’ve been working on some projects lately, more for myself than for anyone else.  Check out the videos/stop motion/time lapse here.

Thank you for letting me into your lives for a bit to capture your sweet family.

These guys were super cute and fun to shoot.  From Dad giving me bunny ears to make the kids smile to the willingness to make a funny face.  Thank you for allowing me to capture some sweet memories for you.

Thank you for allowing me to capture this sweet portrait of you.

So… I save up my money.  I aimed to get either A) new camera body or B) Lighting Equipment or C) New Lens.  All of which costs different amounts of money.  Guess which costs cheapest?  Yeah, the money does seem to burn a hole in my pocket.  So, I wanted a lighting kit, something that would start me off, not be too expensive and yet create a studio feel to my photos.  Plus I really wanted to learn about this side of photography for a while now.  (Natural light is best, but it’s nice to have studio lighting to fall back on or to be able to shoot indoors with on rainy days.)

So… Without further adieu…

Here is one of my mono lights as the flash fired.  It’s a slave unit, so when my flash on my camera goes off it triggers this flash to fire.  I didn’t see it at first, it’s that fast.  But as you’ll see in a minute, you can see the results in camera.

Here is part of my set up.  I hung up fabric on my bookcase, pointed the monolight at the background, then also had another monolight (not seen here) pointed directly in front of the fabric with a softbox on it.  Below are some of my first attempts at using studio lighthing.

Yea… This didn’t work so well, let’s move the lights a little bit…

The light is on her face, but yeah… This doesn’t work either…

Better, but too dark.

Still too many shadows…

Better, but still have some work to do…

Look at the catchlights in her eyes!  I really like this one.  Now, on to play some more.  :)

Toothy Grin

My angel.  (notice the hannah montana boots.)

No matter how serious I want them to be and just smile and pose, I always get this shot.  In fact, this is usually the shot I wind up blowing up and hanging on my wall anyway.  So, why fight them, and just enjoy them.   I loved the light in these shots.  The perfect time of day.  (evening)

Here comes Harry…

Potter that is.

And Hannah…

Montana that is.

I love these kids. Such cuties.

Field Trips! There is nothing better than hands on learning and fun. Especially during the elementary school years. This doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the need to sit down and write, perform math equations, practice piano, read, etc… But we do love the oppurtunity to take field trips.

Here is a scrapbook page, that will go into my Homeschool Portfolio, of our field trip to Dan Shantz Greenhouse. We had so much fun!

We’ve been to the Outer Banks, the Wrights Brother’s Memorial, The Lost Colony on Roanoke Island, the Franklin Institute, and Horseshoe Curve this year so far.   We plan on getting into the city of Philadelphia for some more hands on History fun, by visiting Betsy Ross’s home, the Liberty Bell, the Constitution Center, etc…  We also want to visit Washington DC, Williamsburg, and maybe even throw in a trip to Plymouth Rock.  Who knows?  We have 180 days of school, and the more we can experience hands on, the better.  I’d rather show the kids, then read text from a text book.  I’d rather live out the education journey than watching it flow past us.  That’s not to say I don’t appreciate books and stories, because I do, they help bring our world to life.  I just don’t think that reading is 100%  of all the education we can get out there.