I’m participating in a new Photography meme again this week! You can find the Pro Photo Business Forum Weekly Challenge by clicking right here. I won last weeks fill light challenge so WAHOO! I’ll try again – especially since there’s a cool prize this week!

On to the challenge:

This week, your assignment is “Shallow Depth Of Field”. Tell a story, and make the subject of your story more clear through the use of a shallow depth of field.

I love this challenge. I am still learning the ropes with my D90 (Nikon) and I have one lens in particular, the 50mm, that always gives a fantastic depth of field, even on auto. I was tempted to use it, but I really need to stretch a bit with my technical skill so I used my default lens, the 18-105mm. I changed my settings to manual (uh-oh, here I go, off into uncharted territory – sortof kidding), including manual focus. Then I flipped my focus to single point and voila – I learned something new!

Here’s my submission, which is actually two photos, because there are two totally different feelings from each of these images.

This is our chiapoo, Copper. You can see from the first photo that he’s sitting. It’s a good looking treat and you can tell that he’d like to get his paws on it. The second shot, however, he’s begging. You can see it in his eyes. He wants that treat – pretty, pretty please?

(And I want that prize. Pretty, pretty please?)

I would like to mention that these are, indeed, two completely separate shots, I am holding the treat in my left hand, and my camera in my right. He’s a good boy, and held very, very still while I refocused! I was impressed.

Won’t you play along? Grab your camera and head on over to the Pro Photo Business Forum. :)

This week, I’m participating in a new Photography meme, a Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by my good friend and client, Aric Hoek, who runs the Pro Photo Business Forum. He’s an amazing photographer and a generous spirit. His site aims to help amateur photographers learn, improve, and effectively turn their talent into a successful business.

This first challenge is using Fill Flash. You can see the challenge here and participate if you want – there’s still time this week!

You can really increase the quality of your photography with the right amount of fill flash. Fill flash will help to resolve this problem for you. This weeks assignment; use flash to illuminate your backlit subject.

Here’s my submission for this challenge:

I had her back to the sun and, as you can tell from the blown areas of the photo, the sun was high in the sky so her face was in full shadow. I used my SB-900 flash on a tripod slightly to the right (behind me) with the diffuser and filled those shadows, giving a natural light source feeling instead of a hard flash result. I am not a fan of on camera flash and have very little experience using my SB-900 so this is really good practice for me! I’m glad Aric chose this as the first assignment and can’t wait to find out how I can improve my technical skill.

Special thanks to my awesome model (and daughter) for getting all dolled up to help me with this assignment! You rock, pretty girl!

Yes — I am still around! Has it really been more than a month since I’ve updated? Really? Oh my. I certainly need to be better about keeping you in the loop.

I’ve been immersed in a million little things, which all add up to (shamefully) neglecting my site and blog. It is a time consuming commitment, and as I delve more into photography and trying to learn more; figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it, I’ve put my site on the back burner.

Since my last update, I’ve traveled to California to shoot a wedding and visit with a lifelong friend (whom I miss terribly), and returned home to work diligently on photo selection and editing for the wedding. I have come to realize that weddings are beautiful, wonderful events that are very – very hard work for a photographer to do single-handedly. I applaud all of you wedding and event photographers out there who do it – you are amazing. Truly — I applaud you, and also – envy you. Muchly.

Of course it is also summer vacation – and working from home means I can only work so many hours a day before I must stop to spend some quality time with my girls. I’ve hosted a few family backyard BBQ’s, road-tripped to visit family, watched my niece graduate high school, photographed her graduation party, ran hither, thither and yon for appointments, waterparks and other random summer activities, and photographed a 60th wedding anniversary party. It’s been busy.

I should also mention that I did update my shop last week with some brand new nature photography that I’m making available to you in print. Please check out my new work here in my Nature Prints shop, and order up a few prints to enjoy in person!

Over the last few days, as I sit out back on the patio enjoying (yes, enjoying) the suns rays as they heat my neck and shoulders, I hear the mid-summer buzz of cicadas on the trees and realize that the summer is almost over.

Summer. Almost over.

I woke up this morning, opened the curtain and the sun was not as high as it should be. As I expect it to be. As I wish it were all year. So, here it comes – I can feel it, I can smell it – fall is on the way.

Back to school. Back to the routine.

I still have a few projects lined up – of course a website design, a custom portrait of a cat in oils, and another cat portrait in graphite. I also have myself on my schedule, and will launch an all-new site that will feature the finest of fine art and portrait photography. Stay tuned for that.

I’ll be back, soon. I will be participating in a new Photography meme, a Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by my good friend and client, Aric Hoek, who runs the Pro Photo Business Forum. He’s an amazing photographer and a generous spirit. His site aims to help amateur photographers learn, improve, and effectively turn their talent into a successful business.

I hope that these glorious summer days have kept you just as busy! Pop in and say hey; keep me from hearing crickets along with the cicadas!

Hey there! I’ve been busy as ever over here. Between Senior portrait sessions, retouching, prints, Grad party postcard design (isn’t it cool?!) and a graphite portrait here and there – every day has been jam packed with fun stuff! And also, random stuff – like doctor and dental appointments, carpet cleaners, soccer practices, window installations – and workouts!

Did you know that working out was a part time gig? It takes almost my entire morning to get fit, showered and ready to work for the day. It’s a commitment in a big way – and no wonder why so many people can’t and don’t fit it into their schedules. I decided in January to make my health and fitness a priority again – and even dragged my tired old treadmill out of the house last month in place of a new, fancy treadmill that has a fantastic shock absorption deck. (It’s a NordicTrack) I am glad I’ve made the commitment, I feel so much better and I am not fatigued when I do a “one day” chore like painting a room including the ceiling – or doing a full day of yardwork!

In other news – I don’t think I ever updated here about my e-mail glitch. I was getting a ton of spam so went in and created a filter. For spam. Except it wasn’t for spam, it was for everything BUT spam! I’m such a dummy. It took me a week or so to figure that out. (But boy, did I get a lot done that week. lol) So if you e-mailed me and I never replied, please don’t think me rude. Think it fell off the face of my server, because I selected “does not” instead of “does”.

Once my schedule opens up a little bit – I’ll be sharing and showing a few more projects in the works but for now, I need to get started on today’s to-do’s.

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying this AMAZING weather – Spring has sprung and I’ve got the fever! I’d love for you to become a Fan on Facebook – if you haven’t already – and/or send me a friend request to stay up to date with the minute by minute details of my crazy days!

I’ve just uploaded Jenna’s final senior portrait photo album! We had a lot of fun that day; she’s a gorgeous (not to mention photogenic) young lady who made everything laid back and fun! I really enjoyed taking her portraits.

One of my very first portrait sessions, I’m very proud of the resulting photos and thrilled that she and her family couldn’t narrow it down below 41 selections! I’ll be putting together a poster collage on matboard as well as an album to really maximize the use and display of all of those portraits and give them some wonderful artwork to commemorate her graduation!

You can view her entire collection by clicking here.

Enjoy!

I had a portrait session with Miranda on Saturday and got some really great shots that I’ll share in the next couple of weeks (after proofing, editing, etc.) but I just HAD to share this one right away!

We had a lot of fun blowing bubbles in the studio Saturday night. I had Owl City playing on the stereo, and with bubbles in hand (Miranda had her own and my amazing daughter/assistant blew bubbles in from the left side back for more bubbly goodness) – they blew and blew until I got the perfect shot!

Several more beautiful portraits of Miranda to come, so stay tuned – I have a lot of irons in the fire and am working through my to-do list bit by bit.

Enjoy!!

For my birthday, I acquired a new lens for my Nikon D90. This new 70-300mm lens will aid my birdwatching-slash-nature obsessing habits. It arrived the day before my birthday, and as you can imagine, I unpacked that thing faster than a speeding bullet and it didn’t take any time at all for me to throw my boots on and tromp around the backyard taking photos of random stuff.

This particular squirrel is obstinate. She will not be scared off of my feeders or threatened by my pounding on the windows when she’s running my suet feeders empty. Most of the time, she thinks I’m calling her over and will approach me as close as just a foot away. Crazy squirrel.

Anyway, she was sitting on one of my fence posts and with the large maple in the background it made such a pretty picture, for a sometimes very irritating creature, she’s very beautiful. I slid my back patio door open just enough to brace my new massive lens up against the frame to hold it steady, and she posed nicely for me.

Good squirrel.

Enjoy! Painting progress coming soon. :)

When I opened up the blinds in the studio this morning before the sun came up – I was staring out into the backyard and the blue pierced my eyes and made my pupils readjust to the strange vibrant light.

I looked up at the overhang, and my twinkly patio lights were dwarfed by the icicles hanging down from the gutter. I found the color spectacular, and the size of these icicles are larger than any I’ve seen hanging from our home so had to capture it.

Enjoy!

I’ve finally got April’s senior photo shoot retouched and online for public viewing! You can click the thumb to view them, or just click here (opens in a new window).

I’ve also made online ordering easy for my photography sessions – I’ll be offering prints online through Miller’s Lab because, quite honestly, their print work is phenomenal and their service can’t be beat! I’m really excited to be able to offer that service to my portrait clients!

What I need to do now is complete my site to show these new services. So much to do! :)

I have quite a few favorites from her portrait session – particularly the pond reflection shot! Have a look and let me know if you have a favorite!