This update is long, long overdue!

I’ve spent the last couple of days inserting all of my projects to date into my portfolio. I can’t believe 2010 is almost over!

I’ve added over 20 things to draw to my portfolio, so if you see yours here, please pop right on over to your project and leave a comment. It is so helpful to have feedback on my projects so new and old clients alike have a good feeling for the quality of my work as well as my trustworthiness and reliability!

I’ve even been able to add a few photos of framed pieces (Moggie, Lilly and Joey’s portraits) which is really neat! I love having photos from clients to share!

I’d also like to thank each and every one of my clients who entrusted me with their projects. It’s incredible to me to look back over the work I’ve done just this year and see such a variety, which means that many people put a lot of faith in me to be creative in whatever medium their project requires. That is a very cool thing, and I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to create in such a variety of ways. I never get tired of it – and don’t think I’ll ever narrow down to just one “thing”, even though I have contemplated just that on numerous occasions as many people recommend a specialty – I just can’t do it!

Thanks again to all of you for your continued support on my artistic journey. Love and hugs to you all!

My portrait photography business has been pretty steady in spite of my lack of properly promoting or advertising this as one of my primary pursuits. What a blessing to have that perfect combination of faith and word of mouth working so wonderfully in my life! I am happily snapping shots of beautiful people with my lovely eldest daughter by my side as she assists with lighting and equipment.

My latest Senior portrait session was with Kayla, a real sweetheart and natural in front of the camera. I’d recently purchased a few new backgrounds for my studio (from Fuse Backgrounds) and got to try them all out on her, as well as take her on location to Augustana College for some fall photos around some gorgeous old architecture! I am excited to find out the ones she chooses so I can get those final retouches done and share them.

Hope you enjoy the sneak peek – there’s more to come!

Another one of the very cool products I offer with my Senior portrait and Wedding sessions is a Layflat Album. I had such fun with Miranda during her session and had a great time assembling all of the photos into a keepsake album for her. The end product is a durable, beautiful book to treasure her High School graduation.

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!!