Saturday, September 22, 2012

Jenna - Rio Rancho Senior

I met up with the lovely Jenna this morning to take some senior photos. Her dad came along and helped with my reflector and ideas for locations. It was fun chatting and working with the location and light.

I plan to make up a little featured senior web page soon, and share more about Jenna, but until then here is a little preview of the photos we took today.
















Friday, September 21, 2012

A moment in time

Wednesday afternoon my toddler walked up to me wearing her little wool knit shorts/diaper cover and her favorite hat, eating the apple I'd given her. I thought I should grab the camera. I have a red wall in one of the rooms of my house. It was there when we moved here, and lately I've been thinking I should make use of it.

My daughter is at a wonderful, full age - full of interest, business, energy, and strong feelings. She is delightful and yet very intense about everything! She found her big sister's clogs in the room so I went along with her desire and helped her put them on. So I captured this moment in time and added some processing the next day.

Little hands:


Life is beautiful (to be cliche), make a point to appreciate the little things, to notice the little actions, the excitement, the expressions...

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Dragonfly Princess

I'm still working on this, but am sharing a current project that is a collaboration between myself and my husband. We all need a little fantasy!


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Light and Expression

I typed that title and now I see I could say a lot with those two words. Well, here is just a little bit.

I grabbed a few moments to take some photos of my littlest daughter last night after the sun had set. I could only get enough light outside, but I liked the quality of the light. It was soft, and rather flat, but at a great angle. Lots of open sky makes a gigantic (soft) light source, and with our deck and wall and nearby trees, the light was slightly up, so there was still some shadow cast by her nose and chin. This you do want in the photo as it gives the face shape. (on-camera flash completely flattens a face and washes out shape) I liked it because I wanted to emphasize her eyes and mouth particularly. She will be 17 months tomorrow and often what strikes me so much about her is the way she looks at me and expresses herself. The images ingrained in my mind are her eyes and mouth - conveying her intensity and interest in life.

I intentionally overexposed my images by 2 fstops, while placing her against a white wall. I didn't want to show much texture in the wall and wanted her skin to be soft compared to her features.


Oh, and when I'd say "hi!" to her she would respond with an "-eye" every time.



And sometimes I like monochrome:



Do you see the flour on her dress? Yes, I left it :-). She had found the flour bag when i was cooking and proceeded to pull out handfuls and dump them on the flour. She keeps me hopping, continually trying out something new, exploring, studying....never daydreaming for a moment.

I also looked for other photos as she moved about the deck. The light was fading, and I only could get a couple before we were done. I love this photo. My aperture was f2 (very shallow) which barely kept the front of her and her dress ruffle in focus, as I was quite close to her and was using my 135mm lens. This captures her spirit as well.


I do not leave any photo alone as it comes from the camera. As an artist I do not only look for the image I want in the moment, constantly recomposing and reaching for what I want, I also evaluate every image afterwards, and work with composition and the processing that I feel conveys what is in my mind. And there is another meaning you could draw from the word "expression"!

Here is one last image of her from last week. She was looking out the window at her sisters who were at the neighbor's house, knocking on their door (good friends of ours). Here I was using my 85mm prime lens with an aperture of 2.8 and I only over exposed by 2/3 of a stop. The window gives the  lovely directional soft light.


Monday, September 3, 2012

Stacy and David Engaged

I was blessed to be asked to photograph an engagement session for Stacy and David a week ago Saturday. Then the following Saturday they were married! We met in the evening and the sky was full of clouds. It was actually raining where they drove from, but we just had the beautiful diffuse light to work with.

They had only flown into Albuquerque the night before (her hometown), as they are graduate students in California. I loved chatting with them and seeing their love for each other and others shine through.






 





Saturday, September 1, 2012

Lauren and Jack


Lauren and Jack were married August 11th. Their wedding was beautiful and full of fun and friendship. Here are a few of the pictures we took put together in the form of an album.





 

 
 
 
 













Lizards

Well, I've been terrible about updating this for a while. Sometimes I feel like I hardly have time to turn around and with my 16 month old added to the mix, life seems rather chaotic.

Over the last several weeks I've had several photography sessions. Meeting and working with beautiful people is always encouraging to me. I've always been a shy and rather reserved person who needs lots of quiet time and solitude, but I love getting to know individuals person to person (and rather than in crowds). Photography has allowed me some of that, and this inspires me.

I will be adding posts with some of my recent photography sessions soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to post this that I took of my son a couple of months ago. He is avidly interested in herps (reptiles and amphibians) as well as birds. All summer he has been catching and caring for every lizard he can find around our house. He is very careful to identify them, and he has involved his good friends who live next door on either side of us. It warms me to see his thrill in catching a new one. So I wanted to get some photos of him in his "natural environment". I did have my splendid assistant (my husband) with us to hold the reflector where I requested.