Engagement Photos

A friend asked if I would take photos for her daughter's wedding. I do not normally do weddings, but, I agreed, and asked if we could start with an engagement session. I like to do this as it gives me a chance to get to know the soon-to-be bride and groom, as well as see what sorts of photos they actually like.

The three of us had fun, and it was great chatting with Lauren and Jack. Both of them enjoy children and working with people. They love spending time together. I think you can see this in the photos!

We met at my house and went into one of the Open Space areas of Albuquerque (city owned land kept for hiking and enjoying by the public). I love the cottonwood trees here, and love working with the little nooks where not only we can have a nice backdrop, but the light is great. Here are a few from the session:

Metal prints

It is often hard to visualized a large print hanging on a wall before you purchase it. I purchased a 20x30 metal print of an image I created of my daughter. I love how it looks! I have it hanging at the end of a hallway. And, so you can see it:

local wild flowers

Albuquerque Sky

I did an engagement photo session a week ago. We went out in the foothills around 7PM, and found the light rather interesting to work with as smoke from the fires in the Gila National Forest have enshrouded Albuquerque. Here is a photo of the western sky! (yes, that is the sun)

And the hopeful blue sky up above:

We got some beautiful silhouette photos as well. I want to share a touch about silhouettes. What I do is figure out what settings my camera needs to have in order to expose the sky correctly first. I set my camera on manual, and adjust the aperture and speed accordingly. I can then focus my camera on my subject and frame and shoot away. The result is a lovely sky that is not over exposed, and detailed silhouettes.


On another note, my husband and I have started a new blog! If you know us, you would know how passionate we are about what good education really should be about. So we've started this blog as a way to chronicle our research and experiences, and hopefully share what we learn with others who are interested. When we talk about education, primarily we are talking about educating children, but good education of children starts with adults who are interested enough to educate themselves. We will be working to keep it updated regularly with articles, and links to valuable/interesting material and other websites, and also use our photographs to augment. :-)

Feel free to follow us at:

( www.educationreimagined.org)

Lastly, we watched the annular eclipse over Albuquerque on May 20th. My husband used a 10 stop neutral density filter over his 100-400 zoom lens, set at 400mm, to take a whole series of photographs as the moon crossed the sun. The kids and I watched the change by looking at the pinhole image on a white piece of foam board (and running over to see what the camera had captured). Here is the final image he took just before the sun went out of site. I love that you can see sun spots!

Happy Mother's Day!

My Mother's Day gift was the willingness of my dear children to let me take each of them out to do a little photo shoot of them. They have all had birthdays in recent months, and I wanted to get some recent photos. We had fun, and my husband assisted with the reflector and sometimes chatting and goofing around with them. It can be stressful trying to get photos of your own kids, but I succeeded in not getting stressed and working with each individually. I took so many photos I love, but narrowed down to 16 to post here. My 6 year old daughter had the most unique ideas of her own, so she has a few more than the others here.

 

 

 

 

Family Photojournalism

Around home I try to have a camera handy to capture those real moments in life that strike my interest and humor. When you have kids, these can be fleet. I'm sharing a few recent photos here.

Monochromatic images reduce the information to the lights and darks, shapes, and lines in an image. This challenges me to watch even more, the interplay of my subject with the surroundings. I find that it also has the potential to remove the distraction of any bright or distracting colors. I always work with the conversion from color to black and white to bring in contrast that I find pleasing. A gray image does little for me. An image with great contrast, true blacks and whites and definite shades in between can make a monochromatic image worthwhile.

"helping" Daddy:

 

Sisters:

Not the best place to fall asleep!

"Angry Birds" on Grandpa's smartphone:

Everyone wants Daddy!:

 Some birthday photos:

 

  

Blowing from a safe distance away...

   

A small, very busy Person:

  

Video/slideshow!

I just finished creating this little slide show/video for my website. I've included it here to view.