My daughter, the bride

When I received my in-home studio set up (pictured here in my basement), I was of course very excited to try it out! This involved not just putting everything together, but starting to figure out light placement, and really work with lighting. Fortunately, my daughter is always happy to be my model...mostly because it gives her an excuse to dress up for a little while! Since I wanted to photograph her on the black background, we chose her white bride costume and, well...here are the results!

Kid photo shoots

Recently I did two photo shoots for some friends of my daughter - one is her friend from daycare, and the other is a friend from preschool. I have my favorites in albums on Facebook:
Ruth Ellen's photos
Bailey's photos

The K family

Two weeks ago was my second large family photo shoot. The first you can easily access on the right sidebar - the Nicholson/Philips Family. Two adults, 6 kids...big group! This one was very similar - two parents, five kids, and one grandmother. The shoot primarily focused on the children, and I've shared my favorites of the family in an album on Facebook. It was ridiculously cold and windy, but the location was lovely and everyone was a very good sport despite the weather! We had beautiful early morning light, yet many of my favorites were the ones that I edited to be in black and white and/or muted tones, so I'm highlighting those here. Enjoy!

Rivers at Sunset

I previously posted a few photos I took on a trip to NJ/Philadelphia in January. In addition to this beautiful hanging art installation, I also had the pleasure to driving past two rivers as sunset neared and taking some lovely shots. The first three are of the Raritan River in New Brunswick, NJ.

"Tasha"

I wanted to separate this post from the previous one, even though it took place on the same day and at the same location. While hiking around in Balls Bluff Park with my family, we ran into this beauty below (named Tasha) and her owner Nancy.

Winter at Balls Bluff Park

Yesterday I posted photos on my family blog of us hiking in Balls Bluff Park. In addition to those photos, I took some artistic shots - first of the snow in the woods (this screamed out to be converted to B&W)

New Year's Eve Wedding

As I posted here previously, and have mentioned on Facebook, on New Year's Eve I did my first wedding shoot! It was for a very good friend of ours; she is practically family, and I was more than happy to be their official photographer. The wedding was very small, but very beautiful, and having it on NYE was such a unique idea. I have far too many photos to post all of my favorites here, but I have narrowed it down to my "top 10" and put those here for you all to see. They aren't all perfect, and it was definitely a learning experience, but when the bride and groom are happy with the results, so am I. Enjoy!

Portrait idea a la Pinterest

For anyone who has spent any time on Pinterest, you know how easy it is to get sucked down into the ridiculous amount of amazing ideas that abound there, whether it be ideas for craft projects, home decorating, art, photography, recipes...there's just so much. Often when I go there, it's to look for something in specific and then I quickly close the window, as I just don't have the hours and hours to spend there! This post is my take on an idea I saw floating around on both Pinterest and other websites over the holiday season (this photo is just one of many examples that exist of creating the "bokeh" effect, as it's called, with Christmas lights). I thought that with a relatively simple set up (a solid backdrop and some white Christmas lights), I should be able to replicate this idea fairly easily.