Love is Good | Leesburg Child Photographer

During Valentine's week, the theme for the Weekly Photo Project was "Love is Good". I had a couple of ideas for photos, including setting something up similar with the kids to what I did last year. Ultimately, I decided to shoot my children with a few of the things they love the most: their "lovies". I did see this as an idea on some photography site (I can no longer remember which!), and I was so happy with how it came out. I instructed the kids on where to lie, and then captured moments as they presented. Love these faces!

Weekly Photo Project: July 2014

June 30 - July 6: "Red, White, and Blue"
The theme for this week was a fairly obvious choice, given that it was July 4th! On the beach on July 4 morning we came across a lifeguard team moving one of the lifeguard chairs. I saw their ATVs with the flags and knew this would be my submission.

Weekly Photo Project: June 2014

Time to finish catching up on my Weekly Photo Project submissions! This post gets me through June 2014. Let's not wait!
June 2 - 8: "Create a Mood"
For this one, I chose a photo that I took of one of my best friends during her wedding day shoot. I was tagging along as driver for her, her husband-to-be, and their photographer. I was able to snag a couple of shots of my own in between bridesmaid duties, and love how this one came out! Certainly a mood of "Beauty".

Weekly Photo Project: May 2014

I'm a bit behind in posting this, as June is just about ending now, but better late than never! Here's my wrap-up of my photo submissions to my Weekly Photo Project on Facebook for the month of May 2014.
April 28 - May 4: "Food"
I took this photo with my iPhone, and did small editing in Instagram. The food in question were two delicious chicken tacos I purchased from a food truck in Bethesda, MD.

Weekly Photo Project: April 2014

Once again, I got to start off the month with a category of my choosing! I had just finished editing some photos from our trip to the Outer Banks earlier that month, and loved this photo below. Since I set up the photo to get the exact look I wanted, I came up with this topic.
March 31 - April 6: "Perfectly Posed"

The Weekly Photo Project: March 2014

As I mentioned in my last Weekly Photo Project post, I started off March with choosing the first topic. Having just finished going through my photos from a visit to The Louvre last year, I chose this as our first topic, and submitted a photo of my favorite statue from the museum (Cupid and Psyche)

March 3-9: Objet d'Art

Weekly Photo Project: February 2014

February was the first month where we had a full month of subjects for the Weekly Photo Project on Facebook, and I was glad that I was able to submit something for each week. Here's hoping I can keep that up! I really enjoyed the topics this week; they weren't things I would have chosen, so it made me need to get a little creative in my thinking.

Week 4: "Makes Me Happy." I think the picture pretty much speaks for itself! How could this not make you happy?!

Weekly Photo Project: January 2014

The weekly photo project is back! I started in this group on Facebook well over a year ago, and have previously posted here under the tag "weekly project" some of the photos that I've submitted to the project...mostly those that were chosen as the week's winner, as I'm particularly proud of those. 

Due to technical difficulties with Facebook and their changing how groups are done, we temporarily suspended the project, which was disappointing but understandable. However, right around the start of 2014 we realized the solution to the technical difficulty, and the project was back under way two weeks into the new year. Very exciting! I do enjoy this group of photographers. Many of us did the 30 day challenge that I have posted about on here a few times, but it was a lot of work to keep up with daily photos, and we missed the weekly topic. Plus, it's fun to join in some friendly competition :) So, I was glad to have the project come back.

I've decided that for 2014 I'm going to do a monthly summary here of the photos that I submit each week of that month, along with the theme. So, here are my 3 for January.

Week 1: "Shadows"

The rising winter sun slanting through our backyard fence.

Week 2: "Winter".
This is a lone tree near our pond, highlighted by the rising sun on the ice-covered pond.

Week 3: "Say Something" (i.e. tell a story with your photo).

My husband and son building with great concentration.

Weekly Photo Project: Another Win!

I've been remiss in keeping the blog updated with my submissions to the Weekly Photo Project, but something happened this week to make me remember - I won! For the week of August 4-11, my submission was chosen as the week's favorite. 

Lavender

A little over 2 weeks ago, I went to Seven Oaks Lavender Farm for a photo shoot with two girls (our babysitters!). I'd purchased a Living Social deal to the farm for 4 people, and thought it would be a beautiful location for a photo shoot. I've got another post coming up with my favorite photos of the girls, but wanted to show the photos of the flora and fauna that I shot as well.

First try at Macro photography

I think macro photography is fascinating - for any who don't know what it is, just do a quick google image search and you'll see some amazing close-up shots, such as this one of a cat's eye. How amazing is that?! To accomplish this type of shot, there are all kinds of specialty lenses you can buy (there's one I have my eye on that's about $400, which I can't quite swing right now, much less the much higher price ones that are out there!), or you can get ring extension kits to add to an existing lens to allow focus that close up. There is a "trick" to macro photography that you can do without any of these and I've been dying to try it; I finally had time this weekend to give it a shot with some hydrangea flowers I recently received.

WPP: Another win!

Ack! times two - the first because this will be my first post in June (I didn't realize I hadn't posted anything since last week!), and the second because I fell behind in my submissions to the Weekly Photo Project again. And good news in this one - I won one of these!

WPP: 5 week wrap up

You may have noticed (or not, cause you don't care, but that's ok) that I haven't posted my Weekly Photo Project submission here in a while. That's because I didn't submit one for most of the past month; of the 5 weeks recently, I missed 3 of those due to how crazy our life became there for a while (trip to Paris, moving, work travel, unpacking, etc).

WPP: March 18-24

Two weeks ago the theme for our weekly project was "Vintage Cars". I'm not a car person, and I very rarely have the chance to see any that would be considered vintage, much less take a photo. However, that weekend I happened to take a low-light photography class in Georgetown (Washington, DC) and captured this vintage vehicle. No one said that vintage has to mean "mint condition", right?

One of the aspects of the class was to play with white balance to get different "moods" in the photo, particularly as the light is changing due to sunset. I used the tungsten light setting on my camera; when used outdoors, it creates this great moody blue tinge to the photo. I was very happy with how it came out, and can't wait to share my favorite photos from the class here!

For last week (March 25-31), I was out of town in Paris and missed the submission. The title was "Something I See Everyday", which would've been a lot of fun to add to, but being in Paris just wasn't in the cards. I most likely would've submitted a shot of my kids or dog!

Speaking of Paris, I ended the trip with over 1,500 photos to go through. I am hopeful to start on that this week, but we're moving over the next three days (my house is currently a mass of boxes, all to be loaded on the truck tomorrow), and I still have a boudoir shoot to finish editing and get to my client. It will all happen at some point, right?!

And I'm off!

Tomorrow evening at this time, I will be on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean headed to Paris for a week. My husband and I had always talked about going to Paris (or possibly London & Paris) for our 10th anniversary, and somehow, despite many possible impediments, it's happening! Even better, we're going with two of our favorite people on earth, good friends of ours who are also celebrating their 10th anniversary this year (we got married within 3 weeks of each other; she and I were in each other's wedding).

I'm excited for so many things about this trip, but one of the most exciting things will be the photography opportunities! I can't wait to share photos here with everyone. I think I have all of my gear packed; most everything is in my new camera bag (from jototes.com) - I am in love with this bag! It doesn't even look like a camera bag from the outside, which is helpful as I've been told by so many people about the high risk of pick pockets/crime in Paris, so I'm glad to have something that would be difficult to steal (assuming I'm keeping it across my body, as planned).

WPP: March 10-17

The theme for this week is "Bridges". I had a few photos from some recent photo expeditions that I were possibilities, but I knew that my ideal photo would be from our trip to Australia in 2009. We spent a couple of days in Sydney, and I have many photos of the Sydney Harbor Bridge (along with the Sydney Opera House, Zoo, and the rest of that beautiful harbor!). Sadly, I had a simple Canon point-and-shoot at the time, so my photos are nowhere near the quality that I like to have now, but despite that I'm still very happy with this photo, and thus it was my submission for the week.

Taken near sunset, April 2009.

WPP: Wrap-up to this week

Ok, these don't seem to be very popular posts, but I'm proud of these photos so I want to get them out for any fans to see. So, instead of continuing to do a separate post for each week as I catch up, here are my submissions from January 28- March 10.

WPP: Week of Jan 21-28

As I mentioned previously, I didn't have anything to submit for the subject of "Doors" for the week of January 14. The winner that week chose the subject "At the Movies" for the following week, and I had a couple of thoughts for shots that I could set up. However, the week started to get away from me, and I found myself in Philadelphia for work. One of my clients is in a building near Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and from their floor you can see this beautiful view of the city. So, my submission for this week was "Philadelphia". The photo was taken on my iPhone through a thick glass window, so all in all I was very pleased with how it came out.

WPP: January 7-13

The theme for Jan 7-13 was "At Your Feet". The point of the topic was to get everyone to stop looking out and away at eye level to take a photo, but instead take a look at what is down by our feet, which we often overlook. Just that week I took this photo of my son on the floor near my feet, so it seemed like a good one to submit.

When I saw the photo that did win, it absolutely blew me away and would have been the one I chose as winner as well. This photo was taken by Gail Metzinger, and it is stunning. I had to share it here. She did an amazing job!

Gail then chose "Doors" as her category for the week of January 14-20; I didn't have anything good to submit for that week, so we'll skip that week here and my next post will show my submission for the week of January 21-27.

WPP: December 31-January 6

For the first week of January (which also happened to be week 52 of the project, so it had been a fully year since the group was started!), the theme was "Warmth". Most people submitted photos of tropical/warm locations, or adorable animals snuggled up on blankets but I didn't have anything I really liked along those lines. Instead, I went for interpersonal warmth and submitted this photo from the NYE wedding I shot (which has been posted here previously).

I received many compliments on the photo, which I very much appreciated. I lost to a ridiculously adorable photo of a kitten sitting in the sun; there was absolutely no way I could fault choosing that one as the winner!