Seattle, WA | Travel Photographer

With all of the travel that I am fortunate to be able to do for my job, I try to post my travel photography here relatively soon after it occurs. However, sometimes certain photos slip through the cracks, and it turns out that these from Seattle are on that list! I took these just over 2 years ago, and only recently had the chance to finish editing them and posting them here. Despite the time delay, I still wanted to share as it was nice for me to go back and see them again after so long! Also, even though I think I have grown as a photographer in the past 2 years, these didn't come out too badly - and Seattle is a very pretty city.

Savannah, GA | Travel Photographer

Here is the final installment of the travel photography that I've done so far for 2015 - a day trip that my husband and I took to Savannah, GA in June 2015. It was one of the hottest days I've ever experienced - nearly 100 degrees with 100% humidity, but the city was absolutely beautiful. We took an open-air, guided trolley ride around the city to learn its history and see some of the famous sites. I was able to get some very lovely photos of the buildings through the window.

Butchart Gardens | Travel Photographer

More travel photography! It's nice to finally have the time to show off the places that I have been this year. This one was possibly the most beautiful of them all...while in Victoria, BC in June I took an afternoon trip out to Butchart Gardens. It's billed as the oldest botanical gardens in Canada, and is definitely one of the most stunning that I have ever seen.

Beautiful wide landscape shots, right? I feel like I'm forgetting something...oh, that's right: flower close ups! I would be remiss if I didn't show you those. There were stunning flowers everywhere, and I had a lot of fun in editing them afterwards.

Sunset in South Carolina | Travel Photographer

In June I spent a few days near Hilton Head, SC with my family, visiting my in-laws. They live on a golf course community, and as promised by my mother-in-law, the sunsets over the golf course are pretty spectacular. Despite the heat and humidity, and therefore the need to adapt my equipment to the elements before I could take any photos, the end result was worth it!

Georgetown, Washington DC | Photography Lesson

As anyone with a craft/passion should do, it's important to periodically take classes to improve one's skills in that area. I really enjoy taking photography lessons, whether it be informally with fellow photographers, sharing tips, or in a class that I have paid for. While a lot of my lessons recently have focused on photographing people, which is really what I've focused on, I have taken other lessons in other areas. A while back, I took a class in Washington, DC where we walked through Georgetown at dusk. The class focused primarily on how to adjust things like white balance in camera, not in post editing, to get different "emotions" in the photos, as well as some tricks for evening/low light photography. It was definitely fun to work on adjusting the mood of the photo while shooting, instead of during editing as I usually do! For all of the comparison shots below, I did not do any editing in post; it was all done on camera.

Victoria, BC | Travel Photographer

At the beginning of June I had the opportunity to go to Victoria, British Columbia for a conference for work. It's an absolutely beautiful town, and I had a wonderful time walking around photographing the beautiful buildings (these are my hotel and the capital building).

 

Little Miss E: 9 month portraits

It's very important that I get this little cutie's 9 month photos up here, as I just shot her 1 year photos last weekend! I've previously shot Miss E for her newborn photos, as well as at 6 months (we skipped 3 months because that's a very difficult age to get good photos of a baby). At the very beginning of May we scheduled (a bit after 9 months, to be true, but sometimes that's how schedules work), and I was very excited to have this shoot be a bit different than the previous two. First, we shot outside (the other two were indoor portraits), and second we shot at a brand new location that I had never used before, hidden away in Leesburg! I absolutely love this location, and can't wait to do another photo session here.

Welcome to the world, Baby R! | Newborn Photographer

I'm so happy when I have a friend who has a baby, and even happier when I get asked to take some photos of the new baby and parents. Again I was able to visit one of my very good friends in the hospital when she gave birth in May, and she and I were fortunate to get a couple of hours in the hospital room just the two of us (and the new baby of course!). We don't get that often, so it was a really nice time, capped off with some photos of the little one and her mom. I've never really taken photos in the light that we had (a single light from above and behind the hospital bed), and it was definitely a bit of a challenge, but I loved capturing mom and baby in the first day of baby's life.

Cherry Blossoms 2015 Part 2 | Nature Photographer

In my last post, I showed photos I took of the Tidal Basin during peak bloom of the Japanese cherry blossom trees in Washington DC. In addition to those, I took a number of close-up photos of the blossoms themselves, and had some fun with editing them to bring out the beauty in the flowers, and the light around them. I hope you find these as beautiful as I do!

Cherry Blossoms 2015 Part 1| Nature Photographer

I absolutely love photographing the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. This year, peak dates were delayed due to the cold weather, so I was able to get there during that time (first weekend in April) to take some sunrise photos. I went again with my good friend Kathy; she and I had gone two years ago and photographed the trees at sunset, so we thought we'd mix it up this year and hit sunrise instead. This meant bundling up against the cold, finding a parking spot not too far from the Tidal Basin (which was easier than we thought it would be), and finding just the right spot to get started.