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!

Weekly Photo Project (WPP): My winning photos

I've previously mentioned on here that for about a year now I have participated in a closed group on Facebook called "The Weekly Photo Project". Anyone can be invited in (I was invited by the cousin of the founder of the group, who is a friend of mine, and I've invited at least 4 others in); the premise of the group is to provide a topic to go out and try to shoot that week. You don't  have to have taken the photo that week (we've had people submit photos from years ago when they feel that it meets that week's description), but often members will try to take something new. The person who submits that week's topic gets to choose his/her favorite from all of the submissions (somewhere from 15-20 typically), and that week's winner then gets to pick the topic and favorite for the next week.

Three kids are better than one

Last month I did quite a few kid shoots; I previously posted photos of Ruth and Bailey, as well as my daughter dressed as a bride. Ruth is very good friends with both of my kids, so at the end of her shoot we took some photos of all of the kids together - here are my favorites!

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)