30 Day Photo Challenge: Hands

I'm currently taking part in a 30 day photography "challenge". It's through a photography group I've been a part of for a while now (well over a year), but this challenge is new. I like the daily topics and really enjoy the people who are doing this with me. There's a different topic each day, and you're supposed to take the photo for the topic that day. It's a really great way to force me to pick up a camera every day (even if it's just using one of the apps on my iPhone), and it makes me take photos of things I might ordinarily miss/ignore.

If you're interested in seeing all of my photos for this project, take a look at the Facebook album I created on my photography page: CLICK HERE.

Key West Wedding: Portraits

I wrote a post here earlier this month showing some photos I took at a very good friend's wedding in Key West. (Side note: thank you all for making that post the second highest viewed of all time!). In addition to the photos I took with my phone, I was able to take some "real" portraits of the bride and groom as I drove them around Key West. These were all taken at the Key West wildlife refuge - such a novel and lovely place to take wedding photos, and so fitting for the two of them!

Note: I was NOT the wedding photographer for this wedding; he was amazing, and posing all of these shots. I was simply fortunate enough to grab some of my own from the side! 

Craft project: Jewelry Box

I'm kind of tired tonight, so here's a quick post of photos I took after helping my daughter put together a mosaic jewelry box over the weekend. She and I had a wonderful time doing this project together, and I really like how it came out!

First birthday fun!

In a recent post, I showed photos I took of the Allen family. As we became friendly afterwards, I was invited to their daughter Zoe's 1st birthday party just a few weeks later. I volunteered to take some cake smash photos there, so her mother didn't have to worry about it. But before the smashing I was able to photograph the beautiful cupcakes, decorated by Zoe's mom!

Key West Wedding

Just before the end of 2013, I flew to Key West to be in the wedding of my good friend Amy. I've known her now for almost 17 years (that seems impossible!), and was honored to be a part of her day. Key West was lovely, she was beautiful, and the wedding was so much fun. Being IN the wedding, I couldn't take as many photos as I wanted, and because I couldn't carry around my DSLR all of these photos were taken with my iPhone, using the Camera+ app. But we know that any good photographer makes due with what she has, right?

Let me also start this post by saying that their wedding photographer, David Champagne, is amazing. Please check out his website and his facebook page - he does amazing work, and was such a wonderful guy. It was really great to see him work, and learn some from him! He's posted their first sneak peeks as well. I stayed out of his way, and felt fortunate to get a few shots of my own.

When we got to Amy's mom's house to get ready that morning, he had placed her dress in this door for photos. Could you have asked for a better location or light?!

Light "Painting"

As you've likely seen on Facebook, I'm taking part in a 30 day photo "challenge" - there's no winner or loser, but it's a challenge to take a photo a day for 30 days, with each day having a different theme. So far, I've managed to keep up with the first 8 days and submit a photo taken that day. 

3 days ago, the challenge was "A view from above". I didn't know what I would shoot, and then when I was standing in the hallway of our second floor, looking down into the foyer, I had an idea to shoot my daughter from above. Originally I was going to do a more traditional shot (well lit, her posing, etc), but then when she started playing with her flashlight, I got an idea. And thus, my shot was born!

Blue heron at sunset

About 2.5 weeks ago I spotted a great blue heron walking through the pond during "golden hour". As it wasn't ridiculously cold that night (unlike right now!), I grabbed my 70-300mm telephoto lens and headed out to grab a few shots.

Sun on Snow

About 3 weeks ago I posted photos of the "winter wonderland" around our house from the first snow of the season. These photos were taken during the snow fall in the morning, but by mid afternoon the clouds had gone away, the sun came out, and I had to take more photos. I've posted a few of these, focusing on my daughter as it was her birthday, but wanted to show my favorites of the rest that I took, as the sun on the snow was just beautiful.

Stratford Christmas Lights

Happy New Year, everyone! To celebrate the start of 2014, I have one last Christmas-related post for this winter. I had hoped to get this posted before the first of the year, but with my trip at the beginning of this week I wasn't able to get to these photos before last night. So, please bear with me through one more Christmas post, and then it's on to other topics! I've got at least 8 posts queued up already, and more coming!

Last Friday night I headed out around our neighborhood to take photos of my neighbor's Christmas lights. I brought a tripod to do some long exposure shots (although these first three were not taken on a tripod), and brought my daughter along to teach her about long exposure using my Powershot on a smaller tripod (you can see her best photos here). While they didn't all come out as hoped, and we got pretty cold by the end, it was a lot of fun to do! Can't wait to see what my neighbors come up with next year.

Outside Christmas Ornaments

We decorated the tree in our front yard with some oversize ornaments; my plan is to slowly accumulate more of these over the years until the tree is fully decorated! While enjoying the beautiful weather this week over Christmas, I grabbed a few photos of the ornaments in the daylight.