Foreground Bokeh

One day of the 30 day photography challenge in January was "bokeh". I've previously published here examples of the bokeh shots I did over Christmas, as Christmas lights make such a great background for beautiful blurred lights. Since I had recently done that type of shot, I wanted to try something different for this challenge and to experiment with foreground bokeh. In this scenario, the subject is behind the lights, but you still want to try for the nice blurred effect. I discovered that it's a lot harder to do than the more traditional bokeh, and I may not have used the most ideal light source for my bokeh, but at the end I was pleased with a few of the shots that I got. 

Self Portraits

This month, I participated in a 30 day photo challenge, which I had previously posted about so I won't go into tons of details again. As you can see on the description, the month starts and ends with a self-portrait, and has two self portraits (of a different type) in the middle of the month. I tried to do something different for each self portrait, and wanted to summarize the results here.

Self Portrait Day 1: This is the one I submitted to the challenge.

Sun + snow + dog = adorable

Yesterday I took my dog for a walk in the snow, which she absolutely loves. It's so much fun to watch her run around in it, and even better she is a good enough dog to pose for me (without a treat in my hand, even!) in the sun. Love this dog.

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.