Family Session

While I was in St. George Utah I got to do a family session for someone I know from church.  She is also a photographer and had taken our family pictures the week before.  It was nice to trade services and not pay! WOO HOO  haha  Also I just love taking pictures and haven't had many chances since moving to do so.  We took these at the tabernacle.  The colors in the trees were beautiful.

St. George Temple

I had the pleasure of being in St. George Utah during the week of Thanksgiving. It was GORGEOUS there!  The leaves on the trees were gorgeous colors and the leaves falling were breath taking.  After we all ate dinner on Thanksgiving day, I snuck out for a half an hour to go to the temple and take pictures.  My parents live 2 blocks from it.  I thought there would be no one there but apparently everyone thought it would be a good idea to walk off thanksgiving dinner on the temple grounds.  So I had a hard time getting some of the pictures I wanted but I did get some good ones. Take a look.

Halloween Photo Shoot Part 2

I have know Jason since I was probably about 6 or so.  Maybe I knew him even before that, I'm not really sure.  Him and his wife came down so we could do picture's of their kids.  The baby wasn't feeling well and I was already taking someone's picture when they got there so they had to wait.  By the time I tried taking theirs the baby wasn't having it.  Big brother on the other hand let me take TONS of him.  It was great taking pictures of him because he seemed to love it and he would actually stay pretty still while I took them.  BONUS

I love how intense you looks showing me his muscles!  haha

And a couple of group shots with my kids

Don't you just love that any time you tell kids to make a silly face they all stick their tongues out?!  Gotta love it

Halloween Photo Shoot Take ONE

I have a friend named Lisa.  She is wonderful.  The funny thing is, she is actually my friend Jason's wife.  I would have never even met her otherwise.  She is one of those people who is really generous and goes out of her way to help perfect strangers.  I have done pictures for them before.  Her husband is in Iraq right now and she wanted to get pictures of her kids in Halloween costumes.  She saw a picture of a baby inside of a pumpkin and sent me the link to look at the picture and said, "Can we do this please, please, please?"  

Then she put an announcement on facebook asking any of her friends if they wanted some halloween pictures of their kids.  Not only that but she then bought all sorts of decorations and set everything up.  It was awesome.  So I got a little bit of business and she got her pictures.  She worked 10 times harder then I did!  

Any ways, here are some pictures of her adorable kids!  They both have the prettiest eyes! 

This is my daughters Halloween costume!  haha  We couldn't resist putting i ton Bubba the dog!

Lisa actually took this picture.  My daughter had to go potty and we were losing light so I told her to grab my camera and take some herself!  Check out his gorgeous eyes.  

I love this picture of him!  So Epic huh?!  

The Knight and the Dragon

And lastly, the ones Lisa wanted.  When we first put the baby in the pumpkin she balled!  LIKE HUGE tears.   Then her momma started singing and all the kids started making silly faces and dancing and we got a couple of little smirks from her.  

I'll post pictures of other kids later.  

I Heart Texas

I miss Texas.  I really do.  I miss the trees and the wild flowers.  I miss the food.  I miss my in laws.  I miss my friends.  I miss getting to call someone up and say, "let's do lunch today."  I don't have that here yet.  So sometimes I like to cheer myself up and make something with my Texas cookie cutter.  It makes things fun and if you have EVER lived in Texas you know how much people LOVE seeing things in the shape of Texas.  I have seen cheese shaped like Texas, chips shaped like Texas, stepping stones shaped like Texas, pretzel's shaped like Texas....I could go on.  So why not have something fun in your breakfast shaped like Texas!  Perhaps some yummy pink yogurt in the shape of Texas in your oatmeal...

MMMMMMMMM  That's what I call a good start to the day!

I am entering this into the Katie Evans photography PHOTOBERFEST!  The first week is FOOD and next week is KIDS.  check out the details here  Today is the last day to enter for this weeks food challenge ( I'm cutting it close I know! ) so go take a look.  the viewers are the one's who get to vote!  So click here for voting options and of course HAVE FUN!

My Favorite Color

My favorite color is black.  Black is not easy to photograph.  I should know because I am constantly trying to get good pictures of black flowers and it is super hard to do.  I was sitting eating my lunch thinking about how I was going to photograph BLACK and I looked down at my food and thought, "DUH!"  I was eating nachos I had made with black beans and black olives.  Hmmmmm.  I decided that was a good way to photograph black

And yes these nachos were as yummy as they look!

Today is a childhood memory.  I have some ideas....

Reflectors

I have a shop that I found from my dear friend Katrina, and they sell photography lights, back drops and other things and are very reasonably priced.  I have bought some studio lights from them and some backdrops.  I plan on buying some more lights from them soon when I have a little more money in my pay pal account.  :)   The store is called Cowboy Studio  they also sell reflectors and some day I plan on purchasing some.  For now I don't have the cash. SOOOOOOOO  why not make your own?  Last year I made one and have hardly used it because I miss placed it when I moved.  Now I dug it back out and have been using it a little bit.  Check out how easy this is to do.

Everyone has seen the foam boards right?  I get mine at the Dollar Tree because, well...they are only a dollar.  haha  I use these when photographing things for my craft blog or when taking pictures of products for my etsy site ( not my photography one because I have two ).  I place items on the foam board and behind them for a white blank canvas.  It works great.  Did you know you can also use them to make your own reflector?  

Take the foam board and a box cutter and slice it done the center BUT don't cut alllll the way through both sides.

See how you can now fold the foam board in half but it is still attached as one piece?

Next you want to take foil and wrap it around the foam board on one side.  my foil wasn't wide enough to cover the whole thing so I had to do two strips of foil.  Tape around the sides on the back

And that is pretty much it!  Now you have a cool/ghetto reflector for WAY cheap and it folds to help bounce the light off.  I used this when doing senior pictures for Faith and Lura.  It was overcast and in on of the shots I was doing of Faith I had the "sun" behind her and she has brown eyes. We used the reflector and it shown TONS on light in her eyes and on her face.  Can you tell?

I also used this reflector the other day when I was doing my self portrait.  Just remember that it depends on what kind of lighting you want on your subject.  Sometimes shadows on the face are good and sometimes they are not.  Just be aware of the look you are going for and make it happen!  Now go make a ghetto but cool 2 dollar reflector and go take some pictures!

What I Wore

Seems to me that most people who do the whole, what I wore today thing take a picture of themselves in a mirror, hold the camera up in front of them and take a picture OR use a tripod and just stand there.  Not my style for this one.  You can't see my WHOLE outfit but that's okay.  I like this much better any ways!

Aren't my shoes adorable?!  I love them.  I am usually not a BOW girl but I saw these, tried them on and fell in love.  Cute and comfy is for SURE my style.

Today's photo challenge is my favorite color.  That is black.  Hmmmmm  How can I get creative with that?

Clouds

Of course it was overcast and a little rainy yesterday.  We had a few patches of clouds in the sky but mostly it was grey.  I took the kids to the market after we picked Tyler up from school and while we were driving away Tyler said, "Look mommy, a rainbow!"  I looked all around and sure enough there was one.  I should have stopped the car and gotten out and take a picture but I didn't.  I kept driving thinking the rainbow from my house would be a good angle to take a picture.  I was wrong.  I got home and houses were covering it.  BOOOOO

So instead of a rainbow in front of some clouds I got this shot.

See the tiny patches of blue?  :)  Today the theme is what I wore.  DOH!

Some I Love

Day Two is a picture of someone I love.  I had all day to take pictures of someone I love.  We didn't have church today and so we were home all day long just hanging out.  I took about 100 pictures and more then half of them were fuzzy.  It is frustrating sometimes to get blurry pictures.  I was going through them on my computer and it kinda made my laugh.  My house was kinda dark yesterday and the kids were moving like crazy!  This is why everything was so blurry.  When considering that I almost picked a super blurry picture of Kayla jumping but decided on this one

I couldn't resist!  Kayla started potty training this weekend!  We have tried a couple of times with pull ups and she would just pee in them but she would poop on the potty.  So we bought her underwear and I knew this is what was going to help her.  We threw them on her Saturday and the first 2 times she just went.  The rest of the day she pretty much went on the potty!  It was so wonderful.  So here she is at the table while we were playing the Toy Story 3 memory game.  Sitting on her feet with her little blues clues underwear.  So adorable and I for SURE love this little girl.  :)

Today's challenge is CLOUDS!  I can't wait.  I love taking pictures of clouds.  Hopefully we have some good ones in the sky today.