Sneak Peek of cutie Ryland-Contest Winner Session!

Here is a sneak peek of contest winner Erin's session of her cutie son Ryland!

More to come!! :)

Sneak Peek-Acoustic Night

More to come! :)

They will reunite...

...yet again! I'm sure Mandy (my dog) is looking forward to it! :)
I'm so excited for next week! I miss my sister and my cutie niece!!


Bonus...all three nieces will be together again next week! Good times all around!
Here they are with Grandma and Grandpa or I mean "Gamma Nila" and "Papa".

My family makes fun of me when I take the stairs...

...but see...it can be fun AND exercise!! :)

I'm addicted to sunsets.

Here is my new favorite sunset picture I took a few weeks ago.

I usually don't get sentimental and mushy gushy on my blog, but I have a memory attached to this photo of how I was feeling when I took it. I just want to express my gratitude for all those who have been a part of my life. This has been a crazy year for me of complete change and growth. I am so grateful to have had the love and support from some pretty amazing people, especially my family. I remember feeling completely blessed with where my life has taken me, even with all the struggles I have faced this year, because there were also some awesome and happy moments too.

I was getting into my car and I looked at the sunset just grateful for where I am at in my life. I took a deep breath and tried to take a mental picture of the sunset I was witnessing. I luckily remembered I had my camera on me...and I am so glad I did. So whenever I see this shot I can remember how I felt when I took it.

I am honestly blessed beyond what I deserve.

Holiday Photography Package!! Sale!!!

Woohoo!! Here is that Holiday Promotion I was talking about!

It's that time again!! The holiday season is just around the corner! Can you believe it?!

Our popular holiday promotion is back!!
There are VERY few openings available.

The package includes:

HOLIDAY PACKAGE
One hour session.
One location.
Up to 10 people.
Free Online Proofing of photos from session.
Disc of 25 edited images from session with all printing rights.
$150.00

I have also added a new promotion that I am really excited about:
For every 3 referral photo shoots booked between 10.10.09 - 03.13.10 you will get a FREE Spring/Easter photo shoot!!
(make sure at time of booking your family or friends lets us know you were their referral or else it won't count, sorry!)

Don't forget, we have VERY select openings and this is for a very limited time.
First come, first serve.

Florida or bust...traveling like it's going out of style.

I haven't been one in the past to go out on big adventures or take random trip or really plan a vacation unless it was well in advance. I just felt like things needed to be well organized and put together if you wanted a "successful" vacation.

And then something changed in me. It didn't have to be that way at all. Random trips can be awesome. Doing things spur of the moment can be great. Having things planned out doesn't always mean they go as planned. I have come to find a oneness with traveling that I've never had before. I like it.

I have many MANY trips I still want to take. I know that now is the time for me to do it too. Well, the past few years, especially this year, I have traveled a lot. It might not seem like a lot for most, but for me, it's a lot. And I hope it's just the beginning of the kind of traveling I want to do.

A very close friend of mine, Jackie, was moving from Vegas and though I didn't want her to leave I knew it had to happen. I also knew she was going to have to drive. To Florida. I wanted to be there for her, and if that meant driving a moving truck, well, then bring it on. Due to some scheduling (on my part, boy was she patient with me), we had to make the trip in 5 days. It was not going to be a lot of sight seeing, but I was still looking forward to seeing parts of the country that I've never seen before. We traveled through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama & Florida.

I'm so grateful that I was able to help out my friend but that really she gave me the opportunity to see things and go places I've never been before. I appreciate more than ever the country I am privileged and lucky to be born in. It is gorgeous and magnificent for so many different reasons beyond liberties and justices I take for granted daily. But for the natural beauties that God graciously placed across it.

I am blessed.

Here are just a few shots from the trip. :)

I couldn't decide: color or black & white?!



These I took with my point and shoot camera mostly if not all when I was driving...hehe..ahem, I mean, SAFELY DRIVING!!

One of my favorite parts we drove through was Mississippi and Alabama. It was the most scenic and had a lot too look at. Being a girl from the desert, I wasn't use to seeing so much green and water. It was beautiful.

Swaplands. My first time really seeing them.

So why did I take a picture of cars driving? I thought that too when I first looked at this shot and then I remembered, I took it because this was the freeway...lined with trees! I love trees and I would love if this was apart of my commute! And it went on for forever!

Texas, stand on a tuna can and you could see for miles and miles around. I actually really kinda like this shot.

Inspiration...photographers that move me.

You've seen this photo before. It's extremely famous. It is by Steve McCurry; Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984

He works for National Geographics. He is an amazing photographer. I have a few dream jobs I'd like to have as a photographer. Working for Sports Illustrated. And working for National Geographics. I don't think there are many photographers who wouldn't want to work for one if not both of those magazines. I love looking at his work to feel inspiration to travel and to capture photos of complete strangers that just move you.

Here is his blog.

Here is his website.

Another photographer that I was lucky enough to go to a seminar of his, that also works for National Geographics is Sam Abell. This photo, Pears in a windowsill, National Hotel, Moscow,(June 1986) is one of many of his famous works publish by National Geographics. What he is best known for is his ability to have more than one scene in a photo. He is able to capture more than one subject/story line in a photo. His composition abilities are amazing.

This photo is also another famous piece of work by him that shows his "two-view concept". The photo on the bottom showing what he is best known for. Two views of the annual branding and castration
Ken Rosman Ranch, Utica, Montana

It had been awhile since that seminar I had attended, but when I saw this photo recently, I remembered his composition abilities and was awestruck yet again. Not only for his abilities to tell a story by a photograph but his actual story telling. I could have sat there for hours looking at his work and listening to him. I was engulfed in this romantic photographer glow and my mind was filling with so much inspiration I could have burst.

While searching online for the pear photo, I found a website where Sam Abell is recalling his life and this photo and story moved me. It made me miss working in a dark room....because it is so true.Mother and Daddy, Flower Hospital, Sylvania, Ohio, 1975

I continued recuperating at home in Ohio. Things weren't good there. My mother was dying of emphasema, which she only referred to as asthma. She was the strongest person I've known, an esteemed teacher of Latin and French who imposed high standards on both her students and sons. She just wasn't stronger than Lucky Strikes.

I still have the hammered copper ashtray that I emptied every morning as a boy. In it were stubs of cigarettes with her lipstick stains on them.

My dad lived alone when Mother was in the hospital, and after she died in 1981 he didn't move or remarry. He wasn't unhappy living alone so one time in the darkroom - where you could say such things - I asked him "When was the happiest time of your life?" After a silence he said "When your Mother and I were courting."

And one last one that I couldn't help but share...go to the website and you will see what I mean by his story telling. Amazing.
My Dad and I,
International Center of Photography,
New York City, November, 1990
I suppose everyone has a moment in their lives they wish could 'stay'. This would be mine. I'm with my dad at an opening of my work at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. My dad is the guest of honor. I've asked him to stand. The applause makes him emotional and to keep from crying myself I grip his shoulder, smile and look down. We are a long way from our tiny darkroom in Sylvania, Ohio.

The title "Stay This Moment" is drawn from a diary entry of Virginia Woolf written on New Year's eve 1932. She writes "If one does not lie back and sum up and say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one's gain, dying? No: stay this moment. No one ever says that enough."
But photographers say it when they make a heartfelt photograph, as this one by my friend David Alan Harvey proves.

And the winner is (drum roll)....

I was so excited by the response that I picked two winners!!!

Yay!!!

Winner number one: Erin Freeman!!!

(picture me closing my eyes again and picking out of the hat, holding my breath)

Winner number two: Kiffyn Smith!!


Wooohooo!!!


Thank you so much everyone for your amazingly kind comments! You have no idea how much it means to me!! I was holding my hands over my mouth gasping with love and excitement for the super kind things you all said!

Erin and Kiffyn, you will be getting an email from me in the very very near future! :)




Keep a look out though, I will be posting a special offer for a limited number of portrait sessions since the holidays are right around the corner! October & early November is the best time to get them done!


p.s....I'm sorry I was SO late picking the winners! I have not been home or near a computer all day! I just got home 10 minutes ago and I ran up to my computer to do this!

again...thank you from the bottom of my heart!