HBD...

Happy, happy birthday to the most kind, caring, compassionate, loving, wonderful husband ever!  I love you with all my heart!

The switcharoo...

On Saturday, I was practicing with my new studio lighting using my go-to model (Q) and a funny thing happened...

Normally, Quincy poses for me on my large round bean bag and LOVES it. I did a little switcharoo on him that day and placed a piece of fleece on a crate so that he’d sit comfortably on it instead of on the bare wood.

When he jumped up on the crate, he totally overshot it and crashed into the vinyl backdrop.

He quickly got up, shook it off and happily resumed his posing duties.

Silly dog!

 

 

Before the 10,000...

Just before I hit the big 10,000 mark, I had the pleasure of photographing Bentley, one of Quincy's all-time-favorite playmates!  It was hilarious watching B & Q play - I think they lasted for about two hours.

Bentley is 3 pounds...just about half the size of Quincy so it made it was even more comical to watch their interaction.  I was hoping to snap a photo of the two them together but that was impossible...they were way to busy chasing one another!

I did get some really cute pictures of Bentley but only after I put Quincy in another room, out of sight!

 

 

He's such a nice little guy and a wonderful playmate to Quincy.

Ali you're a great little puppy mom!  ;-)

10,000 reasons...

Ok, aside from that being one of my favorite songs that we sing in church, I couldn't resist using it as a post title!  It has been just a tad over ONE year since I got my dslr camera and I know you're going to find it hard to believe but I've taken over...10,000 photos!

I know, right?  I told you it would be hard to believe...I'm still in shock over it myself!  And I probably wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't set the counter on my camera myself when I got it.  I remember visiting my parents on Christmas day and at that point, I had taken 100 pictures just messing around with it!

A lot sure has happened during that time and I've seen great improvement in my photos!  Woo-hoo!  At the beginning, I was fearing that I'd never get the hang of aperture, shutter speed and ISO - I'm sure terms that are as foreign to many of you as they were to me back then.  I studied and I read constantly.  In fact, I'm still studying and reading and learning...I guess you can teach an old...oh never mind!

The point is if I can do it, anyone can!  One of the biggest compliments that I recently received regarding my photography is...

"The pictures you took are just beautiful.  You are so talented. I think you can do anything you set your mind to."

I saved that email and look back at it occasionally, remembering where I began and where I've come in such a {relatively}short period of time.  Comments like that fuel my desire to continue to provide people with photos that they'll be thrilled to receive.

This year starts a new year of making a it part-time business because of all the interest.  I'm not quite ready to do indoor photos yet but hope to be ready very soon.  I received my sales tax number last week via e-mail and have a couple of other items to tick off my checklist before I make it official!

Since this post started off by talking about the milestone I've reached with the number of photos taken, I thought I'd show you the little gal that had the honor of being in front of the lens as the number hit 10,000 and then rolled back to 1!

Meet Devan...she is SO cute and has the most beautiful blue eyes!

I also thought this was a great time to show off my new watermark.

Yep, I came up with it all by my lonesome.  I know it's not fancy and has no frills but I like it...AND it was super cheap {can't beat free}!

It's nice and simple.

And makes me smile.

Merry Christmas...

May you have a wonderful and Happy New Year!

No more photos please...

The other evening I did a mini photo session for my dear friend, Heather, and her sister, Dez. 

Consider me officially inducted into the hall of patience!  :-)  Mr. Blake is a VERY busy 3 year old and it was sooooo challenging to get him to sit still long enough to snap a photo or two. 

Here are a couple of snippets of Blake...soooooo cute!

 

What I learned from this mini-session is to plan a little differently when working with a 3 year old.

I need a little higher level of energy to keep up with this little guy...not to mention a MUCH faster shutter speed!

Some cutie patooties...

Wow, it seems like f.o.r.e.v.e.r. since I've posted anything so I thought I'd put together a quickie post.  Life has been quite busy lately.  I helped out my friend Robin at her shop by providing some pet photography over the weekend and it proved to be both fun yet challenging. 

First off, let me say, I. AM. NOT. CESAR. MILLAN.  Ok, I got that off my chest. 

Robin only had about 4 people show up for what was to be a mini session.  For the most part, it went quite well with one exception...

The last lady brought two dogs, Shih-tzu's.  One that would not look at the camera no matter what we did and the other that was down right uncooperative!  I end up snapping about 50 photos that were useless all in an attempt to snap what I hoped was ONE or TWO good photos...I did this on purpose. 

(Did I mention that I. AM. NOT. CESAR. MILLAN??)

When a dog (or child or adult, or bird, or bumble bee, you get the idea) is constantly moving and won't stay still, it makes it impossible to obtain GREAT results...which I'm sure you can appreciate.  So after what felt like an hour of snapping photos, I offered to show the owner a preview on the computer (MISTAKE #1).

She immediately HATED every single one of the pictures.  No joke, she hated them all.  In fact, she proceeded to berate me about my photography skills and asked why I would take such terrible photos!  No joke again, this continued on for a couple of minutes, all the while I'm getting more and more annoyed! 

 (Did I mention that I. AM. NOT. CESAR. MILLAN??)

FINALLY, in as nice of a voice that I could muster up, I calmly but firmly explained the facts of the situation to her.

• That SHE couldn't even control her dogs how in the world did she expect me to do it?
• In photography when you're working with challenging subjects, you take photos in bursts...one shot right after the other as fast as the camera will fire IN HOPES that you capture a few good shots.
• And that if she wasn't happy with any of the photos, I wasn't going to waste my time editing any of them for her, she'd have to go somewhere else.

Whew! My blood pressure is starting to rise just typing this story...

In the end, she said to send her 3 or 4 photos.  Eeek!  

I haven't even begun to look at those photos but I do have a couple photos from the other pupper dogs that did cooperate...

 

 

I took away a few very valuable lessons from this experience and will definitely change up a couple of things next year as I do photography on the side as a little side business.  I am very thankful for all the people who have helped me hone my skills along the way.  I am looking forward to 2013 to see what photography projects come my way.

There are always lessons in life...it's a matter of being able to see them for what they are OR have them slam you over the head like a sledge hammer. 

I prefer to see them the easy way and hope to avoid the sledge hammers out there!  :-)

Pom-Pom Girl...

This little gal lives two doors down and makes the occasional appearance at our back slider. If Quincy isn't outside, she'll stand at the door and just bark and bark and bark...until we let Q out.

We don't know her name so we call her Miss Pom-Pom or Pom-Pom Girl (real creative, huh?). She's really cute but a little shy.  It took her forever to get this close to Q.  Of course, he just wants to play like crazy but I think she's more interested in teasing him than anything else.

Once Q is outside, they play for a few minutes and then she dashes away just as quickly as she appears.

Today, I grabbed my camera just in time to snap a couple of shots before she disappeared!

Love those little elves...

Yesterday, some elves arrived and helped decorate around our house...thank goodness for those little guys!! Ok, well maybe it was one big elf named Bob!

Here's a snippet of some of what they he did...

 I think I better rearrange those Christmas presents so the tree doesn't look so small in comparison!

THIS is the very first Christmas ornament Bob ever got for me!  He was cute and thoughtful back then too!

This last shot was a whoppin' 4 seconds long for the exposure.

Can you tell how much I still love my new/old camera!!

Get a J.O.B.!

I'm behind on posting so today's a two for one!

A couple of weeks ago I decided to play around with my camera so I invited Quincy to join me in my make-shift studio (our game room).  Yeah, that's right, I've taken over part of the game room...much to Bob's dismay!

Anyway, Quincy was more than willing to take part in my mini-shoot.  I thought it would be mission impossible since I was working solo and Bob wasn't here to help keep Q's attention.

As you can see, he was more than happy to cooperate, at least for a few shots...

A few shots in and this is what I felt like he was telling me...

After another couple of minutes, I guess he got bored to tears because this is all I got...

I think he needs to get a J.O.B.!  :-)