I have been learning a lot about branding and various marketing strategies.  One of those was a project we created in InDesign for an ePub document that can be used for portfolios.  I really enjoyed this assignment; it totally made me think of scrapbooking and I love that! 

For this project I chose to showcase some of the family photo experiences I have been working on recently.  Let me know if you would like to book your session with me before Christmas, I would love to be able to help you capture some great memories with your loved ones.

Click here to view my interactive Family Portfolio.

Grandma and her sweet little granddaughter

 taking a walk while I made images of her cousin.

I had the pleasure yesterday of photographing someone I have known for about two years. I haven't seen Vonna in quite some time, but it was so nice of her to book her photo experience with me.  She has quite the lovely family and they were so much fun to photograph. I didn't feel like I was working at all.

I am so blessed to have worked with her on this overcast, cold fall day at Finch Arboretum in Spokane.  The colors were beautiful and the perfect backdrop to her gorgeous family.  The babies, one who just turned one year a couple days prior, and the other 15 months, were so easy-going. Not a single whimper out of either of them.  I loved watching these two cousins interact with one another and it was super adorable when little H fed cheerios to sweet baby C.

Thank you, Vonna, and family for a super experience.  I look forward to making memories with your family again.

Photographic Media Field Trip

I love how we are learning to see light differently; the way it mottles the ground as the sun streams through the leaves, the texture it adds, or takes away, from a  surface, the shadows created as someone walks through your light source.  I love the beauty that light brings to the world around us.  

It was a great afternoon of class where we were able to go downtown to Browne's Addition and wander and just photograph things as we saw them, trying to focus on a few different things/techniques in our environment: lights, mottling, panning, reflections, shallow depth of field, etc.  I love shallow depth of field so I often do have my camera set to a wide open aperture so that I can focus directly on my subject and letting the rest fall off so they can shine.  

I tried a few different things for reflections, but didn't have as much success as I thought I would.  I tried to capture the clearness of the apartment buildings in Jadyn's sunglasses, but it wasn't nearly as clear as what I though it was to my naked eye.  The wine glasses in the restaurant window as we walked past were lovely and you could see some of the building from across the street and a few trees if you look closely enough.  I also stood to the side as Shae tried to photograph Sarah from inside the copy shop window as she was reflected back through the window that was close to me.  While they aren't the clearest of photographs, it was fun to try and capture these images.

As Elizabeth and I walked along we walked under a chestnut tree.  I had never really paid attention to how large the pods for these chestnuts were.  They are huge!  Elizabeth loves these as they remind her of her childhood and picking them and reaching inside after cracking them open so she could see the fruit of the nuts inside.  As she squished it, it started to crack.  She reached down, picked it up and began opening it to reveal the goodies inside.  Excitement arose as she discovered that not there were three inside, not the more common two!  Chestnuts are lovely as they emerge from their pod; all shiny and lovely brown-red in color.  Chestnuts are simply beautiful!

It was a great day - one that I am not only grateful for the opportunity to photograph the beauty around me, but to also be able to do that with friends and classmates who can share this beauty from their point of view and to remember it in the form of a photograph.

Girl cracking up walnut pods to reveal the three chestnuts inside on October 5, 2017 in downtown Spokane, Browne's Addition, Washington.

Girl cracking up walnut pods to reveal the three chestnuts inside on October 5, 2017 in downtown Spokane, Browne's Addition, Washington.

Girl cracking up walnut pods to reveal the three chestnuts inside on October 5, 2017 in downtown Spokane, Browne's Addition, Washington.

Braelynn - Class of 2018

Braelynn is so fun!  We had a great time with her senior session, even if the smoke from the forest fires still lingered in the air.

I have learned a few things from this session that will be good to keep in mind from here on out.  One, don't use the gold reflector that comes in the 5-in-1 kit (why do they even include one?); it make skin tones so much more orange and a chore to remove.  Two, smoky days are NOT for photographing in.  Unlike cloud cover the smoke also contributes to a more orange skin tone.   After trying to remove those colors, these are the images I was able to share with Braelynn and her family.

Fashion

I had the opportunity to photograph a classmate friend's roommate for a special event our school holds each year at a local event center.  Randi, the friend, was more than happy to oblige us as we made multiple images of her.  I love how a few of these turned out.  Each of these was made using only the ambient lighting streaming through the windows in this lovely hall.

Video Short - Studio 1 Final Project

Prior to this quarter I had no knowledge of how to create a video.  This was an effort for sure!  I got it figured out pretty well; iMovie was the source I used to create it.  This program is fairly simple to use; I was able to figure it out without any assistance.  I had to use the same program to create the video for my studio design course last week.

One of the challenges I faced was that a lot of the video I recorded was far more than what I needed for this project.  Clipping it down to meet the 2-3 minute requirement took me a very long time to do because there were several things in each one that I wanted to keep to share.  I am excited to have learned this new skill and to see other ways I can use it in the future.  I think it’s fun seeing how the videos can enhance your still photos in a new way by seeing what goes into making these images.  We see photographs and don’t necessarily think about the lighting or the time that was needed to make the images.  I have a better understanding now of the production of these images and by seeing them put together with the video helped that knowledge.

This studio class was challenging for me.  I learned a lot, but I also know that I still have so much more to learn.  Ratios are still a hard concept for me to understand; time will improve that.  I also learned that my notes need to be better throughout the quarter. I am aware that I am a procrastinator, it’s something that I drive myself crazy with, but I need to do better in future quarters.  I am hoping that if the assignment requirements are the same, like the blog style formatting record, and the video short, that I can create the documents as we go through each class so that I am not trying to sort all of the things at one time, creating undue stress on myself.

I enjoyed learning how to photograph people and still life better.  This was something I had wanted to improve on when I began the class.  I am by no means done with learning, I hope to be a lifelong learner, but I’m glad I have a better understanding of lighting and posing/positioning subjects/objects. 

I am looking forward to this next quarter of classes where we will be learning more about color and doing some location photography. 

Inland Northwest Naturescape - A Video

I live in the Inland Northwest and am blessed to be surrounded by nature.  There are several rivers within 120 mile radius that are overflowing with raging waters from spring runoff.  One such river in Washtucna, Washington bears a beautiful 200' waterfall.  Within our community of Spokane, Washington we have a gorgeous Spokane River running through downtown.

This video was made for an assignment in my photographic design course to help us learn more about a place that was important to us.  It was a great experience to see our community and recognize the beauty surrounding us.  I chose "naturescape" as my theme for this.  I love to walk out the door and see mountains to the north, find the rivers all around us, trees that surround our homes, and deer walking through neighborhoods.  My home is a gorgeous place indeed.

Please enjoy a little taste of what eastern Washington has to offer.

Photographic Design

We are rounding out the end of this quarter and I have several projects and portfolios to complete.  One of these projects was to create a slideshow for my Photographic Design class of some of the images taken for this class.

This class was about creativity and a lot about the design elements and principles that help to make great images.  It was hard for me to always be looking for the elements, but I do find myself seeing them more now.  I am sure this becomes second nature after one does it for awhile.  Some of these images aren't my best, but they were some that had some meaning to me, so even if not the best, I included them.

I often go out photographing with a great group of new friends thanks to this photography program.  There's so much fun to be had when photographing with friends and everyone has a different skill set so we learn from each other as well. I'm looking forward to the many ideas we have for other "field trips"!

Photographic Design Slideshow