Thacker Family Session

It's true, taking pictures right before sunset really is the most beautiful time to do it!

Yesterday I was able to take some family portraits of the Thacker Family. We drove out to a local park with some lovely scenery and walked around taking pictures and enjoying each other's company. Their daughter Ashley came with a great vintage dress that photographed well and made her look beautiful! Their son Tate was a ball to work with, and it was great to photograph a couple who seemed to be just as in love as they would have been for their engagement pictures!  

Thank you to the Thackers for a wonderful evening!

Photo Retouching

Today I got a special package in the mail! My new photography books! The only official photography class I've ever taken was my senior year of high school. I thought it was going to be learning how to develop film in a dark room. I didn't realize 2004 was around the time digital photography was really taking off and film was dying out. We learned how to use Photoshop CS. And I learned how to get creative with the simplest tools. It's been very helpful even still. But, all my photography education since then has come from reading. My husband helped me to find a book that teaches photographers how to effectively touch up portraits, and that was the book that I dove right into today.

Here is my first attempt at the "airbrush" look! Pardon the zits in my original….hehe

Newborn

This past weekend I had the opportunity to take pictures of a brand new little one! The poor baby was so upset with us trying to interfere with lunch time and nap time that we only got a few serene shots, but it was precious and fun nonetheless!

Lesson learned, it's best to have a lot of good natural lighting for baby pictures, so cloudy rainy days can be a little tricky. And its ideal to have a baby sleeping in a milk coma haha. However, the family's older children were only too happy to pose and I was able to capture the light in their beautiful blue eyes.

The Reflector

When it came in the mail, the reflector came in a relatively small package. And then we opened it up and it exploded. For some reason, I thought I had ordered a much smaller version. Oh well! Then I spent the next several weeks trying to figure out how to collapse it. Sad I know.

It was finally suggested to me that I should watch a video on youtube to do it. And well, I learned a lot more from that video than just how to get it back into it's bag. Apparently without the silver or gold attatched, the opaque is for diffusing sunlight. Who knew! Man, I wish I had that little bit of information when I was taking pictures for the Johnson's this past week!

I went outside to try it out. And I've got to say, it worked fairly well! Then only thing I still need to figure out it how to take a picture so that I don't have the reflector's shadow in the shot.

I've also been able to go upstairs into my studio and use the different sides to get different affects. I always thought I didn't have enough light up there, but apparently all I needed was a reflector! I sure am having a lot of fun learning all of these neat little tricks. Haha I bet all you experienced photographers out there are laughing at me, but you gotta figure it all out sometime!

Johnson Family Session

Today, I had the opportunity to take some nice family pictures for a friend of mine from church. Becca and her two boys, Alex and Evan, were great sports in the strong Iowa wind and sunshine! We decided to meet at a park in Ames and had so much fun strolling around, utilizing all of the beautiful scenery! It's always so much fun to photograph families; you can just tell those little boys love their mommy!

Thanks Becca!