All the Single Ladies

Okay, I have to admit that I got that idea for a title from my friend Emilee.

She was asked by our Young Women president to come take picture of all the Young Women in our ward and Emilee graciously asked me come along as her second shooter.

Can I just say shooting teenage girls is so much different then shooting toddlers?

All of them are exceptionally beautiful young ladies. I really mean that. I hope they all know how beautiful they are!

I know all photographers say this, but it's hard to pick just a few of my favorite. It really does feel like trying to pick my favorite child.

A treasure beyond measure

A little over a month ago I had the opportunity of taking pictures for a Primary (children's Sunday School) activity. It was a Grandparent's "T" Party.

A couple of weeks before the event I was able to watch portions of the CreativeLIVE Jasmine Star workshop Jasmine Star is a very successful wedding photographer, and although I don't aspire to wedding photography I never turn down the opportunity to learn ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I can about photography, so I tuned in.

At one point Jasmine talked about attending a Zack Arias One Light Workshop (who was the keynote speaker at Photocamp Utah last year and is, by the way, TOTALLY AMAZING!) and him telling a story about a man wanted to shoot the World Series. (The story was probably about a now super famous sports photographer, and I'm totally messing up the story by not being able to tell you WHO he was....but it is what it is. I've got 3 kids-only so much info stays in my head at any one time.) Anyway, the point is, the only gigs he was getting was shooting Jr. League T-ball. And for a long time he shot the games like he was shooting Jr. League T-Ball. Until one day he realized that he needed to start shooting even T-ball games like he was shotting the World Series. And, so of course, you know what happened. Once he changed his mindset it wasn't too long before was, in fact, shooting the World Series.

I likely massacred that story, but hopefully the underlying message remains. At any rate it inspired me to change my mindset. I didn't want to go into this thinking "Oh, I'm just shooting a primary activity." I wanted to be as serious and professional and creative as possible.

Jasmine also talked a lot about building your brand as a photographer. She has 3 words she uses to describe her own photography and every picture she takes should be a reflection of those 3 words. She encouraged the photographers who were attending her workshop live to pick their own three words.

I don't know that I'm to the point of picking 3 words to describe all my photography, but I decide to go into this particular assignment with 3 words.

Since it was an activity for grandparents I chose as my 3 words: vintage, antique, priceless. Because that's what I think of grandparents. They are not old junk. They are antique-something that maybe has been around a little while, but that very thing is what makes them of great value.

So armed with my 3 words I set about trying to create that feel. I got this idea in my head that I wanted an old barn door to use as a backdrop. Amazing photographer and all around nice guy, Rich Legg, came to the rescue and loaned me a very weathered section of wood fencing. It was perfect!

So, enough talk already! What you really want to see is some of the pictures.

Remember, I was going for VINTAGE, ANTIQUE, PRICELESS.

Brightly Colored

At church yesterday my boys were wearing bright polo shirts and my daughter a bright pink polo dress. My friend saw them in the hall and commented that what they were wearing would make great picture outfits. Which was so funny that she would say that because that's exactly what they were! We had our family picture taken a few months ago by the very talented and all around super nice guy Rich Legg

See, here we are in our brightly colored polo shirts.



My mom saw the pictures and said we looked like colored Easter Eggs.

Zoey was hamming it up for the camera!





Adam was his typical goofy self



And Harrison was looking WAAAAY too grown up!





Thanks again Rich!!!!

Choo Choo

Now that I blogged out of order I inadvertantly gave myself permission to pretty much blog about whatever I want, whenever I want. Do you have any idea how freeing that feels? I seriously should've done this a long time ago! My blog may not have been so neglected for so long if I had.

So today, I picked, at random, something I have been intending to blog about.

Way back in March (yes, 5 months ago!!!!) I went to a Photowalking Utahphoto walk at the Union Station in Ogden.

I took my oldest son, Adam. He loves cameras and trains so it seemed the perfect opportunity to take him on his very first photo walk.

Here are some of my favorites from the day.


crack


watch your step


restoration shop


fuel


tracks


christmas lights in march

Engage Brain

I often tell my children that they need to think about the consequences of their actions BEFORE they act. In fact, I sound like a broken record when it comes to the subject. Think, think, think I say. Use your head!

I should take my own advice.

Yesterday as I was walking out the door to take my oldest to school a tall youngish gentleman was standing on my porch. He started rambling something off to me in perfect English but with a very think accent that I didn't recognize.

I kindly blew him off because I needed to get my child to school. He asked if he could come back in an hour or so and I said yes just so I could get away.

But I should mention we had had a big storm early that morning and it was cold outside and this guy was in shorts and a thin polo shirt.

As I am walking down my driveway with him he is prattling on about being unprepared for Utah weather and I so I offer to go back in my house and grab him something to warmer to wear.

I rush in and grab the first thing I can find, because I am in a hurry. I dash back outside with one of my husband's coats and hand it to him. He puts it on and goes on on about how it feels like paradise and thank you so much and he'll be back later.

He did in fact come back later, at which point he gave me his whole sales pitch for over priced children's books. I listened politely (because his accent was amusing-oh he was from Latvia) but then declined his product.

As he was packing his stuff up to go he asked me about the jacket-in as much as the sun had still not come out and he was on bicycle he was offering to purchase the jacket. He said he had looked at some at Walmart recently and they were around $20 so he would pay me that for the jacket.

I knew I had paid only $9 for that particular jacket because of end of season prices and it was really just a cheap coat anyway. Seriously. This is not the type of coat you would take skiing. So I felt bad taking money since so I implosivly just told him to keep it. He was a bit taken aback, asked if I was sure, and then proceeded to thank me profusely.

I guess since he figured I was a sucker he then proceeded explain to me that he would be selling his books through the end of the week and then he would be back delivering personally all that he had sold and that he only had his bicycle and did I know somebody who may need a little extra cash who would be willing to drive him around to deliver his books.

Once again, acting without thinking, I gave him the name and address of my bishop. (The local leader of my church congregation.) In my head he would know all the people in the neighborhood who were out of work right now who may be interested in a small odd job like that.

At that point this guy apparently felt quite comfortable around me (and yes he was in my house, and no my husband wasn't home and no I don't typically do that!!!) and so he asked if he could use my bathroom.

Of course I said yes.

It wasn't until he left that I suddenly realized all I had done.

I gave away my husband's coat!!!!! Yea, sure I bought it on sale at the end of the season a few years ago but we're going into the beginning of the season and it was going to cost me more than $9 to replace it for the upcoming fall.

I had violated my bishop's privacy by giving out his name and address.

I'd let him in my home.

I am not one to be overly scared about things but suddenly all those emails my mom forwards me about con artists and people pretending to be door to door salesmen who are really burglars just casing the joint flooded into my head.

Plus I gave him my husband's coat!

I believe it may be time to get a No Soliciting sign. Because even though I did manage to throw the Kirby salesman out on my front porch (I should blog that story someday....it's a good one!) I don't always exhibit wisdom when it comes to the door to door types.

Memories

Today I've been watching Jasmine Star over at creativeLIVE as she shares with the world her knowledge and experience as a wedding photographer. (And tomorrow she is going to shoot an actual wedding live.)

I say I was watching, but really I have 3 kids who need to be fed and cleaned and entertained and picked up from school and there's laundry to fold and bills to pay...but it was running in the background all day and I caught bits and pieces of it as I went about my mommly duties.

So you'd think I'd want to write a post tonight all about what I've learned or about what I think of Jasmine or a how I'm going to be a better photographer now.

But really I'm going to write about something totally random.

You see, at one point today they actually stopped chatting in the classroom and started shooting the bride and groom. Jasmine took the group outside and wandered quite a ways from the building were they had all the equipment set up for the live streaming.

As the group was all finally coming back they had a quick shot of one of the tech guys and somebody in the booth commented how he was dragging around and keeping tangle free 250 feet of camera cable.

And then I had a flashback of my college days.

I was a broadcast journalism major and had an assistant professor who got fed up with the camera cables being constantly tangled. He preached to us how in the professional world that would never be accepted. Because if you need the camera NOW you do not have time to unravel and tangled cable. And so that day he took us all out into the hall and showed us the proper way to coil a cable so that it would quickly uncoil at a moment's notice. And then we spent the rest of the class time coiling cables and then, while holding onto one end tossing the cable down the hall in order to uncoil it, the idea being that if we had coiled it correctly it would uncoil easily, no tangles.

Seriously. The entire hour he forced us to repeatedly coil and uncoil the cable. This is what I paid good tuition money for!

And yet as I watched the tech guys chase down Jasmine and crew today I'm sure the cameraman was EXTREMELY happy to have somebody on his team that could keep his cable tangle free.

I'm going to start putting on my resume that I know how to keep a camera cable untangled. Maybe then I could move to Seattle and work for creativeLIVE someday.

non-sequential

I'm a sequential kind of gal. I like things to go in order. One then two then three. It bothered me that they made the Di Vinci Code movie before Angels and Demons because as books they came the other way around. I refuse to start watching a television show mid-season. Dessert always comes AFTER dinner.

This need for order is a detriment to me when it comes to blogging. When I stop blogging for awhile but want to start again I have a NEED to catch up in order. For some reason I can't just jump right back into blogging where my life is at RIGHT NOW. I have to "fill in" all the missing parts from when I wasn't blogging. But then the task of "catching up" seems so daunting that time consuming that I put it off and put it off. So then I just may as well give up blogging all together. (This is the same reason I don't scrap book!)

But I saw something today that was too funny. So I'm just putting it out there. Out of order! And I'm surprisingly at peace with that.

I drove past a day care today and their sign out front was missing a VERY important letter!

It said "Great Rats! Come take a tour today!"

Great Rats? At a day care? And you want to advertise that?

(I believe it was meant to say great rates.....)

I was laughing hysterically. I so wanted to take a picture. But I was driving. And had to pee (which wasn't helped by the fact that I was laughing) and I had perishables in the back seat. So I resisted to urge to drive around the block so I could take a picture.

But it made my day just the same.

And look!!!! A breakthrough! I blogged non-sequentially! This opens a whole new door of opportunity for me!