These days...

I'm starting something new here today. This idea has been mulling around in my brain for a week or so and I have decided to act on it. I happen to be moving from this wonderful place called the dc metro area, to the amazing city of Austin, TX. This is both a happy and sad occurrence. It will be so difficult to leave everything I know, all my friends and family and move half way across the country. But at the same time, its so exciting to move to Austin, where I'll get to see my Fiance every day, and start a new job, and be where I'm suppose to be.

So, I'm a mix of emotions. The idea is, to photograph my life here in Maryland from Today (Sunday) until Wednesday June 9th, when I leave on my 2 day journey. Originally I thought I would just document the Maryland side of things, but upon further consideration, I have decided that I shall document the entire journey, including the move into my new apartment at the end of June. SO, that means everyday for the next 37 days, I will be posting 1 or 2 photos from my day. Not of random things like I usually do for my photo of the day, but of the things and people that make up my day. To document the things I love about Maryland, about my 2 day drive to Austin, and about my new life. It will most certainly be a challenging thing but, I am sure that I will be glad for it. This is the biggest thing to occur in my life so far, I think its worth documenting.

I have decided to name this little thing of mine the These Days... Project. The title is inspired by a song from the Denison Witmer Recovered Album called These days, the original song is by Jackson Browne. I have had this album since it came out and I just love his rendition of the song, and lately its been stuck in my head.

Today, after church I met up with Miss Sarah Patch. We got lunch in Adams Morgan at Tryst, and then headed down to the National Gallery of Art, to enjoy a Photography Exhibit . It was a great day. I am certainly going to miss spending time with Sarah, she has been one of my good friends since I was in the 5th grade. It was great spending the day with her, and so I made her my subject for my photographs today.

Now I'm off to the grocery and then I'll hopefully get to curl up with some hot tea and talk to the fiance. Have a great night!

Mandy + Joe the Full Post-Wedding Preview

I think this post's title says all that needs to be said. If you've followed my blog for any amount of time, you know that this post has been long coming. So here is the story: back in November the 3 of us headed down to Alexandria, VA and the district to do a little post wedding shoot for them. They had been married about a month and I wanted to try out a new camera. So we made a day of it.

Enjoy!!

The LONG awaited Mandy + Joe Post wedding sneak peak!

So, I know everyone has been waiting, for a very long time to see the rest of the Mandy + Joe post-wedding shoot. It happened back in November and its now Mid-May. But trust me, it will be worth the wait for this last installment. :-) I am almost finished with the entire set, and will most likely be posting the full preview here tomorrow night, but I am just too excited to wait til then, so I thought I would post a little sneak peak.

So enjoy this PDA-licious photo. Mandy and Joe are totally not PDA people, but they pushed thru this inhibition for this session and I think they will be glad for it. So without further ado, I present to you the offical sneak-peak:

Have a great night!

Ashley's Senior Session

I have been itching to post the Full preview of Ashley's senior session for the past week, but I wanted to  finish editing the set before posting. So now that I have finished and given her the images, I am putting up her post.

You met Ashley, a few weeks ago, but please meet her again. :-)

Ashley is my cousin and she happens to be a Senior. She is actually graduating a year early, which makes her fabulous. The Saturday before Easter we headed down to D.C. to take some senior pictures. We started out at the National Botanical Gardens, and then we walked around the Mall, and eventually headed over to the Cherry Blossoms by the Tidal Basin. So I decided to asked her to some questions about herself so we could all get to know her a bit better.

Lets start with the basics, Her birthday is September 1st. Her Favorite color is Purple. Her Favorite Band is Metallica. Her Favorite type of  Food is German. Her Favorite subject in school is English. She'll be attending Kaplan University starting in July this year, and will be in the Nursing assistant program. When asked what her Favorite things to do in her spare time, she responded with "Just volunteering and working at the Hagerstown suns. I like doing anything that requires creativity like crafts and projects." Sounds pretty cool right? She totally is.

Now that we've got the basics, lets move on to the fun stuff!

I asked her If she could travel anywhere in the world where would it be and why? And she responded with such an amazing answer:  "I would travel to Africa where there is high poverty. I think it would help me appreciate what I have more and seeing a new culture would be exciting. Maybe I can get a tan too." Talk about girl after my own heart.

I also asked her If she was the richest person in the world, what would she do with her life/career and she gave a quality answer, that totally makes me smile. She said, "I would help out as much as I can. I would travel and find out more about the world. And okay I'd probably get a nice house and a pool and a pool boy. :] "

My final question was, As a kid, what did she want to be when she grew up. This is another one where her answer isn't all that different from what mine would be. She said, "I could never decide on one thing. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a long time because I love the ocean so much, but right now most of them are sent to cold places to do research and I hate cold weather. I used to watch shark week and all those shows on TV because its so fascinating. I just love the powerful feeling of the ocean."

 

 

She really is amazing and an awesome model to boot. So for your viewing pleasure, a slideshow of Ashley's Senior Session:

 

 
 

sneak peak!

Here is a little sneak peak of Ashley's Senior session. Ashley is my cousin. She is super smart and is graduating a year early, this June, and so we headed down to DC to do some senior portraits. I'll give you more info about her when I do a full post. Enjoy!

A good excuse

I know it has been quite some time since my last post, but I promise it is not without good reason. That reason is that I have been busy editing photos from my various photo shoots and adventures, and setting up a flickr.

The other really good reason is that I fell shoveling snow and cracked a bone in my elbow and now have a big blue "L"-Shaped cast on left my arm (which happens to be my dominate arm) that makes everything take a lot longer and that makes typing rather difficult. I think more than anything, its just frustrating, because I'm use to the conviences of bending and turning my arm and hand and thus everything in life right now is that much harder. Plus, my arm does hurt a good bit.

But enough of that. Here is proof for you that I have indeed been working on things:

Also check out my flickr. Have a great night and enjoy the snowy-craziness that is maryland this weekend.

Photo shoot-Melissa 2010

On Wednesday I got a text message from my good friend from college, Melissa. She asked me if I would be able to do a last minute photo shoot with her so she could have some head shots for an audition she has this Sunday. Well, of course I jumped at the chance. I can't turn down a good challenge, taking and editing photos all in one day. It was a lot of fun and I got some really amazing photographs of Melissa, she is just stunning and amazingly photogenic. Here is a slideshow with the photos I edited for her today. I'll post a full preview next week when I've gotten around to editing more of them. Have a great Saturday, And thanks Melissa!

Family

Today I spent the day with my sister Katie and her family because its my mom's birthday. We went shopping and then to my niece Grace's (my sister Katie's daughter) christmas play that was rescheduled. The play was so good. It was simple and pretty short, maybe 30 minutes but it was really nice and all the kids did an amazing job. Right after the play was over my sister was holding her other daughter hannah and it was such a sweet moment so I told them to look at me and I snapped this shot. You might remember both of them from my photo of the day this past wednesday, originally this fact had deterred me from choosing this photo but it was just too good to pass up.

I've decided that I am really over winter, and that the only reason I thought I liked it was because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. I wish the cold weather would go away because it makes me a bit mopey, I tend to want to curl up in a ball and avoid the world. Not a good thing to do so I'm trying to fight through it and hold out for Spring. Well enough random musing, have a great night and a great Monday tomorrow!

Day 03- Wordless Wednesday

Mandy + Joe TTD full preview

The full Mandy + Joe Trash the Dress preview is here! Enjoy the slide show. :-)

Have a great night.

Distractions

ight now I am sitting in the Shock Trauma waiting room at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore while my uncle is in surgery. We were allowed to go up and see him before he went in and I have to say, it was more difficult than I imagined it would be. When I was in Nursing school I had a rotation in the O.R., and in the ICU I've seen people Intubated and all that and its never been difficult for me to see or even bothersome, I'm very good at looking at things with a clincial eye, so I thought that this would be no different. But, to my surprise it was impossible to look at him that way. I guess its harder to see a someone you care about with all those tubes. The surgeon said he should be in surgery for anwhere between 2-4 hours, so now we play the waiting game. It could be anywhere from a few minutes to 3 more hours.

 I'm really glad that I brought my laptop with me otherwise I think I'd be going crazy, it gives me something else to focus on. I've been sitting here working on the Trash the dress photos for Mandy + Joe and its helped me take my mind of things a bit. This past month has been quite the journey. There have been so many people in my family that have been in and out of the hospital and there's been a lot of stress at work. I know that its made me a stronger person, that I will be able to endure more in the future. Its taught me how to push thru and compartmentalize things so that I can continue with my life at a somewhat normal pace.

Here's a little mini preview of the TTD session with Mandy + Joe. I'll post a full slideshow preview a little later today.

From Mandy + Joe trash the dress

From Mandy + Joe trash the dress

Day 030

Its day 30 of the Photo Month Challenge and I only have one more day to go. It feels like I've been doing this for longer than 30 days and it feels wierd to think that I won't have to do this on Tuesday. A little bittersweet. I'm proud of myself for actually getting my photo of the day done before dinner though.

If you've followed my blog for awhile you probably know that I really like TTV photography, and that I dabble a bit with it using a duaflex II. I L-O-V-E this camera. I am half tempted to go purchase film for it and go around using it as a normal camera. I love the way this camera looks, how it feels, the mechanics of it, its just such an amaizng thing. In the future I kind of want to collect other vintage cameras as well and display them on a cool bookcase and then just pick them up and use them when I want. This probably seems kind of lame, but that doesn't really bother me. :-) For a few days I've been contemplating doing a portrait of my duaflex but haven't liked any of the test shots I've taken of it. Today I decided to commit and take photos of it until I got one I liked.

runner up:

Mandy + Joe Christmas slideshow

Today I was finally able to get Mandy + Joe's Christmas photos to them. So, now that the photos are in their possesion, I'll post a slideshow of them here for everyone. Enjoy!

Hopefully in the next two weeks I'll be finishing up with the trash the dress and I'll be able to post a preview.

Mandy + Joe Christmas Preview

So here is a small preview of the Christmas photos I took for Mandy + Joe in old town Alexandria a few weeks back. I'll post my photo of the day a little later tonight. Enjoy!

Day 008

So today is Day 008. I spent the entire day with my Best Friend Mandy and her husband of 1 month, having a photo-adventure of sorts. So my photo of the day is from that epic photo shoot:

Here's the runner up:

I haven't had a chance to really do any editing but I have started the sorting process. I tweaked the color and contrast on these ever so slightly. Enjoy.

Mandy + Joe

So my friend, and amazing photographer Sarah allowed me to go with her to do my best friend Mandy's engagement shoot. Here are two of my favorite images from the very long day. I'll post later about the adventure that was that day, but for now I'll give you the pictures.

Goodnight!

This mini post is for Francie

So it is early and I have decided to post a few of my finished shots here for Francie because she has been patiently awaiting her engagement photos that were taken last weekend. I haven't finished editing all of them but I thought a sneak-peak was in order.

Enjoy! And have a great Sunday!

the half blood prince

So I said I was going to post about going to see Harry Potter 6, but I lied. I was busy photo editing from some portrait shoots I did and didn't have a chance. As much as I know everyone was dying to hear about H.P., I feel like posting some stuff from those shoots.

So I went to the beach the weekend of July 18th, and my Aunt Cathy asked me to take some good pictures of my cousins because she doesn't have many of them together. I felt nervous and I felt a lot of pressure because I haven't really done much portraiture. I think that nerves and awkwardness aside it went well. Here are two of my favorites from that shoot.

My Friend Francie got engaged that weekend when I was at the beach and She asked me if I would do her engagement photos and I excitedly agreed. After I had some time to think through my decisions I freaked out a bit. I was afraid that I would disappoint them, and that the images would be boring and they would hate me forever. Obviously this was a bit disproportionate and dramatic, but all the same these were my fears. These fears prompted me to ask my parents to go with me to the locations of the pending shoot and do a mini test shoot with them. Well to my immense surprise, I got some great shots of the parentals. My parents have very few pictures together, seeing as my dad does not particularly enjoy having his photo taken, so I was glad to have some good pictures of them for my mom and family. Here are a couple of my favorites.

So I know that these aren't those most blow you away images, but I think they are pretty good considering I don't have much experience with taking pictures of people. I know that with each shoot I get better.

Well, its off to bed for me, because in the morning I am going along with my close friend, and seriously talented photographer Sarah Patch to do an engagement shot for my best friend Mandy and her fiance Joe.

I will post a few of the shots I've finished from the Francie + Aaron engagement shoot sometime tomorrow.