Wedding

I had the opportunity to shadow Kathy Stephens at a wedding she did back in April, and I had a GREAT time and feel like I learned a lot! I learned that even though weddings are challenging and fast paced, I still at some point would LOVE to focus on wedding photography. I've always loved weddings. They're beautiful, and every wedding is different. It was a great experience, and I'm SO grateful to Kathy for letting me come along!

However, I also learned that to shoot weddings (especially indoor weddings), having better equipment than I have right now is absolutely necessary. There isn't much time to be constantly changing camera settings or testing the settings to make sure they're right. Also, with an indoor wedding, lighting is difficult! If I'd had a flash other than the in-camera one (which I was too nervous to use in case it would distract from the ceremony or mess with the video, plus I absolutely hate using the in-camera flash), I probably would've gotten some good shots at the ceremony and reception. Kathy taught me about bouncing the flash off of things (ceilings, walls, etc.) which I'll definitely keep in mind for future shoots (and hopefully future weddings!) and I can test it out with the flash I bought a few weeks after the wedding!

I actually like how some of the photos turned out, so I'll go ahead and post a few of my favorites!

Family Outing

My family and I went to one of our local fruit stands together!  It's a really cute fruit stand about 15 minutes away.  We got lots of peaches, a couple of tomatoes, some peanuts, and a jar of honey!

These are the best tomatoes I've ever had!

We picked out four of the biggest peaches!

I'm excited to make smoothies out of these!

Local honey always tastes better than the processed kind at the store.

Location Scouting

Vanessa and I took a trip to scout out new locations for shoots.  We went to our favorite Cups first to talk about where we should look.  We decided to drive to Clinton!  Unfortunately, the GPS on my phone ended up being difficult and we got lost a few times, but we finally got to Clinton.  We drove around a little bit, and found a few pretty cool things!  Turns out Sara was in Clinton, so we met her at the Cups there and talked, and she took us to a really pretty spot.  Sadly, the heat has been nearly unbearable the past couple weeks, so we didn't get to stay as long as we would've liked, but we did get some nice shots!

We saw the prettiest bicycle!

This is my favorite shot of the day.

Vanessa and I thought this was the cutest doormat!

Vanessa had set her camera and flower crown down at Cups, and I liked how it looked!

Sara took us to this really cool location!

I got to test out some different techniques, and I loved how this one turned out!

First 2014 Senior Shoot

I got to take Ben Dumas's senior portraits this past Tuesday, and it was so much fun!  This was the first senior shoot I've done for this new class of seniors, class of 2014.  Ben's such a sweet guy and we had a great time shooting!  I am SO incredibly pleased with how the photos turned out.  I was nervous, since this is the first full portrait shoot I've gotten to do in a few months, but Ben is a really photogenic person and that made my job so easy.  I'm absolutely ecstatic about these!