170/365

An Aunt and a Niece

At a family reunion this weekend, these two hit it off really well and for some reason they both had the same T-shirt, so of course they had to have their pic taken together.

It was a great weekend.

279/365

9/11 Tribute

This is an older, much older, image from 2015.  I was looking through some of my older posts and came across this one and several more from the same shoot.  The post was created in 2015, the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.

Many towns throughout the United States held/hold a "Stair Climb" as close to 9/11 as possible in honor of the responders who died that day.  This one was in Utica, NY at the tallest building.  Not sure how many flights it is, but the participates go up and down as many times as necessary to replicate the Twin Towers.

Each participant wears one or two name tags of a responder who died that awful day and at the end of the climb they post the name tag on a central viewing board for everyone to see.

If you can navigate to it, the post was in 2015 on Sept 11 where you'll see more photos of the event participants.  It's actually a full weekend of different events.  

I attended the event for several years and there wasn't one time when I didn't shed a tear or two while there.

My heart is grateful for:

selfless men and women

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Mini Models

I'm amazed I got a shot even this good considering how we were rushing to get done before the skies opened up with the threatening rain and it was just a cell phone image.  I'd love to go back and try it again with my grown-up camera and a little more time.

Feeling grateful for:

the fun we had on our little walk after our dinner

167/365

Three Kiddos

These three fit "birth order" so well.

My heart is grateful for:

Time spent with the grands

26/365    Portrait in Winter

So...when you live in a cold climate and you want your portrait made during the winter, you just bite the bullet and work outside, even if the temperature is only 0 degrees F.  I was not the photographer on this job but I managed to get a couple of images while they were working.

 8/366

 Family Portrait Session

Yesterday I had the chance to do a portrait session with this fun family.

After making some images with their pets, we did a few with just the humans in the family. 

I'm so glad I decided to do this session in the studio~~it was a great way to contain the pets and the kiddos. 

5/366

Fun portrait session

Several months ago I had the pleasure of working with these kids on a portrait session. The little kids were tricky but I finally got some images I like.  I think the parents will love these.

 

Photo Shoot

9/365

It was supposed to be sunny and beautiful that day.  Even the weather announcer on the radio seemed a little surprised that the clouds weren't cooperating by going away.  I was relieved though.  

Clouds mean the lighting is even (sometimes a little too even to be a little flat). They mean there's no need to squint. They mean slightly cooler temps.  They mean the photos can be taken in any direction.  So even though the lighting is not as creative as when the sun is shining, it makes the session a little more pleasant.

It turned out pretty well and everyone seems happy with the results.

Some More Photoshop Playing

6/365

I mentioned that I was taking an online photoshop elements course for digital scrapbooking.    This is one of the composites I created using one of my images of the Pow! Wow! event, gradients, frames, layers, and the different text functions.

Very fun.

Waikiki in Black & White

5/365

The other day my friend and I went to Waikiki with the intention of doing some street photography only in black & white.  We both LOVE black & white and I remember back in the day when the only  way to shoot b&w was to insert an entire roll of b&w film into the camera.

If you decided you wanted to switch to color halfway through the roll, you either had to stick it out and finish the roll or remove it which was pretty tricky to do.

Now....with digital, it's just a matter of switching functions. 

But shooting b&w is a different animal than shooting color.  You have to "see" differently and anticipate what will look good and what won't.  Sometimes it's easier to shoot in color and then convert to b&w on the computer.  Part of me thinks that's cheating.  Part of me thinks that's cool.

Shooting in a b&w function forces you to be more discerning--you know that the image has to stand on the merits of composition and contrast without the impact of beautiful color to grab the viewer's attention.  Of course, the digital darkroom can really enhance any image, as did the wet darkroom, so some images can be salvaged.

So we set our cameras on b&w and began shooting.

After we finished at the beach, we headed over to our favorite Starbucks.  We did a little practice with panning and slow shutter speed.  I didn't have my tripod and I was just trying to teach my friend how to do these techniques, so I really didn't anticipate having any keepers.  Most of the images I shot were deleted, but these next three appealed to me.  

(Although the camera was hand-held, I was resting the camera on a newspaper box)