2013 In Review

So for this post since I've been a bit busy with finals and now the Christmas and New Years holiday I wanted to do a year in review type of post where I look back on what all I have done with my life in the past year and amazingly enough I almost have pictures to cover all the months! Also the idea came to me while I was taking inventory of what all I still had after my hard drive with my life got stolen. I must say I am slightly impressed with myself because at times this year seems to have passed so fast but some of these pictures I feel were last year or so but they weren't! If you click on the month (unless otherwise stated) it will take you to the corresponding blog post.

So its only right to kick this post off with the shoot that started this blog out!

January: The water droplets, I loved this shoot and would love to do it again given the time, assistant and equipment since the assistant used lives in New York and the equipment was borrowed. I feel like this was was so long ago but it was only a year ago and its what has set me on this lovely journey with you readers :D.

 February: So these were from the time I got food poisoning and wasn't able to do the lovely 5k so I stood back and took pictures which was super duper fun and amazing.

 March: Here are a couple shots from a shoot with one of my amazing friends back in March, I honestly thought this was done back in 2012 but to my memories surprise it was in March!

April: Now this one has multiple posts that correspond with it so I am linking you to the month of April because the second post starts the five post long adventure I took in April. Each group of pictures will have their own link to that post if you just want to individually look at that post. In April I went on a cruise to shoot my cousins wedding but it was such a wonderful experience altogether and so many amazing pictures! Some of these pictures did not make it to the blog posts so here are some new things!

Costa Maya

Belieze

Roatan

Cozumel which I apparently never posted about...

And the wedding pictures I did were not readily available on my computer after the incident so i'm just linking you all, but enjoy some pictures of the ship because it was super pretty and I never posted any.

May: I had worked a convention and shared with you all how to photoshop a background and make it blend a bit better than in you just dropped something in the picture.

June was quiet but July was super busy so each has their own link! First was the milk shoot, then fourth of July but I held off posting until recently and another convention!

 August: Ok so for august i'm actually liking you to a youtube channel that me and my brother had started up with him and his puppet because they are a hoot and a half together! We do plan on doing more with him but we have booth been so busy with school and work that it just hasn't happened yet! But we do have two videos up! So shameless plug, you should check it out!

Now there is where my progress kind of halted, school and work kind of got in the way and I went through a bit financially so finally I am back on track and doing what I love, I am linking but not attaching the newest pictures from posts but I am throwing in one of a soon to be post. I did pictures of one of my friends little girls, the shoot was fun and challenging (try shooting a super curious child who wont for the life of her stay on the backdrop) but as a photographer you have to make do and produce pictures that are to last a lifetime. I am also throwing in one of the graduation pictures I did of my roommate, Congrats!

So I'm thankful for those of you who have been on this crazy journey with me and stuck around. 2014 promises to be just as fun I am kicking it off in New York and hopefully if I can save up the money I will be going to Scotland in the summer for school! So as a shameless plug for me I am trying to save up money for the Scotland trip so I have opened up an etsy account and I am selling different .little things that I make so check it out and buy things please! (Also you should check out those ads on the sided and bottom of my blog...)
I am also selling fine art portraits of my photos if you are interested feel free to contact me for prices!

So I am signing off for this year and I will see you all bright eyed and bushy-tailed in 2014!

Life is kind of a living hell right now...

So I've been on this crazy long hiatus from you all because of life and all that jazz. I want to update you that I am still alive I have just been going through some crazy stuff, I have lost a friend (not dead just not really friends anymore), had a ton of stuff stolen from my car (which included my external hard drive so most of my pictures are all gone) and most recently I had a flat tire which hey isn't all bad but one on top of another on top of another is all fun right?

So I am not here to bore you on the woefulness that is my life but I as I make my way through all of this am thinking of starting up a separate blog about how my life could be a c list movie. I do plan on updating as soon as I have more free time but I know for sure there will be an update immediately following new years and hopefully one just before.

The one just before new years will be about how to shoot fireworks, all of those pictures should have been posted on my facebook so I should be able to go back and get those for that post, if not then I am a bit SOL because it really isn't firework season so lets hope I have them on my facebook :/

The one after new years will be of my trip to New York! I am super lucky to have this chance to go up to New York for new years, I have an amazing friend who is letting stay at his place so I don't have to pay for a hotel. I will be up there a week so I expect to have a couple different blog posts separating all of my pictures.

I am now in the midst of finals and getting crap done for my stupid art class and hopefully I will be able to have a post up in about two weeks(hopefully sooner if my life lets me do what I want) with a couple pictures I took over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Now I don't want to just throw a bunch of words at you and not give you any pictures so here are some pics I have either previously posted the shoot and didn't share or I just hadnt had a chance to share it just yet.

 This picture was from my Night Time Photography blog post. This was a little pencil pouch I used to carry arround so we have a bit of fun up on the bridge.

 This shot is from the Photoshoot with off camera lighting blog post. I have a TON of pictures from this shoot that were just down right amazing, most of which are posted on my facebook page if you would like to check them out.

 This one is an extra from the Better then spoiled milk blog post. Yet again I have a ton of these but I havent gotten around to editing most of them! Hopefully there will be more of these up on my facebook page in the future.

This picture or rather composite is from a photoshoot I did almost a year ago. This is one of my very good friends and we were doing promo pics for the cosplay group she runs and I created this little beauty for her. 

Glam Maternity

So this past weekend I helped out one of my good friends Everett of Everett Ross Photography. He was doing a glamorous maternity shoot which is a little different form the normal maternity. I did not shot this but I did help with posing and lighting, all of the poses I am posting today are mine so this blog post will mostly be about the posing not the camera settings. For this shoot we only used one flash off camera to create a more dramatic lighting so I was holding the light stand and moving per shot to create the perfect mood for each shot. 

 So the couple wanted these pictures for their announcements and they wanted to do something different than the normal maternity pictures. So they decided on the Omni as the background and formal wear for the attire. We started in the lobby for the beginning of the shoot utilizing the decorative walls and the couches (not pictured). They were looking for some more “candid” type shots for the announcements so this first picture I feel makes it seem like we are looking in on a private moment. For posing we had them turn in towards each other and have him act like he’s whispering something in her ear. To showcase the baby bump especially if they are wearing a dress you want to have them put one hand below the bump making the bump more noticeable than if the hand wasn’t there. Working with them was quite easy seeing as she is actually a model so she knows how to work the camera and he, once he loosened up a bit, was super easy to direct.

 As we were shooting in the lobby one of the employees recommended we go up to the Republic of Texas, which for those who don’t know is the super fancy yet equally expensive restaurant at the top of the Omni. Since the restaurant was not open yet we didn’t have to worry about getting other people in the background which was perfect. For this next pose we had them on the stairs of the restaurant and had him one step above her. They has these cute little presents they brought as props and since the baby is a girl they had them wrapped in pink. The placement of the presents and his bowtie help draw the eye in and around the picture, also notice the hand placement accentuating the belly.

 This next shot was another candid one which we were able to get up higher making it look a little more intimate between them. We had her have a hand at her belly since she cant really put it below the bump but the idea is to draw the eye to the belly making it a noticeable baby bump. Usually you can have the guy kiss the girl on the temple and if she closes her eyes it makes it more intimate. This pose is actually good for any couple esque shoot not just maternity.

This final pose is probably my favorite of the entire set. This pose we had him pretend to serenade her on the piano and she sat there on the little ledge behind the piano. For the lighting for this one it was super special because I had the flash held high above their heads so it was coming from more a top angle than directly from the side. We put the presents on the piano as an added prop which helps the picture from completely dropping off on the left side.

Over all I felt this entire shoot had a 1920’s glam look and feel so in the editing that’s what I did. For all of the pictures I added a vignette, for those who don’t know what that is it is basically when the edges are darker (or lighter) especially in the corners. And as you can tell I turned one of them black and white for that added effect.

I hope you liked this shoot, I have a ton of super fun things I am doing this weekend that will give me blog posts for the next 3 weeks! I super excited to share this will you all! Hope you all have an amazing fourth of July, I will be on the harbor bridge taking pictures of the fireworks! 

Some Favs

Ok so my eye has been twitching for the past 4 days now and I am about ready to gouge it out so needless to say I really don't have the patience to actually write out a whole blog post because I have a feeling I might just self assassinate... so instead I have decided to share some of my favorite pics with you from all sorts of time periods, some recent and have been posted some I haven't posted but might if I need another filler day. I will probably write a little bit about each pic but not go into detail of how i achieved it more or less just when it was done so I will try to put them in order of when I took them... So without further ado:

So these three pictures were one of the first pics that I took that kind of made me realize how much I liked photography and that was what I wanted to do with my life. Now these three pics were definitely by no means great, of course young aspiring me thought they were pretty damn good but looking back there are so many things I could change which sadly I cant do because two of these pics I don't have the original files anymore because I have a love hate relation ship with desktops and I never used to back up my stuff onto a separate drive. Can you blame me? I was in high school when this happened. Now I back everything up, twice... So if you take anything out of this trip down memory lane please learn to back up everything!

 Next in line is this gorgeous baby, this was taken in my digital photography class on our first photo shoot outing. This was my first time handling my very own DSLR which was my Nikon D5000 which I still have. I was not yet shooting in manual because I was still learning but this picture is by far my best accomplishment from that class. Sometimes I honestly cant believe that I took this pic...



























So after that sometime during Christmas of course right now i cant remember which Christmas but I was up in El Paso for Christmas and it snowed! So of course I whipped out my D5000 and ran outside without gloves on and froze my pretty little fingers off but out if it i got some amazing pictures of snow that rarely ever happens in south Texas and usually happens in El Paso after we leave. By this time I knew how to shoot manual and everything here on out was shot in manual.


Next up was night time photography, my co-worker at the time had gotten me interested in night time photos and so he took me where he liked to shoot and I came up with this baby!.








The  next time we went out we trekked up the Harbor Bridge and did some amazing pictures from up there and soon we are going back for fourth of July to take pics of the fireworks!

So these pictures were taken for one of my friends moms boyfriend, thats a mouthful... He was making a CD and these were some detail shots from the session which I love and honestly have no use for but to post them here maybe one day I will have to use these in a class or something.










This picture was taken at a convention back in November and i just love everything about this picture, the lighting the pool, the convention gave us lots of down time and if we ever film the rest of the video I will post that even though it wasn't photography.

Next up was the water pictures which is the first ever blog post that I posted. There were so many from this shoot that I loved and the entire experience was fun too!

Last but not least this picture! This pic is probably one of my favorites by far, the lighting I'm in love with, the shadows, the pose, the everything... I know there are probably things I could change but this picture but I wouldn't just saying. 

So I hope you had fun taking a trip with me down memory lane, I know I had some fun because I was unearthing things I completely forgot about... So hopefully my eye stops twitching and I might get to post up something else. Today was originally gonna be a post about graduation since one of my friends graduated this past weekend but I forgot the memory card at home thanks the the ever annoying twitch in my eye...