Black & White

There’s something to be said about a black and white photograph. Although, I personally prefer color versions of most pictures, there are some darn nice black and white pieces out there. They tend to take you back in time a bit, even if the picture was taken last week.

I realize that black and white is in and if I ever plan on being a professional photog, I’m probably going to have to broaden my horizons and try to cope with my color photo preference. So last night I made an effort to do just that. The thing I like best about black and white photography is the sort of time warp it puts me in. As I said before, a picture that was taken last week can feel like it was taken fifty years ago when you convert it to black and white. But I wanted mine to feel even older. And fragile. I’ve seen texture techniques that create these kinds of affects and they can turn an average photograph from OK to AMAZING! Here are two samples of my experiment with textures. Let me know what you think!

The Girl Next Door

My neighbor just celebrated turning sweet 16. So last night, to celebrate, we drove all the way up to Mowich Lake to take some pictures and document this time in her life. Unfortunately, when we got there, the fog was so thick and the snow was so deep, we couldn’t even tell where the lake was! Haha! But on the way up, we saw some pretty cool spots to stop and take some pictures. Here are a few of the shots from last night.

Thanks a lot for letting me take these pictures for you, S! You’re such a sweet girl!

This is my personal favorite:

Flora....

A few shots of some of mom's garden. (On again-off again green thumb my butt!) Not much into floral photography, but these turned out well. Happy summer!

Dogs

THESE, are my lovely canine kiddos. Drake is the blondie in the background, and Ruger is the brunette hogging the shot. Aren’t they beautiful pooches? How I adore my little Buds. Especially when they don’t smell like wet dog or nudge my white clothes with their dirty little noses or bark at every moving object that comes through town.

But I digress.

I love them so much I wanted you to meet them!

The thing about dogs is they are incredibly difficult to photograph. You see, they never want to sit still. They’re wrestling, or swimming, or running a trench along our fence line, or eating, or sniffing…but NEVER sitting still. After a brisk swim in the Carbon River, something succeeded in catching their attention. They were loaded up into the truck when that something suddenly appeared and utterly distracted them from their usual constant movement. They were both focused on whatever that “thing” was and low and behold, I was able to get this nice picture of my boys!

Remarkably, it was a child they were peering at so attentively: Little Kyla. And although, I may never know what she was doing that was so very interesting to my dogs, she proved herself as a worthy photography assistant that day. And to her I owe my thanks. Thanks Kyla!!

My first "real" shoot!

In all honesty, getting engaged was my inspiration to become a photographer. Photographing weddings instantly sounded like the perfect job. I mean, come on! Who wouldn't want to photograph the happiest day of someone's life!?

After I got engaged, one thing led to another and naturally, I started thinking about having kids... oooh yes, I want babies and plenty of them. (It doesn't help that there are four very beautiful children in my life, three of whom are my godchildren!) And of course, I'll want to capture all the moments in their lives, so why not add that to my repertoire? Kids are cute, no matter how you slice it! Crying, screaming, crawling, laughing, sleeping, eating, walking, before they can even open their eyes they're cute! Ooh yeah, I can see it now, I’ll be wearing a name tag at all the kid’s events identifying me as the “Mamarazzi”!! But that’s ok, because someone’s gotta do it!

Anyway, so the first REAL shoot that I did was my friend Becky’s maternity pictures, which honestly, did NOT turn out well. Make no mistake, Becky is a gorgeous woman, and being pregnant only enhances that, but I was (and still am) in major trial and error mode. Something I learned early on in my self-taught course of photography is never to shoot in direct sunlight. It just casts shadows all over the place and there’s NOTHING flattering about that. Then, I was approached for a senior portrait session for one of the neighbor kids.

Buck was kind of hard to get in touch with at first, but eventually his mom tackled him and we dragged him up in the woods and we were able to get some really great shots of him climbing a tree. Buck is a great kid with excellent prospects. He wants to be a logger and eventually open his own tree service. Loggers aren’t exactly hard to come by around here, but ambition in a kid his age certainly is! And this kid can climb a tree! I’m talking like 60’ up in less than 8 seconds! Ok, I didn’t clock him, but he was so quick it blew me away! I heard he did a great job at the Log Show this year, too.

Anyway, here are a couple of the shots I’m really proud of.