Practice, Practice, Practice.

I have committed to shooting my first wedding this summer. This means, time for lots of practice, and remembering. It's time to get serious.

In the past few weeks, I took my first stab at engagement photos for my best friend (and incidentally, her daughter because she's just too adorable), and took some photos for another friend of her beautiful, little sassy-pants of a toddler. Of course, most of my practice has been with baby Frank. 

I love natural light. I crank the blinds and curtains open, and snap away. Frank makes it easy, because he thinks a camera lens in his face is hilarious. But I need to expand my horizons. In some cases, flash is very necessary. Especially outdoors when it's bright and sunny, fill flash can be very helpful. Or in a dark room, or, obviously, at night. I'm terrified of using flash. I hate the look of those harsh, dark shadows. However, in order to really call myself any kind of photographer, I have to get over that one. I dug out my external flash and I am in the process of experimenting and researching. I'll keep you updated on this endeavor. I'm excited to try some flash filters to play with the light. I also discovered adobe creative cloud, and have been using the heck out of photoshop. I smuggly downloaded it, thinking I would easy-breezy remember everything from oh, six or seven years ago. Instead, there was a ton of frustration, and I had a window open devoted to CS6 tutorials on youtube. But we're getting there.

I still have some work to do, but in the meantime, here are a few of my favorites from the last several weeks.

Eisley Marie, 5 going on 17.

Meagan and Nathan

First time swinging at the park.

Pensive Frankie.

Sammy Jo, diva in training.

That hair.

Sweet boy.