Alright, so I admit that I'm a blog slacker. I could give excuses . . . . . but anyone who knows my life over the last 8 months or so will certainly understand. To say it's been the most difficult 8 months of my life would be an understatement. Anyway, I'm here, I'm back and I'm starting to get back into the swing of things.

I actually have been ridiculously busy working on two amazing projects. The first has been to plan and style and prepare for our workshops at the amazing Chateau de Courtomer outside Paris, France from May 4-11. To say that I'm giddily excited would be a gross understatement. I feel more like a 2-year-old after drinking a can of Red Bull on Christmas. I think my bouncy energy is going to drive my family insane. But planning the workshop shooting sessions and materials has been toooooooooo much fun! I wake up every morning with the list of things I haveget to do and then feel giddy all over again.

We'll be doing a Lighting Workshop, as well as our new Fine Art Workshop while we are there and all the attendees will be staying with us in the Chateau eating amazing food and soaking in lots of inspiration. Anyone who has attended our workshops, knows the incredible lengths we go to to ensure our attendees have an unforgettable experience and these workshops promise to be the best we've done to date. I've actually been really inspired by this Annie Liebowitz shoot for Vogue and this photo in particular for ideas and styling for the workshop photosessions, though scroll through the entire gallery. You'll get the idea, haha. It's been hours of delicious fun trolling ebay and etsy for all the right styling pieces and putting it all together. Sigh. Oh and we do still have a little room if you would like to join us. Email me if you're interested!

My second project has been a complete redesign of my Professional Workshop. We've broken it out into many mini digital workshops that I've then completely revised and at least doubled if not quadrupled the amount of information in each section. We also did new video for the workshops and these mini digital workshops will be available for digital download. So each workshop will include a detailed pdf with review questions and suggestions for practice, as well as several videos visually discussing and demonstrating the information from the workshop. We should be releasing them within the next week, so stay tuned. We're starting with 6 mini workshops with titles like Using Natural Light, Perfecting Composition, Capturing Sunflare, Achieving Perfect Exposure and Secrets to Extraordinary Images. I love how it's all come together and just think, you will be able to read and watch video from our Enhancing Creativity workshop and see how and why I ended up taking this image:



Eeeek!! So much goodness going on! I can't wait!

For this month's Elevate project, I decided to show a little Photoshop work on a recent engagement shoot. The shoot was a LOT Of fun . . . . involving some antique airplanes, vintage suitcases and some wonderful period styling. My editing for both of these images closely followed this YouTube tutorial I did showing one of my fav action recipes (minus the sunflare, obviously, haha).

For this first image, the groom's adorable daughter joined in for some of the images. I loved her cute Shirley Temple outfit and she was great to act bored for a couple frames.  So here is the image SOOC:



And here is one of my final edits. I wanted to minimize the distracting background and straighten and center the image a little more.



With this second image, I shot this using an off-camera light. But I didn't want to bother lighting the plane too, so I exposed the background more for the airplane than for the sky. As a consequence, I lost some detail in my sky.



So with my edit, I did a manual merge of two exposures of the original RAW file to bring detail back into the sky.



There are many more images from this shoot that I'm dying to play with, haha, but this will have to do for now. To continue this circle, hop on over to kamee june photography  orange county, ca and see what she's done this month!

Just one for this month's post . . . . . I loved the light in this image and how it captured the folds of her beautiful dress . . .



To continue this blog circle, hop on over and see what Wendy VonSosen | San Francisco Bay Area Photographer has done!

Alright. It's a new year and time for resolutions and such. So let me start by at least starting on one New Year's Resolution (and yes, I know that it's February, haha): posting more client sessions.

Yes, I do workshops and, yes, I do design and sell actions and such for Photoshop.  But I am first and foremost a photographer. I firmly believe in practicing what I preach. So I photograph. A lot. It feels like every other day I'm shooting a family or consulting with a client or traveling to a wedding. But as I was looking through my blog for 2011, it dawned on me that you don't see that. Cause I'm REALLY bad about posting client sessions. And when I don't post them, it looks like I'm not actually busy in the true work of photography. But I am. And I need to be better about showing my client sessions. So I do intend to get caught up, haha. But in the meantime, how's about a little taste of 2011.

So here you have it. One image from every client session I shot in 2011. Just one. Though I really wanted to post more, I limited myself to just one image per session. Realize that for some of these images, they represent an entire day shooting a wedding or hours photographing a large multi-generational family. There are no workshop images here, no photos of my kids, no "creativity" sessions, no commercial shoots (though I did all those too). Those will have to wait for another blog post. These are my actual clients. Ironically, 2011 was not my busiest photographic year, haha. Spending nearly a month in Australia over peak wedding season put a damper on my wedding bookings. But I still hugged repeat clients and made amazing new friends and cried during EVERY "first dance" I photographed (that's why I have such a large camera; it's useful for hiding behind).

So, in no particular order, welcome to my 2011:










































































































Thank you if you've made it this far through the images! I'm so excited for 2012 and can't wait to do the same sort of post next year too!

So for this month's installment of the lifestyle blog circle I belong to, I thought that I would post a couple snapshots I took of my kids on Laguna Beach a couple weeks ago. It's been an extremely dry but very cold winter here in Utah. It's like the worst combination. Bitterly cold but no snow so the kids can't really sled or do any wintery things and it's waaayyy too cold to do anything else outside. So a week in sunny, summery Laguna Beach was just what I needed. The thermometer in my Jeep read 12 degrees when we left home and then steadily climbed as we drove south, hitting 80 degrees when we reached Anaheim. Ah yes, THAT was heaven. It took the kids all of about 3 minutes to get into the ocean once we arrived in Laguna.

So here are a couple shots. This is actually an iPhone snap of all three kids right after we arrived. Yes, they're still in their "Utah" clothes. They just rolled up their pant legs . . . . well, sorta . . . they pretty much got soaked . . . . . and love me some iPhone sunflare, haha.


This is the next day more properly prepared with a real camera and wet suits . . .


So loved the sunburst reflection at the bottom of the image with this last one . . . uh yeah, I totally meant to do that, haha.


That's just a little taste of our trip. To continue the circle, hop on over and see what Brenda Acuncius | Dallas/Ft. Worth Child Photographer has done this month!

Well, as some of you know, I've been working on a fabulous new set of flares and sunbursts for Flourish. And it's finally up on the website. I so love this new set! I know it's a good set if I can't seem to stop obsessively using it, haha. This new set includes 22 huge overlays that I've created from actual sunflare, so it's not PS-created sunflare, but the real deal that you're integrating into a photo. This creates extremely believable sunflare. And even better, this set uses our Flourish Palette which allows you to see all the sunflares at once, choose which one you'd like to integrate and then the palette opens, merges and integrates the texture for you, all in just seconds. So fabulous and saves so much time! You can watch a little demo video of this set in action here and see the set here.

And even better, save 20% on your entire Flourish purchase between now and Jan 15. Just enter code

flare2012

at checkout! And here are a couple before and after images from the set, just to give you a taste of what this set does.

Whew! I hope that everyone is having a fabulous holiday season right now. As a little added extra bonus of holiday cheer, we've just posted mentoring information to our {life as art} workshop website. If you'd been wanting to have a one-on-one mentoring experience or to even shadow me on a photosession, now is your chance! You can see all of the details here.

Along with this, I will be in Southern California doing photosessions and mentoring sessions in the middle of January. If you would be interested in scheduling a photosession or mentoring session, please email me. I still have an opening or two.

And a little winter fun . . . . .

I just want to spread some happy holiday cheer and give a little thank you to all of you who have made this year such a fabulous one!

So first of all, here is a free 5x7 holiday template. Cause if you're like me, you're still working on your own personal Christmas cards. Just add your photo and print!



You can download the template here. Note that the font at the bottom of the template (the taylor family) is 1942 Report.

And for a little shopping help, how about saving 25% at Flourish Emporium. Just use this code at checkout and receive an additional 25% off your order (in addition to our already amazing multi-item discounts).

holiday2011

So shop now at Flourish Emporium!

And last but not least, how about a little love from the {life as art} workshops? Enter this coupon code to save $50 off your purchase of any [life as art] workshop:

holidayWorkshop2011

And even better, we've discounted our Beginner Manual by 100%! That's right, check out with any [life as art] workshop and add the Beginner Manual to your cart for FREE! All coupon codes are valid through Dec. 31, 2012.
 
Whew! That's a lot of holiday goodness! Wishing you a fabulous holiday season.

Continue through this blog circle and see all the other amazing fine art that others have done. So visit Brenda Acunius and see what she's done!

For this month's installment for "What ___ Looks Like," I couldn't help but think about family. Like all of you, I'm crazy busy this time of year. But over Thanksgiving, I had a little time to just sit and chat with my grandma. She's always been one of those amazing grandmas. The kind that would come to every event in my life (no matter how small) and would always have a plate of cookies and fashion magazine waiting for me. Christmas was always a big event. She would start planning the January before and would have a wide array of gifts for each of us, all perfectly wrapped in glitzty paper. She would bake for days before the party and the night was never complete unless we took a plate of baklava and homemade almond roca home with us. Her party was as much a highlight of Christmas as Christmas morning.

My grandma is 93 now and now we throw the Christmas party for her. She still lives in the same house she's lived in for over 50 years. She's slowed down in recent years, but in talking with her over Thanksgiving, she was still the same feisty, spunky woman she's always been. I'm so blessed to have had such a woman in my life. I love that even at 93, she insists on having her hair perfectly done with make-up and earrings.



When my husband and I were engaged, he asked me what type of wedding ring I wanted. I told him that my grandma had the most beautiful wedding ring I had ever seen. It was a platinum ring from the 1930's with vintage engravings and inset diamonds. I wanted something like hers. My husband, in the wonderful wisdom I married him for, suggested that instead of finding something similar, why not copy her ring exactly. It was the perfect solution. So Grandma lent us her wedding ring for a day or two so we could have a copy made of it. I wear her ring everyday and it constantly reminds me of her and my sweet grandpa and the amazing marriage they had. Here's her ring on her hand with the diamond solitaire that my grandpa gave her for their 50th wedding anniversary. Perhaps my husband will give me something similar on our 50th wedding anniversary.



Be sure to head over to Brenda Acuncius | Dallas/Fort Worth Child Photographer and see what she has done for this month's project!