Thanksgiving in East Texas

I always love driving five hours out to the middle of East Texas to spend time with my wonderful family. Cramming sixteen people into a small 3-bedroom house for three days was difficult, so I spent a lot of time outside. My week was filled with campfires, fishing, kayaking, and lots of food. It was great.  We had some pretty spectacular sunsets and sunrises, and you'll see that there was an American flag that was just begging to be photographed.

AMERICA.

My uncle and sweet little cousin out on the canoe

This next one takes some explaining. Exactly last year, I went out to the lake house and took a stab at photographing the stars. If you stalk my blog back far enough, you'll see that post (and see how badly I failed). Well, after learning quite a bit in the course of a year about ISO and whatnot, I decided to try it again. Voila! Of course, I still can't do star trails (plus I might have frozen to death had I tried), and you can see some lens flare from the annoyingly bright moon, but overall...I like it.

Nicole

I've never really had the opportunity to work indoors while doing a photoshoot. I always just go outside and use the natural sunlight to light my portraits. Well, one of my best friends, Nicole, wanted some pictures of a more serious quality, so I decided to see what I could do indoors.

Being an amateur, I don't have my own studio, or any good lighting equipment. I literally have a tripod and a remote to work with. Using some index cards, a tissue, a folding table and a house lamp, I finally got my makeshift "studio" how I wanted it to be.

And here are the results!
(Yes, the last two are the same, we just couldn't decide on B&W or color)

Self Portraiture

I've always been interested in this brand of photography- mainly because I don't really trust anyone else to take my picture and make me look good. Unlike many photographers, I am quite the opposite of "camera shy." I love having my picture taken.

The thing I love about self portraiture is that I can take my time to really portray who I am. I love to smile, I'm very silly, I laugh a lot, but I can still be serious.

Halfway through my shoot, I realized that "self portraiture" is just a really fancy name for a selfie. Except photographers usually aren't standing in bathrooms, making a duck face, or using cell phones as cameras.

Two hours and one wrecked room later...

Incomplete: Weekly Photography Challenge

"Sometimes it is what you leave OUT of an image that can really make that image interesting."

I agree. But instead of trying to construct an incomplete image, I decided to capture an incomplete thought- which is hard to do, since thoughts aren't very tangible. So it may not be the best-composed picture I've ever taken, but it tells a story.

Film Photography

I did it! I stopped procrastinating and I scanned my contact sheet and large print in. Here they are!

Autumn

Some of you may know this...but I absolutely love cold weather. And Christmas, and sweaters, and all that it entails. Well, I went on an autumn photoshoot with my two beautiful best friends, Raegan and Cassidy (who is a talented photographer with her own blog). And since I live in Houston, Texas...I didn't get any cool weather. Just hot. So we frolicked around a pumpkin patch and a Christmas tree farm, got yelled at by an angry hayride driver man for standing next to a building, and had a lot of fun. So here are some photos that resulted from that wonderful shoot!

Film Photography

For those of you who are into photography, but only use digital: LET ME JUST TELL YOU that film photography is awesome.

Before taking this class at school, I knew the concepts of photography pretty well- if you have a large aperture, it's smaller numbers, and the depth of field is shallower. If you have a long shutter speed, more light gets let in...

Let's rephrase that. I thought I knew the concepts of photography pretty well. Once I started exploring my film camera (this one's a Canon, so I'm officially on both sides of the Nikon/Canon spectrum), I got to literally open up the back of my camera and see how everything works. Now I understand why the smaller numbers in aperture are called "large" apertures, and I see what happens when film is exposed to the light. It's all so cool!

I developed my first contact sheet today (that's basically seeing all your photos for the first time- it's hard to understand what a photo looks like when it's all negative) and I was pretty happy with my results. When I enlarge some of them, I'll scan it into the computer and upload it here to show y'all some of my first attempts at film photography. Granted, they're not as good as my digital pictures yet, but frankly I'm just happy they came out non-blurry and correctly exposed.

I'm loving learning, not only about film photography, but about developing- literally mixing the chemicals myself, learning to take the film out of my camera in total darkness, learning how to expose the pictures onto photo paper. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in photography.

I'm a busy bee.

Lately...I haven't picked up my camera. Oops.

So this post won't have any new pictures. Just me talking. Sorry.

Well, I'm ridiculously busy with homework. Silly school. And I'm a doulos (literal translation: slave) at my church, helping out with the middle school ministry. But I AM taking a film photography class at school, where I'm forced to practice- hurray! So I'll probably scan in some photos from that. I think I'll actually scan in my first roll just to show you how little I actually know about film photography.

OH! Did I mention I'm going to Africa? :]
My church is taking a small group of students (yours truly included) on a mission trip to host a camp for missionary kids whose parents work around Africa. And I'm bringing my camera.
Can you imagine how gorgeous it must be there? The stars must be so bright. The sunrises must be stunning. I'm just so thrilled, to be so privileged as to get to serve God, serve others, and serve my art at the same time. Obviously, photography won't be my priority, but I'll do my best to make time for it.

And that's the update.

But really. I hate it when people tell me my camera is fancy. I'M THE FANCY ONE.

I like to think I've grown as a photographer.

2009

 2012

Granted, I have gotten a new camera, but looking through old files, I've learned so much about composition and lighting, what is flattering to the subject, and so much more. My perception of what a "good" picture is has (obviously) drastically changed.

Nicole

I got the chance today to photograph my beautiful friend Nicole. We had tons of fun with this shoot and some gorgeous pictures came out of it! I love being able to take pictures of people so often, and I'm learning more and more each time I do a shoot.

Vintage

Today I got the chance to team up with my friends Sydney, who interned with a professional photographer this summer, Cassidy and Anne Marie for a photo shoot. I've never been apart of a co-photoshoot, so it was a cool experience. I'm excited to see all the different angles we captured of our beautiful model (and my best friend) Raegan. We went with more of a vintage look for this shoot, which I've never tried, and I loved the outcome.

People-watching

You've heard of street photography, right? Just you, some strangers & your lens. Well, this is kind of like that. Except in the mountains. I liked experimenting with the look of human-environment interaction, even though my family thinks I'm a stalker for taking pictures of strangers (my wonderful supporters). Enjoy!

Landscape Set

For the first two, does it look better in B&W or in color? I love them both too much to just choose one.