Senior Portraits - Erin - taken in Sea Cliff, NY Part II

I wanted to post a few more photos from Erin's photo-shoot, but I caught a fever on Sunday and it seems to be finally gone today, so now I can sit up straight and post!

Here is the link to the first post for Erin:
Senior Portraits - Erin - taken in Sea Cliff, NY Part I

I am thinking I will do one more post of some Erin favorites, she is my cousin after all! The next post will be more of the "artsy" ones that look more like magazine shots than senior photos (in my opinion), but ya never know! Maybe out there in Washington, "artsy" is "in" for senior photos. Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Senior Portraits - Erin - taken in Sea Cliff, NY Part I

Senior Portraits 
This is my cousin, Erin - she lives out in Washington state, but was in New York with her family for my brother's wedding and a nice vacation visit and asked if while we were both there I could take her senior portraits - to be used for her yearbook and to give out to friends and family and such.

I only was in New York from Thursday night to Sunday evening, so Erin was a little nervous we wouldn't be able to get her pictures done...but fear not, we did! We took the photos on Friday in Sea Cliff, NY - a nice, quaint, older Long Island town that is just 1 square mile. Lots of Victorian era homes and buildings. I love Sea Cliff and my camera does too. This charming village has SO many great photography spots to choose from and since this was my cousin, we chose any and all we had time for! She and the girls (my wife and sister) had to get their nails done afterwards so we had quite a bit of time, but not unlimited. 


I loved how a lot of the photos came out, but in the end had to choose some favorites. There are ones that are more "Senior-photo-y" and then ones that look more like magazine shots. As you are about to find out, Erin is quite photogenic! Most of the magazine shots are not in this post and I actually haven't edited them yet. As always, I am a "light" editor, meaning I don't use photoshop and put crazy effects and made-up sunlight or anything like that. Just some minor tweaks using Digital Photo Professional by Canon. However, I am looking forward to upgrading to Adobe Lightroom.

Enjoy!

Stay tuned for a few more "best of's" from Erin's photo shoot!

New Blog Header...Yes It was FREE!

I was trying to redo my blog header a week and a half ago, and I didn't like what I did to it at all...in fact, I know I made it worse! But anyways, I was trying to search for correct sizes and possibly how to make a good header without the use of photoshop - since I don't have PS - and I came across what you now see above from the website you now see below:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/05/blog-headers-for-free-download/

I think it looks great! Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion about it, and you can also make a joke that it looks like the beginning of "The Simpsons" on FOX. Yeah, I just saw that, but putting that aside, it's great and will work out well until I go super custom and make my own blog header - that is nice to look at of course.

So there ya go, a few totally free, "unrestricted use" blog header designs. Free. Haha okay, now I can feel good about my next few posts! I'm very excited to share my favorites from my cousin's Senior Portrait photo-shoot from last Friday. It was a busy weekend in New York, but now we are back in sunny Florida and I edited a big handful of photos so far today. So stay tuned!

Thursday Means New York Bound! Long Island Technically...

 We are heading to NY today - Long Island that is. Usually when I say New York people either assume the city (New York City of course) or upstate. Well, we are going to Long Island! My brother is getting married on Saturday - so you can expect a few things:

1. Senior Portraits of my cousin Erin
2. Photos from the Rehearsal dinner on Friday
3. Some photos from the wedding, but it will be tough since I am IN the wedding
4. Some photos of my family!

So you can all be so excited for a few posts next week full of photographic fun. In the meantime, have a wonderful Thursday and Friday and weekend!

Here are a few photos of my house (an old Victorian built around 1900):

 House (Left) and Garage (Right)

 Accent door (left) and the awesome front porch (right)

 My brother's golden retriever, Bodie!

Rain Photos into Video #2

Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody #11 is playing in the background

So I promised giving it another shot...so here it is! I will probably try again, hopefully getting a little better each time. During our almost daily afternoon shower, I decided to take a few more photos. I really like a few of the series that I included in the video and will probably do some similar shots next time it rains! 

Let me know what you think!

Fun with Photos...and video?! And a business card?!

Since there was a quick rainstorm just a few minutes ago I decided to take a few photos. I also wanted to try a little time-lapse-style video with some of the photos. So here it is! Nothing special, I will probably try again and use more photos which will make it a little better - oh and also do it horizontally of course so it's not a pain to watch. I have never posted a video on my blog, since this is a photography blog, so don't be too disappointed!

I also played around with the idea of a business card - for my photography of course. So I will show you what I came up with! I would absolutely love to upgrade my camera to a Canon 7D, but until I either have a good job or make money off of my photography, that will not be happening! I was reading a blog the other day that recommended upgrading photo equipment every year if you work professionally...but I don't so here we are going into my 5th year! In the meantime I will enjoy my Rebel XTi, and though it has passed its 4th birthday, it is still doing well! The photos in the video above were with my favorite and best lens, 50mm f/1.4 - which has also done me wonders with portraits. Anyways, the business card....

 Front 

The real reverse has my phone number on it so
might as well keep that to myself! But here
is a version without my phone number!

I printed a few out just for fun. The cardstock I used is not quite as thick as a business card normally is and it is slightly gray in color, but I added a little tab just to see what it looked like...any thoughts? Part of me thought it looked good, then I put it down and thought it looked random and out of place. So I don't know - obviously it would be a lot of work to put it on every one, but I tried just for fun! Here are photos of the front and back I took...

Don't mind the colors, they look a little different in person than on the screen and there was no need to edit them to look like they should! I guess I could figure out some kind of logo to put on that little tab - then it would probably look cool. Any thoughts or ideas are greatly appreciated! Otherwise, I am hoping to get a great photo of lightning sometime soon. Florida has so many thunderstorms, which is great for people who like thunder and lightning and rain (like Christina and I). If it weren't for all the mosquitoes, we would probably be on our balcony every time there is a thunderstorm. But there have been some great *potential* lightning photos, but no successful ones as of yet. I'll keep you updated!