High School Senior Twin Girls

Last week I had the opportunity to work with two of the gorgeous daughters of my childhood pastor. They will be graduating this May and still needed their senior photos done. They were great subjects, and we had so many fun ideas we wore ourselves out trying them all! :) Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate with us, so hopefully we can finish up this weekend with some outdoor stuff and a few other poses we didn't have time for.

In the meantime, I recently caved and bought CS3 (gotta love those tax refunds--and the awesome discount Adobe is running right now!), so I've been playing with that today and can't resist sharing a few:



















This one was an idea I got and just had to try.

They wanna be like me!

On Sunday church was canceled again, so I decided to try out my new backdrop! Wanting something different from the usual solid colors, I followed some online instructions and made my own muslin. I used three different shades of paint and hand-blotted it in separate coats onto the fabric. It took me about three hours and I probably burned 500 calories...I love how it turned out!

I also used this opportunity to play some more with the off-camera speedlight, which I mounted to a tripod and bounced off the window behind me. My children were bribed by Daddy with candy, but due to time constraints and sugar limitations we were only able to get a handful of shots. My favorite:



Where is my older daughter, you might ask? Well, she is sitting next to me with HER toy camera, taking pictures of her sister. :) Aww, they want to be like me!

Here are a few others--not really great shots of the girls, but to show my new homemade muslin:


(For this one we bribed big sis--toy camera in hand--into the photo by promising a trip to Grandma's house as soon as she let Mommy get a photo of her with sissy)


Little sister good-naturedly posing for both Mommy AND big sister

My new trick!

Yesterday I remembered another reason I wanted the D200--I can use my speedlight off-camera! The way this works is you hold the flash in your hand or mount it on a tripod, and you set the flash and the camera so that when the shutter-release is pressed on the camera, the on-camera flash triggers the other one to fire! I can't wait to play with this some more...it will be so nice not to have the heavy flash mounted to the camera! Obviously I haven't come close to perfecting this technique...I skimmed the flash section of both manuals quickly, and tried it out in the five minutes before I had to be somewhere. Looking forward to working on it tomorrow--sounds like we're about to get snowed in...again!

These were all taken with the flash held in one hand and the camera in the other--the first one with it pointed at my daughter (who was sitting on hubby's shoulders), and the last two bouncing it off the wall behind me.



don't ask me why she is wearing this hat--she just went and got it and put it on herself. :)

Longing for warmer weather

In the spirit of snow-hating, I dug out some photos taken this fall--one of the last times we were able to go out before it got too cold. It was unseasonably warm that day, so I couldn't resist the fairy wings and ballerina skirts. :)
















some muted colors...

Happy Valentine's Day!

My girls' cards

These are the little cards I made for my kids to hand out to their friends at daycare and at church.

More Valentine Fun

This is my nephew, Drew, Valentine pics just for fun!



he seriously gnawed the paper off of this heart!






woops, turn that block around!

First Session with the New Camera

Other than some snapshots around the house with my kids, I really haven't gotten to try out the new camera much this month. :( Between the bad weather and spring (hopefully) just around the corner, opportunities have been limited! I personally am holding out for that nice weather because I can't wait to go back to shooting outdoors! However, I did manage to round up a friend's kids just so I could try out my new seamless paper and backdrop (and camera/lens, of course!). Here are a few favorites:

Window Light

I love window shots, so at the end of my daughter's 18-month photo session, I thought I'd try some with her. I kept telling her to look at the cars (and sometimes she'd point, too!) to keep her interested. I played with a few different B&W conversions. I think I'll definitely try this some more in the future!