Family Photo Swap

A friend of mine, who is also a photography hobbyist, and I have decided to periodically do a family photo trade so that we can both be more on the ball about being in front of the camera once in a while, instead of always behind.

 We decided to do this a little too late in the season, but are determined to have at least one family photo this year.  They braved the snowy cold day as bravely as anybody could, but I think I only ended up snapping 10-12 photos and of those came out with 4 that are decent because this family is so lovely.  Here are my 2 favorites:

Photos for Friends

I am finally posting some photos that I took for a friend almost a month ago.  I couldn't pick a few favorites, so you get a picture overload of many of my favorites.  This little Man of theirs was one of the cutest kids I have ever photographed!  Thanks for asking me to take your photos guys!

I Am One Lucky Girl!

Some more of Baby V

Here are some more of little tiny:

Family Reunion

My family had a reunion last week.  It was the first time we had all been together in over 6 years.  My family is enjoyably crazy.  I love it!  I do wish that we had had more time to just sit together and talk, but with all of the little ones running all over it was hard to have much down time.
My siblings did ask me to take some photos for them while we were up at the cabin.  Here are a bunch of my favorites:

Sneaky Peaky

My cousin brought her tiny, new, sweet baby girl up to my house so we could try to get some photos of her before she gets...well...not tiny.  She is just 5 days old.  Here is a sneak peak of this little dolly:

It was so fun!  I wish I had more backgrounds to add color, but it still was so fun!  Thanks Kate!

My 9 month Baby Girl!

After your input....

 

Thanks for all of the input!  I don't own Photoshop (and I wouldn't have the first clue how to use it if I did) so, it took me a little while to figure out how to make the fixes that you suggested in Lightroom, but this is the final product.    I did like the clouds in the other one, but I liked Julie's suggestion with the trees being bigger.  I am just hoping that it has enough area to wrap it on a canvas.  I will be printing it as a TIFF file and of course, the watermark will be removed :)

What do you think?  Any other changes?

Temple Square

For months now, we have been meaning to go downtown to temple square so I could attempt to get a photo of the Salt Lake temple...where we were married 8 years ago.  Yesterday was the day we had time.  I was a bit weary of the weather because it was quite stormy, but we thought we would risk it anyway.  It paid off big time!  The sky was glorious and we only got a few sprinkles on us.  It began pouring after we left....It was meant to be :)
Here are few shots from our trip:

 

Now, I know the two shots below are very similar, but I need your input.  Which one do you like better?  I plan to print one of these images onto a large wrapped canvas and display it in my home above my piano.  I can't decide which one I like better.    What do you think?

Just a couple more

I finally finished the rest of my friends' photos.  This baby is lovely!  Those cheeks!  That fuzzy hair!  What a little angel on earth :)

Sweet Baby Girl

A friend of mine had her first little girl a few weeks ago.  She was 11 lbs.!  Came out with chubby cheeks and a full head of dark hair.  So cute!  I was privileged to be able to take a few photos of her in her home.  Here are a few that I have had time to post-process.  Isn't she gorgeous?  It makes me want another little squirt, except right now I am listening to my baby girl try to go back to sleep after being woken by the annoying fireworks.  Babies are adorable for a reason....they are a lot of work and we need that cute-factor as payoff for all that we put in to taking care of them.  I will post some more photos of this sweet baby girl when I have a chance. Enjoy!

Back in Action!

I have decided to try taking photos for other families again.  I still feel so un-qualified to do so, but I learn something new every time and it pushes me out of my comfort zone, so I keep doing it.
This family is friends with my sister and were so laid back and easy to work with.  I don't know if I have ever photographed such well-behaved children.
I didn't rent a fancy lens this time, just used my lens that I purchased last year and it did a pretty good job.  I still prefer the fancy lens, of course, for it's speed and open-ness, but this saved everyone a little cash.
I shot the photos in RAW, which I hadn't done before...I don't know why?  I did have some issues when I imported the RAW files into Lightroom.  There was this layer of noise on all of my photos.  I have not had this problem before....ever.  I still don't know what I did wrong (anybody?), but I'm thankful that Lightroom has a noise reduction option, or I would be a total stress case.

Here are a few images that I captured.  Not perfect, but like I said...I am always learning: