Naomi/imoaN

 Naomi and I did a photo near Dear Creek park today. It looks kinda like this.

Pretty huh? This is what we came up with. I'll keep it pretty PG-13. I felt more comfortable taking pictures of a naked person this time, maybe because I've known her since I was ten. Anyways, here we go. A lot of these shots are of Naomi in a pretty dress. It's probably pretty clear I like the clothed ones more. I like these nudes more than my last attempt. But a naked girl is a naked girl. I had a vision though and I've come up with a couple photos that actually have nudity for more than the sake of nudity.

Hands down, my favorite shot of the day

NAKED

Her tattoo features lyrics from The Rouge: I will wait (as long as it takes) until my heart breaks

au naturel. get it? get it?!

Endofpost

Bottling Beer

My parents recently decided to brew their own beer. I can't spell the type they're brewing so I won't say what kind, but it's German. Last night was bottling night! Mark and I helped them. I really just wanted to put the caps on the bottles because that seemed like the coolest thing ever. And of course it was documented.

The dog just looked confused... And stopped being so afraid of the camera! He's so cute.

You want to know why I wanted to do the caps? They get squeezed on by this red thing with two handles and it's just super fun. Tell me that doesn't sound fun! It was so exciting. This photo was taken by my momma. I would've put a picture of her in this post but she never likes pictures of herself.

Alone Part 2

You might remember my post from awhile back with an older edit of this photo. It's called alone and if you click on that you will be taken to the old post. Yeah I'm going on an editing binge. It could be obvious by the overflow of blog posts I've had lately. I can't help myself. I love editing and am in my zone. I'm supposed to be on my way to a slip'n'slide thing right now, but I can be a couple minutes late. I'm going to get lost driving there anyways. So here is my new edit!

I like that there isn't any hair poking into the picture anymore (I found a similar image that didn't have the hair, it's off in the upper corner now) and I love the stony look of her body. I'm not sure about the font, but since I've been using picnik.com my font choice is limited. Also, please comment on this post and others. I could use some feedback! Point out things that I may have missed that aren't good. Or tell me you like it and boost my ego. I don't really care. I just like getting comments.

Jasmine

I did Jasmine's senior pictures last year and it was the first photo shoot I had dont with my new camera! I am going through a bunch of old photos because I think I am going to print some photos from my portfolio and make an album of some sort. I came across jasmine's shoot and couldn't help but play around a little.

I love this last photograph. But I'm sure in a different mood I'll love the first more. Funny how that works.
These are some of the edits I did last year that I'm considering printing.

Flower Power

I love taking pictures of flowers. So whenever I have my camera I tend to take pictures of flowers. I can't help it! During my photo shoot with Megan I got distracted and this is my favorite shot (there was another one I liked but it was blurry). I might even make it my new background. WHATUP.

Getting Into It

Photography was not something I ever thought I would be into. Art in general wasn't my thing. I can't draw  and, honestly, after elementary school, my creative flow was minimal. I doodled very rarely, other than that I only did what was required in art class. When I realized I had to take an art class to graduate from high school, I figured I shouldn't take any of the drawing ones because my fine motor skills are awful. So I chose photography 1 as my art class, just to fulfill the requirement. I wasn't excited.

We started out with pinhole cameras, which really just annoyed me because my hands blurred the photos and subjects were limited. But I realized I liked the dark room. It was comfortable and quiet and a place for me to contemplate.

So photography didn't start out as a love to create. It started out as me having quiet time alone to think. During the time I was taking the class, life was tough for me. But when I went to the dark room it was just me and paper and light and chemicals and it felt amazing. And then one day I had a print that I liked. I was proud of it and thought, "This is something I could really get into."So I got into it. I got a film camera, I learned what aperture and ISO really meant, and I started taking pictures. My first few projects were mediocre, but I felt proud. It felt good to create and express myself even if it wasn't determined "good" by anyone but me. This is the photo I was first proud of since I'm sure you're dying to know what it is. I had a better print, but it was sold. It was very hard to work with the film since it got compromised in the development process, but something good came out of it anyways.

For a long time, I focused on classes deemed important for my future: math, science, language arts... This was the first time in awhile I took something other than core classes seriously. I'm really glad art is a requirement now. Photography is therapeutic for me. If I'm feeling down and I start taking photos, my day brightens. Some of you may not have noticed that I get really down if I go through a rut, not taking a lot of photos. But it gets better when I start taking them again.

Anyway, I worked with film and a point&shoot for awhile and then last year decided to buy a DSLR (canon t1i). I love it. I have so much control to get just what I want. It's awesome. So I don't work in the dark room anymore, but I when I edit photos it has the same effect. I get calmer, I get happier, I feel safer. I love the sound of the shutter, I love playing with the settings to get the look just right, I even love my "bad" photos because that's me learning what works and what doesn't. This is learning for the sake of learning something i love, not learning for my future. It feels so good. So now you know. Photography is something I do to keep myself from being a robot, it gives me some purpose.

Water Skiing

Action shots are hard! Especially if you never, ever do them. I love photographing people, but I haven't dealt with many shots that require a fast shutter speed. I had the chance to when I was in Indiana. These photos are of Mark and his dad water skiing together. Mark's brother, Matt, and I were on the boat taking pictures. Most of my shots aren't great. Either the shutter speed was too slow or the ISO was too high, resulting in way more noise than I want to look at. But these few shots are my favorites, so I decided to share them with the world.

Mark 

Mike

When I took these photos, I realized I'm very camera shy. I don't mean that I mind being in front of a camera, but I am shy about sharing that I'm into photography; this is something I love. I really do love it. I can't really explain why I'm shy about it, it's just something I hold near to my heart and I don't want anyone to ruin that. But I'm getting over it. If someone doesn't like my photos, that doesn't matter. They're for me to enjoy and share with other people that enjoy them. It's for expression or sanity or whatever I need. Maybe I'll write a post about how I got into photography. If you're interested in that, let me know and I'll blog about it.

Mega Megan

I am a sucker for close up pictures. This one right above this paragraph deserves to be looked at larger, so please, click on it and look at how gorgeous this girl is. Those eyes! Damn. I'm lucky to know her. That would be Megan, who recently asked me to do some portraits for her to show off her beautiful teeth. She paid me with an ice cream cone - SCORE. Haha, plus I have a great new photo for my portfolio.

I am going to talk about my editing process. I try a photo in color first, always. And then I think, "How about some black and white? Or sepia?" And then I get into the crazy stuff. Here's the order of edits I did for another shot I loved from the shoot. This photo was almost candid, a moment where Megan was walking somewhere else and looked gorgeous so I yelled, "Stop!" and she looked frightened for a second and then went back to doing what she was doing. The last photo has a "cross process" effect on it and it looks a lot better at a larger size (all of these photos probably do). 

I love this last photo. And the first photo of this post. I guess I'm really digging the cross process effect. I noticed that I feel like I never sound like myself in these posts. Anyways, these are the artsy pictures I have from the shoot. There's more traditional photos too but I like these the most, a real moment was captured.