Big Plans...

So today I picked up my Canon 40D, my 24-105 L IS lens, and my 430 EX flash with Gary Fong diffusers from a pro who is switching to Nikon! I am incredibly excited about it, and I believe this investment - using most of the money I earned from my part-time job while my husband was unemployed this spring - will help me get one step closer to my dream of an on-location portrait photography business.

I feel euphoric about the opportunity to turn something I love so much on a creative and personal level into a business. With the economy, it may be difficult to find clients, but we'll see. If it is meant to be, it will be, because I am certainly passionate enough and interested enough in this enterprise to give it my all.

Today I processed a few more pictures for Jenny and Sherry. That is Allie above with her bitty baby.

Teasers for Sherry.....

Had a photoshoot today, lots of fun!
I was using natural light and trying with varying degrees of success to bounce my misbehaving flash off of a sheet, and the sun kept coming out and hiding behind clouds, so it was a challenging lighting situation.
However, I did get some shots I'm quite happy with, like this one. Look at those eyes! This has a slight Orton effect....


Okay, time to go develop a few more pictures for Jenny before I call it a night....

---Late Night Entry
Here is beautiful little gamine Morgan.


And here are a few more of Jenny from yesterday -- I forget what these effects were, but they were free Lightroom downloads...

 And that's it for tonight!

Jenny - sneak preview

I had a lot of fun photographing Jenny, annoying cough aside. I took pictures in my makeshift "studio" in my house, at a loading dock, and at Claude Moore park. The shots here are from my house.

More Panels....

This morning (I am not speaking today in an effort to beat my laryngitis/bronchitis) I was able to spend a few hours on Photoshop Elements 5 learning to create a template. It is actually very easy!

It involves breaking out each part of a template into a rectangle on its own layer, dragging them onto a base template page and connecting them perfectly, and then deleting the portions of the template where the portraits will go. Save that as your template, and then drag pictures onto your template, duplicate your template, and put it on top of your pictures so that they are perfectly sized.

(addendum 11/09 - okay, that was the HARD way. If you have photoshop, you can use grids to align your images, and clipping masks and transform to get your images sized correctly)
Here is one with flowers from my garden this spring:


That was a decent morning's work. Now I am going to go take a nap....

--update post nap :)
Found this gorgeous template - I layered a texture on the girls' faces so that they would be a bit more subdued to suit the template.



Very similar to scrapbooking. Eventually I plan to make gorgeous templates myself and offer them for sale to other photographers and scrapbookers. But that is a project for another day.

Right now, my goals are to photograph 100 families, develop a website, and master lighting in complicated scenarios...

Panel Print....

My sister has been inspiring me with her panel prints, so I'm trying one of my own. It is really fun! What do you think?

TO THE JOURNEY - Goodhart Photography, Northern Virginia

My first blog post for my fledgling photography business! I love all kinds of photography - close up, nature, architectural, documentary, but for now I am focusing on portraits.

I love photographing people, trying to bring out their unique beauty and personalities in my portraits. And learning the language of lighting is fascinating!

Getting my business off the ground should be an interesting journey, and I'm really looking forward to it!