Jenn's princess portraits - Daytona Beach Portrait Photographer

I was so thrilled when I spoke to Carey, Jenn's mom, on the phone about scheduling a princess portrait session. She described to me the location she had in mind and I knew that I had to see it before the scheduled date. I'm so glad I did! I fell in love with the property and the beautiful brick mansion. The little creative wheels in my head started turning as I inspected every spot and began visualizing what I wanted for the shoot. I could have shot there all day and only wished we had more sunlight as the time change was in affect already. We still got plenty of great shots, hence why this post will be full of my favorite photos! Below are just a few of my favs. Thanks so much Carey and Jenn for the wonderful opportunity to capture this time in your life. I hope you love the photos as much as I do :)

Beautiful light! and subject ;)

Jenn wanted a more casual look now so she quickly changed into a cute outfit and since the sunset turned out to be so beautiful, we decided to take a few more shots out by the water and get some Glamorous "City Shots". Don't you just love the lights in the background along with the color of the sky? I think both the background and Jenn's outfit went perfect together

Love this shot of the dock and the colors of the water reflecting the sky

As we were walking back from the dock, I saw this and had to take the last shot :)

Portrait Sneak Peek: Jenn

I posted two more different one's on my facebook but I also wanted to post a little sneak peek here for Jenn. Before we leave for our mini vacation next week, I will have a full post up, promise! :) We shot at a beautiful location but more on that later...

Wedding Sneek Peek

Here are two of my favorite images from a wedding I assisted Jennifer with. It was an 11 hour wedding! But I only had to stay for 8 of those hours. My feet were still achy but I had a blast second shooting again and the wedding was really beautiful. More to come later :)

My furry family!

I love animals and it breaks my heart when I hear sad things happening to them. I truely consider our pets as part of our family and I don't know what kind of people we would be like without them. I absolutely refuse to "buy" an animal, whether it be from a pet store or privately. With so many hungry animals out in the streets, why not salvage one or adopt one from your local humane society? Most of the animals there have been abandoned and are just waiting patiently for someone to come along and give them the love they deserve.

It's been a while since I've shared some personal photos so here are a few that I took a couple of wekeends ago when we were over at my parents. This is my beautiful baby Snoopy. He was watching me as I was taking a few photos of our kitties.

Our three kitties: Precious, Minx, and Vicky

They all have quite the personality! Precious is just as her name. She is precious, sweet, and loves to be cuddled. Minx doesn't have a tail because that is his breed. He's a tough guy, but also very sweet and protective. Vicky, we have had the longest. She is a little bit diva and very independent. She only allowed me to take one picture of her.

Minx loved being photographed the most. Isn't he photogenic? :)

I have a few more personal photos that I'll be sharing in the next few days so stay tuned for that if you'd like!

Daytona Beach Photographer - Adames/Ortiz Family

I've known these two families for a while now and it's so wonderful to see their family grow. We decided to wait until Brianna was 8 weeks old to take her portraits and include her grandparents in for the fun! Here's one of my favorite of little Brianna, her brother, parents, and grandparents:

It was one of those chilly days here in FL so after a few shots, we decided to go indoors to Brianna's grandparents home and do a few more there.

Here's the proud mommy:

and with grandpa!

After the formals, it was time for her to relax..

I love this one of her!

and one more outfit change. She was the cutest ladybug :)

Her parents painted this. I think they did a wonderful job!

Aside from weddings, one of the things I enjoy doing is photographing babies. You can't get a bad picture of them and they are so easy to pose. All the props were her mommy's and I think if I specialized in baby photography, I'd go crazy buying a bunch of props and hammocks and baskets! I think it is so beautiful and you can really get creative with them.


That's all for now!

Update of things to come

I just want to take a few minutes today and blog about what's in store this week! and in the next few weeks!

First off, I want to say how excited I am about our vacation in two weeks! We needed one so badly, so Lamar and I booked a cruise to the bahamas for five nights, and we got a sweet deal! It cost us less than $500 for both our tickets combined. Unlimited food, unlimited room service, unlimited fun! I won't be blogging that whole week because I won't have my laptop with me but I will have my camera and I will be sure to post a few photos from our trip!

Secondly, I will be blogging my friends family and baby session this week. Her baby is so cute and I posted a sneek peek last week here on the blog. And if time permits, I will also blog some beautiful images from this past saturday's wedding that I shot with Jennifer and Glen! I totally love working with them.

Thirdly and lastly, I don't know if some have noticed but I currently do not have an official website. Why? Because I will be working on a brand new one! It will be a website dedicated entirely to weddings and you will be able to view my portfolio, learn a little about me, hopefully see more pictures of me, and also information about my prices. In the mean time, you can click on the links above to view my portfolio, and if you scroll down to the bottom area of my blog, you will be able to see my prices for wedding coverage.


That is all for now, and I hope you are having a happy Monday!

Capturing motion blur in photography

One thing that I strive to consistently implement in my work is producing sharp images. I love shooting wide open, mostly for a single person portrait such as a bride or groom. But I have found that leaving my aperature at 2.0, my sharpness rate has increased, especially on moving subjects. We all want nice sharp images so the thought of camera shake and motion blur in a picture might make us cringe.

I have found though, by reading photography related articles and looking at a few example of other photographers, that motion blur can be a very good thing to create a very cool and dramatic affect to a photo in several occasions. One that I can think of is on the dance floor or at a reception hall. You can capture the mood and feel of a dance floor by slowing your shutter speed way down at about 1/30th of a second or below and no Flash. If you have a steady hand, you can capture the lights that surround the reception hall, or the lights that make up the mood of the room while having all the people blured and look like there is alot of motion going on. This effect really makes a photo look like it is standing still, frozen in time. Here's a very good example of this that I found on another photographer's blog:

Doesn't it look like someone hit the fast forward button to the future and everyone is moving fast forward while the entire room stands still? I think it's fabulous! You can almost feel all the buzzling and excitement that is going on.

Lets all try to get a little out of our comfort zone and think a bit outside of the box and really push ourselves to try new things. You may not succeed the first time but I bet that with more practice, you will start to create photos that are truely unique and reflect your style and your creativity! I will be shooting a wedding this Saturday with Jennifer Werneth and I can't wait to try this technique during the party!