Hello, hello! This week I bring to you another birthday photo! Yesterday was Lyle’s 24th birthday and we celebrated with dinner, drinks, hoola hoops, & failed pizza cookies/regular cookies. Anyway, I had a sort of planned out photo of what I was going to post for today but due to the fact that the Texas heat can be unbearable, we didn’t take it. And since we didn’t take it, I mildly panicked about what I was going to post. So, I had to rely on my awesome last minute thinking skills to figure something out. Now, I am all about simplicity so if I can skip out on setting up and using my DSLR and getting all the settings right, I will. All I had to do was tell Lyle “stand here like this” and whip out my iPhone and snap a few photos and I was done. But don’t think I’m lazy and like to take the easy way out!! This is strictly for when I’m in panic mode and in a time crunch. Anyway, here is his simple birthday portrait. I hope you enjoy!

Side note: do you know how hard it is to come up with a creative birthday portrait (on a time crunch) that isn’t super cheesy or intended for children under the age of 4? Ugh.

Happy Friday & Happy August! Can y’all believe it’s already August? Anyway, for this week’s post, I definitely encountered some struggles. Between getting settled back at home from last week’s trip and other scheduled engagements, I hardly found time to think about what to post for today. One thing that has really been on my mind lately is the subject of creativity. I feel like I have really been slacking on that and I have been wanting to find new creative outlets to express myself. I’m just not sure how or where to even begin. This week, I took a piece of glass outside to experiment with some ideas I had. While those ideas didn’t work out, I did stumble upon some happy accidents (in my book). For some reason, I was really intrigued by how the glass was so reflective but didn’t give a perfect mirrored look. I don’t know, I could just be desperate or crazy but I thought it was pretty cool. Until next week, enjoy! 🙂

Well, hello there! In case you haven’t noticed, I am currently in California on vacation with my family. Being away isn’t going to stop me from posting! It did hinder my possibilities a bit though. I wasn’t sure what to post at first. My niece had an awesome suggestion but unfortunately I couldn’t capture it in time for today. I don’t want to spoil it just yet because I could still take the photo and show y’all later! 😉 Anyway, we were leaving dinner and I noticed the sun was setting right behind us. So, I rushed back to the hotel room and went straight to the balcony to get this shot. I have to say California sunsets ain’t got nothing on Texas sunsets, but the palm trees add a nice touch! That’s all I have to say for now 🙂 So until next week, enjoy!

Hi there! So, this week my idea for a photo changed quite a few times. Of course, these things hardly go as planned for me because something is always coming up or going wrong. Earlier in the day (Thursday), I had taken a simple iPhone shot of the image I was going to post. It was all set and ready to go until that night. My mom told me to go outside with my dad and look at the show. I was really confused… due to the fact that I was actually napping and she woke me up. I had no idea what was even happening. So, I got up and went outside to see this awesome lightning show happening. I stared and took it all in for a few minutes until I finally decided I wanted to try photographing it again. Again meaning that I don’t think I’ve tried since the first time I “successfully” captured lightning, which was in 2007 with a point and shoot camera. How I did it, I have no idea. Enough rambling, enjoy my lighting composite as well as my first ever attempt from 7 years ago! 🙂

Lately, I’ve really enjoyed preparing for my weekly Friday post. I have it all set up and ready to go so that I’m not scrambling around super last minute. However, this week has been incredibly busy and, well, here I am scrambling around super last minute. Either way, it’s done and ready to go! This past Sunday (July 6) was my niece’s 9th birthday. It really is insane to see how fast they grow up. I now know what it was like for everyone to see me grow up and understand why they were shocked when they heard I was another year older. Anyway, Ashtynn is a little fashionista in training and was super pumped about having her picture taken. She even let me do her hair and makeup! And you know I had to include some extra shots because they were too cute! So, I hope you enjoy & don’t forget to come back next week!

Well, if this isn’t an important post in America then I don’t know what is! Happy Independence Day, y’all! Of course I had to post an American themed photo for today. I mean, I guess I could have gone in the opposite direction & done some sort of Independence Day movie themed photo but that just wouldn’t make as much sense. What else says “4th of July” like the American flag & fireworks? I was super proud of myself for planning ahead and making sure I got everything together and finished in time. It was so much less stressful too! Anyway, don’t want to bore you with too much rambling. I’ll let y’all get to your BBQs, pool parties, & beer! Enjoy 🙂

Did y’all know that we are exactly halfway through the year? Because we are. Week 26 is here and that means we have 26 weeks of 2014 left! I’m sorry but when did that happen!? Anyway, in honor of this being “half a year” I decided to do half a portrait. I tried various ways to make this image happen the way I had it planned in my head and that was pretty difficult. I finally got it somewhat close to what I was happy with and this is the result! I wanted it to be somewhat fading out to signify what’s still to come. So, since 2014 is halfway over, if you haven’t accomplished what you’ve wanted to there’s still 26 weeks left! SO GET TO IT! 🙂 Happy Friday!

Well, would ya look at that. Another week gone and here’s another Friday. It’s strange that there are some weeks that I swear there’s two days between posts. Then, there’s other days, like today, where I feel as if I forgot to post the previous week. Does that make sense? Anyway, as you know (and if you don’t, have you been living under a rock!?) the San Antonio Spurs won their fifth NBA Championship title on Father’s Day. It was definitely a huge deal considering the outcome of last year’s finals but let’s not talk about that. Anyway, the plan was to go to the river parade downtown on Wednesday and take lots of awesome photos for this week but, considering how hot it gets in San Antonio, we opted for the Alamodome viewing instead. I was on my way in with my camera ready when we noticed there was someone walking back to the parking lot with their camera. We asked if they weren’t allowing them in and he told us no. I was pretty upset, especially once I got inside when I realized plenty of people had somehow taken their cameras in. I still had so much fun and was able to capture some photos on my iPhone. It stills irks me about the low quality and thinking about how much better my DSLR photos would have been but you can’t change the past right? What’s done is done and all that matters is I had fun! 🙂

Hey y’all! Welcome back to another week & happy Friday! I had a super awesome photo planned for this week and I had all the photos for it ready buuuut I couldn’t edit it the way I wanted to. It just wasn’t coming out looking right at all so basically, that was my first fail for the year. I do plan on trying again in the future so we’ll see how it goes then! I’m not giving up! So of course I start panicking and thinking of last minute things I can photograph without it being dumb and rushed. My nieces were playing in the pool at the time & I was loving all the colors going on so I decided to just snap a quick photo on my iPhone. Honestly, sometimes I love shooting with my iPhone more than my digital camera. It’s quick and you can edit everything right there and bam you’re done! I figured this was also a great way to kick off summer (for most people at least. I don’t really have “summer break” anymore :|). Hope you enjoy!