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Thursday, November 4, 2010

I promise I used to be good at this!

There was this time long ago when I was amazing at blogging. A few of my favorite people and I started a blog back in college, which had many readers [one] and had quite possibly the least interesting posts known to blogspot.com. Don’t try to find this blog, I promise it’s not worth your time, but I really wish I could get back to that point in my life where I had nothing to do BUT blog. Maybe I had 18 hours worth of college courses which required a lot of studying, but I was way more dedicated to blogging. Now that i’m an adult and have responsibilities and bills and pets, I have lost sight of my priorities. What a tragedy. I have a lot of things on my to-do list these days and I guess, for now, blogging will have to be at the bottom. My issue is that I LOVE to write, it’s not just about uploading photos. I am a storyteller by nature (hello fellow Geminis!) so it’s hard for me to just upload 10 pics and call it a day. I am struggling to find a compromise between my full time job, photography and my TV shows. What??! How did TV shows end up on my list of priorities?

Ok here’s the deal, I love a few shows, and when they are on TV I can’t get anything done. This list of procrastinating inducing shows includes Modern Family, Real Housewives of (insert ANY city here), Teen Mom, It’s Always Sunny, The Office and Dexter. Do not text me, call me, email me or think about me if these shows are on. You can blame this partially on a broken DVR remote (can you believe we used to live without DVR?) and the fact that I have to rush to the TV as soon as these shows come on. I can’t get enough and it is my one escape from having to use my brain. Thankfully most of my fav shows are on wednesday and thursday, so I’m able to balance my time. How ridiculous is this post by the way?

Anyway, I wanted my readers to know there is a blogger deep down inside of me, and hopefully she emerges in the near future. Im making it a goal for me to catch up on some blog posts this weekend. Things in the pipeline:

Maternity Portraits with the McClain’s
Engagements with Amy & Ryan
Jackie & Ruben’s Wedding
1 Year old Portraits of my nephew
Maternity Portraits with Khiabett & Gerald
Family Portraits with the Ramos Family

November Sessions I’m looking forward to:

Jen & Brendan’s Engagement Pictures
Jenn’s Bridal Portraits
Tiffany’s Family Portraits
Suzana’s Wedding

Can’t wait to give you all a taste of what i’ve been up to!

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Ferguson’s: A Wedding Story

An amazing couple decided to marry back on August 7th, 2010 and I was more than excited that I was asked to be their wedding photographer. Abby & Craig have had some appearances on my blog already, and I can’t say ENOUGH how much I love these guys. They ooze fun everywhere they go, and they made no exception for their wedding! First let me talk about how GORGEOUS the ceremony was. I have always been a little biased to outdoor weddings– I guess I just like natural settings– and I was very excited to take these pictures.

**I need to give a HUGE THANK YOU to my sister and brother in law who both assisted me with the photography on this wedding. Without their help I don’t think I would have survived. So, Thank you Dena and Adam. You both rock!**

Abby & Craig had their wedding at the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort in Bastrop, TX. Bastrop is about 25 minutes outside of Austin, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Texas. The resort was very gorgeous with a lot of rustic decor. I didn’t have the privilege of staying at the resort, but I made a mental note to come back for a weekend sometime. Here are some previews of the big day!

I have so many photos of these two it is really hard for me to go through them all and pick favorites. The reception was amazing and I don’t think I can do it justice by describing, but I will say that I’ve never seen a wedding where almost everyone in attendance was on the dance floor. It literally looked like a trendy club on a saturday night. My favorite part, by far, was the “Power Hour”. I know what you’re thinking, beer, shots, college, hangovers…but no, it’s not that kind of power hour. Basically each table had a big bag full of goodies in it and once they announced it was power hour, everyone looked under the table revealing giant sunglasses, party hats, beach balls, mardi gras beads, noise-makers, boas… etc. I’ve been to A LOT of weddings where this would have resulted in everyone looking at eachother with disgust and MAYBE one or two of the drunkest people at the wedding actually participating. This wedding was not like that by any means. Every man, woman, child, grandma and drunk uncle decided to join the fun, resulting in possibly one of the best nights I’ve ever had watching other people have fun.

Here are some snippets of the fun!

And in case you didn’t believe me the first 80 times I said this was a fun couple…

Congratulations Abby & Craig! I wish you many years of bliss…. thanks for letting me be a part of this special day!

Tags: Abby, Bastrop, Craig, Hyatt, Reception, Texas, Wedding

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Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Oh, hey there little blog.

I don’t know if you’ve caught on to my trend yet, but I have made it my goal in life to start every blog post with me apologizing for my lack of actual blog posts. Forgive me. I am a true procrastinator, but I promise it actually is how I keep myself productive. Don’t ask me how. It just does.

Without getting into too much boring detail, I recently had to take a little work break for medical reasons. I am alive and well, but was forced to take it easy for two weeks. My original plan was to take it easy and still do some photography work at home, but I quickly found out that I actually wasn’t going to happen, and I ended up watching endless episodes of Friday Night Lights on my iPad. By the way, love that show. My boyfriends mom, Rindy, recommended it to me and I can’t stop watching. I’m already on Season 3! I find myself wishing I could go back to high school in Dillon, TX, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist, but their high school seems a lot more exciting than mine was. Either that or I’m just having way too much nostalgia and realizing I’m creeping toward my 30s. Most likely the latter.

Anyhow, onto photography related stuff. Since I last blogged, I have finished proofing Abby & Craig’s Wedding. I plan on blogging about the wedding this evening with some previews of the beautiful day. Abby and Craig are wonderful and have been very patient with me over the last two months, while I’ve been trying to manage a million things. My goal is always to get photos edited as quickly as possible, but life tends to get in the way sometimes. Anyway, I really appreciate them as clients and friends and had the BEST time shooting their wedding! Can’t wait to share it with you all!

Mid-September I had two sessions scheduled with some of my good friends. First I met up with Melanie & Jonathan McClain in the Fall Creek area. Melanie is a little over 8 months preggo with a little baby boy, Jake. I had the pleasure of taking her maternity photos, which I always love. I have been friends with these two for about a year and they are both amazing people! Melanie and Jonathan were both good sports and very photogenic so the shoot was a breeze. The following day, I got to take some engagement photos of my two good friends, Amy and Ryan. My boyfriend is the best man in their wedding and I am privileged enough to be one of Amy’s bridesmaids. Amy and I have gotten to be good friends over the years while bonding over the horror of dealing with Austin and Ryan’s longstanding obsession with football. We have both come to terms with this and supposedly, Amy has decided she is okay with marrying into such an obsession, hence, why I took engagement photos of the two lovebirds. I had a great time with their photos. I found myself taking laugh breaks quite often due to Ryan just being himself.

I have two shoots this weekend, one of my nephew, Alex, for his 1 year old portraits, and the other is another Maternity shoot, which I will have updates about next weekend! I’m really excited to get some previews up of all my sessions as soon as I can. Try to bare with me, as I am ferociously trying to get all this done before my next wedding on the 16th! I promise it’ll be worth the wait!

Tags: Abby, Amy, Craig, Engagement, Jonathan, Maternity, Melanie, Ryan, Wedding

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Monday, September 13, 2010

Noah Dexter Gartz: Newborn Session

I am at an age where it would be nearly impossible to not be surrounded by weddings and babies. Lucky for me, some of my best friends are getting married and having babies, which makes my life a lot more fun. I am also lucky in that my friends are sweet enough to ask me to capture some of these special moments. In this particular case, I was privileged to capture some newborn pictures of one of the cutest little boys I’ve ever met. Back in July, one of my favorite couples *and some of my best friends* had a little baby boy named Noah Dexter Gartz. He was born July 24th, 2010, while I was in Florida for my brothers wedding. The funniest thing about this was while my friend Jenn was in labor, she was texting me updates and asking me how my brother’s wedding was. That explains Jenn in a nutshell, no matter what kind of pain she is in, or how busy she is, she is always thinking about others! True friend to a tee.

Needless to say I was THRILLED when she asked me to take Noah’s newborn photos. As I learned with my nephew, Alex, it isn’t the easiest task to shoot a newborn. Mostly because if they aren’t sleeping, they are usually crying. And while you can pretty much move them in whatever position you want while they are sleeping, they do not really like anything you do to them when they are awake. :) Lucky for me, Noah was sleeping most of the time I was there and I was able to capture some really sweet photos of him.

Here are some previews of little Noah doing what he does best:

Tags: Jenn, Newborn, Noah, Taylor

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