Thank You to My Photoshop Angels April 30, 2008

Julie & Cathy,

I felt I had to make a special thank you post to both of you for really coming through for me with my Photoshop issues this week!

Seriously – I really appreciate you trying to solve my issues and I finally have something I’m satisfied with!

You are both great friends and I appreciate your support! Having friends like you both that come through in a pinch is a wonderful thing!!

It’s nice to know that you’ve “got my back” for something as important to me as my photography work is great feeling.

Thank you both!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

The B. Family II (Communion Portraits Continued) April 29, 2008

More of the B. Family!

To see all of the B. Family photos posted so far HERE.

S. looking over at mom…I love moments like this:

Such a sweet smile…

The bow!! Such a beautiful dress – we wanted to show the wonderful details:

With the rosary beads from grandma:

Without the beads but hands in prayer:

So cute with the feet up:

And a quick candid of “J.” What a cute face! I love the colors that mom chose for J. & E. to wear.

Definitely more to come soon!!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

The B. Family’s Sneak Peek – Communion and Family Portraits April 27, 2008

This morning I had pleasure of photographing The B. Family! M. & M. have the most beautiful family. Two very lovely & sweet girls (S. & E.) and their cute little boy (J.) who will be turning very one soon.

We had lots of fun and tons of giggles while taking S.’s Communion Portraits, a collection of “sisters” portraits, sisters with brother, the entire family, and a mixture of Mom with the kids and Dad with the kids.

J. was a little tired but we got him smiling with the help of his favorite quacking duck. (I might have to invest in my own quacking duck if it gets great smiles like we got from J. today!) I got a kick out of how he would slowly find a way to crawl off the backdrop after a few shot. At once point we decided to turn him around mid crawl and aim him back in the direction of his family.

We started the day out with some “detail” shots of S.:

(click photos to view larger)

And then we continued onto portraits:

Look at the beautiful long eye lashes!

I love the over the shoulder pose.

Vintage effect:

Also, a BIG THANK YOU to JoAnn for being the most wonderful assistant today! JoAnn, I soooooo appreciate you giving up your Sunday morning to let me a hand. You were such a tremendous help to me and I appreciate it! Looking forward to next week’s photo assignment with you!

To see all of the B. Family photos posted so far HERE.

www.jenweaverphotography.com

The B. Family’s Sneak Peek – Communion and Family Portraits April 27, 2008

This morning I had pleasure of photographing The B. Family! M. & M. have the most beautiful family. Two very lovely & sweet girls (S. & E.) and their cute little boy (J.) who will be turning very one soon.

We had lots of fun and tons of giggles while taking S.’s Communion Portraits, a collection of “sisters” portraits, sisters with brother, the entire family, and a mixture of Mom with the kids and Dad with the kids.

J. was a little tired but we got him smiling with the help of his favorite quacking duck. (I might have to invest in my own quacking duck if it gets great smiles like we got from J. today!) I got a kick out of how he would slowly find a way to crawl off the backdrop after a few shot. At once point we decided to turn him around mid crawl and aim him back in the direction of his family.

We started the day out with some “detail” shots of S.:

(click photos to view larger)

And then we continued onto portraits:

Look at the beautiful long eye lashes!

I love the over the shoulder pose.

Vintage effect:

Also, a BIG THANK YOU to JoAnn for being the most wonderful assistant today! JoAnn, I soooooo appreciate you giving up your Sunday morning to let me a hand. You were such a tremendous help to me and I appreciate it! Looking forward to next week’s photo assignment with you!

To see all of the B. Family photos posted so far HERE.

www.jenweaverphotography.com

19th Annual Civil War Reenactment 2008 – Neshaminy State Park PA April 27, 2008

If I can give you any tip regarding your journey with photography – it’s to get out there and try different things that you never thought you would..

It’s like that old saying “You’ll never know if you like it until you try.”

Today my sister and I decided to try something different for a new photo opportunity. We attended the 19th Annual Civil War Reenactment at the Neshaminy State Park in Bensalem. PA.

(click all photos to view larger)

I found out about the event after I came across Michael Belgie’s Flickr stream with Civil War Reenactments photos. I sent him a note and he kindly provided me with information about the event. We made sure we found him at the “headquarters” and said hello since I wanted to thank him for sending me the information.

The official event website described the day as:

The 28th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, together with the First Battalion of the Army of Northern Virginia, The Historical Society of Bensalem Township, The Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum, the Delaware Valley CWRT, and The Neshaminy State Park are sponsoring a Civil War living history weekend on the Spring of 1863 Campaign.
News story
Brochure

This weekend, we will be portray a portion of the Battle of Chancellorsville that took place on May 3rd., the day after Jackson’s flank attack. We will portray portions of Archer’s, McGowen’s and Lane‟s Brigades.

This was something really “different & interesting” for me photography-wise. The history was interesting too. I never thought I would enjoy an event like this but I did. Everyone was so friendly and we enjoyed speaking with many of the participants.

Favorite face of the day:

I have over 800 photos (mostly taken with my 70-300VR — which produced EXCELLENT results for me today!). Due to the fact that I have a few paying photography jobs coming up in the next couple weeks it’s going to take time for me to sort through and edit that many photos I took today – but I created the gallery that the photos will be housed in when I finally get to them (and I promise I will!).

Here’s one that made me smile…the irony of the modern cameras with the period dress…I had to snap a photo.

You can check this blog and the new gallery I created for this event, periodically, to see when the (over 800) photos are completed and ready for viewing.

Click here for: GALLERY WHERE PHOTOS WILL BE STORED

Please be sure to check back and bookmark the link to the gallery!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

The "Brats" April 26, 2008

My friend Tiffany’s mom, Donna, is learning how to make her own wine at The Grape Escape Winemaking School in Dayton, NJ.

She’s calling her wine “Two Brats” and she wanted me to take some “bratty looking” photos of her grandsons (Tiffany’s boys) to use for the wine label.

I thought the idea was so funny we we tried to do some “bratty” poses. Normally I would have cropped them more but I wasn’t sure what size she would need.

These are my favorites of what we came up with:

Even thought D. (in the back) is out of focus I can’t help but love M.’s expression here. They’re great little actors!

And just one more…

To view them all click HERE.

www.jenweaverphotography.com

Lakeside April 25, 2008

EDIT 4/25: When I got to work today on a different monitor I see that none of photos below look how they did last night when I spent hours working on them.

Ever since I darkened the brightness on my monitor I have had trouble with how my photos on every other monitor but my own. I guess I will have to brighten my monitor back to where it was and re-doing every one of the photos below because of the terrible halos on every photo that involves the sky (which is 98% of them).

I have so much to edit and it is really upsetting that I wasted a whole night on processing all of these photos and now I have to re-do them all.

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Original post:

I took some time to go to the part after work again. Today I gave the flowers and the macro lens a break. I brought my tripod with me because I was interested in doing HDR waterscapes near the lake.

I can’t even express how wonderful the weather was today. I was so glad to be outdoors even if it was only for a little under an hour.

In order to get these you have to go on a little path through a wooded area and there are little great spots in between where I was able to stick my tripod and get different views of the lake.

These are all HDR shots with 3 exposures each:

(click all photos to view larger)

Next time I’ll try from the other side of the lake. I only had so much time before I had to leave and there were a lot of people out and about at the lake so I was limited on what angles I chose.

Oh the reflections, the reflections!!

I made my way over across the street to another section of the park with a lake and got some more great angles!

This place is gorgeous and the afternoon light was perfect for these photos!

These are some of my favs of the day. I love bendy tree trunks!

Oh and while I was there 2 of the geese at the park had the nerve to hiss at me! LOL! So I hissed right back at them!

I always visit this place so I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of it from different perspectives soon enough!

Feel free to check out my entire HDR Gallery: http://jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3868580_st8qe/1/284706791_saeNW

www.jenweaverphotography.com

Bobbi + Mike April 24, 2008

I like to visit other photographer’s blogs to learn new & exciting ideas and to get inspiration from others photographers.

I have a whole list of RSS feeds that I try to check daily and one in particular that I’ve really been enjoying lately is:

BOBBI + MIKE

This husband and wife duo from Indiana continues to amaze me each time I see their work.

Their website says: “a husband & wife photo team who love being in love, photographing love, and being loved. how lovely is that?!”

Take a look and I think you’ll be impressed!

You’ll love the personality that oozes right out of their blog!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

And the Experiments Continue April 24, 2008

In continuation of this shoot…I experimented a couple more times with adding texture. You never know until you try things, right?

I like how they look but it’s most important for me to see what the customer likes.

One more edit that I haven’t shown yet…completely dodged out the background on this one. I’ll probably experiment with textures on this photo as well tomorrow night. I need to download some more textures off of flickr to try with it though. I’d like a variety to present to the customer.

Check back for more from this series.

www.jenweaverphotography.com

In Memory April 24, 2008

In Memory of my Aunt Angie who passed away this evening from Lung Cancer…

She’s finally at peace now…

(She is pictured in the middle between my Dad and My Aunt Carol)

 

Building Your Blog: 10 things to consider when building your rockin’ photoblog April 24, 2008

“Natalie Norton recently authored a post entitled Blog Power: Why you should consider setting up a photoblog. This post is a follow up to that article. Here Natalie discusses 10 ways anyone can create a photoblog that will really shine!” (excerpt taken from the article linked below)

Click this link below to read Natalie’s article on Digital Photography Shool blog:

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/building-your-blog-10-things-to-consider-when-building-your-rockin-photoblog/

www.jenweaverphotography.com

Show Me the Texture April 23, 2008

Thanks to a suggestion from Julie I added texture to this shot and I love the results!

I grabbed the first texture I saw and tried it out…now I’ll be on the hunt for the perfect texture to try this a few different ways for the family to choose from.

I love yesterday’s high key version but that’s very time consuming to get right with dodging so texture is a nice option as well….makes it look like I had lots of backdrops!

I love S.’s expression in this one (she’s in the middle)!

Click to view larger

www.jenweaverphotography.com

3 Lovely Ladies April 22, 2008

Aren’t they the cutest Family???

I think so!

(click to view larger)

H., S. & J. were great to work with!

This is one of my favorites from their shoot!

More to come!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

I love this photo April 22, 2008

I love this photo. I do.

Yes, it’s a photo of me. I’m not being conceited…it’s just that I really love this photo for many reasons. It’s over a year old now and as many other pics of me that I always experiment with for self portraits I always end up going back to this one as a favorite. I even used it on my website Guestbook.

Maybe it’s because it reminds me of a really good time in my life…a time when things were A LOT simpler. It was also the time when my photography passion IGNIGHTING! And then traveled full speed ahead!

The photo was a self portrait of me on the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC. I was there with a good frend of mine, Lee, and we had a fantastic day walking around NYC. I think we walked about 6 miles in total from the time we left his apartment and then returned to it. We actually walked so much for so long that I was hardly able to walk on my left foot all week!!

The photo was taken with a point and shoot that I still own and carry with me in my purse (the Canon Powershot A620). The Powershot has the great screen that you can flip around so you can take self portraits and actually know what you are taking rather than turning the camera towards you and just praying you get yourself (and/or you and your friend in).

I love that you can see the Brooklyn Bridge in the DOF and the way the wind was blowing my hair backwards. Okay, I know…I’m getting carried away…

I’ve processed it many different ways when I was a lot less crafty in Photoshop and decided that I’ve learned a few more tricks or two so I re-processed it today. It works best in B&W IMO.

Well anyway, back to the story…

Lee along with my sister are the two people that helped me on the start to getting my journey with photography rolling. The “journey” as I like to call it started back on February 11th, 2007 when my sister and I decided we’d go out for “photo days.” We continued to do so almost every Sunday for much of 2007. Lee and I had “key” couple of photo days as well in February and March of 2007 that were great for me. Who wouldn’t love taking photos in one of the best cities there is! They both made it fun and exciting to spend the day out photographing anything and everything.

I’m glad this spark has ignited and look how far it has taken me… from a little point and shoot to actual photography jobs!

I love my hobby…I just do!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

Featured on Epic Edits Photodump 4-20-08 April 21, 2008

Thanks to Brain Auer of www.epicedits.com for featuring my favorite photo of all time that I’ve taken on his “photodump” from FLICKR.

See his blog post: http://blog.epicedits.com/2008/04/20/photodump-04-20-2008/

My photo is in the 1st column, 2nd to last row.

This shot:

Brian has his own Flickr Photo Pool – feel free to join if you’re on FLICKR!

www.jenweaverphotography.com

Office Inspiration April 20, 2008

Ever find yourself looking for photography inspiration?

When you can’t think of what to photograph just look around you – the inspiration is there – you just have to SEE it! It doesn’t always jump out at you, you have to experiment and take a risk.

Lately my macro lens has been inspriring me to try looking at normal objects differently. I brought my camera to work with my yesterday because I planned to go to the park after work (which I did).

I was changing the lens to get the camera during my lunch so I could be ready for macro shooting after work and I decided that I would play around taking a few macro shots at my desk. Well, it turned into a whole series… “around the office” (or shall I say Cubicle!)

www.jenweaverphotography.com