Sammy & Kimberly

Mickey & I invited a fun, young couple over to model for me the other night. He actually met Kimberly at school & she & Sammy graciously agreed to come over to help me get some more "couple" shots for my portfolio. We did an indoor session mainly using our black backdrop & we are planning an outdoor session later in the spring. Now, we love our kids, but I have to admit that Mickey & I were a bit jealous when Sammy & Kimberly left at 7:30p announcing they were headed out for dinner...we were headed to bathe our kids.

Addy, Ava & Ridley

Yesterday I had a great time at my photo session with Addison, Ava & baby brother, Ridley, in their home that was built in the late 1800's. What a wonderland! It was so fun to do a session in their home, not only because their house has such character, but because I intend to do most family sessions in the client's home if possible. It was good practice for me to look for splashes of color & natural light. Ava & Ridley missed out on the bubble fun because of those nasty ole naps, but Miss Addy was a sport out in the cold January air.

Who cares if it's cold!

Yesterday the kids & I headed out to the backyard to play...they played with toys while I played with a new lens. Thursday Mickey brought home a new short focal length lens with a fast aperture (17-50mm, 2.8) that has turned out to be a really great addition to the camera bag. I love it because I can get in really tight to my subject while maintaining a short focal length that gives me that dreamy blur that we all love. We have also been playing with new photo editing software, Adobe Lightroom & CS3...wow! It has enabled me to shoot RAW & really fine tune every little detail. All of these shots are all framed in tight, I know, but I was testing the new lens.

We got this shot of Grace mounted onto a 24x30 to use as a display (as an added bonus, it should pump up her self esteem so much that we'll never have any issues with that in the coming preteen years).

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Over the weekend I had the privilege of photographing a very unique family full of missionaries & seminary students. The parents are missionaries & three out of four daughters are on the mission field, preparing to enter the mission field & a seminary student just returning from the mission field. Whew! They are wrapping up a Christmas visit before each family goes their own way again & wanted some family pictures before heading out. You'll recognize some sweet faces...my little model girls, Sahara, Bria & Tirza, with their parents this time, Mark & Hannah.

Merideth

These are some more of the shots that I got while my family was together over Christmas. This is my brother's daughter, Merideth, a cowgirl at heart. I called my brother to ask if Merideth could model for me while they were in town & asked him to have her bring her favorite cowboy boots & hat...well, he forgot the hat, but we got some excellent shots anyway. I am so happy that she modeled for me because I really needed some nice teen shots for my portfolio & with Merideth's beautiful face & natural posing I got so many good shots that it will be hard to choose which ones I will use on the website. Of course, with her being fourteen, her parents love the ones of her smiling the best because of the rarity of those glimpses.

Trey, Trevor & Becca

I took some shots of my family while we were together over Christmas. Mickey set up the black muslin backdrop & lights at my sister's house & we had a fun little photo shoot. These are a couple of my favorites. These are my sister's kids, Trey, Trevor & Rebecca. Again, I think my favorite thing about these shots is that each of their personalities shines through. It was a great time to get a family picture of the three of them again...the last picture they had made like this was one I took when Becca was about 3 years old!

A Few New things

There are a lot of new things to update you on. Most importantly, we have decided to change the name of the business from In The Moment Studios to Emily Rainey Portraits. Mickey & I have been reading up on starting a photography business (probably a good idea if you intend to actually be successful with your photography business) & one of the things we learned is to name your business carefully. In The Moment Studios was just not specific enough & sounded very mall photographyish to us. So we went with using my name & there's no turning back now...business cards have been ordered & are in transit as I type. Thanks to my dear Mickey for using up precious study time to design a new logo & business card for me this weekend!

I also have two new backdrops in...black muslin & a roll of white paper. Now backdrops are not my favorite choice to use with my style of portraiture, but I do look forward to using them with newborn & other family posed shots like that. Of course I had to try them out, so I enlisted the help of my oldest kiddos as models.

These last couple of shots of Ian I manipulated the contrast in Photoshop to give them a very high key look. The more I practice, the more I see that I like the results so much better when the expressions & poses are natural & just captured, not forced.

Last, but not least, the most exciting news is that I received an early Christmas present from Mickey...a new Nikon portrait lens! I am very excited to get some shots with it & when I do you'll see them here first!