Christmas Gift Wrapping 2012

This year, I decided to try to top my previous gift wrapping ideas. My wrapping themes started two years ago. 2010 was the photos instead of tags idea, and 2011 was my "customized coloring paper" wrapping paper. 

The idea for this years theme came to me when I was considering, "What else has fancy wrapping to it?" The first answer that came to mind was, "Candy!"

So here it is:

I loved being able to take candy that everyone loves and add the person's name that the gifts are to instead of the name of the candy. So far I've done a Hershey bar, Toblerone, Hershey Kiss (one of the easiest ones!), Twix, Reeses, and Smarties. I also want to do a Crunch bar, Kit-Kat, and some mints for smaller gifts. The mints will also help me to use up some of the cellophane wrapping that I purchased for the smarties! 

Can't wait for everyone to see what candy they got this year! I've already had several family members say that they'll be disappointed that there won't ACTUALLY be any candy inside. ;-)

Family Portraits: The Peters

 I had the opportunity to go up and take these photos in York, PA on a farm of the Peter's family. Taking a family photo of 19 people can seem like a daunting task, but they made it one of the easiest experiences for me! I didn't have to photoshop any of these faces, folks. The eyes were all open, and the faces were all smiles. Here are some of my favorites from that day:

 Lanny is a farmer, so this was an obvious choice for a prop for him:

Lanny and Ruth Anne are the last people you'd see on a motorcycle, so we had to have some fun with the one they had at the barn with this shot:

All of the grandchildren:

The grandkids and their grandparents:

Here's the whole family:

Portrait Session: Casey

Casey's mom, Lauren, won a free portrait session with me after bidding on the gift certificate for a one-hour sitting at a softball fundraising event. We were able to go to a beautiful park in Eldersburg, MD.  Casey was a lovely subject to work with, and was great at improvising and working around the poses that I set up for her. Her personality was bright and bubbly, and I felt that in every shot I took of her that day. The lighting was wonderful that day, and despite some light showers in the middle of our session, it all worked out. Here are some of the shots from that day:

Photographers: The Post Process

I've had some trouble relaying to people the value behind how much photographers do to make your photos beautiful. It's not just a matter of buying an expensive camera, an expensive lens, and making the most of it. It's about knowing your settings, your light, and your angles before you even turn your camera on. Equally as important is what you do with a photo after you've uploaded it to your computer.

By the end of this post I hope to enlighten you about what goes on in the post process of your professional photographer experience. If you hire a photographer to shoot a wedding, or event, and they say they'll have the photos back to you in a matter of days, then they probably don't care a whole lot about post processing. Or, they're up day and night editing them until they're finished. The later seems unlikely. Maybe they're just extremely confident in the way they took the photos. I find that even my best images taken at weddings or events could use some fine-tuning. That's the perfectionist in me, I guess.

To give an example, here's a photo I took at a birthday party a few weeks ago:

At face value, it's a "good" picture. Right off the bat, you might see that it could use some cropping, or maybe that it's a little too dark. The depth of field adds dimension to the photograph that it wouldn't have if every part of the child was in focus. A professional takes photos like the one above to another level when they edit it. 

Here's a list of what I did to edit the picture:

1) Correct white balance

2) Crop most of stool out of picture to center the child in the frame

3) Increase brightness

4) Increase saturation

5) Burn the edges of the iris's and dodge the whites of the eyes to make them stand out more

6) Give a fishbowl effect to make the child's hands look further away from his face and add dimension

7) Decrease exposure on the right side where the flash bounced

8) Add vignetting to pull focus inward

9) Increase contrast

10) Lighten highlights

11) Add some fill light

12) Increase the black

Here is the result:

Photography is about transforming "good" photos into "great" photos. I give this level of attention to detail to every photograph that I give back to a client. That means hours of editing to check and perfect the settings, levels, composition, and overall quality of every photo.

There are good photographers, and then there are good editors. I happen to be both. :)

Maternity Portraits: Aaron & Jessica

I worked in retail with Jessica years ago. She's such a fun and bright spirit, and it shows in every single picture I took of her when I did her maternity portraits. She and Aaron are having their first baby, a son, to be named Jackson. They're going to be great parents, and I can't wait to do their newborn photos! :)

Wedding: Oscar & Lelin

Oscar contacted me through a friend from high school, and wanted me to do their wedding photos. I was more than happy to agree! I met with the bridal party at Quiet Water Park in Annapolis for their group and family pictures. It was a hot day, but the weather and lighting were perfect for the group setups. I had a lot of fun posing the bride and groom, and the entire wedding party were a riot. Not to mention, most of them only spoke Spanish, so that was an interesting obstacle for me! I understand quite a bit more Spanish than I actually speak, but that day was certainly a challenge at times with a communication barrier. I guess I'll have to invest in learning some more Spanish, because it was a very rewarding experience to work with all of them. Here are some of my favorite pictures from that day: