Merry Christmas from Marnie, Sarah and Brandy!

I just finished my sister-in-law's "roommate pictures." When I was a freshman, Nicole and I had to do this with my 2.3mega-pixel sony cybershot and a self-timer...none of this fancy photoshop edited stuff! But this was a lot of fun and Marnie and her roommates couldn't have been more adorable if they tried. The end result of these pictures will possibly be a Christmas card.

A blind date in Dayton, TX

Last weekend I drove 7 1/2 hours to shoot a wedding east of Houston. I got this wedding through my internship at Belle's and was accompanied by another member of the Belle's staff. We didn't know a lot about the wedding, other than that the photographer that the couple had hired backed out four days before the wedding without providing a replacement. So you could say it was kind of like a blind date--normally we meet with a client several times before the big day--we didn't really know what we were getting into until we got there.

From this wedding and editing the pictures I have learned one important thing: All this time I've been carefully resizing my images for my blog since they are huge files and won't upload at full resolution. My boss finally told me a secret--this is the important thing in case you didn't figure it out--Photoshop will do it for you. Now he tells me!

I also have advice for anyone who reads my blog and is planning a wedding: If you decorate your church with tall candles, on tall pillars, every other pew, down the entire aisle, your photographer will think you hate them.

Now for the pictures:

Current craziness...

This week has been and still is very busy. Over the weekend, I shot a wedding in Houston with Belle's and the first image shown here is my first critiquable image from that event. Let me know what you think. I like the mystery of it but I'm also arguing with my self that it's too dark.

The second image is for the Shinnery Review's ARTiculation contest. Since Kalyn and I are co-editors this year--and since we cooked up the contest--we figured we should enter. The rules are that the finished work has to combine art and poetry (or literature of another kind) in a visual way. The artist can accomplish this by any means they choose. We decided to work together to illustrate a poem Kalyn wrote. I took and edited the pictures and made the mock up to Kalyn's specifications. Kalyn was the model and will mat the finished prints into the layout shown here. Again, let me know what you think.

you can click on either image to make them larger

Fat Tuesday....part one

I've begun work on my last art photography project: the project to end all projects, the capstone piece, the grand finale. So, anyway. This project is going to highlight a weekly night close to my heart...Fat Tuesday! Fat Tuesday--name stolen from the Mardi Gras festival--is a night set aside for my friends and me to cook dinner for each other and catch up on the week's events. There are six of us on this weekly rotation, each week a different house, cook and recipe. And ALWAYS desert. So my project is not only the photography, but the display of the photography and for this subject I am making a photographic table--more details and pictures to come. Since it's such a time intensive project, it's the last thing due in the class and we've already been working on it one week. Good luck to me and my classmates!!

Here is the first installment of pictures for the table. These long images will be mixed in with images of different sizes--all about food and us! I still have mine and Kalyn's film strip image to complete but take a look at what I've got so far and, as always, please let me know what you think!

You can click on the image to make it larger

Multiplicity in intervals

This semester I've been moonlighting at Hardin Simmons taking an Art Photography class (since ACU doesn't exactly have a wide variety of photography classes, although they do offer a PHOTOjournalism degree...but I'm not bitter). We've had four assignments so far, this is the fourth one. Our mission was to capture motion in three related images. Yep. That's it. So since the only readilly available models I have these days are me and my husband (sniff sniff, no more pictures of Kalyn and Tony!), poor Eric got dragged to Hardin Simmons for yet another photo shoot.

Two interesting things to know about these images:

1. They were shot using the interval timer on my Nikon D2x. The camera actually records up to 9 consecutive shots all by its little self--after you set up the shot, of course--at any interval you wish. I then picked the ones I liked and erased them into one image using Photoshop and a whole bunch of layers.

2. The other requirement for these images was the size...9x7. Which is, of course, a crazy uncommon size and I had to photoshop the borders in order to make the image 8x10 so that it would go through the Wal-mart 1 hour without a stupid crop (where they gave me a horrible printing job...that border is the exact same color in photoshop! I printed six images from Wal-mart and got six DIFFERENT colored borders!). So THAT's how you fox Walmart...if you can stomach their color correction process. Humph!

Split personality

So, I have discovered--and I think this is true for most photographers--that I have a split personality. There is semi-professional Emerald, who hauls around her heavy but important looking Nikon D2x, carefully choosing each shot and looking as smooth as possible while doing it. Then there is tourist Emerald, who weilds her ancient Sony Cybershot (which still boasts a rockin' Carl Zeiss zoom lens comparable or better than personal digital cameras you can buy on the shelf today), running aimlessly like the typical annoying tourist, taking the typical posed pictures and rigging the self timer while the camera is propped on various personal items and shopping bags. The last two weeks I was tourist Emerald and it was fun.

What follows are the four decent pictures I took prior my wedding last week, and the adventures of Eric, Emerald and the self timer on our honeymoon in New Mexico.

My two new sisters Marnie and Kayla Lemmons.

Meagan, one of my best friends from high school and one of my bridesmaids, posing in an art project I made this semester (we were supposed to change the color of something with a distinct traditional color and see what effect it had)

Helena, another friend from high school and a bridesmaid, also playing dressup.

(this is actually a typical face for her to make at me)

Now starts the honeymoon. Eric's mother's family has a semi-tradition where they go to a family cabin in the mountains of Las Vegas, New Mexico for their honeymoon. It's quiet and peaceful (and exactly what we needed after this crazy semester). They have a board overlooking the living area in the cabin where they pin boutineers and corsages the bride and groom wear at the wedding...so we got to add Eric's boutineer.

The rest of our honeymoon is represented in the goofy pictures we took using the self-timer on the camera. There are some of us hiking (yes I actually hiked):

and shooting BB guns at defenseless tin cans and pine cones:

And visiting Santa Fe, where we toured the really big church,

(does anyone know who the kid in the pink dress is and why she ranks with St. Francis?)

...and gawked at the interesting sculpture outside the Native American Art Museum,


...and where we petted $4000 fur coats (but Eric said we'd get kicked out if we took a picture) and decided that the following picture will definately NOT be ME!


...and then hiked some more.





And then we left for home and took a quick picture by Hermit's Peak on the way out. Do you see the Hermit's face???

(isn't he cute????)