Santa Claus is in Town!

Santa Clause is in Town. Well sorta! It's mom in a Santa Suit. lol

Here is a cute little storyboard I put together just for the Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Clayton and Tatum are lucky to get two Christmas Cards!

We photographed these images at my friends Ranch. Great Place for photography. Thank you Dr. Ron and Andrea!

Clayton's favorite part was feeding the horses and Tatum's was dressing like a cowgirl and modeling for me!

Clayton & Tatum

Merry Christmas!

I love designing Christmas Cards.
Here is one of my latest.

These kids are wonderful to work with. Little Ms. Tatum had so much fun wearing that Santa Suit. She didn't want to stop!

Enjoy!

Homecoming 07

My daughter, Caitey, recently attended Homecoming and had a lot of fun. Caitey wanted the "Old Glam Hollywood" style this time. I think she pulled it off!


I only had about 5 minutes to photograph before her date showed up, Jordan. He looked quite dashing in his black suite with green tie. He was so cute that way he asked her to homecoming. Late at night he wrote in chalk outside our driveway on the street in really big letters, "Will you go to Homecoming with me?" Very Original. They have been friends since we moved here three years ago.

Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We went to the best Halloween Party this year. Our good friends, Jodi and Gary, love throwing Halloween parties. In fact, this was their 25th annual Halloween party. That's them to the left! They are both wonderful singers. Gary sounds like Frank!


I was Spider Lady (stupid, I know) and my hubby was a fart! Yes, you read that right, a fart. He dressed like a whoopie cushion and hid a fart machine under his costume with a remote control. I have to say it was pretty funny. He won a big trophy for funniest costume. He did deserve it :) And, He is an awesome singer/musician too.


It was the year of the Pirate! There must of been at least 15 Pirates. Urg, Matie!

Here we are the three musketeers, Susan, Me, and Lisa. My best buds who I have so much fun with. I love you guys! Oh ya, I'm in Texas now, I love ya'll!

I posted all the images that I took that night on my website under "proofing" If you know the hosts' last name, that's the password! The first letter is capitalized.

Run, Nate, Run

How do you photograph a young toddler with lots of energy? You let them loose, run all over, and capture doing what it is that young boys do! That's how!

I love this little storyboard above. I was thrilled to get a cute little close up series of him sitting down and having a quite moment. Didn't last long, but that's okay, I didn't expect it too.

Little Nate turned 2 and we photo- graphed him playing around town.

We all had a lot fun! Thanks Nate and Katie.

Christmas Cards

I have so much fun designing Christmas Cards.

Here is another card. I love finishing this early before Christmas!

Hint, Hint, again!

The top is the cover, the middle image fills the entire card when you open it up. So, in actuality it is twice as long as the front and back cover and it will fold in the middle. It opens horizontally.

I couldn't resist designing another image on the back cover too!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cards

Can you believe I have already started working on Christmas Cards?

I love getting it finished this early in the Season. Hint, Hint!!!!

Here is one of my favorites!

Merry Christmas!

Not Your Typical Santa Photographs!

I was asked again by Interior's Galleria to photograph Santa Photo's this year. My first thought was... I don't do Santa Photos. lol

Well, I starting thinking about it and how I could have some fun with it. This is what I came up with - No sitting in Santa's lap! I bought a Santa Suit and dressed mom in it - this way the baby won't cry because it's mom holding them.

I will be at Interior's Galleria photographing "Not Your Typical Santa Photographs" on November 10th and 11th almost allll daaaay! There will be a sign up sheet at the front counter if you would like to make an appointment, otherwise it will be first come, first served.

The photographs will be delivered back to Interior's Galleria in about 2-3 weeks for pick up. Besides photographs, I will offer greeting cards too! Interior's Galleria is located next to Collin Creek Mall by 75 and 15th street next to Hemisphere's.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

For our 25th Wedding Anniversary my hubby and I booked a trip to Santa Fe!

This was our first visit to New Mexico, so we were both very excited.

I think it turned out to be more of my vacation than his... We do both love art galleries, but after 4 days of it, he was a little done and I could have kept going and going, like the energizer bunny. Yes, I love art galleries. I also loved the architect of Santa Fe.

Any one that knows me very well, knows that I LOVE purses. We were walking by and, of course, this window display caught my eye. All the purses in the window are made from gum wrappers. The store had very unusual purses and I couldn't resist the martini shaped purse on the end of the middle shelf :) It's a Sono Purse. For those other purse lovers out there.








The number one tourist attraction, besides the art galleries, is the Lorretto Church built in 1873. Here is a picture of the Miraculous staircase. Per it's website: Two mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel: the identity of its builder and the physics of its construction. The staircase has two 360 degree turns and has no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. Here is the link for more info: http://www.lorettochapel.com/


We also came across this store that displayed old dinosaur fossils. We must have spent 30 minutes looking around with our mouths wide open in awe. They had quite a selection of amazing fossils still in tact. Very, very cool.

I know you can't read it, but it states under the fossil, 30 million years old with a price tag of $1195.



We were drinking our coffee in Starbucks and my sweetie looked so handsome with the natural window light that I secretly pulled out my camera and caught this image. I wouldn't stop photographing him after that. Poor guy, it's hard to be married to a photographer! lol He is such a great husband, he never once said a word as I was stopping every couple of minutes to photograph something! Like the chili peppers hanging!

We had a wonderful time. I love long weekend getaways. Four days was plenty of time. On our last day we left early and drove through old town Albuquerque. I told Russell that we would do whatever he would like, since the whole trip turned out to by my vacation. He chose the Atomic Museum. It was really quite interesting.

AA's Last Minute Getaways!

FYI:

Just so you know. We booked our trip to Santa Fe using AA.com with their last minute getaways and we found out the hard way that it is actually - Travelocity!

If you have any problems the only number to call is a call center in India for Travelocity. Let's just say we did have quite a few problems with the condo that we booked and got no help!

Always check out your accommodations online on one of the review sites. Learn from our mistakes!

Luckily, we still had a lot of fun after we booked our own hotel.

ps - this is just a pic I took of a building in Santa Fe that I thought reflected the adobe style and I liked it very much.

Happy Anniversary!

Holli was asking for help on what to give her boyfriend for their one year anniversary, I answered her with a great idea! One year anniversary is paper. He would love sexy images of his girl.


She was a great model and these
are the amazing images that she
can give to her boyfriend.

Happy Anniversary!

Deep Ellum

I've been trying to get to Deep Ellum for a while now to photograph
the area and see what is available for different locations.
Remember, I'm a native Californian.


I brought my husband and two kids with me to model. They were really good, considering it was a Friday night.

I love the "artistic" feel of the area and all the beautiful wall art (graffiti)! We didn't spend too much time in any one area because we were losing light and there was so much to see.

These are some of my favorite images. How observant how you? Did you notice that I put Conner in the reflection of the window and me too, only because I'm the mom!

Just as we were almost done, in front of the Sunshine Store we met the owner, Ms. Ruth a sweet older women who makes her own jewelry and sells other artist's work. She was trying to photograph her jewelry with a film camera and no meter! I was glad to help her out and photograph her jewelry for her.

And, then we met one of the other artists, Michael Crone, and his company's name is "nuttkace ltd". Got to love the name. Well, my daughter feel in love with his painting. We had to have it for her room, which she just painted dark purple! It's so her.

Went out to dinner afterwards and we ended up having a lot of fun together! :)

Go check out the Sunshine store at 2714 Elm Street if you are looking for something funky and fun!

Cuties!

This is another one of my favorite families to photograph! I first met them when Christopher was 3 years old. Well, I have been photographing them every year since! I love it when the mom calls me up 3 months before their portrait is due and asks what are we going to do this year and what should the kids wear. She always does an amazing job with the wardrobe and she also comes up with great ideas. She told me a great story about Hannah. She is in brownies and the brownie leader was trying to take her photograph with the school Principal (whom I also photographed his family portrait) and she started to cry and said, "Only Karyn can take my picture". Boy, did that put a big smile on my face. How cute! Their Dad is wonderful too. I love it when he is able to accompany us on our sessions. He works for George Lucas and understands lighting and the whole mechanics behind photographing a session. He is the best assistant I've ever had. He carries all my gear, seems to be able to read my mind on what I need, and I don't have to explain how to hold my reflector! As you can tell. This family is near and dear to my heart. I had a hard time selecting only these images to post. I loved so many of them. Hannah loves to pose for me and it's a piece of cake to photograph her. Christopher on the other hand is a pretty typical boy. He'll pose for me because he is a sweetie.

Carissa & Katrina

I have been photographing this family the longest out of all my clients. That holds a very special place in my heart. I photographed their wedding, their sister’s wedding, pregnancy images, and every year since the oldest, Carissa, was born. That’s 14 years.

They are wonderful models and the best part is they want to be photographed! We have so much fun together.

This year I took them to a great location in San Rafael, Ca. Every Bay Area photographer knows this spot! We actually photographed the family here when the youngest, Katrina, was only 2 years old. This time I used different locations and it had a completely different look.

The mom has narrowed it down to 55 images that she likes and we had to stop previewing because she wouldn’t delete any more images. I suggested we come back and revisit them with a fresh eye! I had a hard time only picking these few to show. I loved them all too.

Harp Beauty

Marissa called me up looking for some fun unusual photographs of her playing her harp to add to her website and for a CD cover. I suggested a consult for us to brainstorm together to come up with some ideas.

I just photographed Caitey in the pool and thought that we could do something with the same theme. Well, this is what we came up with.

Marissa was a great model. She never complained about getting in the pool and "messing up her hair or makeup", or trying to hold her breath under water without blowing bubbles and trying to smile all at the same time!

Thanks Marissa. I love these and I hard a hard time picking out only 3 as my favorites!