Senior Portraits in Downtown Fresno

The following pictures were taken in August. Yes, August. So, I am a wee tiny bit late :-P

I have a pretty good excuse though, I am currently enrolled in the UC Davis teaching credential program, which fits both a teaching credential and a masters into one and half year. So I am student teaching in a 5th grade class, and taking both teaching credentialling and masters classes at the same time! But now it is finally winter break, and I finally have time for more fun responsibilities, such as my photography.

These are my brother's senior portraits. We went to downtown Fresno and just wandered around. The downtown area has really nice old buildings that provided both an interesting backdrop and really nice light. We had a lot of fun.

When I shoot senior portraits, I work hard to incorporate the senior's interests into the photo. I think that photos should scream YOU, and that means getting my seniors to both have fun and be natural in front of the camera, as well as incorporating props.

Normally, I ask the senior lots of questions to help figure out what kinds of things the senior would like to be photographed with. However, since I was taking pictures of my brother, this time I decided for him =p. My brother has been playing violin since Kindergarden, and he wears that white fedora all the time, so they both made appearances in the photos.

Hope you enjoyed them. I should be updating soon with some belated wedding and also engagement photos that I took in the last two months.

Sue and Gary's Wedding

On August 1st, I had the pleasure of shooting my very first wedding, up at Bass Lake. The fact that I shot it at all, was a very short notice affair as I literally talked to the bride for the very first time on the day of her wedding to hash out details. The wedding was held at the beach at the camp I worked and was very small, with only 15 guests (mostly camp staff). It was low budget and absolutely fantastic! I was so impressed with how much they were able to accomplish with little, and the atmosphere was just lovely.

This is what the wedding venue looked like. The wedding guests created an aisle using the logs, which didn't even end up being used, since the bride arrived via pontoon boat from the water. Everyone ended up just crowding around the canopy for the wedding ceremony.

The groom (on the left) practicing what he was going to say during the ceremony with Pastor Bob (on the right)

Then the bride arrived via boat, and the ceremony was started.

There was some nice accompaniment of Amazing Grace, and another hymn.

Then after the ceremony, the plan was for everyone to immediately jump into the pontoon boat and head over to the reception which was at a burger place across the lake. But I begged for some time to take a few portrait shots, so they gave me 10 minutes to do that. The lighting was absolutely gorgeous! I am happy with some of the portraits that I got, but imagine if I had actually had an hour to take pictures, as would be usual for me with my portrait sessions!

This is the bride and groom and all of the wedding guests. As said, it was a small affair.

The End :-)

I just recently took my brother's senior portraits, so that blog post will be coming soon.

Yosemite Sierra Summer Camp

I have been pretty much completely silent on this blog and my facebook photography page, so I thought I would leave an update on what I have been up to.

This summer for the second year in a row, I am working at Yosemite Sierra Summer Camp as a Camp Photographer. My basic responsibilities include photographing camp activities and uploading at least one picture per camper every single day, which ends up being between 100-200 pictures a day. I also shoot video, create Mid-session and End-session video/photo recaps, and create a yearbook for every two week session.
All the staff here go by nicknames for the extent of the summer, so everyone here knows me as 'Slick"; a nickname I earned from tumbling down a steep rockface after slipping on a slick spot. I make sure to remind everyone of this by stumbling and falling on even the most smooth of surfaces...completely on purpose and not because I am really clumsy, of course!

Anyways, I thought I would share a few of the pictures I have been taking. For the most part, I take pictures of the various activities the campers do, which includes ropes courses, slip and slides, lake activities and much more.

My absolute favorite activity to photograph is banana boating! Heck, that is also my favorite activity to do myself. It is fun! And I get some great shots with kids just having a blast, with the occasional epic falling picture. My new 7d is really handy here for its 8 shots per second to just get that perfect falling off moment 

 

 

Another fun camp activity to photograph are the various night games. The staff get super silly and dressed up, and then the campers have to chase them around and accomplish some objective or another. This year, the summer theme is Wild Wild West, and all of the night games are somehow related. One of the best night games is called Cattle Roundup, where the campers must figure out how to collect various staff members that are dressed up as cows, pigs, mice, you name it! But watch out for the wolves, cause they will make your animals stampede away!

  

 

 

Camp also has a great tradition of an offcampus all day long Capture the Flag game. The boys go off on the first Thursday of the session to play at what they call "Outpost" and the girls leave on Sunday to play "Uzemahti" (warrior princess theme). As a girl myself, I only take pictures of Uzemahti. It is super epic with a Capture the Flag field that goes across creeks and streams, through forests, and across ravines over several acres. Then at the end of the day, we have a massive mud fight!

  

  

Then, there are various other events: Flower Sunday, in which everyone goes around giving each other flowers accompanied by a meaningful compliment; Yosemite Day, where the youngest campers head over to Yosemite National Park to go on various hikes such as the pictured Vernal Falls, and a wide variety of camp games, camp songs and so much more.

 So basically, this is the best place ever and I am having a blast! Hope you enjoyed the photos!

UC Davis Graduation Photography

This time I get to blog about something a lot more personal, my own graduation! On Sunday, June 17th I am graduating from UC Davis with a Bachelor's of Science in Human Development. The next 2 years, I will continue to study in Davis for grad school, to receive a Multisubject teaching credential and an Education Masters.

The way graduations work at UC Davis is that all of the different colleges have their own ceremonies. This is unfortunate for me, because all of my closest friends are in different colleges than me.
I really wanted to have grad pictures with my friends, so being the photographer I am, I took charge! I selected a date, time and location and then sent out facebook invites to all of my friends to join me in a professional photoshoot with my nice camera equipment to get some grad pictures! It was a great success.

I obviously took all of the pictures I am not in. Half the pictures I am in, I put the camera on a 10 second timer and then ran into place. The other half, I had a friend press the shutter after I set up all of the proper settings. In a way, I still consider them my own pictures, since the only thing I didn't do was press the shutter. I also did all of the editing.

    Here is a picture of the entire group. Shot with self timer on a tripod

After a while, we got tired of taking pictures in robes and took them off to take some regular nice dress pictures.
I like the picture below so much that I actually added it to my portfolio. Its of two of my best friends, and I just love their happy and natural smiles.

    I love these girls! They are the best, and made my college experience so wonderful!

That is all I have to share. I think it was a really fun session, and it was especially fun because I got to jump in front of the camera a few times instead of always being stuck behind it.
These are also the first real pictures taken with my new Canon 7d. I am still getting the hang of it, since a lot of settings are very different from my Xti, but overall I was extremely happy with the results.

Amanda and Brian's Engagement Portraits

On May 13th, I met with Amanda and Brian at some Davis train tracks in order to take their engagement pictures. We made sure to stay on only the set of tracks that were for standing trains, and carefully stayed off the live tracks. There was both a caboose and a few railcarts on the dead tracks, so we climbed all over them, in an effort to get the perfect pictures.

Amanda and Brian were an absolute blast to photograph. They were clearly so in love and each tried hard to get the other to laugh, which made my job so much easier as the photographer. All I would do was put them in the right place, give them some posing suggestions, and then wait, because they would talk and inevitably the natural laughs would surface on their own.

The photo above was my favorite moment of the shoot. The two were just standing and smiling at me, when Brian swooped in an stole a kiss. It was such a suprise to both Amanda AND me, as I almost wasn't ready to take the picture! Thankfully, I reacted fast enough to capture Amanda warding Brian off with a laugh. I thought it was such a cute moment

After we had taken our share of train/rail cart pictures, Amanda and Brian changed outfits, and we moved locations to a nearby park with a really cute wooden playground. At this point the lighting was absolutely beautiful but the light was fading fast, so we quickly took the remaining pictures and called it a day.

All in all, I had an absolute blast! This session really made me fall in love with shooting engagement sessions. While I love shooting senior portraits, there is just so much extra emotion and joy in shooting a couple that is in love. I really feel that you can see how happy and excited they are to get married through the pictures.