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.