Engagement Photos and Paint Fight

Early on in our engagement I saw this amazing engagement photo session from Jerry Yoon.  The couple used Holi powder (from the Hindu Festival of Colors) to create exciting and unique portraits.  Or maybe they just wanted to throw crap at each other! 🙂

Photo by Jerry Yoon

I KNEW that I wanted to do this for our engagement photos as well.  Since Tony just does whatever I say, it was easy to get him on board.  Just kidding!!  He was all for it, but he definitely doesn’t do whatever I say.  In our search for a photographer one of the questions was if they would be willing to participate in this type of photo shoot.  No photographer ever turned us down.  So if you are also looking to do this same thing, I’m sure there is a photographer near you willing to help!

Callie V Photography was our final choice of photographer to participate in our wedding.  Callie has been great and I love her photography.  Plus she included everything in her package that we were looking for.

All of the following photographs are courtesy of Callie V.

First, we had to get a few normal engagement shots out of the way.

July Recap and Awards

Sure it’s the middle of August, but I want to show you what happened in July photographs over on Serendipty 365.  At first I was very excited about this project and had little problems taking a photo every day.  Now, even at just the second month, I feel like I’m running out of ideas!  I’m still very much eager to see where this takes me, so I haven’t lost momentum.

I realized at some point that eventually winter is going to come along.  I hate winter.  Although I like photographs in winter (nice high contrast black and white ones!).  I just think winter will be a big struggle for me since all of the daylight happens during my working hours.  Definitely will have to be more creative with subjects and lighting for about 5 months!

Here is a summary of July’s images, and then I go on to give special mention to certain photographs.  This will also be a fun monthly post!

Announcing… Serendipity 365

Hello Fellows!  I hope everyone is enjoying (or did enjoy, depending on when you are reading this) their 4th of July.  I’ve just finished setting up the new blog!  What new blog?  Well, the one where I post ALL of my Project 365 photographs.

I just wanted to jump in quick to tell you all about it and so that you will save this link, or just look at the tab at the top of the blog there.  In order to keep the new blog as a “sister” to this one, I have named it Serendipity 365.  I also did some updating to this blog background and header.  Once again, I created it all and am pretty proud of myself (hey both blogs match!).  🙂

I’m off now to enjoy the day with a barbecue and another home project that has been waiting for my attention.

My Project 365

Project 365 is something that has been around for quite some time now.  I’m not sure where it first started, but it’s a pretty simple concept so I don’t think any one person is able to claim “creation” of it.  Project 365 is where a person will commit to taking 1 photograph a day for… wait for it… 365 days!  Didn’t see that coming did ya?

I’ve seen many different approaches to this concept.  Most people will start on January 1st while others start on a birthday.  A lot of people are putting their photographs out there for public view.  This could mean through a blog, or Flickr, or other photo sharing site.  I feel like the intention is to take a new picture each day, although I have seen some that just commit to posting a picture each day (so that picture could have been taken months ago).  Some literally only take one photograph a day, others take many and only choose one to post.

If you haven’t come to this conclusion yet, I have decided to go forward with my own Project 365.  The next year of my life is shaping up to be a pretty exciting one, and I would love to have a record of all the little things that happen along the way.  The biggest, most important event in the coming year is the day that Tony and I become husband and wife.  Beyond that there is all of the wedding planning, camping trips, family vacations, holidays, and then our honeymoon as well.

TLR Camera Film Results

After building my new TLR Camera last month I am now back with the results of the first roll of film.  I wasn’t even sure any images were going to turn out, and this first roll was really a test to see how this camera acted.  So I was surprised to find all of the images were able to be printed.

However, I have some learning to do with the quirks of the camera.  I knew that there would be come kind of focus vignette from what I read before hand.  I was ok with that, it gives a nice ethereal feel to the images.  This is the first time I have had to hold a camera at my waist and focus through a plastic screen.  It wasn’t so easy.  Many times it was hard to tell when I would be in focus.  As you’ll see in the pictures, I didn’t always get it right.  I think this is also because in pressing the shutter down it is almost impossible to not shake the camera.  I will be trying again, and next time I will use a tripod, which should help.

*the only editing I’ve done is to the color/contrast although all images were shot in black and white*