Long Time No See. But Look! 3D!

Hello there friends! Oh how I have missed you!

I did not intend to step away from photography for so long. But given the nature of my work, my photography business was incredibly affected by the pandemic. Since I was unable to work with people, I took time to reflect as many did. I took time to explore new avenues. I started with the iPad and an apple pen and really dove in to the entire Adobe catalogue. My children got involved and it wasn’t long before we created a fun virtual world. It was a beautiful creative outlet at a time when things felt bleak.
We soon learned all about blockchain technology and we decided to try out a generative project where we took 12 different layers of traits and made 3,333 different unique combinations. It was a lot of fun! In fact, we’re still building wonderful things using these dolls that we created. I’m sure one day in the future you’ll get an update about them.

But that somehow lead me to a path of 3D art. I learned how to use a program called Blender and before I knew it I was creating 3D animations. Naturally, this animated doughnut was the very first thing I created! It look me 30 hours! I ate so many doughnuts that week! But I learned so much and I was hooked!

Since then I have been creating delicious renderings that make me so hungry! Making treats is so fun!

But at that time, I was unaware of the doors I was opening. Wow did I end up on a path I never expected. I was now working in the very fast paced Web3 space. It was quite the learning curve. But my goodness was it fun!

Being a creative director at a Web3 agency is so fun. I’m still a little shocked by this experience because it all happened so fast and some of the people and projects I get to work with are pretty incredible.

It took some time for me to balance out my life. And now that things are feeling more balanced, I am so incredibly grateful to be able to pick up my camera again and do the thing that I was truly born to do! Which is…

Documenting life’s most precious moments!

Contact me to set up your next photo session! Can’t wait to see you!

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What's in a Picture?

Here's a little secret about taking great pictures. A nice expensive fancy camera with all the fancy gadgets will not take a good picture. Well, it may take a decent picture on "auto" if you don't know the manual settings, which is like a glorified point and shoot camera. However, it's the person using THAT camera that will take a good picture if they, know about composition, lighting, the proper camera settings to go with the scene you're shooting and of course knowing how to get that perfect moment! ...Or they take 50 and get lucky with one or two decent pictures. But even with all that, taking the picture is only half of it. The other half is in the editing. And the editing will make or break a picture no matter how good that picture is! It's like baking cookies. You don't want to under do it and you most certainly don't want to over do it. 

People are often curious as to what goes in to my editing process and some people don't understand why they can't just have the images right away directly from the memory card. Well, there is no one answer as every image is different, but I do have a process. I shoot in RAW and edit with Bridge and Photoshop. I turn my RAW files into TIFFs. I edit my TIFFS in Photoshop, and then I process them to JPEGs for printing purposes and then in to web-safe JPEGs for sharing online. All in all, the process takes on average, about 30 minutes a picture. Not because I am "photoshopping" your picture, but because a RAW file is just information. That information needs to be turned in to a picture and then adjusted and sharpened so it can be printed. This is so we get the best possible quality! 

This here is a fine example because it's a dramatic difference. Over the summer my husband got this really great shot of me and my girls! Only, the settings were on "auto" which wasn't set to allow enough light in because it was adjusting the light to the sky! So alas, the picture was underexposed making it unusable for printing, especially if you are someone that doesn't know anything about editing! And how unflattering is my rolled up shirt with my panties and hip sticking out!? Even with my knowledge of Photoshop, I wasn't sure if I would be able to save it while keeping it's quality. But as you all know by now, I treasure any picture of me and my girls because I am usually the one taking the picture meaning I am rarely IN them so I had to try. With a little of this and a little of that, and about  45 minutes later, PRESTO! 

Before.

After.

Perfect! And going on the wall next to the Fraggle Rock picture!