taryn (boulder senior portrait photographer)

Taryn and I had OHMYGOSHSOMUCHFUN shooting her senior portraits in Colorado Springs!  We immediately hit it off and were joking around like crazy within minutes of meeting each other.  Love it!  This girl is so awesome and silly and ridiculously photogenic that it was tough to stop shooting :)

We shot the next portion of her session at Garden of the Gods.  I know that to a lot of people, Garden of the Gods screams "cliche" and "overdone", but I love shooting there because each time, I try to find new little corners that express the beauty of this place without looking like the exact same images from the exact same angles that everyone else gets.  It's totally possible to have unique photos at the Garden!

Ultimate "Colorado Girl" shots: sunshine + deer in the background + mountains + pine trees.  Haha.

A quick outtake: we were setting up to take a few shots and Taryn got scared by a deer that was hiding in the bushes.  Best. surprised face. ever.

Taryn, dude.  You're beautiful and fun and I love you to pieces!

2012 client magazines!

In the middle of one of my insomniac nights a while back, I had a thought.  I'd been giving my clients some fun little booklets with tips about their session / wedding, but I had a lot more information I wanted to include, and I honestly felt like I could do better than a small booklet, creatively.  So... in the middle of the night, I started designing magazines!  I had SO much fun putting these together.  They just recently came in, and I think they're pretty sweet.  So now, when you book your senior session or wedding, we'll send you one of these babies right away to help you get started with your planning & brainstorming.

All of my upcoming brides and any senior who books a session will get one!  If you want one but aren't an upcoming bride or a senior with a booked session, feel free to contact me to place an order.  I'm excited to share these with you guys!

springtime, aka multiple personality disorder

About this time every year, I go a little bit crazy :)  I have a bad case of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder- self-diagnosed, okay), meaning that winters leave me mopey and lethargic and feeling hopeless about everything, and as soon as I get a little bit of sunshine, I'm a completely different person.  When we were living in Buena Vista, that was especially hard - the winters there last forever!  Sometimes I wouldn't see green grass until the end of May.  Imagine my delight when I realized that the trees were starting to grow leaves like THREE WEEKS AGO.  I couldn't believe it, and as soon as I realized this amazing weather wasn't a fluke, my personality kind of did a 180.  All my black clothes are now in the back of the closet, and I'm wearing neon everything, and I have SO MUCH ENERGY I don't really know what to do with myself.  Warmth and sunshine make me REALLY HYPER, as you may have noticed from my EXCESSIVE USE OF CAPS.

I love it.  I love springtime, I love the sunshine, and I feel SO EXCITED about this upcoming year.  This video  is a pretty accurate representation of what's going on inside of my happy little head right now (although the eggs, that's a little weird): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQjyGT1-mc&w=640&h=360]

Anyway, happy spring!  Hope you guys are out there doing lots of fun things and playing in the sun :)

katie (boulder senior portrait photographer)

The lovely Katie is another one of my Senior Models! Gaah, it's been so wonderful getting to meet & work with all of these girls - they're all so wonderful!  I loved Katie's color combo of shades of blue.  What a great smile!

Thanks, Katie!!

i'm going to africa!!

I'm so excited to let you guys know that this November, three lovely photographer friends and I are headed to Kenya!  My friends Nicole, Meredith, Lindsay, and I will be working with Friends Vision, a great organization comprised of volunteers from Kenya and around the world, working to make life brighter for kids at their Children's Home.WHAT ARE WE DOING?

We'll be bringing donated digital cameras & computer equipment with us, and teaching the kids basic photography lessons, hoping to open the door for them to our passion,  and give them a potentially marketable skill.  I really want to see these kids energized by the beauty of photography - I remember how exciting it was (and still is!) for me to take that first good shot, and to start to see the world in a new way.  Wouldn't it be awesome if some of these kids grew up to be renowned wedding photographers, or award-winning photojournalists?!?

We'll also be documenting the work that Friends Vision has been doing, through both video and stills, giving them updated images for their website and hopefully a short documentary film as well.  We also hope to shoot individual portraits of the kids for use in their child sponsorship program.  Obviously, we'll also be helping out however we can around the Children's Home, too.

(some of the Friends Vision kiddos)

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

We would be so encouraged by your support!  Here are some of the ways you can help:

- Donate your USED (or new!) DIGITAL CAMERAS for us to take with us to give to the kids.  We're looking for digital cameras in working order with all the necessary parts, if possible (batteries, chargers, cards, card readers, etc.).  It doesn't matter if they're cheap point & shoots or big fancy SLRs - I'm sure the kids will love them!  We're also looking for a few small printers - there are some travel-sized mini-printers that can print straight off of a camera.  We'd love to be able to hand out prints as we shoot.  If we can get our hands on some USED LAPTOPS IN WORKING ORDER, we'll bring those with us, too!

- Donate your FREQUENT FLYER MILES.  If you have accumulated miles that you're not going to use, we'd love to have them!  It may help us get over there a bit more cheaply.  Sign up for an account at points.com, or contact your airline / credit card company... here's some more info about transferring your miles.  If you need my frequent flyer numbers in order to transfer miles, just let me know which airline you'll be transferring from!

- Donate FINANCIALLY.  You can make donations towards my trip at my YouCaring account.    We're each trying to raise $2600 to cover airfare, travel costs, food, and lodging.  Any money raised over our goal amounts will go straight to Friends Vision as a donation, or will be used to purchase any accessories necessary for our donated cameras to be useful to the kids.

- Plan to BUY A FRAMED OR MOUNTED PRINT from me when I get back.  I'll be taking LOTS ( and lots and lots and lots) of pictures, both of the kids and of the scenery, etc, and all proceeds from any Africa print sales will go towards this trip.

- Consider SPONSORING A CHILD through Friends Vision!  If we know who your sponsored child is, we can bring extra letters, etc with us, and make sure to take plenty of portraits of your sponsored child, with you in mind :)

- Join us at a FUNDRAISER EVENT. We have some fun fundraiser ideas planned ... we'll keep you updated on the details as we figure them out!

Thanks so much for your consideration - we're all so excited about this trip, and can't wait to share more details with you soon!