The most wonderful time of the year

When I was growing up I wanted to be an artist. Trouble with it is that the word starving too often precedes the title of artist. Well, I'm happy to report that I think at this point I qualify as being "grown up" and I made it to being an artist but I'm much more a WORKING artist than a starving one.

The type of artwork I do is not necessarily the stuff that hangs in fine art galleries. (Well... I hope that someday my studio art endeavors will take me to a place like that!)  Just the same, my artwork is still hanging on walls all across the country. The images I help create are beloved family portraits taken just in time for holiday send outs, snapshots of those tender moments right after a couple betroths themselves to one another or just before a mother delivers her beautiful baby, and preservations of the incredible bliss that is being completely in love and newly engaged. I absolutely L-O-V-E doing the work I do because it's the kind of stuff that even after it does get changed out to make room for the next year's portraits, it always stays in the hearts and memories as a thing of beauty to be cherished and treasured.

This time of year is just about my favorite not just for the obvious reasons of the Christmas season but also because I get to see the fruit of my investment in creating images of true beauty come back to me in the way of seeing it pop up in the profile spots of facebook pages OR within annual holiday send outs. Nothing gives me quite a joy like that of opening up some good ol' fashioned snail mail to see my own handiwork staring back at me with well wishes for a merry Christmas and happy New Year from my wonderful clients.

This portrait was taken in the Baltimore area in the Fall of this year! What better way to wish someone a warm holiday than with the beautifully warm color palette that an autumn color palette offers.

Something unique I offer that goes far beyond photography is graphic design expertise!  I can snap gorgeous pictures of you and your loved ones just as much as I can pair them up with tasteful and polished graphic elements that make them more than suitable for holiday cards, birth announcements, save-the-dates, and invitations. I walk you through the design process from start to finish and provide you with an image ready for printing and MUCH cheaper than some of the big names out there that have only a catalog of templated designs that everyone else has. Just as the portrait work I do is commissioned artwork to me, the graphic design pieces are also ART in my book. I love using the gifts that the Lord has blessed me with to the fullest extent and you need only ask me how we go about creating something unique and wonderful for YOU and your needs.

Today puts us just barely 10 days from Christmas but don't let that deter you from dropping me an inquiry to get your annual family portraits done at the tail end of this year or at the tip top of next year. Ever heard of happy New Year cards?  We can get your portraits done and then wish your friends and family a beautiful start to their 2012 with your gorgeous portraits!

Featured today on Captiol Romance!

Last week it was Bayside Bride and this week it's Capitol Romance!

Just received word that Jamie and Colin's Union Station engagement session from early November is being featured on Capitol Romance wedding blog today. I submitted their images and Jamie and Colin's engagement story and wedding planning details a couple of weeks back and have been waiting to hear confirmation of its publication. The wonderful Bree (editor of Capitol Romance) sent me an email with a heads-up that it went live this afternoon.

Hope on over to Capitol Romance and check it out!!!

Featured today on Bayside Bride!

I'm delighted to share a wonderful collective of unique engagement and wedding ring designs presented by Bayside Bride...

The ring shot I contributed is toward the end of the feature and showcases a ring shot I did of my own engagement and wedding ring set. Here is the picture featured on the page:

I'm actually not a huge fan of jewelry (plus for my husband!) and I'm much more a lover of a beautiful piece of artwork (not good for husband since these are typically more expensive than lots of pieces of jewelry). I love my ring set because it's something that takes the symbolism that is a beautiful piece of jewelry and infuses it with the integrity of an amazing piece of sculptural artwork. If you can believe it, this is actually an "upgrade" from my original engagement and wedding set that I got last year around the time of my third wedding anniversary. Why the upgrade so soon? Well, my original ring set was vintage in style and had a tremendous amount of filigree and engraving within the design that I had pretty much destroyed because I am so hard on my jewelry. My regular dayjob is working in high school art education classroom and all of the different types of art media I might have deal with just plain whittled the designs down to almost nothing. Not good. Not good at all. The solution to this? Well, my husband indulged me with picking something new to replace it!

I searched probably almost six months until I finally found the perfect ring and wedding set for me on Etsy via an incredible artisan jeweler named Elizabeth Scott. Her inspirations are of the botanical sort and the specific inspiration for my ring came from a sapling branch that she found when she was hiking around the area where she lives and works in her home studio. One of the best things about my set is that Elizabeth really helped me to take her design and customize it to very precise specifications (like down to measurements in the millimeters!) so that it could be as structurally sound as a piece of jewelry that would take the beating it would end up taking like my old set. Elizabeth also allowed me to use a stone called a moissanite in lieu of a diamond because I am not keen on diamonds anyway though I like the look of them . Moissanite was a stone that was a great alternative because of it's hardness and look - most people seem my ring and think it's a diamond!

So that's it. That's the story of my ring and just wanted to share a little background about it because Bayside Bride was so kind of include it in the collective that they shared today.

Jamie + Colin :: Washington DC Engagement Photographer

I have known Jamie for over 20 years now.  We first met each other in the 6th grade and attended the same middle school together. It's weird to think about that type of thing now since we are both at stages of our lives that are so far from our middle school student government years. For the most part we've not done the greatest job keeping in touch with one another (unless you count keeping tabs via Facebook) but when she recently became engaged, I was honored to be called upon to document the bliss of her engagement.

Spending the late afternoon and early evening hours with Colin and Jamie was so much fun for me. It was like time fell away and we were able to pick up with conversation just as easily as we used to have it on the four square blocks at the school recess we once had. It was also wonderful to meet Colin and witness first hand the romance and adoration they obviously have for only each other. It's never too hard for me to cajole newly engaged couples into liplocking for the camera but for Colin and Jamie? I hardly had to mention the idea. Colin just couldn't get enough of showering Jamie with just a little more affection.

When Jamie made it "Facebook official" and announced her engagement, she did so in a very lighthearted and fun way - with a picture of her new ring and a caption that said just this, "It's pretty."

But even all of the sparkle of her engagement ring couldn't come close to the shine of being freshly engaged and deeply in love with one another the way Jamie and Colin are. They easily glow when they are anywhere near each other or are talking about each other and it's just the sweetest thing to witness.

Despite the fact that they are both actual transplants to the DC and NoVA regions, they are staying true to the place they have since found to be home to them and planning a wedding just outside of the district lines in Alexandria, Virginia. The chose Union Station's downtown location for the setting of the start of their engagement session and then we finished at the extension train stop in Alexandria where Colin used to catch all of his trains to travel back home to Philly.

They both share a love for ice hockey (though they root for different teams!) and also a love for the romanticism that is a good train ride so the train stations were the perfect place for them to bask in their newly engaged bliss!

Their wedding will be held at the temple pictured here in the background and though they still have a number of details to work out just yet, I have a feeling it's going to be quite a grand affair since Jamie is a master at things like event planning.

No doubt that Jamie and Colin are well on their way to their very own happily ever after. Congratulations to them both for a life that is only more richly blessed with every day that God gives them together.

The new guy in town :: Pittsburgh Baby Photography

I don't believe there is anything quite like a new little baby. This past Thanksgiving allowed for me to take a road trip up north to PA and finally meet my newest nephew. He was born at the beginning of November and despite the fact that his mama says that he is quite a bit bigger than he was when he was born and doesn't feel like a newborn to her anymore, he sure seemed and looked like just about like a newborn to me!

I had a marvelous time doing a quick portrait session for him - his first professional quality one(!) - and my whole family left me to do as I saw fit. I'm not the type of baby photographer who likes doing staged composites of infants suspended in cloth hammocks, swaddled in special blankets, or bedecked in shiny satin bows and I prefer cleaner images that show clearly all of their teeny tiny details.

Some of my favorite images of babies/children are the ones that really allow you to look into their eyes because they are always so bright and curious and full of wonder. It's the type of thing we easily lose as we get older because our lives become too busy to stop and look long enough for someone to be able to look back at us. There's an old adage that the eyes are the windows to the souls and I firmly believe that no matter what our age, that's always the case.

God has not blessed me to have a newborn again just yet but until then I will relish in the opportunities that I get like this one to appreciate the beauty that is a newborn baby. I'm so honored that I was able to capture these first portraits for my nephew and I'm looking forward to more opportunities that I will have to keep documenting the way he grows up to be an upstanding and handsome young gentleman the way I know he will.

Hot off the presses!

When I'm not posting things here, it's sometimes because I'm posting things elsewhere. I write for the Fuel Brand network's photography division. My aim with my articles has been to instruct photographers how to use elements of art and design within the photographic medium. So many photographers out there (nowadays) are self-taught (and I don't begrudge a nontraditional start of a career in the least) but could have much stronger bodies of work if they considered how essential classic art teachings are for visual art itself.

I've already published articles addressing using visual texture to make photographs feel more dimensional and also touched on color theory and some of the ways that it can visually balance an image.  This month's article highlights the importance of visual branding and how it can be done effectively with typography.

Getting here from there

For as long as I can remember, I have been a workaholic. I had my first job at 15 years old and by 18 I had doubled up with work and have pretty much working like that since. To date I've probably worked over 30 different jobs in the following fields: restaurant/food/hospitality service, acute care within the clinical psychology and psychiatric field, health insurance management, quality assurance for retail sales, and classroom education and instruction. I've also successfully freelanced for both visual art and marketing/branding. What can I say? I LOVE to work. I really do.

A little more than a decade ago I was crazy enough to start my photography business.  Nowadays everybody has a photography business but way back when? It wasn't so easy to just start such a business. Digital photography wasn't nearly so affordable OR technologically advanced, photoshop was but a funny sounding word, and you had to know film and the actual functions of manual cameras and periphery equipment in order to create an even halfway decent image much less one that someone might be willing to pay you for. Still?  I had a gut feeling that venturing into the world of professional photography was something I was supposed to do.  I believed that I didn't need an actual studio in order to produce professionally recognized work. I believed that my skill and artistic voice could, should, and would be heard and I just needed to let it rise above the whisper it had been within myself.

Today I am amazed by the trajectory of my career path.  I just did an update on my official website and at this point my body of work and portfolio representation is so immense that I can't possibly even think about including half of it because there are just so many images. I am really having to pick and choose what should be cut out and replaced with newer images and it's awesome to look at the "throw away" pile and see that all of them are still really great pieces of work and are only being put out because they just aren't current enough.



I wish I could have a conversation with my younger self while she was in her school-age and college years and reassure her that telling people she wants to be an artist when she grows up will be something that really actually can happen and absolutely and honestly WILL happen. I wish I could tell her to not let others take the wind from her sails and call her endeavors lofty or pipedreams. I wish I could let her in on the seemingly secret thing that seems like the greatest key to success and happiness (but really it isn't) that if you truly do go forth and do what God has called you to do, He will provide every provision to catapult you forward and straighten every path you will find yourself walking. Even the ways that seem like they are taking you away from your dreams? Sometimes the road not taken by everyone else is actually a bit of a shortcut to the place that you couldn't believe actually existed.

Today I'm so happy to not have to "fake it until I make it" and also to know better when it comes to boldly and confidently going in the direction of my dreams. I'm still classically a workaholic with plenty of irons in the fire...

I write for Fuel Your Photography

I founded and maintain an art enrichment blog that provides lesson plan ideas and also an archive of my fine art pieces.

My precious creative endeavor that might be one of the greatest career risks for me ever but one that I cannot bear to give up despite the naysayers and accusations of pipedreaming.

When I was working a thankless office job without windows and going to meetings that seemed neverending, I dreamed of a life that was being a working artist and my art mentor encouraged to me do the things I felt and the money would follow.  I did just that and I will tell you that I am STILL doing exactly that. It's the one and only sure thing I know no matter how many people might tell me I'm crazy.

The Erdmans :: Baltimore Family Photography

I've done portraits for this family for a little more than half a decade now. I've had the great blessing and joy to document the engagement of their parents, their very first ever family holiday portrait (with their "furbaby" additions), then two more family holiday portraits (here is last year's), and a visit to the hospital for a "special delivery" newborn session of the youngest son.  Not sure if you have bothered counting but ll of those milestones have made it so I have been able to photograph them just about every single year for the past five years! Does that make me their official family photographer? Hmmm... I don't know but I will tell you that I sure have enjoyed being able to watch their family grow.

Anyway, here is their this year's holiday portraits.  In the past we have done them a lot closer to Christmas for their holiday send outs but this year we were very well organized and got them in my schedule book early in order to beat some of the holiday hustle and bustle. If you haven't already gotten your family's portraits squared away like the Erdmans, I suggest you take a tip from them and book your holiday session with me while you can!

Jamie + Colin :: Washington DC Engagement Photographer

Today I capped off an already awesome weekend with an incredible engagement session for Jamie and Colin.  We started at Union Station in downtown DC and then finished things off in Alexandria, Virginia. Here are a few teasers of Jamie and Colin basking in some serious bliss of being newly engaged.

Tovah + Dean :: Silver Spring Wedding Photographer

Tovah and Dean are two of the most in love people I believe I have ever photographed and I was so honored to witness them take their vows at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland just outside of DC. This isn't to say that other brides and grooms aren't in love but more that Tovah and Dean have a love that is nothing less than palpable. You can absolutely feel it when you are around them and you can definitely see it in the way they look at one another. What is even more amazing than all of this is that what they've got? It's nonstop. Seriously. I bet if the world just started crumbling around them they would hardly notice. Also? It wouldn't matter since, truly, they are all that matter to each other in the world anyway. There's really something to be said about unabashed love like that. There really is.

Thank you, Tovah and Dean for being a TRUE picture of love. There needs to be more love in this world like what you two have together! Perhaps you will inspire others and they will take notes from you.

Rhys & Luca :: Northern Virginia Family Photographer

I am the mother of a lovely little girly girl but I'll tell you what, I have a special place in my heart for the sons in this world.

This evening I got to spend time with a very old friend and meet her two handsome little men, Rhys and Luca. We met up at a wonderfully delightful rose garden park tucked in amongst the neighborhoods of Arlington, Virginia. It's fair to say that after this session I am even more delighted by the joy of sons and brotherly love.

Class of 2012 *teaser* :: Southern Maryland Senior Portrait Photography

Had the great blessing to photograph some of this year's Class of 2012 by way of the Senior Portrait promotional I'm running for this school year last evening in southern Maryland. All three girls were picture-perfect with gorgeous smiles, incredible energy, and infectious spirit of pure fun to be around. I'm officially convinced that the way to go with senior portraits from here on out is to make it an event where best friendship is not only celebrated but also photographed - by me, of course! *wink*

There are plenty more coming but here is a select few of too many that I have to choose from...

Thank you, ladies for being so gorgeous, easy to photograph, and fun to be around. You make me love my job that much more!