I went out with a friend the other night to do Brittiney’s portraits…what can I say…this girl is gorgeous and has AMAZING eyes! And talk about being in a small town, she is engaged to my sister in law’s nephew. I guess that makes us distantly related! I just wanted to share a few of my favorites. I’m so glad I met you Brittiney!

As 2010 is winding down, I wanted to take some time and reflect on the past year. It’s been amazing! I have met so many wonderful people, made new friends, and grown in my photography. My kids have gotten bigger, learned new things, and truly give me a reason to get up every morning and face the day. My ‘baby’ is now running around the house at mach speed and speaking in sentences; when did this happen?!?

Anyways, I’m not much for writing, but I wanted to thank all of you for a wonderful year. I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

Last year, I did a ‘Top 20′ countdown, but there is NO WAY I could narrow it down to 20 this year. So, I just made them smaller. If I make them smaller, I can put up a lot more, right? :D Anyways, these are in semi-order from early 2010 to the present. If you had your pictures done by me this year, you will likely see some of them in this post. And hey, I *still* have over a week to go, I may throw a few more up, you never know! And yes, last but not least is my entire family. We never had a family picture, and now we do thanks to some wonderful friends. :)

I hope you enjoy these as I had a wonderful time taking each and every one of them! <3

What can I say about Mikayla…she’s kind, smart, and naturally gorgeous both inside and out. Mikayla, it was a pleasure meeting you and doing your photos. I know you are going to go far in life, you are a truly wonderful girl!

I really hope you like these…there are more to come!

Last week, I decided to do a ‘pay it forward’ session for someone. Well, this was that session, and I couldn’t have had 2 sweeter, more wonderful children to work with. They were an absolute joy. And I think it’s pretty obvious, you can see it in their eyes and on their faces.

I hope you guys love your pictures…I had a wonderful time doing these for you!

I like to do these posts every so often, they are always fun to look at! So here is my latest installment of ‘before & after’. Obviously, getting a properly exposed, well composed portrait with wonderful lighting SOOC (straight out of the camera) is extremely important, but the other half of being a GOOD digital photographer is in being able to provide sound and artistic editing to your photos. A RAW file comes out of the camera as just that, raw data. It is up to the photographer to take that raw data and enhance it to bring it to it’s fullest potential. I’m not posting this to explain HOW I did what I did to the photos (so please don’t send me emails asking), but just to show a small insight into the amount of work that goes on ‘behind the scenes’. You can see my previous ‘before & after’ posts HERE.

Enjoy! :)

In this particular photo, I obviously didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on in my background and thus, created a lot more photoshop work for myself after the fact. This expression was way too cute to toss though!

This next one had some major white balance adjustments and color enhancements. I love the end result!

Added a little eye contact and made the blankie disappear! Oh, the wonders of photoshop!

This final picture just needed some minor adjustments. I included the black and white conversion as well. :)