She's turning THREE!

Brelin's Birthday Shoot

This photo session was the reason I started to catch up on my blog here. As we were preparing to go out on this shoot, I referred Brelin's mom and Gaga to the website to since we were returning to the JW Marriott. When I got to the page, I remembered that it had been almost a year since I posted anything. Now it's time to share the Brelin awesome-ness.

I think I have truly fallen in love with using the JW Marriott as a location to shoot. I know that there are other places that are beautiful in Vegas, but this one is a gem.

Brelin was super excited for the shoot. As were Mommy and Gaga and Amy. Turns out, Brelin did A LOT of growing up in the past year and she has managed to get even more adorable and beautiful. Mommy did an awesome job with the outfits. There were even balloons - Brelin was very excited to have those.

We started at the secluded bridge, fountain, and swing.

The fountain was Bre's favorite because we let her play in the water. I got some great shots of that, but I absolutely loved this one with the 3 balloon in the background. We were having a VERY difficult time with the wind to get that 3 to face the correct way.

Brelin was being silly as we were waiting for her outfit to be picture ready. I was winking at her and she decided that she needed to wink back. I am impressed that I was able to catch such a good wink - Brelin is still learning how to do that.

Any, and every, picture that Brelin is in is beautiful. I have decided that if I could make a living off of taking pictures of her, I would follow her around all day and capture all the wonderful moments of her life. But I can't so I will gladly take the ones that I can get =) What an angel!

As we moved throughout the courtyard, we stopped for some waterfall pictures and had to look for the large fish in each part of the water.

Then we made our way to the flowers and asked Bre to smell the flowers. I must say there was a great change from last year. At least this time she knew that her nose had to be facing the flowers. She needs to practice with the getting close enough to actually smell them.

One of the suggestions I had to Gaga and Mommy was to get letters to spell out the word THREE. Well, Mommy decided to do just that. We used the letters in a could of different places, but putting them up against the wall was the best for Brelin. She was able to check out the people that were just on the other side of the bushes and dance to the music. And she wasn't too shy to show her super model "I'm three" stance.

The last outfit that Mommy had for Brelin was a homemade tutu and some angel wings. Mommy wanted me to highlight just the suspenders and the tutu and she was walking away. Looks like the Presley family truly has an angel in their midst.

I have decided that no matter where I am living and where the Presleys are, I will spend my Spring Break taking yearly pictures of this adorable girl.

Oh, and let's not forget, that Brelin has taken to calling her Gaga Amy now =)

~Amy J. Gardner

Photography Class - The Rest of the Assignments

I decided to hang in there.

So, here you will find examples from the remaining assignments I had in my photography class.

The next assignment was Everyday Life. I had to take pictures of strangers doing every day things. I was allowed to photograph one person I knew, but my teacher would prefer if they were all strangers. I set out with my camera and my car. I drove around Vegas and photographed as sign guy, a woman pumping her gas, a store clerk on her cigarette break, and a pizza store girl. Later I even photographed my friend while she was working with students.

Most people were totally fine with me taking pictures, once they realized I wasn't a creeper =). The best pictures turned out to be of a Hot Dog girl working at the Drive-Thru Hot Dog on a Stick on Charleston. Thanks to my co-worker for taking me there one day after school and having the connections with having worked for Hot Dog for multiple years!!

"Hot Dawg!"

For one of the assignments we had to do a self-portrait. I really liked this assignment because I didn't have to work with anyone else's schedule, it was me. I didn't like this assignment because I had to take pictures of myself. We could shoot one of our scenes inside, but our house doesn't have great lighting so I ended up going to the park down the street. My sister-in-law had given my a tripod and my husband had gotten me a wireless remote so that I could take pictures of me "in the act" of something that describes me. This is what I came up with:

"Books, Books, Books"

My most favorite assignment was the close up assignment. I got to take random, ordinary things and take pictures so close, my goal was to magnify them 3 - 6 times. The idea was to capture the items in such a way that the viewers had to say, "what is this?" This was my BEST assignment all semester.

"Drink Up"

"Something Wicked"

"Sew much time"

 There were two items that I just fell in love with, even as I was shooting them. The first is my grandmother's pearl necklace on my Fijian clam shell. This is the necklace that I wore on my wedding day so that my mother's mother would be represented. The second item was the one that I mounted and turned in for my assignment. It is of our money bouquet. A dear friend of the family's made the bouquet as a bridal shower gift and John and I love it so much, we can't take it apart.

"Mother of Pearls" B&W

"Mother of Pearls"

"Money, Money, Money"

Later in the semester, there was a student choice assignment. We were able to go back and re-shoot another assignment. I chose to do the close up again. The second time was just as fun as the first.

"Hair today"

"Just Clean"

Another assignment required us to work with strangers again. This assignment was called the window light assignment. I think if I had more time and access to more places with the correct background, I would have loved this assignment. The idea was to do a photo shoot using indirect light from a large window (a garage door would work too). The subject needed to be far enough from the background that the texture of the wall was not visible. We were going for simplicity. 

The first image I turned in didn't get credit because you could see the sun on John's shoulder. The shots I got of the other too girls were either too close to the background or too washed out of a background so I couldn't use those. I ended up having to re-shoot, but at least I could use my husband and this time the garage door did the trick!

"My Love"

"My Love" B&W

"A Mother's Love"

"Happy Days"

One of the last assignments we had to do was our teacher's choice. This semester she gave us the option to choose from three different assignments. Shooting a race, old Las Vegas signs, or the contents of our refrigerators. I went to the fridge, mostly for convenience, and I ended up liking it.

"Secret Ingredient"

"Oops!! Don't Cry"

The semester ended with a good note. It took me a while to go out and shoot for fun, but everywhere I look I think of the things that I learned in this class. I think one day I may go out and shoot some of these assignments over again. I didn't decided to take the next photo class. This first one was enough for me-I needed LESS stress in my life. But I will continue to shoot and improve my skills.

~Amy J. Gardner

Photography Class - The Beginning

Now I know a few things

During the fall of 2013 I was enrolled in a beginning photography class. I had actually tried to take the class during the spring of 2013, but not enough students enrolled and the class was cancelled. I waited until the next semester so that I could take the class from that same teachers. Turns out there were only 5 students in the class this past fall, but since the teacher already signed her contract, we got to stay.

I think in the end, it was a blessing to be in a small class. We were able to get some individual attention and I never felt lost in the crowd. Each class member made a difference to each class.

So, the reason for taking this class was to really learn how to use my camera. I had to shoot in manual and my images were captured in RAW not JPEG. Also, NO FLASH was allowed. I could only shoot during the SUNNY 16. Which is when the sun is within 15 degrees of either horizon. Basically, I had to shoot between 8 and 3 on most days. This became a HUGE issue for me. My contracted hours at work are 8 am to 3:30 pm. To top it off, I had class Saturday afternoon from 2 pm to 6 pm, and I couldn't even get into the digital lab at school on a Saturday morning. My work had to be ready to turn in by Friday night at 10 pm. That meant that I was completing my assignments the day after they were assigned - Sunday. It was a stressful 16 weeks, but at the end of the semester I ended up walking away with an A by one point!

When the class first started out, we had to complete some shots to show that we understood the different composition rules. Here are my images:

Blurred Action

Everything in Focus

One thing in Focus

Panned Action

Stopped Action

There are 10 composition rules when taking a picture. These rules are to help make a great image. They are:

1. Simplicity: A simple background

2. Rule of Thirds: The subject of the image is on a third division line of the image

3. Leading Lines: The image has the idea that a line is leading you to something 

4. Repeating Patterns 

5. Curve 

6. Framing 

7. Symmetry 

8. Asymmetrical: looks like two images together 

9. Forced Perspective: Something forcing your eye to the subject 

10. Merger: A distraction. This one happens to be a head merger. 

It was after this last assignment that I was not liking my teacher. When I didn't get something right, and I asked why, or how I could have made it better, her answer was just keep shooting. There was no partial credit - it was an ALL or NOTHING.

The first real assignment was the Freemont Experience. We were to take our cameras to downtown Vegas and shoot. That's it. We weren't given any more guidelines other than use your composition rules. So my awesome husband and I picked up a class mate and went to Freemont. John was still dressed in church clothes, so it looked like someone important was around. We had "CIA" and "photographers." Boy, did we catch the eyes of people.

After the shoot, I spent time in the lab critiquing my work and finding the shot that I thought was ready to mount. We actually had 2 weeks for the project, because our teacher wanted to "flag" our images so that we would have an idea of what she liked. Out of my 150 images, she likes 2. And neither one was one that I thought was good. I was not happy.

That day in class, we needed to choose an image to print and practice mounting so that we knew what we were doing. This would not be the image that we were turning in for the assignment and we could not submit it for a redo. Basically, it was an image that didn't count. I chose an image that I liked, but the teacher did not; since I couldn't use it anyway. When my teacher saw that, she said no, I had to pick one of the ones that she liked - But I only had 2!!!!! This is the one I picked:

"Mixin' it Up"

The next week, my parents were in town and I took a half day from work and they went back to Freemont with me. I got about 100 more images. Ran to the school, critiqued and mounted them before class the next day. This is what I turned in:

"Great Ball of Fire"

I was really happy with this image. It was mounted great and I had all sorts of composition rules happening. Curves, one thing in focus, rule of thirds. BUT my teacher was NOT impressed. I got a D on the assignment. Fortunately, I could turn in a new print the next week to make up the grade. I went with the other image that she liked:

"Doorway to Fun Times"

Ironically, I got a lower D on the redo than I did on the original. It was after this assignment, and the redo, that I started to seriously consider auditing the class. I didn't like the pressure of the grade and a teacher that wasn't telling me HOW to improve when I wasn't making the grade. In the end, I didn't audit and I feel like I did improve.

I need to take a break for now - time to make dinner. But I will be back tonight to finish putting up the images from the class and to get this blog up to date.

~Amy J. Gardner

Newborn Session

Max

In August of 2013, I got to take pictures of my co-worker's newborn boy. He was only 6 and 7 weeks old. I had to split it up over two different sessions because Max was not cooperating with me. The first time I was there he just wanted to sleep. Mommy and I were being VERY mean with the tickles, pinches, and camera. There were LOTS of pictures of a not very happy Max.

So I decided that I would come back to visit at a time that wasn't nap time. Good thing my "day job" is a teacher and I was on summer break. That meant that we could pick a day and I could just wait for the "He's awake, come now" text that Mommy was going to send me. The second sessions went better, as far as getting Max to keep is eyes open. When all was said and done, I had plenty of pictures of Max. I must say, that some of my favorite ones were when he was sleeping. I just love those sleeping babies. How about you??

So cute!!!!

This baseball was a gift at Max's baby shower. One of the Jones daughters (see Photographing Teenagers post) is making a name for herself with softball. Of course she needed to make sure that Max was set on the right track!

Of course not all the pictures were of Max sleeping. Here are some adorable ones that I caught.

The scale that Max is laying on is similar to the same scale that his mom's dad was weighed in.

 Taking pictures of a newborn is hard work, but the results are so precious. Before I left I made sure to get a picture of the adorable little man with both his parents.

Max is growing quickly and still just as adorable. I am not sure when the next time will be that I take pictures of a newborn. But I definitely love that I got the chance to take pictures of Max.

More past sessions to come.

~Amy J. Gardner