The Strength Within

I had to do a PhotoEssay in my Photojournalism class. My subject was Ashley Jaillett talking about her father that had passed away about 9 years ago. It was very hard for her to tell the story, and she had asked me not to show the video in public due to it being too personal, so I will respect her wished. She was great, a very strong woman with alot to say.

Model: Ariel: Fashion/Fantasy Shot

Ariel was my model for my assignment in my Advanced Portraiture class. I was going for a curtain feel that i wanted and when Thanksgiving came around I realized that I wanted her to be my model. She fit the description perfectly. She looked very.. umm... Earthy, I guess you would say. So I contacted her over facebook and asked her if she wouldnt mind being my model. She was as excited about it as I was haha. She was also such a trooper, she did anything I asked her to do and she did not complain about not one thing! And not to mention is was like 30 degrees outside and she was wearing a thin dress with no straps on it!! I will most definitely ask her to be my model agian!

YouTube!

I also have a YouTube page that i upload all of my multimedia videos that i have done for school. It includes my Life Video, My statement video (Special Needs Marriage), a How To video on how to play pool, it also has my video on my adventures in Italy! Go check it out by clicking here!

Im on Facebook!

I am now on facebook! Come and check out my work now on my facebook fan page! And if you like anything that you see you should message me and i will get back to you as soon as i can get to it! I hope you enjoy it and dont forget to like it! :D
  Click here to see it!

Photography Lighting Techniques : Location Lighting in Photography

This is also a great How To video on lighting. This one is especially helpful to my classmates who are shooting their Fantasy/ Fashion photography outside, or well as he puts it, on location. I dont know about all of yall but this really makes me want to go buy a really nice strobe light to test out! :D

Photography Lighting & Equipment Tips : How to Position Lights for Photo...

This is a great How To video for how to properly set up your lighting and equipment. It goes into great detail about it all and it really helped me out a ton, i hope it helps everyone else out who will watch it. Now lets practice how to use our lighting skills!!

Autumn Weather

Fall is my favorite time of the year! it is beautiful! All the leaves change into all the yellows, oranges, and reds. Its just one of the best things in life. At least to me it is. I just wish that the weather was more regulated. It is either extremely cold one week or hott as can be the next week. If it just stayed in the middle with a light breeze all the time, i would wish that it stayed like that forever!

Fun in the leaves!

Patience and I decided to take some pictures together and of course we couldnt take any serious ones. We are just not serious kind of people! But we had fun throwing the leaves and trashing that yard, im just thankful that it was an abandoned house or we could have been in all sorts of trouble haha

Fun with Friends

Patience, Samra and I found this abandoned house and in the back of it we saw that the grass was way overly tall. I first asked Samra if she would walk into it so that i could get a picture, and as always she did. She was such a trooper, no matter what i asked she did it even if it meant having bugs or little flower petals all stuck in her hair afterwards haha. But the image turned out so great that we all wanted one!

 

Model: Patience

Patience and I have been friends for a very long time. She was probably one of the first friends that I made moving to where i live now. We had chorus class together and we just clicked. I havent seen her in about a year and when Sam called me to confirm our photoshoot i was thrilled when i found out that Patience was going to be joining us! She was also a great model just like Samra.

Model: Samra

Samra is an amazing friend! Me and her have been planning on having another photoshoot together. We did a photoshoot maybe a year ago so we were past due for another one!! We always have so much fun when we get together! She is great to be around plus she is very photogentic which is a major plus, it makes things easier on the photographer haha.

Family Photos!

Well thanks to my tripod I was able to take some family photos. My family hasnt had a family photo in about 10 years or more. We actually first went to my school (Gwinnett Tech) to take some Holiday Portraits which was nice, we will be using those pictures for our christmas cards. I want to give thanks to Jessica Tedone, my fellow photographer student, for taking great pictures of my family and I. We greatly appreciate them!!
Those pictures are soon to come. Mom is making sure no one sees them until after christmas haha. But here are the images that i took!

Learning to Use Flash!!

So earlier this week me and a friend of mine Ashleigh Ice were in open lab at school. One of our teachers came in and told us that we needed to go outside and get some pictures of the sky because it looked amazing outside. We had just came from outside and saw nothing special but we were like allllrighhhttt i guess we will go take some more pictures. When we got out there we were amazing by how beautiful it really was! So it was most definitely a great opportunity to learn how to use our flashes!

Special Olympics Video

Watch this video that I made for the Mavericks Special Olympics team. It has alot of good images that I took while they were playing in their tournaments. I am so very proud of the Mavericks, they all did such a fantastic job. They are all such hard workers and I hope they take home the Gold next year!!

Time For Softball!!!!

My brother Billy is on the Mavericks team. That is how i came about helping out with Special Olympics. It was a great weekend for the Mavericks, they were undefeated until the last day. The team they were playing, Big Dogs, would have to beat them twice in a row to take home the Gold Medal, and thats exactly what they did! It was a great game and the Mavericks put up a great fight but it is still a great honor to win the Silver Medal in Special Olympics! And like we all told them, they are still number one in our books :)

Photojournalism Opportunities!!!

 I was a kid in a candy shop with all the photojournalism opportunities that I had. There were so many games that everyone could play and tattoos to go on peoples faces. I walked around taking pictures of everyone and everything!!! I couldnt get enough of it. Everyone was so happy to be there that it just made it easy for all the images to look great.

Wandering around!

Me and a friend of mine were loving everything that the Special Olympics had to offer. Me and Kerrie went and got tattoos, we bought shirts, bumper stickers, hats, more tattoos. We even took pictures with a few of the players and the helicopter!! It was most definitely well thought through. I dont know one person that didnt have a great time?!

Life Flight!

While I was helping out with the Special Olympics we saw this helicopter fly over us. We could tell it was a Life Flight Helicopter so honestly it freaked us all out like crazy! We thought that someone was hurt or something but turns out they just came to show everyone. It was really nice because all the kids, well shoot even the adults, had a blast looking through the helicopter and getting inside and taking picture with it and everything. I even had fun doing it, im not gonna lie! haa

Holiday Portraits!!

We have been shooting Holiday Portraits all week now. We have been very lucky, of course we have our slow days, but that always happens. You cant be busy all the time you know. But I worked one of the slow days this tuesday. There were 4 of us ready to shoot. Kayla Andrews, Ashley Arnold, Christina Cline and I. We only had one customer that night but we got lucky enough to take a picture of SANTA CLAUS! :) Well, technically only Kayla took a picture of him ha, but still it was pretty awesome! But here are some pictures of us! :D

Understanding the Nikon Speedlight: SB-900 SB-800 SB-600

I am having a hard time figuring out how to use my Speedlight. So the best thing to do is to go onto YouTube and look up how to videos. Thats how I have learned alot of things throughout the years when it came to photography. I have taken alot of classes but for some reason seeing it in action makes it that much easier to comprehend.

Havenese

My grandmother also just recently bought some Havenese dogs. They are hypoallergenic dogs which makes them very good pets for dog lovers that are allergic, like me :) My mom actually has the two stud dogs, which one of there pictures is in a previous post for animal portraits. These are some of the pictures of her females.

French Bulldogs

As i said in the previous post, my grandmother breeds her french bulldogs. After i took some pictures of her i started taking some pictures of the puppies so that she could use them and put them up on her website. She has 3 puppies right now. One sweet white one, and two very energetic black ones.

Environmental Portrait for Photojouralism

One of our assignments this week was to take an environmental portrait on someone and what they like to do. As i have said previously, i always tend to make my assignments personalized, so i did my grandmother. She breeds French Bulldogs, and will soon be breeding Haveneese dogs, they are hypoallergenic. Right now she has three puppies that are up for sale, if you would like to check it out click here to view her website.

Holiday Portrait Group Picture!

As they do every year, my class got a group photo in our scene that we have all been busting our butt on to make perfect :) This picture really tells you a lot about everyone of us. We are such a fun class, and no matter what goes on, we all keep our heads up! I could'nt ask for a better class!

Study Abroad Italy

In September I went on a study abroad trip to Italy with my class at Gwinnett Tech. It was alot of firsts for me. I had never been on a plane, because i have never needed to. I have only been to all the states that surround Georgia, so we always just drove. So needless to say i have also never been out of the country. I was very nervous about the trip but still very excited, i asked my mom if she would like to come, and of course like anyone would do, she said yes! :)

Who is Nicole Lord?

Also in class we had to make a video on our lives. I instantly knew that i would have to do my video on my brother. My brother has changed my life in more ways than you could ever imagine. He has made me the person that i am today. With out him i wouldnt know what to do with myself!

Special Needs Marriage

For class i had to create a Statement video. Since I always make my assignments personal ( to an extent ) i decided to interview my brother who is special needs. Billy is planning on marrying his girlfriend that he has been dating for a year now. I wanted to get some person point of views on special needs marriage, so i asked my parents and Shannas, Billy's girlfriends parents. This is how it came out.

Holiday Portraits DONE! :)

FINALLLYYYY!!! the holiday portraits are finally done! :) Its such a relief to know that we do not have to run around like a chicken with their heads cut off anymore! All the stress is gone! And it looks amazing!

Also taken with my camera phone.

Holiday Portrait Set!

ITS ALMOST DONE! :) we have been working so hard on Gwinnett Techs Holiday Portraits. I alone have already bought like 5 bags of snow and a few bags of the little snow flakes. It just never seems to be enough ha. We should be done soon though! all fingers crossed!!!

Pixelated because it was taken from my phone.

Heidi Schumann: Photojournalist

Heidi Schumann takes amazing photos while she Travels the world. Since one of my major goals in life is to travel and see as many places as i can while capturing as much of the beauty as i can, this photojournalist inspired me.. check out some of her work at blog.

Ring Flash

Today my teacher introduced the Ring Flash to the class. She showed us how to use it and said it gave a beautiful even lighting. I did some research on it and this is what i found. Click here to see the site.


Because the ring flash light originates from a circle around the camera lens, the Ray Flash creates a distinctive lighting effect, producing a virtually shadowless look on the front of the subject, while leaving a soft, even shadow around the edges. The versatile adapter is ideally suited for fashion, wedding, portrait, journalist and macro photography, as either a main or fill-in light.


The Ray Flash relies on the hot-shoe flash to generate its light and automatically takes advantage of a camera's TTL metering capabilities. The adapter easily slides over the front of a camera's flash unit and locks into place for easy, secure use. Weighing only 16 oz., the Ray Flash contains no electronics, batteries or flash tubes and does not require any cumbersome cables.

GTC Holiday Portraits

ITS TIME FOR SOME HOLIDAY PORTRAITS! And thanks to Gwinnett Tech we are making it easy for you! Just come up the days listed for some Great photos to send out to your friends and family! For a BONUS we have even asked Santa to join us one saturday!!! Im sure the kids would love to see him and have a picture, so come on down to Gwinnett Technical College!!!

Learning about fill flash!

In class today we learned about how and when to use a fill flash outside or even inside. It is much easier to use a fill flash outside than inside. You can use the outside lighting which is always more natural looking. you can find alot of information if you go to Cannon Digital Learning Center. click here to get the link from this picture.

Halloween!!!

Halloween was very interesting this year. Like every year my house is one of the most decorated houses in the neighborhood. Everyone always wants to go to our house just to see whats new. My parents always dress up all scary and likes to freak all the kids out. That is of course the older kids, not the younger ones. Unfortunately I had to work for the first time on Halloween night so I was not able to enjoy it as much as I usually would. But this is what the house looked like this year!  :)

New Header!

After many tries i finally have a header that i like! It was hard to get the size just right to fit with my blog. but I believe that its overall look works :) at first i wanted to have a header with more images and it was really hard for me to cut some images out because i loved all of them, but i decided to get a guy and girl, and different age groups. I felt it would be more appropriate. Let me know what you think!

Final Header

original, but it was too long so i had to cut some images

Older Photography

I have always loved photography ever since i was young. I was always the girl that had her camera everywhere she went. In 10th grade I actually took a photography class. It taught me all the basics like what an aperture and shutter speed was and it even taught me a little of the basics on photoshop. I took a photography class every year after that. My senior year I even went to Grayson Technical High School for Commercial Photography. I took some of these pictures that year and the others I took my first year at Gwinnett Technical College.

Some images from Photo Imaging

Photo Imaging was so much fun. It was basically a class on how to use photoshop the correct way, kind of like a non destructive way. I have taken photoshop classes for the past 4 years and I have never learned so much as I did in just a few months. We were using Photoshop CS4, then CS5 came out and we will hopefully learn some of this new version!! Til then..

Original Movie Poster on left, Mine on right

Billys Baseball Game!

Billy had a game last saturday and i was actually able to go to it. It was my first free day in for what seemed like forever!  He played at Bethesda Park right down the street from where we lived when we were younger. Billy is on a new league so he is meeting a lot of new friends. Even though Billy can meet friends anywhere he goes! He is the biggest social butterfly that I have ever met!