Better late than never...

My first photo shoot, as promised. Here she is...the beautiful Cora. Not only a trememdous volleyball player and athlete, a gifted student, and family friend. She will be playing volleyball on scholarship this fall for University of North Carolina....thats right. UNC baby ! Keep your eyes out for her. http://tarheelblue.cstv.com/sports/w-volley/unc-w-volley-body.html

These are low res this time, so they are a bit fuzzier than the originals. : )

Up next, highlights from the year !

Kristi

The countdown begins

Well, it has almost been a year since I decided to trade in my point and shoot and get serious. May of last year my dad and I were talking about what we could do for a new adventure. Perhaps a new career path we could love and enjoy doing. After weeks of conversations we decided that photography was the path we were going to take. After all, I was always taking pictures of Jordyn...how hard could it be ? I am very calculated and my dad is...well...more emotional. While I was spending hours upon hours in "paralysis of analysis" looking for the best camera for the best price, my dad was out buying the best camera for the best price. There we had it, 2 camera's 4 lenses and no idea what to do with either one of them. Our first venture was a trip to Washington to visit my mom. This trip was spent learning, that we basically knew nothing. Including anything at all about how to use a fancy camera. We did however point it at a few things, and download the images into my moms computer. We then used Picassa to edit them, or so we called it at the time. Here are a few from our "experiment" in Ashlyn, Oregon. ( Clearly I thought is was cool that I could blur and saturate whatever I wanted )

The next few months were spent learning the very basics. Literally - what is aperture ? How do you focus ? What is exposure ? Absolutely no knowledge other than my little Nikon point and shoot. I read the camera manual, and 90% of it was a waste of time, because it may as well have been in Russian. I did not understand any of it. This is where Cynthia comes in. Who is Cynthia you ask ? She is the reason I didn't throw in the towel. A wonderfully gifted photographer, who just so happened to be the mother of one of our ( Me and Jeff ) current volleyball players. What a treat ! She very patiently answered what must have been an exausting amount of questions well below her level. She encouraged me to just shoot. Go out, pick a subject, and shoot it. Change your settings, see what works and what doesn't. So, that is what I did over the next few months. I had a 3 year old and a new baby at the time, so progress was slow to say the least. But what better subjects than my kids. So, they become my practice. Picassa was all I had at the time, and boy did I ever use every ounce of it : ) Here are a few. ( ughhhh )

It was in August that I decided that if I was going to do this, I needed to actually get on the horse and start to ride it. I got a website, a license, a name....you get the picture. Now all that was left was to get someone to shoot other than my kids. Who better than someone from my team. I asked Cora, whom I had the longest relationship with of the group, if I could take their senior pictures...for practice. She said yes. That is when the panic set in. I quickly called a few of my friends for a last minute trial run. Tanya, a good friend, graciously brought over her boys and let me snap a few, and my BF Ali, who had a baby boy just 3 days after my Kami did the same. She even let me take a few of her. ( Here are a few of those )

Finally, August 18th came. The day I consider my official start date. Cora was dressed and ready for her senior pictures. I would have been freaking out if Cynthia hadn't offered to come along and help me with a few things. What a God send. Several hours, outfit changes, and tips from Cynthia later...my first official photo shoot was in the books. Now it was time to edit those suckers. You guessed it, with Picassa. The website and all the other fee's left me a few cents short of Photoshop. As if I would have the time or mental capacity to learn it anyways.

It is late, and this was a VERY long post...so up next...... a few from the "debut" photo shoot of Cora. After that, a re-cap of the highlights this first year has had to offer. Come back soon!!!