First Look: Baby Keller!

Wedding: Daphne and Johnny, Admiral Kidd Club, October 28, 2011

Gorgeous blue skies graced Daphne and Johnny's beautiful wedding at the Admiral Kidd Club next to the San Diego Bay. I was incredibly touched by how much devotion and tenderness these two people showed for each other, as well as the outpouring of love from all the gathered friends and family.

The Bride's niece takes a quick peak in the mirror as Daphne adjusts her veil.

I set up a bit of off-camera flash to really make the blue sky pop out on their portraits. What a beautiful day!
I just love how much warmth Daphne has in her smile. :)

A distinguished picture of Johnny next to the evening sky.

Portraits: Steve

Took this awesome portrait of Steve earlier this week, whole setup was crowded in the corner of our living room after we got the baby to bed. The crystal skull is actually a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka (with the top removed in post-processing), an awesome gift from Steve's sister. Apparently the vodka is filtered three times through Herkimer diamonds before being bottled in order to infuse it with the same spiritual qualities as the original crystal heads. Steve is, of course, a gentleman and a scholar, so it had to be included to help push the portrait a bit more over the top. :)

First Look: Daphne and Johnny, October 28th 2011

Portraits: Kev, Balboa Park

hew! I know it's a been a while in between postings. I've been working on writing/illustrating a children's book as part of a personal project and am finally finished! Now back to photos and all that fun. :)

Took some portraits of Steve's friend Kev a few weeks ago in Balboa park. Steve and Gwinna came along and we had a blast!

Ah yes, very dramatic :)
This shot uses a cool post-processing technique I recently saw in Scott Kelby's seminar Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It, LIVE. Can't get over Kev's guns in this shot.

Gwinna, One Year

My baby turned one year old today. It's so hard to believe that already a year has passed, and that she's walking around and exploring her world with more joy and excitement than I'd ever thought possible. As other parents all knew would happen before she arrived, this year has been an incredible whirlwind for Steve and myself. We soon realized that between the exhaustion of day-to-day tasks, a ten-fold increase in family visits, and the occasional sleepless night that our previous hobbies and interests were set upon the back burner, or perhaps taken completely out of the kitchen and unceremoniously dumped onto the back porch along with a somewhat neglected cat. But on the other hand, we have a tremendously happy and healthy child who wakes up each morning with a huge smile, ready to start her day. I really can't ask for any better inspiration or reward than that. :)

More family visits!

This week we had several visitors from my mom's side of the family. I took the opportunity to do a couple of portraits while they were in town, excepting for my cousin Kendall who refused to pose. Since I am a nice person I am choosing not to post the photo of him cowering on the couch with his face hidden from the camera. ;)

But first, the obligatory photo of Gwinna with her first pair of shoes, looking a bit sunburned after spending several hours at the park.

I told my uncle I wanted a couple of serious shots of him, probably because my family has a really difficult time taking serious shots (most of the time we're beating each other up or sticking fingers up each other's noses while posing for the camera). He kindly humored me while I dragged him down to the bottom of my mom's canyon and set up my flash through an umbrella to get the different lighting effects. :) My cousin Christina, posing with the same umbrella but inside the house. We've done a fun photoshoot during each of her visits during the last couple of years, but between chasing after a toddler and the short nature of their visit this time we just did a few portraits with dramatic directional light instead.

Gaughran Family Reunion 2011: Church Creek, MD

I've been in Maryland for the last week at the Gaughran family reunion. It was an awesome opportunity for all of the cousins to get together and practice kung fu. Hiiii-Ya! :)

We stayed on a secluded estate on the edge of Chesapeake bay. A few kayak expeditions out to the bay in search of a somewhat elusive nearby beach met with different levels of success. The different twists and turns in the marshy waterways caught a few of the first brave explorers off guard and they had to travel back without landing on the sandy shores.
Gwinna was appropriately dressed in her stripy pajamas when she discovered the special motif of our small cottage fridge. :)
Steve kindly posed for me for some dramatic sunset shots.
My favorite part of the scenery was how stunning the sunsets looked in this beautiful place. However, I only took a fraction of the photos I wanted because of my least favorite part...the thousands of mosquitoes swarming up from the marsh to eat me alive!

Right before sunrise with a full moon.
Right at sunrise...what a beautiful place!

Photo-a-Day 2011: Week 11, Random

Actually, I'm not really sure what week it is officially of this project...obviously I skipped some in there. I work as a graphic artist for a semiconductor company and we just had a big trade show a couple of weeks ago in Baltimore. Between prepping for that and taking care of the baby, something had to be put aside. I decided it was best to keep feeding the husband and young daughter and put aside the photo project for a while (cause man, Steve sure knows how to whine when he gets hungry!). ;)

I'll need to sort out my assignment list again, so until I'm back in the habit I've decided to give myself a break and allow random photos for a while. So of course, a lot of them are of Gwinna. But hey, since I haven't been posting pictures of her to facebook either this should satiate the barrage of requests from various family members at least a little bit.

Monday: Some fabric swatches I purchased for a project my sister and I are working on. It is top secret and will be extremely lucrative. Well, probably more lucrative than trying to sell my husband tanning lotion anyway. Because he's pale, you see.

Tuesday: Love this shot of Gwinna! Now you can see what I see when I follow this amazing explorer around outside as she discovers new and interesting objects/items to put in her mouth. I'll probably post the full series later this week, it was hilarious to watch her with a mouthful of seeds!
Wednesday: I have no idea what kind of flowers these are but they come up from seed every year. We started out with a light purple one that must have been a hybrid. The next year's flowers came up all different sorts of purple and one coveted plant produced an incredibly dark, rich purply red. Most beautiful flower ever! Well, that and all of the other dark-purply red flowers out there.
Thursday: First ocean shot with long exposure. What in the world haven't i ever done this before?? You will probably be seeing more of these later on. :)
Friday: We had a fruit thief in our yard, and I discovered the culprit!! This little fig tree had tiny, tiny baby figs that were apparently way too much fun to pull off. Luckily, the rest of the figs reside a bit higher on the tree and our little rouge can only reach up about 2 1/2 feet or so, so i still might get a fig or two to eat when they ripen up.
Saturday: Gwinna greets her dad when he wakes up Saturday morning. She's just discovered she can step up onto my pillow to peek out the window and positively squeals with delight when she looks over at Steve.
Sunday: She's of the age where she is in constant motion whenever she's awake, so having a waking yet quiet moment with her is a rare and special occasion.