special friends...

I recently did a photoshoot on the beach for some special, long-time friends and it was a lot of fun.  Everyone was a good sport for the most part and then we headed to Max's Pizza for some yummy dinner.

Here are some of my faves from the day:

The Hammells & Family...

Over the Memorial Day holiday, I had the pleasure of photographing Todd & Susan Hammell & family, along with Susan's parents and her brother & sister-in-law and their family.  They are vacationing on North Topsail Island this week -- in from the Greenville, NC area -- and wanted some family photos made to celebrate their parents' 40th wedding anniversary.

This entire family was a lot of fun to photograph -- the kids were adorable and all the adults were fun-loving and open to whatever kind of poses I wanted to put them in.  By the end of the shoot, I felt like we'd been friends with them forever.  :)

Here are a few of my faves from the evening on North Topsail Island:

class of 2010: revisited

I recently had the privilege to photograph the lovely Miss Caitlin Mason for her senior photos and had a really great time.  The Mason family attends Scotts Hill Baptist Church where I do, and Caitlin happens to be best friends with Jessica Warren, whose senior photos I had the privilege of taking last year, if you'll recall this post.

Caitlin and her mom did a lot of research before her photoshoot last week so they were prepared!  Caitlin is a fan of 'the gates' in downtown Wilmington so a lot of our shoot was spent walking/riding around downtown and stopping for photos here and there.  It was a beautiful day; perfect for strolling.

Of course, we hit the beach, too, because it IS just so close!  :)

I'm not quite finished editing the photos but here is a sneak peek at some of my faves from the day:

Jefferys wedding

This past weekend we attended a wedding for one of the couples within our Connect Group.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day for a wedding -- sunny skies and temps in the mid-70s.  Just beautiful.

This was the first wedding we've gone to since I've had my new camera so I was looking forward to seeing what it could do in this kind of setting.  Of course, I didn't take any photos during the ceremony, which was just lovely, by the way.  But I shot to my heart's content during the reception which was held in downtown Wilmington at St. Thomas Preservation Hall -- what a great place to have a reception!

The following photos are without edit, meaning I haven't done a thing to the photos.  This is just how they came out with my Nikon.  I'm so pleased with them!

[photo credit: Jeff Wenzel]

[photo credit: Emily Ondish]

continuous: 3 frames per second

It's been a while since I posted, I know.  Sorry about that.  I have had this post in mind to do for a few weeks now and just haven't had a chance until now to sit down and type it up.

A few weeks ago we had an opportunity to reconnect with good friends that we haven't seen in 6+ years.  They were our best friends when we lived in Fayetteville and the last time we saw them was at Jeff's UNCW graduation in December 2003.  Their boys were 2 & 4.  They left soon after that for Germany due to military orders.  We did our best to stay in touch over the years with email and, more recently, Facebook.

Fast forward 6 years.  They have recently moved back to NC and it worked out for us to make a flying overnight trip to Sanford to see them.  It was a blast!  The boys are now 8 & 10 but you'd never know we missed those 6 years of their lives -- they warmed right up to us!  And as far as the adult conversation went, it was like we just picked up where we left off.  Good times.

So of course I had my camera with me and was just snapping away the whole time we were together.  The big boys decided to throw around the pigskin before dinner Saturday night so I decided I'd try out the "continuous" feature on my camera.

Here's what I got:

Nice follow-thru, babe!

UPGRADE!

You are looking at the proud owner of a brand new Nikon D3000 SLR camera!  That's right, peeps.  This chic FINALLY upgraded from her Kodak point-&-shoot to her first SLR and she could NOT be happier!

I have been really considering and saving for a new camera for about a year now.  I really thought I would end up with a Canon -- for some reason I just was leaning toward a Canon.  But I've heard really good things about Nikons, too, so I wasn't opposed to having one of those either.  This Nikon deal just kind of fell in my lap when Jeff got an email from TigerDirect with an online 48-hour sale on this camera/kit.  After reading the reviews (all of which were really positive), I decided that this would be the perfect first SLR camera for me.

I've only had this camera for 5 days, folks.  So I still feel like I know NOTHING about it -- there are so many "bells & whistles"...I'm sure it will take me until Jesus comes back to even figure out all those but hopefully, in the near future, I will have enough knowledge and be comfortable enough with it to really take advantage of it and come out with some really nice photos.

Since getting it on Tuesday, I've had very limited time to "play" but I will show you a few photos that I've taken with it.  I'm amazed everytime I discover something new about it so the photos I take to "practice" with that new knowledge are really kind of ordinary but hey -- you gotta start somewhere, right?  :)

Everyone knows that I am NOTORIOUS for "self-portraits" as seen here.  :)  I've gotten pretty good at them and while it does appear that I cut off my chin in this one (give me a break, peeps, it's a brand new camera!), I think it has a certain artistic style...yeah, we'll go with that.  :)  Anyway, the camera has a "retouch" feature built right in to it that will let you do some basic editing to your photos before you even upload them to your computer.  The following photo is this same one but I used the "color balance" option under the retouch menu:

Pretty neat!

The next image is 2 photos I took using the manual focus -- I.love.this.feature!  I haven't worked with it enough to really be good at it yet (I forget about it since I didn't have that option before, only autofocus, and some of my photos end up blurry before I remember to focus them with the manual) but it does wonders when I'm trying to make something in the foreground or background sharp (in focus) while everything else around is blurred.  That's something I had to work REALLY HARD to accomplish with my Kodak and I love how simple it is now with this Nikon.  The photo on the left has the flowers in the foreground in focus while the photoframe in the background is blurred. The photo on the right is the opposite -- the flowers are now out of focus or blurred and the photoframe is in focus.  I did take these photos without flash so they're not even as crisp as they should be but you get the idea I was going for.

That's so cool... :)

The next photo was strictly just me taking a photo, on "auto", with flash, just a normal photo.  Nothing fancy.  But I think it came out really cool.  Like I had a spotlight on the flowers or something.  But I didn't.  It's really amazing to me how dramatic everything is with this camera vs. my other one...

Okay, one more photo.  This is the very first photo I took with my camera after I got it put together.  Before I knew anything at all about it.  While I was waiting for the camera to come, I wondered what my very first photo would be with it.  It shouldn't surprise me that I would take a photo of my most favorite person in all the world...

Aw.  :)