About two weeks ago, my friend Kristi was celebrated her 18th birthday. She was no longer the little girl that I had come to know. She was now a woman and a beautiful one, as a matter of fact.

My family, (the Endique’s) have known her parents for so many years.  They’re really good family friends that I have grown up to know as uncle Ramon and aunty Amy.  When I found out Kristi was planning her party three weeks before the event, I offered my services to them and I was so thrilled when they decided to have me as their photographer.  I really do love this family.  They are one of the sweetest and kindest families you could ever know. Her brothers, Kevin and Michael, are wonderful too! They are so supportive to their little sister.  You could really feel the love they have for one another. I’m really happy to have been a part of it.

Kristi, Aunty Amy, Uncle Ramon, Kevin, and Michael: Thank you all for being so wonderful! Not only are you considered family friends to the Endiques, but you’ve always been: family. period.

Special thanks to Natasha of NTME Photography for helping me out that day! She took photos of Kristi getting ready for the event. THANK YOU TASHA! :)

Kristi waited in the ladies room before her grand entrance, so we decided to take some photos of her in there.  Who can make a ladies room a cool place to take photos??? Kristi can…

Kristi and her grand entrance :)

Aunty Amy worked really hard on every detail used for Kristi’s birthday. From the program below, to the giveaways, centerpieces, etc.. She wanted her daughter to have a memorable debut.

With her parents :)

Her BFFs

Make a wish…

Family portrait

To view more photos, please click on the play button below to play the slideshow.

I haven’t posted a Happy Friday Video for a while. So here’s another segment of it :).

I’m not quite sure if this would fall under “Happy Friday Video” because it’s about a bride suing her wedding photographer, BUT today is Friday; I am happy; and this is definitely a video I must share with all of you! A must watch for all brides/grooms-to-be and also for wedding photographers too!

When I first started doing weddings, I admit I couldn’t afford to buy a professional camera or lenses. So what did I do then? I rented them!

If you’re wondering where you can rent equipment, check out Borrowlenses.com or Lensrental.com.  If you don’t feel comfortable about borrowing lenses online, look for a locale photograph company that rents out equipment.  It’s just for the best!

I guess we can all learn a lesson from the video above.

So.. I realize that I start my blog posts with “So” as an introduction :oP but that’s just me… so I apologize to my all my English teachers for this bad habit of mine.

I just wanted to post about my experience with using the Radiopopper last night.  It was my very first time using it for my off-camera flash and it worked out beautifully! I loved the way my off camera flash gave my photos a little more pop and more depth and now I’m really hooked and I am definitely going to do a lot more practice time doing night shots!

I also had an on camera flash and because we were searching online on how to attach the Radiopopper on to our on camera flash, and we couldn’t find anything, I thought it would be helpful to someone else by sharing how we attached it.  It worked perfectly for us.

Below is how we placed the velcro:

And although it looks kinda funny, it served it’s purpose.

Here are a few teaser shots from last night’s event using our on and off-camera flashes:

The off-camera flash for this photo was right behind her and the on-camera flash was pointing straight up.

We took this picture inside a white tent.  The off camera flash was pointed straight up to the ceiling and my on camera flash was pointed to my left side.

I hope this helps someone! And if anyone else has a better way, please feel free to share it with me too :o)

Almost two years ago, I was fortunate to have been the photographer for Lauralee and Steve. Two complete strangers who found my website, interviewed me at their home, and decided that they wanted me to do their wedding photos. I’m still in awe because I didn’t have much experience then as a wedding photographer, but they believed in me and hired me. For that, I am grateful.  It was also during their wedding preparations that they had told me of an idea for table numbers that they had seen somewhere and Lauralee wanted to do the same thing for her wedding. These table number were photos of the couple doing funny poses and holding numbers up.  I thought it was a genius of an idea!!!

Fast forward to this past Wednesday evening. I told Kristi about the idea and she said that she would be up to it! So, here are a couple of shots of her table numbers that she had displayed this evening during her debutante party.  I wanted to share it with whoever might want to do the same thing.  I think it’s wayyyyy better than the usual boring table numbers… and sooo much cooler too! What do you think?

Here are my favorites! These poses were for table 2 and table 5

Table 15 pose was one of my favorites and we put the S.C.A.N. brethren in table 16 ;o)

Ryan’s idea was to get his music recording equipment for Table 17 pose and another favorite of mine is Number 21

I’ve been getting bored lately. The kind of boredom that makes me want to start changing things around and do new things.  So, Ryan and decided to finally invest in Radiopoppers and a new lens!

We finally got our Radiopoppers yesterday and as soon as we got home from choir practice, we started playing around with our flashes and so far, I love it! I’ve never tried a Pocketwizard, and I know they’re more popular, but Ryan told me that this was just as good and we would get more for our money. I trust Ryan’s decisions on a lot of our equipment because he takes A LOT of time to research anything we plan to get for our business. Plus, he’s the head of the household and I must obey ;o)

We also recently purchased a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 D AF lens. Oh my goodness gracious.  I LOVE how the pictures come out from this lens! I wish I had it earlier and I can’t believe I’ve worked without it for sooo long!  Thanks Conrad M. for convincing me to get it!  I can understand why one photographer had said, “It’s not the camera or the photographer; It’s the lens!” but I still believe it’s the Photographer, the Camera, and the Lens working properly to capture a great photo!

Well, that’s pretty much it for now.  Here are two shots of my recent purchases for es-sense ;o) to add to our bags.