In my mind, the mark of a brilliant photographer is one who can create images that emphasize relationship and moment. When we photograph loved ones we have the advantage of experiencing both of these.

5 tips to capture true emotion

When I am not professionally photographing families and children, I love to photograph my everyday. I love to take photos of the ordinary things that make up my day and my life. If you follow me on Instagram, you know I have a photo of a Starbucks cup, or a few, in my gallery. And that’s because I just love to photograph my reality. To me, photography is simply a visual journal where I tell my story. I just tell it through pictures instead of writing it down. Today I am sharing what things inspire my photographer eye. I will share what things make me scramble for my camera and think, “I have to photograph that!”

5 tips for photographing your everyday

Beginning food photographers are often curious what other foodies are using for food photography equipment. I can admit scouring the internet in search of ‘the best tripod for shooting food’ or ‘what lens is best for food photography’. In my opinion, it isn’t the gear that creates your amazing image, it’s the foodie behind the camera, but that doesn’t mean some good gear can’t hurt, right!

Food photography equipment

We all love bokeh (you know, that blurry background) and using a wide aperture like f/1.8 is sure to help you get it. However, that wide aperture also makes your plane of focus smaller and makes it harder to get your focus just right. When you’ve got a quick moving child, you need some wiggle room. You don’t need to go extreme with f/22 or anything but consider closing up your aperture some to f/3.5 or so. This will still allow you to get some good bokeh as long as your subject is pulled away from the background enough.

Aperture rebellion: 7 reasons to use a smaller f-stop

It started with a shooting prompt, “Shoot the same thing for thirty consecutive days”. I had been documenting my oldest daughter’s love for her stuffed chicken for a few months on Instagram, complete with it’s own #thingschickenslove hashtag. Her favorite book series, Tilly and Friends by Polly Dunbar is built around a little girl and several animals that live together in a yellow house. The chicken “Pru” is my daughter’s favorite character, when I found her a stuffed chicken, it quickly became her “lovey”. I had been documenting their adventures together, mostly with my iPhone for several months, she loved calling me in to see what Pru was “doing” or what she “loved”(which gave birth to the hashtag).

Photography Project: One subject, 30 days

I am WAY behind on editing. Like embarrassingly behind. But I didn’t want that to stop me from printing images for my kids to enjoy.

Who doesn’t love giving their images as gifts?

This year, each one of my three children received an Artifact Uprising photo book with around 100 images featuring them throughout the year. Like I said, I’m behind on editing and don’t have all our pictures from the past year ready but I realized I could easily pull out some of my favorites for my kids.

The best part is I made all 3 albums in about 4 hours!

Let me show you how to make a photo book in no time at all.

How I made 3 photo books in 4 hours

Backlighting is one of those beautiful lighting techniques that is so easy to achieve, you’ll wonder why you didn’t try it before. All you really need are some good windows with some nice light, a reflector & the right angle!

How to use backlighting for food photography

It can be a challenge to work full time and still find ways to stretch yourself as a photographer including finding ways to be creative. There are a few things I do to try to challenge myself so I know I am growing my skills and pushing myself creatively while I work a full time job outside of the home.

Tips to spark your creativity while working full time

I’ve been afraid of tackling off camera flash photography for a long time. This past year I challenged myself to dive in and see why so many photographers can’t live without it! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE natural light and it’s what I primarily shoot. But there are times when available light is poor quality and I simply need more to make a photo pop! When balanced correctly with your available light, flash can coexist beautifully to enhance your images.

Off camera flash photography for beginners

Have you ever edited a photo in Photoshop and at the end wish you could go back and change an edit you did, but you already flattened the image and you have long passed the 20 items your history allows? Well I am going to show you a quick tip that you can put in your workflow that will allow you to go back to any point in your photo editing.

Photoshop editing: Snapshot feature