This beautiful family came out to my home studio this week to capture some moments together after Colin recently returned from an overseas deployment.  I first met Taylor and Caiden last year during this deployment, when we took some photos for him at Christmastime.  She was nice enough to contact me for family photos upon his return and it's the most amazing thing to see a family reunited that obviously has so much love for each!  Caiden was super sweet and really smiled for mom and dad, but the faces he gave me had me cracking up during the entire shoot!  He'd smile at me, but as soon as I put my camera up he'd go serious again and lift an eyebrow, like, "What's she doing?"  He was just adorable!!  Taylor and Colin, I hope you guys enjoy these images for many years to come!  I know I enjoyed every minute of taking them with you and look forward to working together again, soon! :)

This summer The Potter's Hand Photography had the unique experience of participating in two traveling dress adventures!  The first was Miss Plum, whom I shot with my daughter one week prior to shooting Miss White (link to come later).  This dress is a gorgeous vintage all-lace wedding gown provided by a lovely lady named Beth, who picked it up at a local thrift store.  The gown is so tiny, I didn't have a model available for it, so a model call went out for petite ladies and I received an overwhelming response!  I will share a few images from each lovely lady!  This traveling dress was shot by quite a few professional photographers around the globe and you will find the link to the next adventure Miss White had at the end of my blog post.

The first model I shot was my own daughter, Lindsey, who is 9-years-old and certainly didn't fit the dress well.  However, she loved playing dressup in the gown and I challenged myself by shooting with the Lensbaby Composer Pro plus Edge 80 optic to blur certain aspects of the ill-fitting dress in-camera, rather than trying to create the blur in post. Blurring the dress while getting her face somewhat in focus was certainly a challenge--as anyone who has worked with the Lensbaby can probably attest.  I would swivel the composer all the way to one direction and then twist it and manually dial in focus where I wanted it. By doing so, I was able to capture some rather unique focus slicing with this lens and it helped to creatively style these images the way I envisioned them.  Enjoy!

My next lovely model was a young lady named Destiny and she's as beautiful as her name implies! <3  We had some fun with the Lensbaby as well and went downtown for a more urban setting after playing in the studio.  We shot this images right at midday so finding the right light and using buildings and bushes for shade was imperative to making these shots work.

Miss Isabel helped me create a fantastic studio portrait showcasing the entire dress and allowed me some fun shots outside battling some spotty daylight with a reflector:

 

Adrienne braved the mosquitoes in our wooded backyard and allowed me to get creative with the Lensbaby some more and we created a dark fairytale look:

And finally Mrs. Amanda came into the studio and we did some classic portraiture work and my little star kitten Brownie loved the dress and just layed there until we had her move:

To continue following Miss White's Adventure, please head over to my friend Kate Luber's Blog to see her fantastic high-fashion session with an elegant dancer! 

It's 2015, and I'm going to try something new.  I'm going to blog.  At least once a month, on the 10th of each month, and I'll be sharing 10 images.  Now, I've never been very good at this whole blogging thing...it tends to get pushed the wayside when I've got other things to do, so even just this once a month post is going to be a challenge for me.  I'll try to make it entertaining, or at least give you a few nice pictures to glance at, and I hope you'll follow along with me and my fellow photographer friends that have volunteered to do a 10-on-10 as well, and enjoy our journey through this new year.  A link to one of my friends will follow at the bottom of this post and every 10-on-10 post from here on out.  

So, without further ado, please enjoy my favorite 10 images from 2014 as I begin this journey into blogging.

We started this year out preparing to leave South Korea, which was such a wondeful experience for our family!

My middle son, January of 2014                                                                Namdaemun Market

Our daughter got very sick with a stomach virus just a week before we were to leave South Korea and was admitted to the hospital.  She was released just 2 days before we were on a plane, headed back to the U.S.  I actually took these images with my iPhone 4s and then combined and edited them using editing software, so even though the quality isn't the best, it's still a favorite to capture this moment.

We arrived back in the U.S. just in time for spring and Easter:

May found us visiting friends in the South, on our way to Louisiana:

And the summertime was spent being thankful that we were stationed close to our family

Fall closed in quick and my oldest son celebrated his 13th birthday and thus began the busy season of family photos for the Christmas season.

My favorite image of the fall, a collaberation between my son (who was up above her dropping leaves into the frame) and my daughter who stood there gracefully waiting and trusting for me to get the shot:

Finally, this was a lens test fo the 105mm f/2 and the light in our new house...and I couldn't believe the shot that developed...moody and deep and one of my all-time favorites:

Please visit my uberly talented friend Irene's blog at, http://www.irenesmithphotography.com/?p=4845 , and continue following the links at the bottom of her blog and each blog, to view work from other amazing photographers!  Here's to a wonderful start to this New Year!

I recently had the pleasure of working with my own lovely family on a few concept shoots for a competition.  These were created for an online photography community contest: Project Shoot Out from the I Love Photography site: (www.ilovephotography.com).  This challenge was my way of inspiring new creative thinking and truly pushing the boundaries of my own photographic abilities.  I wanted to really challenge myself and push beyond my normal shooting.  For four weeks, I worked with a team of photographers and an amazing mentor to develop images releated to each weeks theme.  I will share my final images, as well as a few "in-between" shots and detail each week's theme and my take on it.  I did not win the overall competition, but I did win first-place in Week Three's category. 

Week One: Color

I chose to use the color yellow.  Yellow to me symbolizes light, sunshine and hope.  I wanted to give the feeling of emerging from darkness, into the light and overcoming a bleak time.  It's a little heavy, but hopefully worked well.

Image One:

Image Two (and the final image I submitted for the competition):

Image Three:

Week 2: A Different Perspective

There were many ways to have interpreted this theme.  I chose to use this theme to highlight the differences in a military child's lifestyle from that of a child outside the military. It's tough on a kid.  We also happened to be right in the middle of packing to move from South Korea to Fort Polk, Louisiana.  My oldest son was a little disappointed to be leaving all his friends, yet again, and I tried to allow that and the stuggles they face with our lifestyle to show through (and even got my hubby to participate in a shot).  Now that we are with family in Louisiana, he is singing a different tune. :)

Image One (final image submitted for competition):

Image 2 (close call but didn't submit this one):

Week 3: Time & Motion

So for this week's challenge, my inspiration revolved around my daughter once more, but in a different setting.  In the middle of our move, just one week before we were supposed to be on a plane heading back to the United States, she got horribly sick.  She had a gastroenteritis stomach bug that just wouldn't let up, so we took her to the ER.  It's a scary thing to be in a foreign country relying on doctors that cannot speak to you except through a translator.  She was hospitalized for a total of 4 days and made a complete recovery, praise God!  Since we had nowhere to go, I used my iPhone to snap a few pictures of her as she went around the hospital room and then combined them in Photoshop to make one image that showed "time passing".  I placed first in this week's competition!

 Image (finally and only image created):

Week 4: Light & Shadows

For this week's theme, I promised my youngest son I would use him for the project, as I'd used every other family member previously.  So, we were in a small hotel room in New England and I used available window light to capture my little dreamer.  His beautiful blue eyes amaze me with their kindness and joy for life!

Image (final and only image created):

So, even though I did not win this competition, I truly enjoyed experiencing it with my family and expanding my knowledge of thinking outside the box.  Doing these themed shoots has helped me look at light and composition in a whole new way!  I encourage you, fellow photographers, if you have the means and opportunity to participate in competitions that challenge you and your abilities, to do it!  Get active, creative and inspired as you push yourself and your abilites!