Highlights of 2010

Here's some family photos from 2010. Merry Christmas everyone!

Advent Novena

So I decided to pray this novena during Advent, cause I've realized over the past few years that I really don't prepare well enough spiritually for Christmas. Christmas as an adult has always felt a little empty to me. There's so much buildup and then fifteen minutes after all the presents are opened the letdown begins. There's so much we do to prepare for Easter during Lent, but during the Christmas season, its just way too easy to let the shopping become the focus.

Anyway, I found this novena that you begin TODAY November 30th, and say up until Christmas Eve. You're supposed to pray the prayer FIFTEEN times a day (which seems a little daunting) but don't worry, its really short.

Because I'm a major nerd I realized that the place I find myself most frequently during the day is --you guessed it-- my computer. Therefore I turned the prayer into desktop wallpaper for my laptop, haha.

I'll try to make it downloadable in case anyone else is game to join me, haha. Happy Advent!!

Ka-Ching.

I haven't posted anything in ages.

So a couple things:

1) Stop motion animation simultaneously fascinates and freaks me out. I'd like a piece in my portfolio but I think I'm too impatient to do it.

2) Being someone who is (almost) too un co-ordinated to catch a ball, I think its funny that I work so much for the Athletics Department. I took this photo of the seniors on the basketball team a week ago. I have so much other athletics stuff I could post. I'll get to it someday.

3) This book is blowing my minddd. A friend suggested it as a resource for a paper I'm writing about "hook-up culture." It proves that it doesn't matter whether you're a "good" girl or a "bad" girl, you've swallowed all sorts of untrue crap our society tells us about being a woman. Read it men and women alike.

4) Lately I feel this Pretty:

Really though. I've just been feeling pretty lately. For a couple different reasons, Me and a household sister challenged each other to wear NO makeup all last week. It was harder at times than I thought it would be, but it was crazy good for me. I really came to the realization that feeling beautiful has almost zero correlation in my mind to what I look like, its really more about what I'm doing. And then wearing makeup again this week has just made me feel dynamite, score.

Causing a Ruckus

Not sure yet on the technicalities of who "owns" the photos I take for the athletic department in my new job as "Graphic Design Lead". In the interest of playing it safe I'm not posting any just yet, ha. I figure it can't hurt to post some of these though, these are some of the advertisements I designed for our Rugby team's big home game last night, the "Rugby Ruckus." I was proud, enjoy.

I love my job.

Wait, hold up.
You can get paid to do stuff you LIKE?

Coming soon.

Awesome, adorable, sweaty, fun photo-shoot with Matthew and Kyla and their gorgeous boys tonight. And yeah, I've got no choice but to admit that I was almost embarrassingly anxious about the whole thing, this being my first "real", "non-family member commissioned" photo shoot basically ever. Kyla and Matthew are almost family anyway but I was still way nervous.

I will post pictures soon as I p-shop them to my liking but in the meantime

Lessons learned:

1) Shooting kids = total unpredictability. I thought by being well prepared I would have a smoother shoot, but ended up completely improvising. And things went fine anyway. I walked away amazed that I hadn't even considered things like attention span and water breaks, (it was about 90 degrees outside...) among the things I prepared for. I guess this is one of those cases where flexibility will get you better results than planning.

2) Shooting groups = much harder than shooting solo portraits. Simple math here- four faces are harder to watch than one face. I swore I struck gold with my last two shots- everybody actually smiling and looking one direction. And then I realized I'd perfectly framed a detached camper shell as the background. Oh Arkansas. Oh details.

3) Directing a shoot = a definable skill. I stalk several professional photographers. Every time they post new pictures their clients inevitably comment in raving tones about how wonderful they were with the kids, or how comfortable they made everybody. I didn't realize until today that your attitude and interactions with your subjects can outweigh lighting and framing in taking good pictures. Being confident, reassuring, and communicating well are things I'm really going to have to work on as a part of my preparation for possibly creating my own business.

Cate

Belated Senior pictures for my sister. Nobody should get to be this good looking. They're still a work in progress, but these are a few of my favorites. More will be going on facebook.