The Gem State | A Family Vacation up North

....Huh? The Gem State? Idaho!

Will, Reid and I visited Coeur d'Alene, Idaho a couple of weeks ago to see my in-laws. Idaho is beautiful. For a week. Then I was ready to come back to the 80 degree Southern California spring. I didn't get nearly as many photos as I would have liked because honestly, the cold weather scared me off. haha. I'm such a wimp.

My in-law's dog, Rudy, is old and sick so I wanted to take him outside and get a few photos so that someday when he's gone they have something nice to look back upon. Isn't he a sweetheart?

They also have a brand new 4 month old chocolate lab puppy. My father in law mentioned that I should take photos of her, but uhm...that sounded rather difficult because she is a rambunctious young puppy. I figure that I'll have plenty of time to take photos of her once she gets a tad older and calms down ;)

I did get a quick snap of their sheep that would make me jump every time I walked outside because they neigh so loudly. Neigh? Is that what you call the sound that they make? Baaa?

My in-laws have a full room deticated to music. Reid was in love. Hopefully he gets some musical ability from his daddy's side of the family because he's certainly not getting any from me.

I was also able to do a quick little shoot with my gorgeous 16 year old sister-in-law, Shelby. All of these were shot on their property or right off of the road. Nice, right??

This is NOT one of their dogs. In fact, he was barking at us from the road but then after we sweet-talked him he came over and showed his true colors - a friendly old boy! He squirted his way into a photo.

I grabbed Ian (who's 13) for a quick shot. This kid has major musical skills. While we were visiting we got to see him sing a solo during his choir show and he also played Aerosmith's Dream On on the piano - played and sang, which is basically taught himself by ear. Impressive.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun | Southern California Photographer

This Sunday I got together with a few of my photographer friends to photograph these gorgeous little ladies. They were so, so full of personality and such a joy to photograph. They took me back...oh gosh...how many years? (19 if you're curious) I adore my little boy and I think I'm a perfect "boy mom" but please, God, give me a little girl someday too!

Forget catching bugs, they caught eachother!

Some before and afters

I've had a couple of people ask me what my "trick" is - no trick, just a lot of hard work and practice. People were curious to know what my images are like straight out of the camera (SOOC) so I figured, hey, why not just show you? Actually, I have a good reason for not wanting to show you. I'm a wee bit of a perfectionist and I don't even like my husband seeing my photos until I am done and can show a truly final product. I really don't do much editing in the grand scheme of things, so it's odd that I feel that way I suppose. However, I think it's important to show a) the importance of getting things as close to correct as possible in camera and b) how sometimes the most minor adjustments in Photoshop can take a photo to a whole new level. So, here goes nothing! Get ready for a little photo nerd talk.

I shoot in full manual, obviously, as well as in RAW. Shooting in RAW allows me to not really worry about setting a custom white balance. I've purchased and tried to use gray cards but found them unreliable and difficult to use. It's not uncommon for most of my photos to come out looking too cool SOOC, but it's an extremely easy fix since I shoot in RAW. Honestly, warming up my photos is the main edit that I do and it's quite easy. We live in Southern California so "warm" is a necessity!

I normally don't run a lot of actions, but I did play around with this session. Using actions is a slippery slope and it's important to be able to create a technically clean and correct image before you start to play. Also,  it's important that the action match the photo. The action that I used on these would NOT look good on a photo taken inside or in a different setting (well, maybe, but this is totally a "beach" action in my opinion).

Nothing like a good black and white!

A simple warmth adjustment took this photo from nice to wow.

This is an extremely stylized shot and I knew exactly what I wanted to do while I was shooting it. Sometimes you have to do things wrong to do things right. That totally doesn't make sense, but yeah....haha.

Sorry Kennen...but it happens to all of us! I loved this shot. I loved Jessica's smile, the hair in her face, and the fact that as I was sitting on the ferris wheel I leaned slightly to the left to get that awesome sunflare from behind the pole that was in front of me. However, I obviously don't want Kennen's eyes closed. Head swap time! Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's not, so if you're a client of mine, please don't expect this! haha. I only do it to save a really awesome shot.

Last one

Okay, I played a bit of a trick on you here. I didn't do a single thing to this photo except for crop in a little closer. I'm riding high on life when I can get shots like this SOOC. So, why is this one so great as-is whereas the others needed a couple of tweaks? The answer? Perfect, beautiful light. This was one of our last shots of the day and the sun was just dipping into the horizon over the water. The light perfection - warm and glowy. Right before sunset is my favorite light and I found it to be especially magical at the beach with nothing to obstruct it.

The end!