My husband and I recently joined Spectrum Fitness Center to help us reach our weight loss goals and become healthier and active people, for ourselves and our kids. I can’t even begin to tell you how proud of my husband I am for the level of commitment he’s made to our new workout routine. He is my motivation on those days where I just DO NOT feel like giving it the effort. After all, seems like once I hit 25, the weight wouldn’t come off like it used too.

Extra pounds have always found their way around me and we all know how brutal school kids can be. I was far from Miss Popular. I had short, curly, unruly hair, absolutely NO fashion sense and thick, plastic-rimmed eyeglasses. Bus rides to school were agonizing! The bullying, among other things, set the stage for serious body image issues later in high school that eventually turned into a battle with anorexia and bulimia.

Although it will always be a struggle, I’ve made the transition to want to be healthy and not just “skinny”. I believe that somehow I will use photography to help other girls feel beautiful in their own skin. At least, that is my hope.

Today was our “splurge” day. Counting calories every day warrants us some sort of reward right? Besides, we go back to our workout routines and calorie counting first thing Monday morning. So go ahead…eat another cookie.

Sorry I’m late with this guys, but please don’t miss this opportunity to catch Jasmine Star for a FREE web seminar on creativeLIVE on Building Your Wedding Photography Business. She’s so real and offers lots of insight! Catch it here and again tomorrow! Also, look below the video for the online web stream agenda.

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

I met Jazmin and Alex in downtown Baton Rouge for their engagement portraits. They were so much fun and so natural to photograph. It was evident how very much in love they were. I stood back and let them have their moments. Here are a few shots from their engagement portrait session.

Stay tuned for photos of their wedding!

We had another portrait session when she was about three months old.  Mom always had the cutest clothes and accessories for her to wear.   Her little pink crochet hat looked perfect against her pink blanket.  She was all smiles, one of the milestones I look for in a three month portrait session.

Mom loves Trumpette socks and just had to have a photo of the ones she was wearing.  I did a little “pop art” for her.  To learn more about Trumpette or to order some of the apparel, please visit their website. You can do so by clicking here or by visiting http://www.trumpette.com

At her six month portrait session, she was able to sit up all by herself.  Here is a photo of her all decked out in her little outfit, a gift all the way from France.

Remember the maternity shot we got of mom in her zebra print fabric and the baby heels from Heelarious.com?  We got some inspiration from the photo on their website and together with mom’s fabulousness, we created a little setup for a glamourous baby portrait.

When baby was nine months old, we had our first outdoor photo session.  She was crawling and finally able to stand holding on to something for support.  Mom even had one of her own outfits that she wore as a baby for her to wear.  Here are a few photos from that portrait session.

The day finally came for her first birthday party.  Had it really been one year already?!  Time goes by ridiculously fast.  It seemed like just yesterday we were waiting for baby to arrive.  Here are a few from her first year portrait session and birthday party.

I am so blessed to have been a part of documenting your first year.  You will grow to be a beautiful lady just like your mom and I’m sure just as special of a friend as she is to me.  I love you both.

We had big plans for her maternity portrait session.  Even before she knew she was going to have a girl, she found the cutest baby heels from a company called Heelarious.   Ready to go in her zebra print fabric and using those baby heels as props, we set up for our maternity portraits.

There was so much excitement and anticipation the night she arrived and I’m glad I got to be one of the people that had a first look.  Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle and I were there patiently waiting for Mom and Baby to make their grand appearance back from the O.R.

Patiently waiting for a baby

Finally she arrived!

Fresh out of the oven

Once she got got we had to get a few newborn portrait shots.  Its fascinating to see those little baby fingers and toes.

To be continued…

EXPOSURE:

Exposure refers to how bright or dark your photo is. This is effected by the amount of light that is recorded by your camera’s sensor. A properly exposed photo should typically resemble the brightness of the original scene. A poorly exposed photo will either be too dark (under exposed) or too bright (over exposed), and may contain areas that are so dark or so bright that they contain no detail (know as being blown out).

In case you didn’t already know, photography uses light.  In fact, the word “photography” comes from two Greek words, photo- meaning light and graphy – meaning draw.  So a “photograph” is like a light drawing.  Your camera uses light to capture what is sees.  Depending on your type of camera (film or digital), the light then “draws” what it captures on film or type of sensor that acts as a sort of “digital film”.

“How?” you might ask.  Well, lets look at some major parts of a camera.  All cameras, whether film or digital, have a lens.  Inside this lens is something called the aperture.  The aperture is a mechanism that can be adjusted in size to control the AMOUNT of light is allowed in.   Its like the pupils of your eye.  When you are outside on a sunny day, your pupils get smaller to control the amount of light.  Have you ever seen a cats eyes react to light?  When it is dark a cats pupils get HUGE!  When a cat is in a lot of sunlight, their pupils get very small.  Just like the pupils in a cat’s eyes get smaller or larger, the aperture of the camera’s lens gets smaller or larger to manage amounts of light.

Let’s try something.  Make a fist and close one eye.  Open your fist just enough to see through and place it over your open eye.

This is my hand..tada!

See how much light comes in?  Not much right?  The wider the aperture, the more light can come into the camera.  Why is this important?  The aperture also controls something called Depth of Field which we’ll talk about a little bit later.

All cameras also have whats called a shutter.  Imagine its a terribly cold and windy day.  In fact, its so cold and windy that you can’t stand it and the only thing keeping you from all that cold and wind is a door.  The LONGER you leave the door OPEN, the more wind and cold will come in.  The camera’s shutter is like a door.  The longer the shutter stays open, the LONGER light will come come into the camera.  The shorter amount of time the shutter stays open, the less time light has to come in.

The amount of time the shutter stays open is called shutter speed.  Shutter speed also affects how movement is recorded on a photo, but we will discuss that a little later as well.

The other component to exposure is ISO.   ISO is basically a numbering system created by the International Organization for Standardization to represent the sensitivity of film negatives (if you’re still using film,film sensitivity may also use a scale created by the American Standards Association or ASA however most digital cameras now call the setting ISO).  ISO controls how sensitive to light your film or digital camera sensor will be.  Most normal cameras have an ISO range from 100-1600.  Some cameras have lower or higher values.

Have you ever had your eyes dilated when going to get an eye exam?  They tell you that your eyes will be very sensitive to light and give you these crazy looking “sunglasses” to put on.  Ok, ok…that really has nothing to do with ISO at all.

ISO, like aperture and shutter speed, will control the overall brightness of your photo.  Its sortof like this…

Imagine you have a container under a water faucet.  The water will be “light” and the container will be your “film” or digital sensor.  Lets say you turn the faucet on slightly, letting a small amount of “light” flow. The container or “film” would take in this small amount of “light”.  This would be a low ISO setting.  The higher the ISO setting, the more “light” flows out of the faucet and into your container (film or digital sensor).  ISO can allow you to adjust your shutter speed and aperture to get desired effects in your photographs.

There is a downside to raising the ISO value.  The higher you raise the ISO, the more noise or film grain you will see on your image.  This can affect how crisp and sharp your photo appears.  We will talk more about noise later.

So, we’ve discussed the three main aspects of exposure, commonly referred to as the Exposure Triangle.  By combining the aperture, shutter speed and ISO values, proper exposure can be achieved.  Next we will talk about the different things aperture, shutter speed and ISO affect and some typical combinations for different outdoor lighting situations.

I hope you found this post helpful and interesting.  If you have any suggestions on how I can improve it or other topics you’d like discussed, please let me know.  Feel free to post comments and questions to help other readers.

She was a tiny little baby!  It was quite a shock when I saw her for her 6 month portrait session.  She had grown quite a bit!  Abigail wasn’t quite able to sit up for her 6 month portrait session, but was still a ball of fun.  She was smiling and excited before we even got setup for her photos.

Abi was cute as can be and her portrait session came just in time for Spring colors and Easter eggs.  I got to throw in a few props I had bought at an after Easter sale last year.

She was so much fun and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen such a happy and laid back baby.

After a very productive portrait session for mom and baby, it was time for Abi’s bottle and nap.  It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep in mom’s arms.  So peaceful!

I love you guys and I’m so glad I get to watch Abigail grow and you and Gavin grow as parents.  Thank you for trusting me to take photos for your family!

I also found this nifty little free “Zapd” app today an decided I would post my Instagram photos there. It was just launched today and is another type of blogging program that you create directly from your mobile phone its instantly published to the web.

If you don’t know about Instagram, it’s a FREE iPhone photo app and it is quite popular. It has some great photo filters you can apply to your iPhone camera snapshots. I love it and an pretty much an addict. Lol. There is also a Facebook community for Instagrammers called Instagram Community. Here you can meet other Instagram users an don’t be surprised if you find Instagram “meets” in your area and these are becoming increasingly popular. Oh! Did I mention it was FREE!

The photo I posted today was made using my iPhone camera and two photo apps from iTunes; Diptic (which is $1.99) and Instagram (again, it’s FREE). The filter I used was the Earlybird filter. It’s one of my favorite as I LOVE vintage looks.

The photo above is a picture of my lunch: a strawberry/banana Greek smoothie. I can’t really see it was low calorie cause I drank all SIX one cup servings (:o) but it is low fat and sugar free. Here is the recipe:

Strawberry/Banana Greek Smoothie

2 cups whole strawberries
1 1/2 bananas (frozen)
1 cup Chobani Nonfat plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cup no sugar added 100% apple juice
1/2 cup Splenda granulated sugar (more or less depending on taste)
Reddi Whip fat free whipped topping (optional)

I used Chobani yogurt because one 8 oz serving has a whopping 23 grams of protein in it.

Blend all ingredients, except whipped topping, until smooth. Serve topped with two tablespoons fat free whipped topping (only 5 calories).

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Jon and Kristen, your wedding was beautiful and I wish you a long and happy life together. Here are a few more photos from their wedding day.

All images © Suzette B. James

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