A senior portrait of sorts, these were for college applications!

It’s BACK!  Holiday cards at an affordable price… and YOU don’t need to take the pictures!

My package includes a one-hour session fee, 100 greeting cards with envelopes of one shot chosen from your session (with over 40 designs to choose from) for a great low price of only $150*!

Book before October 31, and I’ll include a free 8″x10″ (unframed) of the photo you chose for your holiday cards!

This is a great way to update your family portrait.

NEW FOR 2011!!

New for 2011 - Folded Cards!

Along with my standard offer, this year, I am offering a premium line of Folded Cards** that are sure to please:  I can show you samples at your session.

A wide variety of sizes
5×5, 5×7, 5×7 wide format, 8×4

Beautiful Paper types
Premium Bamboo, 100% Recycled, Smooth, Linen, or Pearl press papers

Free Envelopes
White envelopes included with order; choose plain, gold, or silver lined envelopes

Click here to contact me to set up your appointment today!

* 1/2 due on the day of the shoot, remaining 1/2 due upon delivery of photos.
** minimum order applies.

It’s always fun doing a photo shoot – it’s even more fun shooting friends and their families – this one is no exception.  Here are a few from a recent Senior portrait session I did at WMA.

This shoot was originally supposed to happen at the beach, but due to the number of kids – we thought it best to do the pictures at the location of the brunch… of course, it POURED! The rain forced us inside, and it was a bit chaotic – but I love what we got!

I enter different contests from time to time, the main one I like to participate in is Boston.com’s RAW competition.

They have a nice variety of themes, and you usually have to take the picture in the month of the theme, which makes you get out and take pictures! My favorite one so far was the Scavenger Hunt they did back in February – featuring twenty-eight different items (some with specific instructions) to photograph.

One of the professional labs I use is doing a contest right now, and it’s for Baby/Children portraits. I don’t do tons of these, but I do have a few in my arsenal that I could pull from, so I went and found this shot. Of course, when I went to upload it, I found out that it had to be taken between January 1 and May 21 of 2011…. I shot this back in November – so it did not qualify!

Click to view Before and After transformation

I’m sharing this here, because I learned a few techniques from the time I took the photo (and did subsequent retouching), until now… I wanted to show off some of the Photoshop techniques I used in this shot.  Skin smoothing, hair clean-up, tone blending and eye sharpening – just to name a few.

It’s too bad, because it’s such a beautiful shot!

So, back to the drawing board I went, and decided to go with one of my “Sportraits”.  I couldn’t use my oldest daughter, because she’s “too old”.  The competition clearly states that the cutoff for age is 12 (she’s almost 14).  I actually am submitting the Sportrait and another portrait of my youngest daughter.  Who knows, she brought me luck back in December (I won first place in Boston.com’s RAW).

Here’s the first:

Click to enlarge

This was taken using a technique I picked up off another photographer’s website.  He used available daylight for his shot, I cheated and used one of my portable LED lights… what’s really cool is that I paid 1/2 of what they’re listed for now… but I digress!

I used the LED light to light her face, then had my SB-800 behind her head to light the stick and the back of her head.   I then used Photoshop to convert the shot to Black & White and used a layer mask to bring the color back just to her eyes.

This is the other:

Click to enlarge

This last shot was taken when my little monkey was playing up in the tree.  I had my 300mm lens on the camera at the time, and was doing some playing around trying to take pictures of birds around the yard.  She was in the mood for a little photo shoot, so I grabbed as many as I could before she changed her mind!  I didn’t do a ton of post-processing, I used an effect I have saved in Lightroom to get the “vintage” look.

We’ll see what comes of it, I started in one direction and wound up in completely different one!