Let it snow!

The Duncanville High School Show Choir were the perfect subjects for our snow extravaganza! They were adorable in their seasonal costumes and REALLY enthusiastic about throwing the snow and snowballs. It took several shots to get everyone to show up through all the flying snow.

Congratulations to Bryon & Lauren

Newborn portraits

Meet Colten. We used exactly the same yellow flower in the maternity shoot. It was doing OK until Colten got hold of it.

Maternity

We started with a studio shoot then moved to the Fort Worth Watergardens. Ash was a trooper-eight months pregnant and climbing up and down stairs.
She had them printed in metallic which turned out gorgeous!

Kim & Nathan

Kim & Nathan are young, fun, and adorable. They are getting married in late September. We took engagement pictures where they had their first date, then a couple of places I suggested. My favorite part was when they broke out these homemade thank you signs that they intend to use for their thank you notes. We traipsed through the woods to get to a creek, climbed on the playground and ended up with a memorable set of pictures.
For her engagement pictures, I had traveled earlier this summer with Kim and her parents to her grandfather's farm about an hour away. It was completely worth the trip because she used places that meant something to her that also offered a variety beyond anything we could have found locally.

Why you need prints as much as a cd

In my class blog I tell a true story about a friend who still has not printed any pictures of her daughter's wedding months afterwards. I do understand. Life gets busy and complicated. I am often guilty myself, but I have tried to be more conscious of this. I admit that I haven't printed but a couple of big prints from my dream vacation. I do have big prints on the wall from my children's engagement sessions. But I haven't printed an album lately. I encourage people to invest in an album or a book to have memories to share not just to email or post in a photo bucket. It is these hard copy pictures that you will still be able to find and view years from now. Computers crash. Folders get deleted. Technology changes. Save your memories-print your pictures.

http://virtualphotographystudio.com/photographyblog/2009/08/11/photographers-the-history-killers/

The flash site is up!

We have finally gotten the new flash site up in a test version. Let us know what you think. We hope to finalize early next week.

Grunge filter

Still working on getting the revamped site to work right. I've decided to move to the flash site sooner than expected, so it's almost ready to go. But in the meantime, I've been playing with grunge filters. We saw a lot of interesting filter effects on pictures at the Dallas Bridal Show. I think seniors would like the look as well. Here's one example.

Website Issues

If anyone has tried to follow the link to our website, fair warning it's completely screwed up right now. My mom & I have been working on redo-ing our website, but unfortunately technology has been fighting with us. We have our new html site ready to upload, but we seem to be having issues with the uploading process (Frontpage is being difficult). We are hoping to figure this out & get it fixed soon.

This is all still very much a learning process for us to have a website. It's kind of been trial and error so far, but we have made progress over the past year. We are hoping to eventually switch to a flash site, but that's a whole other issue.

Ashley

Our First Blog

Welcome to our blog. For a year people have been telling me to get one, so I spent that time looking at others trying to decide what to put in it. This should be one of the few times it will be primarily musings, an opportunity for you to get to know us better, for me to say more than I would on the About Us page which is also new. My hope is that in the future this page will include examples from shoots we don't post on the pages, a few family photos, and some school projects-photography by high school kids who often amaze me with their visions, cool projects we are working on, maybe the odd photo tip or two.

August 2009 begins my 22nd year to teach photography. I have watched my program grow to fill six classes then dwindle back down to four. I have been proud to see many former students succeed professionally in the business, hope that at the least most have better family pictures than average, and occasionally moan that kids walk in and tell me they have a camera in their phone so they don't really need another one or ask what is there to learn about photography, it's just taking pictures. We do both film and digital in a digital age, but there is art in both that I hope to share and maybe inspire future photographers to explore more deeply.

It took having all my children graduate from high school and my daughter choosing photography as her profession for me to start a business that has been part of my life since my grandfather gave me an SLR in high school. When you look at our work, Ashley's are the more obviously edgy looks, but I am learning from her to break my preconceived notions about angles and cropping and to see the beauty of a purposely blown out image or a color shift just a little off the normal scale.

After a year of growth, we look forward to expanding our business with your help and hope to open a studio by the end of four more years. Until then, we will bring our lights and backdrops to your home if you want, or we will bring you to my home where the studio has been set up in the living room and several backdrop options and props are available. We will travel to a location that you love or take you to one of several we love. We are happy for you to send or bring example photos that have sparked your imagination. We welcome you to say, "How about if we try this?" It's your photo shoot. We want to make it special and to give you pictures you can't get at the mall. We work with a variety of vendors to find equally unique products for you to choose from.

Thank you to those who have been our customers this past year. Thank you to friends and family who may get tired of our constant obsessions about photography and our business. And thank you to those who choose us to record your memories this next year.


Charlotte Hensley