Your oven makes great cookies!!!

 

If you are or know someone who is a photographer, you’ve heard the comment and story of “Your pictures are great, you must have a fantastic camera!.”

And just as a side note, when I say photographer I mean someone who actually understands things such as exposure, white balance, ISO, aperture and uses techniques such as bracketing, the lighting and shutters to make sure that the photo coming out of the camera is a work of art. There are lots of people out there who’ve gone out and bought a $1000 camera and consider themselves “professional photographers” even though they are using the little green box on their settings and having the camera make all the decisions for them

Now, I’ve been working with several professional photographers for a few months now, and have seen some amazing work. I’ve also seen how much time goes into really getting a photo to be perfect. I’ve seen photographers take hundreds of pictures, and end up only coming out with a handful of “good ones,” even though all of them look perfect to me. I’ve seen photographers spend hours upon hours editing their photos with love and care someone would give their child, and then packaging off the best results and sending them to clients who have paid thousands of dollars for the serves.

Every photographer has good and bad pictures. There are always the “oops” moments when the white balance wasn’t changed, or the lighting was off, or the length of exposure wasn’t right. A professional photographer will dump these pictures and ensure that all of his/her photos that are on the internet, in people’s homes and in the public are the best of his work. No one wants a bride with ashy skin, or a wedding cake that looks grey because of the wrong settings. So photographers will work their butts off to make sure that their work is professional and worth the money their clients shelled out.

NOW, here is what annoys the bejesus out of me! PEOPLE POSTING PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK, BLOGS, and so on… CLAIMING THAT THE PHOTOGRAPHER IS PROFESSIONAL when in fact my point and shoot would take better pictures. Just because someone has a fancy camera does not mean they are a professional photographer. Just because they are making money of of selling their photography does not make them a professional photographer.

Just to show you what I mean, here are some of my wedding photos taken by my family with a fancy (and very expensive) camera… and some of our engagement photos taken by a professional with not as fancy of a camera.

While the pictures save the memories of the day, I wish I had asked a professional to be there for our special day. I can go through and edit these, and bring out the quality and lighting, fix the contrast and so on, but the photos will never be as good as those taken with the specific settings to compensate for the lighting, and so on. (That may have to be another post).

Pardon the quality of the pictures, I had to download them from Facebook, since I’m using a new laptop and have no pictures on this one. Look at the use of light, composition, the use of focal length and depth and so on.

All the pictures are of us… but the artistic thought, the use of light and of course the professional grade editing makes these photos so much better. You can see all of our engagement photos here. The photos were done by a very close friend of mine, Lena Karabushin, who was just getting her feet wet in the photography world.

The price of a good photographer can be scary… but let me tell you, every penny is worth it.

A birthday weekend

… with our best friends.

A weekend filled with lots of laughs, great food, and even better friends. These are the days that make the boring, frustrating and discouraging days so worth it. These are our closest friends, who, over the years, have become our family. I’d literally take a bullet for every single person pictured above. <3

Lesson Learned

I have a bit of a funny story to tell y’all. Today, I had a hair appointment at 10 am, at the same time Husband decided that he wanted to walk over to our local farmers market with his mother and brother. As we were all leaving the house, I told him to grab a spare house key… however he said that he’d use the garage key pad to get in.

Well… around 11:30 I get a call, Husband can’t get the garage door to open, and has no key to get into the house. While most loving wives would rush home to save their hubs from sitting out in the 100 degree heat, I decided that I would take my time and get my hair done… While this seems mean, and my mother almost read me a lecture on how uncaring I was… I thought it was very fitting since I had suggested he take a key with him.

Fortunately, my father-in-law is fantastic and came to their rescue while I took my sweet time getting my hair done, and picking up a birthday cake from Costco. They ended up having lunch in the in the comfort of air conditioning and met me back at the house around 1:30.

I personally thought it was a lesson to be learned and would have/will do it again if need be. I bet next time there will be more than one spare key taken.

On the brighter side, I’ve become a Photoshop nerd and wanted to leave you with a before and after: