Ladies and Gentlemen....we found a winnner.

The photo to the right has brought me some luck this year. Taken during the summer in Reidville, SC. I have won first place in the SCISA photo competition. Honorable Mention in the Piedmont Interstate Fair. 2nd place HubBub Spartanburg High School Art Show and hopefully more awards to come! I also won second place in the fair for another photo! I am enjoying getting my photography where people can see some of my work. Some of the money I win from competitions will help my project as well as my photography portfolio. I also had my 4th photo published in the Hearld Journal this past week which is always really exciting!

A busy girl......glad to be on break!

I have been an extremely busy girl and I am very thrilled to finally be on Christmas Break. I have been running around school....afterschool....before school taking pictures. It seems that every five minutes someone needs something. The good news is all by time will pay off in the future. I have been working on many school things such as picking out pictures for the banners than will be hung downtown Spartanbug for the entire month of January. The banners have two of my pictures. Glad to be displaed in downtown Spartanburg and will also be something good to put in not only my senior project portfolio but also but photography portfolio. I also am working on picking out and shooting pictures for the school tour brochures. One of my favorite photos that I was secretly hiding for the yearbook my favorite picture from this entire year I let go this week. Mrs. Ledbetter my mentor and I both agreed that this photo is great for not only the yearbook but also that it would benefit my future to be seen by more and more people on the tour brochure if it is used. I also have been extremely busy working on the Villager....which is FINALLY done!! The Villager is the yearly news publication at Oakbrook. I took almost all of the pictures in the Villager except for maybe three or four. In the past few weeks I have had to take a pictures for the Villager that included school administration pictures as well as a picture of the schools board which was quite awkward because I am used to taking photographs of children not adults. I am having to step out of my comfort zone a lot. So I have completed the Villager photos as well as the down town banners. Working on yearbook, catching up on Knightly News because I have not had photos in there for several weeks because I have been so busy but plan to start again after the first of the year. I also am working with people on making the school brochure better and next maybe even the schools website. All of these things that I am doing will look great in my photography portfolio!! The picture to the left is one of my favorites from last week. I took pictures at the Winter Concert and enjoyed taking dance photos for the first time! I cannot wait for their next performance dancing photography is very challenging. Glad to be on break to well....take a break! After I return to school I will be busy working on my calendar and hopefully more family photos I need at least 4 more families to buy camera but also more families after that to help pay publishing costs for my calendar! Cannot wait for 2011 but it will for sure be a very very busy year filled with lots and lots of pictures!

Research Paper and tough choices

Research paper working on it now and all week. Today I took more family pictures. This past week I had to turn down a family for pictures because I have to do my paper. I was running out of time and had to say no. I felt really bad and still do. I had to put my school work in front of pictures otherwise I would still be doing this senior project next year! Turn in research paper tomorrow so I can finally start work fully on my project and I cannot wait!

"The Pictures Aren't On The CD"

"The Pictures aren't on the CD...." I made my first big mistake this past week. I was editing photos and saving them to a disk and I formatted the CD wrong and the pictures did not save onto the CD so when the family went to look at their pictures they were not on the disk. It worked out though I made the family a new CD and all is well. My biggest challenge as you can see in the picture is the size of families. The last two bookings I have had were big families. One family had seven people and the other had eight. Telling people where and how to stand can be major challenge. I hope the families are understanding that I am by no means a professional. On saturday I took a families pictures at their house in front of a lake and they went great I think they really liked them! The family I did Sunday afternoon was definetly a learning experience. The sun was very bright I would place the family one way and the sun would be behind them and it would not work, and then I would face them another way and the sun would be in their face. I took those pictures at Glendale my favorite picture place but not the place to take photos in the middle of the day! The photo to the right was one of the only ones I liked. I am very worried about the family not liking these as much. I am very new at this so from this experience I learned two things. First I learned that taking pictures at 1:30 is not a good idea. Second I am still researching the best way to take photos with bright light. The good news is that I have $350 for camera fund and have three families coming up in the next two weeks. This project is a learning experience and that is all that matters! I am learning!