Aperture 1.4 {focused blur}

This what happens when you have a photographer for a sister...

She gives you photos for a present. My baby brother is getting married! He is the last of our family to be married and he picked a lovely girl!  I flew out a month ago to shoot their engagement photographs. I thought I'd share a few favorites here.

I think these all turned out really well. And it was fun to spend time with Brenna and Eli. On the way home  from one of the locations we shot at, we stopped and took a few more for fun. Sometimes I see images that just stick with me and I like to see if I can mimic them. Just to know if I can, like we did in school assignments. Professors would show us an image from the 20's or 60's or current and say...see if you can figure out how they lit this and then we would create it. Sometimes to great success and sometimes it was not even close but we learned either way. When we saw this location I knew it would be a perfect chance to try out the lighting that Mark Seliger used on his cover of Robert Downey jr. I think Mark Seliger is a brilliant photographer. And when every other girl my age was drooling over the New Kids on the Block, I was crushing on Robert Downey in "Only You". I loved that movie. So when I saw this image I just had to see if I could do it. You know, for fun. 

I think we pretty much "nailed it" as my brother said. We shot all of these next images in about 15 minutes as a storm was rolling in and we didn't want to get hit by it.

Rolling Stones/Mark Seliger/Robert Downey Jr.

Utah/Me/Eli

I got the pose reversed, and I wish there was more catch light in the right eye. The sky was different too. But, I think it's fairly close.

Obviously this was just for fun. But we did do these too.

Totally different, but I love them! 

I just hope they like them!

In the land of Oz

One week ago I was sitting in my office and it looked like this...

 

It's messy and cluttered but that is how my office looks when I'm creating and in the middle of a class. 

This is what my office looks like now...

Thats right, it's empty. And no I'm not moving again. Everything had to be moved out because our house was hit by a tornado...yep...you are reading that right. A tornado. And it quite literally took the roof off. The entire back half of the house was ripped open and our roof is currently sitting in the yard across the street. Of course it was raining at the time so the family room, hallway and our master bedroom had rain pouring in, awesome. 

The good news is that we are all fine, and the front half of the roof stayed on so a few rooms were spared. Friends and our insurance agent were there in moments and helped us move everything we could into dry places. I can never thank them enough. And I've never been more thankful for insurance in my life than I am right now. And seriously I'll let you know again in the future after all the repairs are finished but if you live in San Antonio and need insurance, state farm and in particular our agent, is the best! 

Right now they have packed the whole house and they are going to replace the floors, ceilings, walls, and furniture. So everything had to be moved out into storage. We are at a hotel. And everything is fine. I just won't be posting as often. 

After loosing a lot of our belongings 8 months ago and buying all new furniture for our family room and having this happen I'm starting to think that the universe is trying to teach me a lesson. It's been a very unlucky year for us...it can only go up from here right? Please?