So It's Halloween

I have no plans for tonight, I don't enjoy Halloween parties, and dressing up... I may hit up a fall festival. I live down the road from my childhood church so maybe I'll talk Wes into going there so I can snap some photos...

Tara posted on her myspace page a while back a photo of her dressed up for Halloween and I think she was like 5 or 6... I unfortunately have a similar photo, mine made it all the way into the school yearbook, which is where I had to scan it from cause I couldn't find the hard copy... So forgive the distortion of the photo...


Got to love childhood memories... I'm not sure why Lisa (then stepmother) put me in this... I do know that even my beloved babydoll was dressed like and indian as well...

Revamps...

*sigh* thankfully most of my revamping is almost done... I've recently revamped the pricing on my large prints on my online hosting account... they are HUGELY discounted!

It includes merchandise too, just in time for the holidays....

It's exhausting revamping everything it really is... Along with the price cuts I've finally developed a referral program.... w/the help of Tara we got an ad designed for it... it's pretty cool...



I hadn't blogged in a while, and I figured I'd update on what I've been up to...

I'm going to the airshow today, then to get a pedicure, and then to see if the girls still want to go smoke a little hookah...

Keri & Kenny are Married

A little over a year ago I did some photos of a lovely family from Tennessee, they were a military family spending some time at NS Mayport and wanted some family photos taken on the beach. We headed out to Hannah park, snapped some photos, they placed an order and I never heard from them again.

Two weeks ago I received a message on my website from Keri, who said she was referred to me by this family! I was so excited that they remembered me and were passing my name along to another military family.

Keri informed me that Kenny was down here at NS Mayport going to school and she was coming to visit him and get MARRIED!!!! They did the justice of the peace thing in Jax on Oct 9th and had a photoshoot with me a few days later.... it was so very sweet because they are SO in love and SO cute.

They both kept saying that they were "bad" at this, HA! yeah right!!!!!

This one might simply be my fav!























See what I mean about them being very much in love...








Keri told me when we started this that she doesn't take very good photos... hmmmmmm, I personally think she might be crazy, or blind!

















Here is the email I got from Keri right after she looked at the photos online :D

"Hey Jess....omg the pics are great!! wow!! I am very very happy with all of them!! Thank you so much!! They are soo cool!!! Kenny is really happy about them too..he keeps going on about how hot he looks.. lol!! Thank you again so much (and Wes too)..it was awesome working with you , and we will def be using you again.

**Thank you again!! They are beautiful!!!

Keri"

:D :D :D

I've made a discovery...

I love photography.... shocker huh...

There are some things that I however, do not love.... such as the politics of "networking" and getting ahead and other business owner jargon that I have NO interest in. I left corporate America to get away from all this, lately I've been working on a lot of projects and as my close buddies know I'm kinda pulling away from anything and everything main stream....

This Sunday morning I brought Shelly (UNF, BFA, Photography major and close pal) to my grandmother's house. (Same place I shot Jenny's trash the dress) and I followed her around as she used her medium format DLR to do some shots for one of her film classes.

Since I started taking photos I've wanted to learn more about film I have very very limited experience in film photography, I had a little film camera way back in the day when my interest in photography was peeked, but it was just a little Kodak 35mm.

Shortly after I met Shelly and Tara they made me want to learn more, Wes got me a Holga for my birthday and until lastnight it has been in it's box! Well after Sunday with Shelly I decided it was time to get some film for the Holga and start shooting.

More interesting (at least to me) last November my friend (who's also an art teacher) Rachel gave me an old Minolta Autocord in exhance for snapping a few shots at her wedding. Shelly gave me a roll of black and white film and for almost a year now I've thought the camera was broken... well yesterday I whipped out the maual I had printed from the internet, did a little reading and figured out that I'm just an idget and nothing is wrong with the camera... SO today I went in the back yard and shot my first 12 images onto some 120 film... I can't wait to get them developed... I want to either have Shelly do it or watch her do it if she can sneak me into the lab!

I'm really excited!!! I should get my film in the mail next week or so and I've already told Shelly that we'll have to make a day of making art... I have 10 rolls on the way 5 color 5 black and white... I also customized my Holga today!!! LOL

Dragonfly stuff to match my computer!!!!

And my Autocord.... PS (will work for old cameras and cake!)

sorry for the horrible quality of the photos... this was a very spur of the moment blog... :D

Downtown Jacksonville, What A View

My work for the San Marco Magazine takes me to some pretty sweet places. This time around I got a glimpse into the posh life of the residence of San Marco Place... Really nice condos in the San Marco/Downtown Jax area.... As I photographed the condo I noticed that she had a sweet view of the Chart House, where Wes proposed... So pretty!!!!

Heather & Erik Got Hitched

Heather and Erik's wedding was very simple, chill, and laid back. It made for a really easy day for Tara and I, it wasn't with out it's hitches though... I believe it was set to start at 3:30 and didn't actually start till somewhere around 4:30ish or so.... So we didn't get to do all that we had planned for them, we were going to use a lot more of the base than just the wedding/reception area, but it was all good :D

Their wedding was at NASJax in the officer's club (civilian) for those who are going to get nitpicky... LOL

We had an awesome time at the wedding, even Wes got in on the fun taking some photos. He's in love with the 70-200 I might have to get him a f/4 for christmas or something! LOL

Here are some of my favs from the day and look for photos of the photogs gettin silly in the slide! :D

I love this shot that Tara got, such an awesome ring shot!!!


Erik chillin waiting on Heather's hair to be done so he could go home to shower before the wedding :D


I love love love this photo of them... it's on their dresser in their amazing home.... so pretty!


The girls gettin sassy!





Again my lovely, sometimes underpaid, secondary Tara got this shot while I was busy doing the family formals...


I'm completely obsessed with lens flares!!!


Love it when the bride and groom laugh during the first dance shoot... there is always so much to talk about during the first dance...

Everyone Starts Somewhere

Surprisingly, I get a lot of resumes, messages and emails about my work. I say it's surprising because... well because I haven't been at this very long and lets face it I'm not Jessica Claire!

I look back at my work from when I started (almost two years ago!!! wow where does the time go?!?) Only by God's grace have I come this far in my business, honestly! I had NO clue what I was doing when I started and have come a long way... I learned A LOT in a span of 6 months because I had to... My job was stressing me out so much that my Doctor was telling me to find a new one, I had started the business but had NO plans of doing anything further than, ready for this, real estate photography! That's where I wanted to start the 360 home views, taking photos for Watson or something like that. I had flyers and things of that nature, I wanted to do people one day but never dreamed that with in a few months I'd have my first WEDDING! It seems like a whirlwind now...

I wanted to take you all on a visual journey of my two years in business.... from my very first "people" photo shoot and up to a recent photo shoot with my most faithful client...

OK, here is a photo from my first ever photo shoot. My friend Caressa, we worked together at BGC and she agreed to bring her cute little girl out for me to experiment...



This photo was taken in December 06 or Jan 07 I don't honestly remember... I didn't know anything about photoshop but I put my little name in the corner cause I did know people needed to know who took this photo...

I look at it now and see that it's blue, my white balance is off, and the composition of the photo needs a bit of help... it's straight on (mom would be proud she hates my crooked photos) it's a cute photo but you can tell that I had not developed any style of my own!

Now I've decided that the best sample of my work is my client that has been there with me through everything... even when my photos were always blue! LOL

Miss Priscilla... we have had 8 shoots total if you count her band shoots and boy oh boy how much I've learned!!! I want you to look at the following collage and see the progression from one year ago... she seems to like to do photos in August (close to her birthday) and Feb (close to v-day) So take a look at this!!!!!



Wild huh! As you can see when I started things were much much different!!!! check out the difference from Feb07 to Feb08 and then from Aug07 to Aug08!!!!

So to all you photog's out there that are just starting out... I by far am not done learning nor do I feel I'm at the peek of my career, I just wanted to show you all that you learn so much with every shoot don't get discouraged because your images don't look like some rockstar photographer out there, keep working and always be true to yourself and it'll all fall together how it's supposed to!

I've been tagged...

WOW this is the first time I've been tagged in one of these things... so here goes...

I was tagged by Stacy with Kiss The Bride Consulting

This is the deal...

Four things I did today:
1. Picked up Shelly from the airport
2. Mailed out CD's to clients
3. Had dinner with Miss Syd, her little brother, and their parents
4. Had a rockin couples photoshoot

Four things on my to-do list:
1. Editing/Album to make
2. Car to clean!!!
3. Dinning room table to move and room to pick up
4. Spend some quality time with the hubbs

Four of my guiltiest pleasures:
1. Bravo!!!!!!

2. Chick-fil-A breakfast

3. Elliano's (sp) coffee....

4. Cereal before bed....

Four random facts about me:
1. I pick at my lips way too much cause they are always dry
2. I'm horrible at picking up after myself
3. I have an unhealthy relationship with MySpace
4. I enjoy talking to random people online about random/strange things....

So who am I gonna tag? Hmmmm......let's try:

Tara of course
oh oh Jamie's Mom she sometimes reads the blog! :P
Amanda Register (she might have already been tagged though)

That's all I got

Totaled Craziness

I feel like I'm trapped in a wind tunnel the past couple of weeks. I don't know how it's happened or what happened really but I've been very very busy. Between weddings last week/weekend to trying to edit things from the end of September, finishing (kinda) the website, doing BT stuff, meetings and other misc things I feel like I'm getting further and further behind. I had a shoot Thursday that got rained out and I'm almost thankful that it did... Cause it gave me a chance to get caught up on things and on life. I actually finished all my editing from Liz rehearsal and Heather & Eric's wedding (post on that one soon) and finished Breaking Dawn.... that whole story is really awesome and I'm going to be in line for the Twilight movie just like a teenager! I, like half of the world am totally in love with Edward Cullen.... but anyway, that's a tangent that I'm not going down.

I'm supposed to have dinner with photographers tonight, and this will be the second time in a row I've missed it. I'm not even thinking about going, yesterday was too much for the senses it will take me at least a day to recover, I haven't seen my family in weeks, almost a month and well they win! Wes and I are going to Nanna's today to see Miss Syd and Baby Will! We'll get stuck there for hours and be home late I feel sure. If I'm honest the dinner out with a big group of lady photogrpahers makes me a bit uncomfortable. I don't do well in groups of people, I always feel like cowering in the corner and then get uncomfortable. Maybe I don't know how to enteract with people or something! One on one or small groups I'm fine but this is like 20 girls! Makes my palms sweaty just thinking about it! There is nothing wrong with any of these ladies either, they are all super tallented and successful, and sweet I've talked with a few of them via email and met I guess 3-5 in person.... But still seeing my family and playing cards over crazy stories of what we've missed in the past few weeks totally beats uncomfortable (for me) dinner out.

And that brings us to last night.... As you know (if you follow the blog, if you don't shame on you!) I'm getting things together to open Breaking Tradition Studios in January... well an official launch in January at least... we've been gathering info, building a website foundation and doing some promotional shoots for the new business venture... Yesterday was a largest production yet. We had two models, two assistants, and a camera man to help us make a promo video for the site... (If you know me you know I hate being on camera!!!! very much bad! so it was a really trying day for me) Tara being the amazing person that she is, scowered her area for sweet places to shoot and we all met up at her house and trotted along stopping along her "map" of places to get some really sweet shots. The last location was my idea, and if it weren't for Liz I would have never found it... I'm not telling where either! LOL (I think there are some things that you should keep to yourself, I'm all about helping but I can't give everything away) After we wrapped up the shoot, took a photo with our models, were all hot and sweaty and tired as hell we all decided it was time to head back to the house and make our respective ways home. Kati (my model) and I stopped for gas, bathroom and mountain dew... OK it was all me I needed gas, had to pee and figured caffeine for the ride home would be helpful. We stopped off and then headed to Tara's place. We were a good 5-10mins behind the other two cars and as we get to the area by Tara's house I see red and white flashing lights coming from all directions and thought that some old fogie (cause Tara lives in an older neighborhood in St. Aug) had collapsed and the ambulance had come to take them to the hospital or something of that nature. As I got closer I saw that it was a pretty bad car accident, sitting in the turn lane I realize it was part of our gang of people that were all smashed up in he car accident. I see our camera guy on the side of the road pacing back and forth with his head in his hands and did NOT see Dani..... I didn't know what the riding situation was so I didn't know if Dani rode back with Tara or if he was with Luke so I pulled into the front of the neighborhood and parked only to find Dani sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a pole looking half dazed. Once I found out he was alright I ran back to my car to get my phone to call Tara then Emily (our other model) showed up stopped and so on and so forth... The 7 of us stood out there at the scene for about an hour and a half.... Tara snapped some photos....


Keep in mind that Dani was the PASSENGER here!!!!! crazy!!!!!!!!

I'm hoping this is not a bad omen for the new studio... Both Dani and Luke were shaken but alright, thank goodness it hit where it did or this would be a very different kind of blog...

Well I'm off to shower, spend some time with my hubby, and go see my family.... Drive safe everyone.....

Liz' Rehearsal

I'm not going to go into a long story about the good time I had at Liz' rehearsal and wedding and all that hoopla. If you follow my blog you kinda know who she is, you know I went to the rehearsal and that I was at the wedding etc etc... here's the story of the night....

Liz' Dad practicing giving her away...


So sweet


Making all the final arrangements... I think his name was Cordell... the catering coordinator at the Seranata


Liz and John's little boy John..... the last time I saw that guitar was..........................................


LOVED her programs... so awesome!


Lookie! Me as a guest!!!! yay!!!!!


They guys had a blast... John seems like a really fun guy


So pretty, I love the tealish color...


This was my hubby's shot... I'm not really accustomed to taking photos while driving, the sunset on the way from the rehearsal site to the dinner was stunning.... so Wes snapped a few photos


mmmmmmmm, mmmm good


One of the cutest flower girls evar!!!!


Miss Liz ROCKIN her dress.... I wish I could wear stuff like that!


Well this was the best I could do in a tiny space.... Liz and John dancing at the end of the bar at the resturant...