Here Goes Nothing...

Oh Blog, how I mistreat thee... I've been unfaithful with a little website called Facebook. It's much more user friendly, I don't have to spellcheck as often (although I should!) I'm a terrible blogger... TERRIBLE! I can't imagine this is a secret... My poor blog followers must think that I fall off the face of the earth (all 5 of them, lol) but I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've actually been quite busy. Wes and I have renovated the house, more out of necessity than "want" but still the casa is lookin pretty good. I've been working on some businessey type things, taxes, new software, etc etc all the fun stuff... BUT lately I've kinda poured myself into doing something I've wanted to do for a long time.

For a while now I've been wanting to make something to help photographers. I'm not a master photographer and I'm terrible in front of a crowd so teaching was out. I'm horrible at social networking. I'm awkward in large groups of people, the list goes on and on... But I'm good at developing. All the funky coloring you see in the Breaking Tradition photos, I did myself, in Lightroom. Which is an awesome program btw if you aren't using it to edit you're so missing out... but anyway, I hear people complain all the time about how long it takes them to edit and all these sites with actions galore for photoshop, which honestly I don't fully get have I purchased these actions yes, do I use them, kinda... I use maybe 4 out of the hundreds I've purchased, which frustrated me. I'm saying all this as a poor lead up to what this blog is about. I've created some Lightroom "presets" to hopefully make your life easier. I personally adore them and find them very useful. They are extremely simple to use, and yes, I'm selling them. Here in fact: Jess Cumbie Presets
There are 13 presets in the collection, each one almost totally different than the next. I've put together some samples using some of my past images to display here on the blog, and there are some samples on the website as well (which still needs a little work)
The presets are $45 and you can purchase them through the website listed above
Here are some samples of the presets included in the collection

















The presets will not work well with jpgs, they work best with RAW images. The work with the tones and color balance that is already in your raw image. So, while "Yesterday's News" might look like a vintage pink in my image it could look different it yours depending on the color balance and tones that are in your image.
If you have any questions about the presets, please feel free to email me at jess@jesscumbie.com I look forward to seeing what everyone does with them!!!

Thanks Ida!

I've been told I can thank Ida for all the rain the past couple of days... and, while I didn't enjoy getting soaked going to my car of having to clean water spots off my lenses today... I did enjoy shooting at the beach with the storm clouds as a backdrop!
There is something about shooting in the rain, I likely shouldn't like it since it's A. not good for my equipment and B. likely voids my insurance in some way shape or form but I really do enjoy the interesting photos you get with dark skys, raindrops, and rain soaked subjects :)
Last week, at Faythe's Shoot Out I was pretty excited to use my new toys for the shoot... and I'm super happy with the result! My friend Heather, had recently gotten herself a pocketwizard and flash to start learning and had some trouble with it... and well I think all of us did when we first started using them. Anyway, she asked me if I'd help her. I of course said yes she's the sister to one of my brides and it was one of the craziest wedding's I've been involved with to date!!! Anywho, Heather has become a good friend since the wedding and I love spending time with her, so after roping her into being my lighting assistant we had lunch and met up with her friend Hidi for a quick session/lesson. Now, I was mainly the "teach" as Heather says in this scenario but I did manage to pop off a few super cool shots before the rain ruined our fun!

And, is it just me or does Hidi seriously look like Nellie Furtado???













Be sure to keep an eye out for Heather's photos oh her blog!! whitblackphoto.wordpress.com

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!

Did You Go To School For Photography??

I didn't... I haven't had formal training... I started out with out a clue as to what I was doing but I've learned A LOT. I'm always reading up on things, learning from others and on forums etc etc...

To my knowledge a lot of greats haven't had formal training. I remember going to dinner with Scarlett Lillian and asking her that same question and she said no, she just picked up her camera and started learning... I believe she's recently blogged about it too...

Another Great here in town that freely admits to not having any formal training is Mark Pennington, I have such a professional crush on him!!!!

Anyway... I'd like to know who else out there is like me... or even who has gone to school for it and how they feel it makes them different from the people with no formal training....

We Wanted A Pool But Settled For Rain

Yep, the plans were to head to the Dr's Lake estate that I use from time to time, but due to some minor complications we were unable to use that location. SO I took Jenny to where I grew up... good ole Granniema's place! We had just gotten into everything Jenny was getting super comfortable, Christy ran from the gnats that were attacking her... and sure enough DOWNPOUR!!!! UGH, Grandma had even brought out the tractor for us to use! booooooo rain...

We still got some fun shots of Jenny all wet, which was the plan in the first place :)

If only everyone knew what was on the other side of this fence, if anyone has been there with me or knows where I grew up... ya'll know that Jenny is feet from...... (dramatic dum, dum dummmm) Dead People..... lol


I love this shot....



And as many of you know, if you read the blog or follow along on myspace, I'm in the middle of a revamp, logo, blog, photo signature etc etc... This revamp includes how look at my photo editing, what techiniques I use what I want to showcase... I tried a little something new here, well not new but out of the norm for me... and I frankly love it!!!!