First Couple Shoot: Kim + Mark...

Yay! I've had my first shoot with a wonderful couple, Mark and Kim! It went really well and although it did highlight many of the things that I, as a new photographer, need to work on it was a great experience and provided me with a place to start in building my future as (hopefully) a casual photographer!

One thing that was reaffirmed to me from this shoot, the old saying Practice Makes Perfect. And I need a lot of practice!

However, I am SUPER happy with the shoot and I think I got some great shots of the beautiful couple. I have to say a HUGE thank you to Mark and Kim for being so patient and willing to be my first couple!

Friday had been absolutely freezing cold so I was a little worried about taking outdoor shots Saturday morning however it warmed up a bit and although Kim and Mark were getting a bit chilly they were great sports!

Here are a few of my favourites from the shoot...

Aren't they a beautiful couple?!

email: annielouisephotography@gmail.ca for photography services

*A

Closing of Photography Course, K's Birthday, Future Endeavours...

Our final class/assignment for our Photography course was to go on a field trip out on the Sackville Dunes to take some portraits and landscape shots. We went out around 3:00pm (except that I was late due to a vet's appointment with the vomiting kitty and a need for food in my belly) so we could get some good light before sunset and twilight. 

He gave us the opportunity to use any of his lenses and he has some Available Light Portraiture equipment there as well such as reflectors and diffusors and was giving us a brief explanation on how to use them to improve our portrait shoots.

Our first location was at an seemingly abandoned barn..

We then headed to the beach/dunes to grab some shots of sunset. The lighting was awesome and the mud as the tide was going out looked like mud slicks.

Although I love the outdoors and beautiful scenery (especially in the fall) I find landscape photography difficult and I honestly don't find taking landscapes as much fun. I like Macro (close-up) photos of things IN nature, but not necessarily of scenes.

We ended at the wind farm just inside the Nova Scotia border at twilight. We were losing light fast and it was sooooooo cold we packed it in rather quick but I found this shot interesting none the less...

All in all I have learned SO much by taking this photography class and it has been well worth it in the long run. 

The weekend after our final field trip Kyle had a Birthday! This guy deserves the world and I just wanted him to have a great birthday and I think it was a success. Friends and family all joined together at our local bowling alley where the shoes are nothing but fabulous, the competition is ravenous and the beers are $2.50 a pop. As I'm sure you can tell it was a fantastic night. Three strings later (Myself coming out with the top bowl of the night at 104, I-thank-you) the festivities landed at our place and went into the wee hours of the morn.

Happy Birthday to my Birthday B-Ahoy! Yes there was a pirate theme back at the house and many many pirate accents came out as soon as the eye patch went on. And yes he wore his pirate hat all night which I had written Birthday B-Ahoy on. 

Future ventures... Well as I mentioned before, I'm much more inspired to photograph people and plans are in the works to increase my skills (and my portfolio) by practicing practicing practicing. And how to get this practice, but by providing my photographing services to all who are willing to be some of my first clients! 

Interested? Email: annielouisephotography@gmail.com

Until next time...

*A

Weekend Happenings (Sans Photos): Cat Vomit.. House Viewing.. Dinner with Friends.. Dog Show

Hey Y'all! (I went a little American there for a second, Excuse Me)

Bonjour Tous le monde! (Aaah there's my Canadian back again.. Or is that just Monctonian?)

Anyhow.. This post may be a tad boring because I don't have any photographic contributions for it : /

I feel that's probably a big No No since the POINT of this blog is to show what I'm getting up to via Photographs..

Sorry... It just didn't happen this weekend k!

Thursday: Our cat Cleo... well... she is a big sook and we love her but for a large stretch of time she was barfing twice a day. Usually at some point over night and sometime in the afternoon. Most of the time there was a hairball in there, but not always. It is gross. We've come accustomed to searching for it when we wake up and when we get home from work. Anywho, Starting Thursday we've been recording everything, how much we fed her, when she barfs and what it's like, etc. But what we also record is whether we've given her her laxative. Yes. I said laxative. It's this tuna flavoured gel that we must rub on her furry little paw so she licks it off. It's to help her digest the fur rather than throw them up. It's been working so far... but she does NOT enjoy having a gooey gel rubbed on her fur. Nope, she sure doesn't. She kind of freezes for about five minutes staring at us... or leaps away thus spreading the gel all up the front of her and under her chin cause she's LEAPING on three limbs. Aaah pets..

Saturday: Kyle and I got up and made some super delicious breakfast sandwiches and hash browns.. YUM! Then we had an appointment for our first ever House Viewing!! EEK! It was very big moment and super exciting! Our mothers accompanied us which was great since neither of us truly have any idea what-the-crap we're doing so they actually knew what questions to ask. Love our Mothers. It is an adorable house but we are in NO rush and are just starting the process to see what's out there and educate ourselves about the market and the whole process.

Yes. It's official. I'm an adult.

That evening we headed out to a new Restaurant in town, Moxie's and had some drinks and food with Steph and Jason, Jenna and Jesse! It was a blast and great to hang out with the gang! It is new so it was Bumpin' on a Saturday night but the wait was only 45 minutes, and there was space at the bar for us.The food was good, the drinks were flowing. Over all, great experience!

Once we were done eating, Kyle's cousin and her husband came by to chat with us about the House Viewing and our plans and well... to tell us how to buy a house. Because, Thank God, his cousin's husband is a really great realtor and is going to help us out with the whole process! He came with info on the house we had viewed and on a bunch more houses in the same range. It was super informative and an all around great time to visit with them!

Sunday: For the most part Sunday was filled with sweats, fast food and television but we DID get up and headed over to the Coliseum to check out the Moncton Kennel Club Dog Show. We are planning on getting a puppy once we've settled into our house so we went to check out some dogs and ideally chat with some breeders. But my Main goal was to hunt down the Leonberger that was in the show and meet her and her owner. She was beautiful, and large and fluffy, just what we want. We chatted with the owner about some of the different characteristics of the breed and her experiences and it made me even more of a fan of the breed. Still, we are narrowed down between a Leonberger or a Golden Retriever. Check out some photos of Leonbergers.. they look like Lions, they are huge (especially the males) and great family dogs. I'm in love.

I promise next post will be filled with pictures! : D

Happy November!

*A

Happy Halloween Festivities...

I love dressing up. I may drive around every single day with a giant costume bag in the trunk of my car. It's a huge part of why I love camp. And an obvious reason why I love Halloween. It's been a little while since I've really been able to get into the spirit and get a good costume going so I was super excited to do so this year.

Last year Kyle and I carved pumpkins together and I'll just say we took it a tad seriously. It was still fun, but we got hard core. Here are last year's masterpieces...

Kyle's on the left, mine on the right. 

Well this year we got invited over to our besties' (Steph and Jason) house for a little triple carving pumpkin date with Jenna and Jesse! 

I got too ambitious and have always wanted to do a Haunted House pumpkin but I bit off more than I could chew. I didn't plan it well. The top of my pumpkin was already half rotten. It was a failure.. so I flipped the thing around and did an old school triangle vampire face pumpkin. 

 There is no photo evidence of this catastrophe. Just the way I like it. 

We continued the Halloween festivities on Saturday night at our place with a little costume party, and there were some costume gems for sure! 

Poison Ivy. Batman Villian. Red Head.

Two Flappers and...

Two girls in bow-ties.. impressive! Doctor Who and Mary Poppins!

Two Batman Villians at that.. Love my K-Man but he was a creepy Joker.

Roomies.. Flapper and 20's Gangsta..

Hey Look it's some Newleyweds as Minnie and Mickey!

The Beautiful Princess Jasmine and Mary Poppins..

Candids of an 80s Prom Queen and Flapper #2...

All the ladies...

 Some kind of elfish.. cloaked.. big eared dreadlocked man.. and Wolverine!

 Oh there's her Prince!! Aladdin and Jasmine.. adorable.

Mary Poppins and her Bert : )

Love Halloween and it was a great night! 

Now t-minus 13 days until Christmas decorations go up!

*A

Photo Assignment #5 AND.. The Market, Photo Outing and Puppy..

Okay.. Lots going into this post but I'll try and keep it short and sweet.

Photo Assignment #5 was to get a few great shots showing different aperture settings like an isolation shot, exploration and a depthless situation. I didn't find anything to photograph that was "depthless" so I sent in a photograph that I took for the Desktop background Assignment of a wood pile which I posted earlier here.

The isolation shot a submitted was one that I snagged while at the Market two weekends ago with my parents. I've always known this about myself but sometimes even I surprise myself with how excited I get sometimes over the weirdest things. Well I got very excited about seeing how Brussel sprouts grow for the first time. So I took a photo of it and since part of the photo is in sharp focus and the rest is blurred it is considered an isolation shot. Here it is..

The rest of the photos I submitted were taking on Jenna and I's little photo outing we went on that Monday night. We went first to this old building in Moncton that is well... not a building anymore and is covered in graffiti and No Trespassing signs. I still haven't figured out what the building used to be but I'm on a mission. Anyhow.. this is my exploration shot!

Another part of the assignment was to use Shutter Priority mode and get photographs while catching different amounts of motion. So taking one where the subject is completely frozen, one with a little bit of motion blur, and one with a lot. Well I didn't use this next photo but I want to give Jenna a shout out for her great cartwheel techniques : D

What I did use was a series of three photographs like the following which caught different amounts of blur by adjusting the shutter speed. Jenna was kicking her feet like a mad lady.

We were going all out.. laying on the ground and climbing on things. Whatever we had to do to get some good shots. This is Jenna taking some photos of my boots/socks. Love it.

Here's that photo! ALL credit goes to Jenna but I had to show it because she rocks... and so do my socks.

Now my parents just got a little puppy. She's the sibling to my sister and her husbands dog Sophie. They are Puggles, which is a Beagle-Pug mix. And I now find myself heading to my parents place at lunch to visit my dad and well... play with the puppy! After the market adventure that Saturday I tried to snap some pictures of Jazz (That's their puppy by the way) outside playing in the leaves and it proved much more difficult than I expected. She's a wild one.

I recognize that photo is completely blurred but doesn't she kind of look like Dumbo?!

She's teenie and adorable. That's my Mom! Later that afternoon we enjoyed a movie together. Love her to DEATH.

*A

Weekend Happenings: Corn Maze, Wine and The "Imbo's"

In around mid-September Kimbo and I discussed how we needed to schedule a visit and really make it happen, so this past weekend was it and it couldn't have been a better weekend! They got in late Friday night and we sat around, had some wine and chatted the night away!

 On Saturday we got up, made a delicious breakfast (Well Kyle was up and made it and woke us all up to eat... he's such a good host) and then we headed off to Salsbury to hit up the Green Pig Country Market to get some pumpkins and venture through their Corn Maze!

We got maps to use to find our way through...

James was SUPER pumped about the maze! 

 If you can tell by our clothing... it was freezing out on Saturday, and very windy. The Imbo's said the temperature dropped as soon as they crossed into New Brunswick...

There were even some bridges so you could look over the whole maze..

I gave the map up to Kim real fast... it was just too much pressure!

It had rained a whole bunch on Friday so the paths were just a tad muddy!

There was actual corn on the stalks! And you could see some animals had gotten into the field quite a bit... that made us all agree we wouldn't want to do the night-time flash light maze adventure..

THE NEWLYWEDS!!

So this last photo in the maze was taken at the furthest point away from the exit.. and from that point on it was every man/woman for themselves. We each went different ways and the last one out was to buy the first round. And the rankings were... drumroll please: Kim #1, Myself #2, James #3 and Kyle #4...

Girls rule obviously.

So then we went to blast some pumpkins cause... it was an option and who doesn't want to shoot a mini pumpkin out of a canon at 90km/h??

The Corn Maze and Market was such a fun time. We picked out some pumpkins to carve which we will be doing later this week! And then we headed home for a little rest and to get ready for the evening. We went to the restaurant I work at for dinner and drinks then hit up a few other places downtown as well!

All I'll say about the rest of the night was like we got home at about 2am, cracked some more wine and headed to bed around 6am... Let's just say we probably solved all of the worlds problems and planned three weddings through-out the span of the night's conversations.

It was such a great weekend and I can't wait to see them again very soon! 

*A