So, I haven’t had time to process any of the “real” photos I took from our Alaskan vacation, but I wanted to take a few minutes to share some of my favorite images that I captured with the fun vintage-style Hipstamatic app.

We took an Alaskan cruise on the Holland America Line ship, Zuiderdam, for 7 days, with family. Following the cruise, we stayed in Seattle for a couple of days. We visited friends, checked out the amazing Pike Place Market, and visited the truly beautiful Mt. Rainier. Amazingly enough there was snow/ice on the ground and it was July! We really had a great time, and I had a lot of fun taking these pictures with the Hipstamatic app. I can’t wait to make prints for my house!

You can view all the Alaska photos I’ve posted so far by checking out my Flickr page.

Tracy Arm, Alaska

Alaskan Hotel & Bar – Juneau, AK

White Pass & Yukon Route – Skagway, AK

Ketchikan, AK

Mt. Rainier, Washington

Mt. Rainier, Washington

Pike Place Market – Seattle, WA

We took mini-vacation to St. Augustine this past month to enjoy the last bit of summer and spend time with my husband’s parents who came to visit from Tennessee. We had a great time! Running around with a toddler is a busy time, so I took a lot of photos with my awesome iPhone 4 and used my favorite camera app, Hipstamatic. The app is fun because it allows you to take vintage style photos with your iPhone. I always have a lot of fun shooting with it.

Some of the places we visited were Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, the St. Augustine Alligator Farm & Zoological Park, and beautiful St. Augustine Beach, where we took Zachary swimming in the ocean for the first time! Hope you enjoy the snapshots.

Wishing you and your families a very happy holiday from our family, no matter what you celebrate, and success, health, and joy in the coming new year!

The Studio will be closed until January 4th, so please be patient if waiting for an email reply or a returned phone call. Thank you!

When Adrian, Zachary, and I went out to California, we traded sessions with one of my best friends, Hillary Gardner from Stills by Hill Photography! Hillary is an amazing lifestyle baby/family portrait & wedding photographer out in Southern California and we were so lucky to have had her do our family pictures. I posted the session that I did of Hill’s family a few days ago (click here) and now I want to share with you the session that  Hillary did of OUR family!!

Here is one of my favorite images:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE REST – and don’t forget to leave a comment on Hillary’s blog!!!

Happy Halloween!

This is our Zachary’s first Halloween! Yay! We’ve always called him our little scientist since he is such a smart, curious boy, and we love Star Trek, so he is a Star Trek Science Officer for Halloween this year. How cute is he? I ordered the blue Star Trek onesie from ThinkGeek and it’s perfect. Zachary looks forward to trick or treating tonight. Yay! :)

Zachary doesn’t quite get the Live Long & Prosper sign yet. Soon, though! LOL!

I realized the other day that I hadn’t posted any images from when my family went to Eastern Tennessee back in April. I took a bunch of photos but here are a few random personal images that I liked. It’s always fun to take photos without people in them every once in a while to get a different perspective on things.

This last image is of a horse and a donkey playing together down the street from my Mother in Law’s house! It was so much fun to watch them play – they were such great friends.

I look forward to our next trip to Tennessee. If you’re planning a wedding in the Tri-City or Eastern Tennessee area or anywhere nearby that area, please consider giving me a call to chat about your wedding photography at 954-753-3933.

After shooting Andrea & Scott’s wedding in November, Adrian and I headed up through North Carolina and visited the Great Smokey Mountains and then to Washington, DC for just a day and a half before heading home to Florida. Here are some photos chronicling our trip through the South!

I had never seen cotton fields before, nor had I seen how the leaves change color in the fall. It doesn’t happen this drastically in Florida! Adrian shot these three…

I thought the leaves looked cool with the sun streaming through them.

I have a handsome husband!

Can you see the tiny little bee? I am normally too chicken to get near bugs like that, but I tossed my fears aside because I thought the flowers were lovely and I really wanted to try to get the shot! Hehe.

Adrian stopped the car at a lookout to go down and take a long exposure of this cool river. As you can see by the next photo, which he also shot, it was super cold, so I stayed in the car and get to enjoy the beautiful photograph from the warmth of my office!

Adrian spotted these icicles at Great Smokey Mountains National Park. So cool! Yet another thing I had never seen before. I love when he is able to show me new things on our journeys together.

In addition to the two photos above, Adrian took these as well when we got to DC. I was too cold and my feet hurt too much to schlep the big camera all over the city! However, I’m very glad that he did, as we now have some lovely artwork for our walls at home! :)

Hopefully we can return to the DC area soon, as a day was just not enough time. We saw many of the major sights – the Capitol building, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, The Vietnam Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Air/Space Smithsonian, but obviously we missed quite a bit. I would love to go back again soon.

The holiday season has officially started for our family, as tonight Adrian and I had my parents and my grandma over for dinner to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. We cooked a delicious dinner and finished up with some latkes, or potato pancakes, a traditional holiday treat. It was fun doing all the cooking this time – usually my parents are the ones who prepare all the holiday meals!

If you’re looking for a little fun, holiday-related distraction, you should check out “Winterbells” which is a game that some friends of mine sent to me. Thanks guys. Now, since I am successfully, addicted, I am sharing it with all of you. The idea of the game is that you are a bunny…. an adorable little white bunny. You get to jump on bells and birdies and score lots of points. It’s fun, I promise!

So, Happy Hanukkah to everyone! I hope your evening was as lovely as ours was!

We got married on the 4th of July so that we can always have fireworks on our anniversary.
It was raining too much to go to the city show this year, but lots of people were launching their own. Having grown up in Arizona, a state that made fireworks illegal, it is strange to witness. Fireworks are constantly going off in every direction, creating a thick smoke haze.
As you can see, some of them are quite impressive for DIY fireworks.

See the other fireworks being launched from two spots? On this small street there were three groups of people all launching their own fireworks

This was what it looked like a few hours earlier after the heavy rain. Unfortunately all this rain has been missing the lake that all of South Florida lives off of, so we’re still in a bad drought. My feet were in about a foot of water in our driveway when taking this photo.

The trip up Highway 89 to Page was beautiful, though difficult to photograph. I saw this vista out the window and pulled over for some shots. I set the camera on a guard rail with the lens on a rock and took this timed photo.

 

I tried to frame the famous shot you see of Horseshoe Bend, but the evening sun was right in the lens and the 17mm focal length made it hard to avoid a bad lens flare. We’re going back tomorrow after Antelope Slot Canyon as we head back down Highway 89 towards the scenic Highway 89A and the Vermillion Cliffs, as the lighting will be ideal and won’t require HDR magic (at least not as much).

I forgot to post this yesterday, so here it is…

Karen Standin’ on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona.

We were only a half hour away from Winslow while visiting Meteor Crater, so Karen insisted that we head there and visit the famous landmark from the Eagles’ song “Take it Easy”, even though it was pitch black outside.
Don’t miss my previous post or my Flickr photo set of our Western Vacation so far!