from my camera / san francisco (day 2)

on our second day in san francisco we finished off all of the touristy spots. jarman hadn't been to san francisco since he was really little, and didn't remember anything. i feel like we had to cross all of those off the list, and next time we will do irregular things (or just shop, all i wanted to do was shop but that doesn't always go over well with boys). we visited the golden gate park, which was enveloped in fog and completely breath-taking. i had never been before, and i'm so glad we went. we went to the de young museum and saw an exhibit on david hockney (don't worry, i'm going to do a whole post on it because it was amazing). there was tons more to see at the museum, but we wanted to get to other things. we visited the japanese tea garden that was authentic according to jarman. after that we went underneath the golden gate bridge where there was an old military fort. then we got treats in ghiradelli square and walked over to lombard street (and up the street, rough one). we watched the pretty sunset near ghiradelli square and then headed to uc hastings for a law school orientation. (by the way we would love to live in sf for law school. it is one of our top four schools.) that evening we went to tacolicious for dinner and had braised pork tacos and butternut squash tacos. so good. oh, and i included a couple of pictures from our drive home. we stopped by half moon bay and walked out to where the huge mavericks waves break. there were these awesome colorful plants i couldn't get enough of.

from my camera / san francisco (day 1)

i wrote this whole post, and somehow it got deleted. so this is going to be short and quick, because i really don't feel like writing all over again. last week we tagged along with my father in law on his business trip to the bay area. on our first day in the city, we caught the ferry in, hung around pier 39, and the went out to alcratraz. before we left for sf, i decided i wanted bright white pictures. i tend to like over-exposed pictures, but i wanted them to be even more dramatic than i usually do. i love the way they turned out- sf's foggy skies and picturesque scenes weren't hard to get right!

engagement shoot / tressa and rylee

 I am so excited to share my first engagement session! I am lucky to have a pretty cousin who was brave enough to be my first experiment. It was so much fun to spend the afternoon taking her and her fiancé’s pictures.

We originally planned to go to Balboa Park's air and space museum and botanical gardens. After realizing that some of the locations were closed for the day and that we didn’t want to drive that far, we made a last minute decision to take the pictures in Old Town, Temecula. I figured out that location is secondary to people. We found an awesome wooden wall, and some cute stairs and archways. Oh, and a gorgeous weeping tree. Tress also wanted to take pictures in the Orange Groves (where we spent many of our childhood days). We were dying over how they turned out. As we were driving back, there was a gorgeous sunset so we pulled over on the dirt road and took some of my favorite pictures of the session.

I am looking to get more practice photographing people. I still consider myself a beginner (though I think I have come a long way since I got my camera a year ago). If anyone has any shoots they are wanting to do, please contact me and we can talk about what you want, pricing and such. I have booked my first maternity and newborn shoots (!!) and am excited to try new things!

from my camera / yale

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i don't want to sound conceited, but i kind of love this set of photographs. yale was such a pretty place, it was hard to take a bad picture. i think if i ever have a house (well, vacation house) in the snow (tahoe) i would hang a few of these. this is the only place that i have ever thought was beautiful in the snow. i loved walking around the campus, and the museum was very enthralling (i have never been so excited to see a heroin addict). can you guess the influence i am thinking of for the lamp post picture below? what do you think about changing up my cover picture for the wintery version- those frozen red berries? if you ever get a chance to visit yale's campus, do it. even if it is frozen, it is beautiful (and super east coast, might i add).

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have a sparkly new year!

we had the most fun new years eve with explosions and silly string. it was the best way to ring in the new year! i dug up our goals that we made last year, and of course we fell short on a few that will likely end up on the list this year. but we also hit a few, which felt really good! i can't wait to sit down today and think about what we want to accomplish in the next year, it'll be a nice refresh and a good chance to see how far we've come.

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this shoot was so much fun. since we didn't have any other projects while my aunt was in town, we had her help us with it. sydney is wearing a sparkly sweater that we found at the rack (for $13), a teal and purple sequins anthro skirt from a couple of years ago, and some hot pink steve madden heels. her jewelry is vintage. she is wearing bobbi brown plum lipstick, my new fave. it was so hard to narrow down pictures, i seriously want to share all of them because they are so cute! here's to a very sparkly new year!

styling by bobette carpenter, hair and make up by angela pedersen, photography by brittany carpenter