I Miss Molly

I Miss Molly
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

My daughter, Molly, had surgery last Friday and hopes to come home tomorrow. Her cat, Nellie, misses her SO much. She paces around, sits on the stairs and whines. Here she's looking out the front door.

Molly was doing quite well but today has a fever, is vomiting and experiencing some other complications ... she's become a bit depressed about these developments and that's sad because she was really upbeat and focused on her quick recovery.

As you can see, I'm in Ohio and will be until the end of the week to help care for my oldest grandsons, Nic and Jason. They have been so great and getting along with each better than usual.

I'll get back to photo editing and ordering when I return this weekend - thanks for being patient with me!

Heather's Studio Session

Here are a couple from our studio session last night - it's so much fun trying out some cool effects on these photos of Heather. We had a great time.

I Hate to Say "NO"

It is very difficult for me to turn people away when they call and ask for photo session appointments. However, since there really is SO little time left until Christmas, I cannot accept any new clients until 2008. I have several orders still to process and also have a few family obligations that will make this time go even quicker.

I have been stunned by the word-of-mouth response since I started in February of this year. It has been a bit over-whelming to me in the past couple of months and find that I'm glued to my glaring computer screen most of my waking hours! I will need to make some adjustments in 2008 as I continue to work my full-time job at Highland while learning to meet the demands of this part-time photography business.

I have truly been blessed to meet so many new familes and children this past year. I know this is a bit early for such a relective post, but I feel that I need to share with all of you out there. Thanks for supporting me in this new endeavor.

witchey-dawn

witchey-dawn
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

This is Dawn in the witchey hat that Lars brought home for her to wear on the day of the party. I wore my Minnie Mouse hat, pink false eyelashes and my Minnie Crocs. Erin wore her MInnie Mouse costume - Jim called us Maxi and Mini. Not nice!!

Kelby and Jenny

k-and-jenny
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

Just one photo from Kelby's 6th birthday party - their sunroom is an awesome location for photos like this. He looked SO cute in this Halloween shirt. More photos to come on the creative decorations from the party.

October Wedding

Finally had a few minutes to post a few photos from Saturday's wedding of Amanda and Shaun. The deep red dresses were so gorgeous as was the bride! This is the link to their preview slideshow.

Molly's Family

These are a couple of favorites from our long weekend in Ohio over Columbus Day. We really got SO many great ones and the boys were very fun. On Saturday, they had football games and I didn't experience any "lens envy" this time using my 70-200mm. It was very hot in the sun but so delightful to watch Jason and Nic with their football teams. Molly and I got to do some antique shopping in anticipation of buying their new, old house (built in 1902).

Fall Session for Kelby and Erin

I have taken SO many family photos lately (as well as others) and just haven't had time to post. This is a quick slideshow from Kelby and Erin's session that we did a couple of weeks ago. I love Kelby's toothless smile! More to follow ....

http://www.nmbphotography.com/anderson%5Ffall/

More Wedding Photos and Video

Since Tiffany and Waleed are home from their honeymoon, now, it's ok to post the link to their wedding slideshow. Here are a couple more favorites from the day.

Wadi Wedding Slideshow

New Hat

New Hat
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

Doesn't this look cute on six-month-old Jaiden? It's a little large but I just love it on her. Guess I'll have to order a couple more from Deb at
http://www.nanabananadesigns.blogspot.com/ so I can give these away!

My Second Wedding

Last Saturday I had the privilege to photograph the wedding of Tiffany and Waleed. The ceremony and reception were in the bride's parent's backyard which is about a mile away from my house. That was handy when I discovered I had forgotten my second camera battery. My assistant, Kirsten, was able to jump in the car and run over to my house to get the battery which I definitely needed later on.

I was so very impressed with the love and emotion that this family revealed - especially evident during the ceremony which the bride's brother performed. I'm SO glad we stayed until the entertainment arrived. The hula dancers were just delightful and so was the time when the groom joined them on the "stage."

This photograph wouldn't have looked like this without the diffuser blocking out the afternoon soon. I really wanted to photograph them in this area of the park since we had taken some shots during their engagement session here.

Double Dip

double-dip
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

The bees are so intent lately on their pollinating process that they don't even fly away when I approach to take pictures. I'm totally in love with my new macro lens!

Another Christmas Card

Here's my newest template to choose from for Christmas cards this year. I just LOVE it! I know it would look better with a baby's photo but I'm really fond of the way my sister is looking at her husband of almost 50 years.
#9


And, this is a shot from our Sunday trip to White Pines State Park for the brunch.

New Podcasts, New Inspiration

Every so often I load up my iPod with new photography podcasts. A recent studiolighting.net podcast featured Jeremy Cowart. Check out his new website for some emotional photos of his Africa project.

My sister is gone along with her little bichon, Ellie, and Bogie is kinda' sad. They really got used to each and had great time playing. Ellie held her own even though she's much shorter and has quite a chubby little tummy. She is sure a feisty little girl.

Lightroom Workshop with Scott Kelby

Wow, I got to attend the Lightroom workshop with Scott Kelby in Chicago on Thursday. I've never been so focused for an entire day. He is brilliant and crazy funny all the time. Over 500 people were there and I had the pleasure to talk photography with Moira from Indianapolis during our fabulous buffet at the O'Hare Hyatt. It amazes me how many people are such serious photography hobbyies with all the professional equipment. Adobe's Lightroom is new software that helps photographers manage workflow and edit photos without opening every one of them in Photoshop. Awesome!

Now, I'm beginning a lovely three-day weekend and my oldest sister and husband are coming to visit. She lives in Las Vegas and is back in the midwest for a class reunion and family get-togethers. We will be doing a photo session of them for their 49th anniversary and I plan to use the flowers on the golf course in my backyard just like I did for my other sister's photo last fall.

This is a photo I shot last week on Monday - a totally perfect sunset. We drove out in the country to see the high river water and I had scoped out this tree on AYP road - knowing it would be a great sunset location. The second one is pretty natural, the first photo has extra vignetting and hue added in Lightroom.

Christmas in October Mini-Sessions

Are you thinking about Christmas cards yet? I am - especially since I've had my Fall, JCPenney catalogue for a long time now. I have set aside two days of 45 minute sessions to have your child's photograph taken and designed into a custom Christmas card. The $100.00 mini-session includes:

1. 50 custom-designed Christmas cards
2. one 11x14 portrait
3. 10% all other portrait prices
4. 20-30 images to choose from in an online gallery

So far, I only have time for eight of these mini-sessions. The available times are 9, 10, 11, 1, 2 and 3 on October 12th and 2 and 3 pm on October 13th. They are studio sessions only for this special. Call me or email NmB Photography to schedule your appointment. Must be paid for in advance to reserve your time.

Here are a few of the many designs that I have available to choose from. The cards are 5x7 and will be designed only from the templates that I currently have. Hope to see you for Christmas in October!

#1
#2


#3

#4

#5

#6

#7
#8

This is Love

This is Love
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

I'm crazy about this little pink girl and her pretty Mom from a recent session. She has the same name as one of my granddaughters, Paige. She is eight-months-old and was an absolute charmer.

Tiffany & Waleed

Tiffany & Waleed
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

This is one of my favorite photos from their engagement session. But then, I have alot so it's hard to choose.

Strong Jay

strong-jay
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

He's only eleven years old but growing bigger every day. My first grandson - I can't believe how tall he is now. I also couldn't believe how willing he was to pose for me. We took a bunch in the studio today and will take more outside tomorrow. Later ...

Beautiful Morning in the Park

Even though we had never met, Tiffany and Waleed and I didn't take long to get to know each other. What a beautiful couple! We rescheduled our session from last night to early this morning and we were so glad we did - it was about 20 degrees cooler than last night.

I can't wait for their outdoor wedding in September - here's a slideshow of some of their amazing images:

Tiffany and Waleed

Amanda and Shaun's Engagement Session

We decided on my college campus for the location of their session and I'm glad we did - the grounds really look beautiful this summer. We travelled around looking for various spots where we could get some fun interaction between the two of them. I find the engagement session allows the couple to become more comfortable with me taking LOTS of photographs and to learn what they like and don't like.

We were fortunate to have good, evening light which makes them look better than ever - here's the preview slideshow:
Amanda and Shaun

Tutu 2

tutu-2
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

We had to coax her into wearing this for the photos and then she didn't want to take it off. She wore it to dinner at Cannova's and afterwards rode the merry-go-round. Why, or why, didn't I take my camera to the park.

We had just been reading her new book, Puff the Magic Dragon, and listening to the music. This book is beautifully illustrated to describe the text which is the words to the son. The exclusive CD features songs performed by Peter Yarrow, his daughter Bethany, and cellist Rufus Cappadocia.

Anyway, Paige is very into this book so we had to visit the "magic" dragon in our park. She called the secluded area of the park, "The Dragon Cave" and insisted that we whisper while we were there. She also wanted us to circle the dragon while singing the Puff song. She's three - we did it.

Siblings

Siblings
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

I got several cute shots of Kelby and Erin while we were in Iowa City last weekend for Dawn's birthday. The guys got their hot tub running, put up a clothes line and installed a door bell in their new house. I mostly took pictures - what a deal.

garden-07

garden-07
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

It's good to be back home and out in my garden. Bogie and I took a walk on the golf course about sunset and I didn't hear any traffic or jets - just the birds. Sweeet.

It was a very informative workshop, though, and should make me more efficient with Photoshop.

All Tied Up

img_6664_bw
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

This is one of the shots I love from the wedding on Saturday. I think these details are missed by many and are a part of the day that needs to be captured.

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Chicago this evening after my first day of Photoshop workshops. Since I didn't get to see Paigey and her parents, I made a quick trip through IKEA and the Container Store and found a couple of cool chairs for photography props. Then another bee line back to the Holiday Inn Select to watch The Closer, one of my very favorite shows on TV. How many times do you see detectives cry when they find their victim? Of course, in this case, the detective is a woman played by Kyra Sedgwick.

Anyway, I haven't stayed in a hotel room by myself for quite a while. I don't do much travelling for school any more. Since my last trips were to our timeshare in Aspen (a modest studio) and a Disney resort, I was surprised to walk in and see a very large, flat-screen, high def TV sitting on a marbe-like counter top.

We're using CS3 in the workshop and I've learned quite a few new things and I'm sure will learn even more tomorrow. I was disappointed when they cancelled the two-day Advanced workshop but I'll be glad to get back home - and keep working on those wedding photos.

The drive back made me totally miss my camera. Almost all of the sky was very overcast but the last bit of horizon where the sun was out and setting. The sun shining into all the lights on the planes coming into O'Hare looked pretty surreal.

My First Wedding is History

It finally came and went. So much anticipation by me and lots of other people. The day was quite hot, although not as hot as today, so folks didn't really want to get back outside very much but retreated to the cool sanctuary as quickly as possible. I loved being part of this event, though, and wish Jon, Heidi and Ava so many happy years together.

My biggest snafu was being locked out of the church and everybody (including the minsiter) had taken off for the reception. Yes, my equipment and my car keys were in the church! Thankfully, a custodian came and let us back in so we were a little late getting to the reception.

Here's a link to the slideshow of a few of my favorite images. We had beautiful, pregnant bridesmaids, a super helpful bridesmaid, a slanky maid-of-honor and a stunning bride. She made the unique programs and there were lots of special touches to the wedding. Her gown, veil and shoes were just to die for. Enjoy!

Heidi and Jon's Wedding Slideshow

Pretty Sophie

Sophie recently turned three months we I got to capture some smiles and this beautiful expression. Her big brother, Dillon, joined us in the studio for some shots, too, and liked playing with the old train but I think he wondered why it didn't DO something.

 

Morning Sun

Morning Sun
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

I haven't taken many photos of our yard (or any other flowers) yet this summer since I'm so much busier with portrait photography. I got out early this morning, though, and caught a little back-lighting on these lilies with our bed of geraniums in the back. These were taken with a wide open f/stop to get the smooth bokeh in the background. Bokeh is the Japanese-originated concept of the difference between out of focus areas of an image due to lens design. You get the best bokeh with back-lit images.

Nic and Friend

Nic and Friend
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

Nic has been with me for a week so I've had a couple of opportunities to photograph him. He did a great job with these yesterday but alas, my camera was only set on medium jpeg - I wanted to make this into my very first gallery wrap.

Sun in her Hair

Sun in her Hair
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

Taken of Paige close to sunset. The sweet light at just about sunset only lasted a few moments but it caught the back of her hair just perfect.

Cradled in the Arms of Love

Cradled in the Arms of Love
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

This is from a recent session with Eden and her parents. Eden is such a perfect name for this little girl as her Daddy is an Old Testament expert! What a tiny little squirt with teeny, tiny toes and BIG blue eyes,

Erin Beads

Erin Beads
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography

Erin and I were talking this weekend about a specific toy that happens to belong to Uncle Andy. I said, "Do you like Uncle Andy?" She said, "NO." I said, do you like Uncle Mark?" She said, "No, I like Paige."

too funny -

First Interior Assignment

A young man that I've known since he was about five, is now refurbishing older houses for rent/resale. He asked me to take some shots and create something to commemorate his hard work. The call from him came last minute, on Monday of this week, and I already had two sessions scheduled so it has turned out to be my busiest week ever. Anyway, I took quite a bit of time with my light/flash setup so I could get a very pleasing mix of ambient light. My goal was to capture the nice, late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows. I knew that my 24-70 wide-angle would work well here. I used one off-camera strobe bounced into a white umbrella and sometimes I used it as a shoot-through umbrella.

Here's a link to the photos that I took:
Interior Assignment

Last night I also finished the design of the inscribable guest book for the upcoming wedding, proofed the Monday night session and finished the interior project proofing. We had ALL the carpet cleaned in the house this week so, of course, I had to get my studio back in order. My first 105" role of background paper came yesterday (wheat) and we got that installed. This will be much better for the family shots that I've been doing - it was HUGE!

Tomorrow I'm off to LaCrosse to finally visit my niece in her "new" home. I think she's lived there for at least three years. I'll be shooting her family while I'm there.

Memorial Day Weekend

Yesterday was my first Friday off of the summer. After commencement, at my community college, we work four, ten hour days. So, this Memorial Day weekend means four days off - sort of like a mini-vacation. On Friday, I got my Tsubo shoes (they were NOT attractive) UPSed back to Zappos, washed our sheets and hung them out, image editing (of course), washed and walked the dog and various other odds and ends. It's so nice just to take it slow and enjoy our home - not having to rush.

We got some rain today so I was able to finally put a wedding book together to take to a local wedding venue and then we went to Spider Man 3. Three kids sat next to us, all by themselves. I think the Mom must have had other kids at another movie, or something. She set them up with popcorn and then left. I think they were about eight.

Then, afterwards, I stood at the counter working with some more pictures until the sunset called me. We have bluebirds making a nest in the house in the backyard and they have the sweetest, most gentle song. I put the dog hair that I comb out of Bogie in back of their house for nesting materials.

Hilarious First Wedding Dance

YouTube can be so entertaining, can't it? I'm doing constant research (well, almost constant) on wedding photography and came across this link on one of my forums. Weddings are so much more fun than they used to be.

First Engagement Session

I did my first couple's session last Saturday. It was a beautiful evening so we met at 5:30 at their home to get some shots there, first. Then, we finished up at a State Park. It took a while for us all to loosen up but they did more and more kissing toward the end!

Here's a link to my first ShowIt video:
Heidi and Jon

Evening Walk

There was some beautiful light and flowers tonight on the Jane Addams Trail. Bogie and I were all alone - that is, there were no people. We heard Sandhill Cranes and pheasants and saw a Baltimore Oriole, a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, catbirds and flickers. The sunset was spectacular.



phlox
Originally uploaded by NmB Photography.

New Actions

I came across this photo taken before Easter. Paige is holding one of the Easter cookies made by Cole's Confectionary in Freeport. Yummo - they are awesome bakers. I applied my new black-and-white action. I think I like this. I was looking for something in between brown and black tones. Something that I can quickly use to show proofs on the web. The border was recently purchased from Itty Bitty actions.

It's Here - my first L series Lens

I couldn't wait for the UPS man to come tonight to deliver my new 24-70mm Canon lens. We took a stroll on the golf course and I shot a few of the dusky sky. This will be the perfect lens for a couple of upcoming jobs - an interior/exterior for somebody that renovates houses and for Highland's graduation. It has to be indoors this year due to continued construction at Krape Park. This is a wide shot of my living room -


Molly spent two nights in the hospital last week with a Strepp infection - probably caused by her central line. She had a raging fever on Wednesday upon admission. That same afternoon, my 31-year-old son found out that he has mono. How weird is that? So anyway, they both are sick.

We helped Dawn's family move and I took a bunch of new house shots as well as some hilarious ones of Kelby posing apres bath. Erin even posed good for me this time.