Happy Hearts - Albuquerque Commercial Photographer

I was so excited today when I opened up my email and I had a message from the American Heart Association.  They just got the proofs back from their ad agency for the new billboards that I shot for the Lovelace Hospital heart disease awareness campaign.  I only have the low res proofs, but I wanted to share just a few of them with you.  You can see the real thing on Feb 15th when all 12 billboards go up around the city!  Each of these men and women are generous local donors of the American Heart Association and are members of the Circle of Red.  Check out the campaign at www.Lovelace.com/GoRed !!

If you want to get involved, this year's Go Red for Women event will be held:
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 from 11am-1:30pm at the Hotel Albuquerque located at 800 Rio Grande Blvd.

Space is limited, and we are expecting a sold-out event this year, so get your sponsorships, tables or tickets secured today!

For more information, visit www.heart.org/albuquerquenmgoredluncheon or call Kathi Bradley at 353-5800, or 353-5818.

Make It Your Mission to fight heart disease in women. By sharing this commitment, together we can help save lives. Be a part of this extraordinary day.

Tamaya Wedding After the First Snow - Albuquerque Wedding Photographer

Sneak Peak of the Wedding of Jon and Camille at Tamaya

Albuquerque is such a pleasantly small world!  When Camille got engaged, she was referred to me by one of the first girlfriends I made when I moved here to NM.  We all went out to Happy Hour get to know each other and hit it off right away.  Then we found out that her fiance and my husband both have their doctorate degrees in the same very specific aspect of engineering. Excitedly, I skipped home to tell my husband and one of our friend's in the same field that was visiting us at the time. Much to my surprise, I discovered that Jon was actually our friend's roommate back in college hundreds of miles away.  It's so fun to uncover all the webs of connections when you meet new friends!  Jon and Camille are both AWESOME people and I hope that we are friend's and stay in touch for a long time!

The night before their wedding, I was so nervous about the weather because it was pouring down all day and into the night before the wedding, but we woke up to many blessings as the rain had stopped early in the morning, and the Sandia mountains were snow capped and glistening!  The snow on the mountains really made this Rio Grande landscape so beautiful and wildly romantic for these two new lovebirds. And with a little chill in the air, they had even more reason to snuggle up close together for their wedding pictures :)

After much debate, they decided that they wanted to do a "First Look" before the wedding. The woods were a perfect setting for them to share their romantic moment alone together (more of these photos soon!). This was taken just after Camille was such an elegant and poised bride!

The couple's little nieces were the cutest flowers girls!  And their little nephews were little hams (and very responsible ring bearers!)  I thought it was so cute that Camille wanted the flower girls to have their own bouquets instead of petals.  As she reminisced of weddings she was in when she was young, she said she always wanted to have a bouquet like the big girls.

A High School Senior Close to my Heart - Albuquerque Senior Portrait Photographer

Kelli flew into Albuquerque from out of state for her Senior Portraits.  We had so much fun playing dress up and finding cool places to shoot.  She's not sure where she will be going to college yet, but probably somewhere close to home.  In the meantime, you'll find her at the gymnastics gym or on the soccer field.

Destination Wedding in Albuquerque - Albuquerque Wedding Photographer

Tram and Soo Young came to Albuquerque to get married near some of their family.  The Bride's family is Vietnamese and the Groom's family is Korean. When I first met Tram and her sister, we bonded over comiserating about the lack of good Asian restaurants here in Albuquerque.  They pointed me to some great Korean restaurants both here in Albuquerque and back in LA. 

They are both from the city, so we did an urban bridal session before their wedding. Tram looked like a princess.  Two of her little nieces came to help hold her train and will be flower girls tomorrow at their wedding.

New Realtor Back In Town - Albuquerque Headshot Photographer

I have loved finding great new places to take headshots in Albuquerque.  I met Michael Ryan when he moved back to Albuquerque from Texas a few weeks ago.  As a 4th Generation Albuquerque native, Michael knew some great little accents in Old Town that made for some great headshots.

He's been in the Real Estate industry for 20+ years and loves what he does.  He says it's good to be back in NM with lots of his family here and is in awe of the beauty of it all- something he'd forgotten after being away for 27 years.

February Specials!

Brighten Up Your Real Estate Listings - Albuquerque Real Estate Photography

This last week I got a call from a friend who is a professor up at a university in Oregon.  She was teaching a class on product photography for Graphic Design majors.  I had helped her with some basic lecture outlines earlier in the term, but this time she wanted to add some spice to the curriculum.  She wanted to do a lecture on HDR - High Dynamic Range so they had something fun to learn about right before their finals.

The human eye is truly amazing.  In one scene, the eye can see detail in the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows all at once.  A camera, on the other hand is not as gifted and has about half of the dynamic range of a human eye.  Even shooting in RAW falls short.  There are several HDR programs out there, including a plug-in in photoshop, that can help bring back detail in both the highlights and the shadows by merging several images together taken at different exposures.  Many times photographers also bump up the saturation to get an over the top HDR image.  While I'm not going to get into details, I will share some of the pictures I made yesterday.  I needed a subject while I was writing the tutorial for my professor friend to use, so I looked around and decided my dining room would do just fine.  The first photo is best averaged exposure from the camera, the second is a 5 image HDR composite. The HDR version makes the room just glow. It is warm and inviting. In this case the HDR isn't over the top, it's just enough to add some spice to any real estate listing.

Research done by Tim Ellis at Redfin concluded that listings with professional photography:

• Receive an average of 61% more views than their peers across all price tiers.
• Have a 47% higher asking price per square foot.
• Have an increased likelihood of selling for homes priced above $300,000.

BEFORE:

 AFTER:

When Should You Use HDR?

If you are interested in photography and have access to Photoshop, you can manipulate images using HDR too.  Here were some pics I took in Zion National Park at the Weeping Wall a few years ago. The left picture shows a photo with an exposure metered for the cliff, but then the sky is blown out and loses detail in the highlight. The second image is metered for the far away mountain, but then the cliff loses detail and is too dark. This is a perfect situation to use HDR. With the camera on a tripod, take 3-7 images with different exposures. Keep the aperture the same and move the shutter speed up and down from the best average exposure.

When the images are merged in the HDR Photoshop plugin you can get an image like this:

There are far better programs for HDR such as Photomatix with better tone mapping algorithms. However, if you already have Photoshop, it's an easy way to spruce up your vacation photos.  (This photo is a little too saturated and "HDR over-the-top" but you get the idea of the range of things you can do.)

Baby Yakup! - Albuquerque Baby Photography

In January, Christine came back to Los Alamos to visit her family for a few weeks with her two and a half year old and her 3 month old boys. They were a blissfully boisterous handful, to say the least.  We decided to do two photoshoots at Grandma's house where they were at ease. 

We shot Baby Yakup on his 3 mo birthday. You'd think he was a lot older because he's just about ready to sit up on his own! Their grandma had a beautiful white bedspread, so we set up the portable studio in the guestroom and put Yakup in a basket full of towels with a blanket thrown over the top. I saw these cute little hats on Etsy and decided to knit one myself. Yakup was my first baby model to wear it. I'd say he rocked his first gig!

He absolutely LOVES his Aunt Tricia. She just had to tickle his toes and he'd start cooing and giggling.  He was being so cute and adorable that the rest of the family heard him laughing and came running in to see the action.  If you zoom in on the reflection in his eye (in the high-res image), you can see mommy, auntie, uncle, and me standing over him smiling.

A Boisterous Handful - Los Alamos Children's Photography

It's such a shame that the amount of energy that you have in life is inversely proportional to age.  Two year olds have all the energy in the world, and parents wish they had as much to chase them around!  I learned long ago not to bring a 2-yr old into a portrait studio.  The best children's photography is on-the-go, just like they are. 

Emin is no different.  He LOVES chickens and eggs, so we decided to take a field trip to a farm to meet some animals while we looked for eggs.  Now We're using the photos from the trip to make a story book for him and his family.

Falling for Your Sweetheart Over and Over Again - Albuquerque Photography

This young couple has been married for 3 years, but together for many more.  When I first met them, I thought I'd be shooting an engagement session for their announcements, and was surprised to learn they were already hitched.  The trees behind the waterfall and the pond were just starting to turn and made a romantic background for this gorgeous couple.  They made the photoshoot fun and easy, but narrowing down the photos was very hard!

My Best Friend's Wedding - Wedding Photography

Labor day is a VERY popular weekend for weddings!  My two best friends got married on the same weekend, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.  Two days, two states, and two best friends taking the next step into the rest of their lives.  I impromptu photographed both of them, here are some of my favorites of Jaynie's wedding (James' still to come).

Chief, Jaynie's pup was their ring bearer at the Corvallis Rose Garden.  They had their reception at Strega.  It's unfortunate that the restaurant closed down, but still awesome that you can rent it out!!!  They had their first dance just as the sun set over the mountains.