{Originally published on Melissa Jill’s blog}

I’m back in Phoenix having some great memories from my two weeks in the Bay area. Michelle and Brent were married Thursday in Half Moon Bay.

Brent is a farmer in Iowa and Michelle, originally from Arizona, has moved there to be with him. So this was a destination wedding for them.

This wedding was so special to me and here’s why. If I wasn’t already born into an amazing family, this is the family I would want to adopt me:

Originally posted at My Marrakesh:

It’s morning, and I am meeting my friend Benoit, a French interior designer.

We are meeting at Bab al Khemis, which means Thursday’s Door in Arabic. All around Marrakech’s old city, known as the medina, there are babs, or huge carved entryways. Each bab has its own name, and Bab al Khemis it is the entryway to the city’s equivalent of the flea market. Outside the bab, vendors are beginning to throng, displaying broken bits and bobs, as well as an occasional gem or two.

Benoit arrives, and we kiss, French-style, on both cheeks. For a number of years, Benoit designed interiors for the King of Morocco. Now he and his young family have moved to Marrakech and recently have bought a piece of land. Close friends of ours, Benoit and his charming wife Zoo, also a designer, are giving us a helping hand with our guest house interiors.

In T-shirts and cargo pants, we are ready for action. Today we are looking for antique doors and other architectural remnants that will help give our guest houses some character. We have brought along with
us one of Chris’s employees, Khalid, who can be counted on to negotiate in Moroccan dialect so fast that it makes your heads spin.

{Originally published on Lawyer Mama}

In photography, the best shots usually come with the best light:
shortly after sunrise and the hour before sunset. At this time of day,
everything looks magical. Everything looks beautiful. The light
diffuses the world with warmth and a special ethereal glow. Everything
is simple and clear for one. magical. hour. every day. The golden hour.

Because I am not a morning person, my golden hour is the hour before sunset.

I spend my day at the office focusing on facts, analysis, crafting
legal arguments. I deal with petty office politics, avoid those I
don’t care for, and court favor with those I do. I attend committee
meetings and client meetings and depositions and hearings. I write
briefs, pleadings and professional articles. I take client calls and
conference calls. I scour contracts for loopholes and alternative
language.

My day is added up in 6 minute increments and ruthlessly accounted
for. I can tell you how much time I spend in the bathroom or getting
tea every day.

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Originally published on Kellan Studios.

We booked Kristen’s wedding last fall, for the upcoming fall. Not
only is she incredibly funny, but she gets the award for most patient
“bride to be”. I say that because during our consultation she got a
phone call from her fiance. Not unusual, except that he was calling
from Djibouti, Africa. Charles was finishing out his last few months
with the military over in Africa. I am constantly amazed at technology
that she was chatting away with him in our living room and he is almost
1/2 way around the world!

We were so excited that they wanted to book an engagement session so
we could meet the illusive Charles. He was just how we expected him to
be, incredibly witty! We had soooo much fun with this couple shooting
around downtown and Old City Cemetery. We did not have to try hard to
get them to laugh. In fact, it was just the opposite, trying to get
them to be serious!

Can I make a personal note? This couple is TALLLLLLL! Charles is
6’4” and Kristen is 6’0…but had four inch heels on and Ryan is 6’6”. My
vertical is 5’2”. I felt like the little sister that was tagging along
16 inches below! Luckily, they let me play too.

Here are some of my favorites from our blisteringly hot session.

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Originally posted at Allsorts

Finally! After years of thinking about trying my hand at making a quilt, I have completed all of the blocks for my very first one! I took a class last week with my Bernina sewing posse, and learned how to make a “crazy nine patch.” It is incredibly easy to make these blocks! I snapped pics along the way so you can try it, too.

First, here is one of the finished blocks:

This quilt uses 36 fat quarters. I chose 12 each of red yellow and blue 1930’s inspired fabric.

Once you’ve chosen your fabrics, wash or rinse, dry them, then give a liberal spraying of starch and iron them so they’re nice and stiff.

Using a rotary cutter, cut them into 36 squares. Mine are 12″ but you can go bigger if you like. Divide into four stacks of 9 squares with the colors arranged red yellow blue red yellow blue, etc. But vary the order and which color is first in each stack, to assure a random scattering of color across your quilt.

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Originally posted on Christine Mason Miller’s blog.

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Originally published on emilie inc. photography.

I could hardly sleep last night because I was so excited for today! I
popped out of bed early for one final cleaning of the studio and a few
last minute additions to the walls before the art walk.
At 10a, the balloons and signs went up outside my door, and I started
distributing stickers on each visitor’s map- those who received a
sticker from each studio was entered to win a raffle.

I would
say, in the 6 hour span of the walk, I easily had 100 visitors. I was
very humbled by the kind people, many of whom gasped when they rounded
the corner at the top of the stairs and peeked in the studio (a few
asked if they could move in!). Everyone offered their congratulations
and “welcome to the neighborhood,” as well as tips for great brunch
spots and neighborhood organizations to join. Mothers with
not-yet-engaged daughters tucked my business cards into their purses
with a wink. People marveled at the artwork, the beautiful light in the
space, and the yummy cupcakes (yes, the mini version of my birthday
party treats- I’m hooked!). It was a long day, but boy, what a great
way to introduce emilie inc. to the East End and kick off the official
wedding season.

Once the tour wrapped up, J and I headed to
dinner at Flatbread with the emilie inc. associates and their families.
What a treat to spend an evening with Geneve, Steve & Sage, and
Wyndee, Pete, Olivia & Chloe. Really looking forward to working
with you!

Here are a few pictures of today’s set-up with the
studio’s finished look! Some of you may recognize photos of yourself on
my walls!

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Originally posted at [b]ecker’s Blog.

I was recently chatting with some friends at a party, and I was asked if I knew what my favorite wedding image was. I laughed at the notion that I could ever narrow it down to a single frame, but it did get me thinking of some of the more memorable images I’ve captured over the years, and today I’d like to share with you 20 of my all time favorite wedding photographs. Of course, if you ask me tomorrow, I may have a completely different set of images. I am always striving to create better images that capture moments in time that the subjects will cherish forever.

I define my style of photography, as capturing relaxed portraits, amazing details and real moments. I feel these images do a good job representing my abilities in doing just that.

These first few images are scans from back in the film days… the 90’s!

I absolutely still love this portraits of a bride from July of 1999. Her expression was real, and she was just a gorgeous person inside and out.

***

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Originally Published on Blog O’ the Baroness

The illustration on the right was for the little reader The Case of the Missing Manny,
which was done for Imagine Learning. It happens on the set of a pirate
movie, so this picture goes with the page when our detective Ace is
interviewing Bob the costume designer. Bob, btw, hates pirates and
wishes he could design costumes for sci-fi movies.

I’ve put
together a big ol’ tutorial on how I made this illustration. I tried
keep it at the level of expecting the reader to know at least the
basics of Photoshop, but if you are an expert at Photoshop, then a lot
of the information will be old hat. If I’ve left big holes in my
explanations, let me know and I’ll be happy to make some edits.

Tools

These are the brushes I will be referring to throughout the tutorial. I
am pretty lazy with brushes - I stick with what works. All three
brushes are in the default brush palette. The only customizing I’ve
done is to save a couple more spatter brushes at smaller sizes. When
I’m in a real hurry while shading, I’ll just use the soft round
brushes. The downside is that you get a slick airbrushy look that I
don’t always like. The spatter brushes give me a little texture to the
brush strokes.

Some other general type information - I have two
different setups. At my Imagine Learning office, I work on a PC. I have
two 1200×1600 LCD monitors, an Intuos Wacom tablet, and Photoshop CS2.
There’s a screenshot of my desktop a little further down. At home I
have essentially the same setup, only with a G5 mac and PS CS3. I
personally prefer the mac over pc, but I’ve worked with both for so
long, that it’s not an issue for me. (Speaking of apple love, recently
got an iphone and they are pretty much lots of awesome .)

This
whole illustration was done in Photoshop from start to finish.
Sometimes I use Flash or Painter, but for this tutorial, everything I
refer to is happening in Photoshop, and I’ll be using PC commands. If
you use a mac, just replace Ctrl with Cmd.

Thumbnail

Here is my first sketch, which is essentially a thumbnail, even though it is done at actual size but lower resolution (72 dpi). I’m using a small round brush. It looks like it was maybe at 30% opacity. I’m not consistent with that. This first sketch is just to figure out what is happening in the scene and work out the general composition. Before starting any sketches for the project, I had already done some research, finding pictures of costume studios, pirate costumes, etc. to help come up with ideas.

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Originally posted at Beyond Megapixels.

One of the most important things your photo should have is an
ability to hold your viewers attention. There are a lot of techniques
that can be used to help you compose your shot so that people will
spend more than a second looking at it. Besides keeping your viewers
focused on your photo, the techniques below can also help emphasis your
main subject.

There are many ways to hold your viewer’s attention. Here are five that you can easily start off with:

1. VIGNETTE

A
vignette is a gradual loss of light and picture quality towards the
edge of the photo due to poor lens construction. Although it is
considered a lens aberration, a vignette is helpful in drawing the
viewer’s attention towards the center of the photo. It also adds
character to a photo since it makes it look like it was taken with an
old camera.

CC Photo by australian overanalyzerTo add a vignette to an existing photo with Adobe Photoshop, refer to our previous article found here.

2. SHOOT THROUGH A FRAME

This
is probably one of the oldest tricks in the book. You simply choose an
object you can shoot through that frames your main subject.

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