MY SENIOR REP!

Well meet Miss M. my High School Senior Rep for ****** High School, NJ. She's is also a budding model and continues to pursue her pageant titles. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to photograph such a special young lady.

THIS IS MY FAVORITE SHOT OF THE DAY. HER PROFILE IS STRIKING. I think the joke between her Mom and I is that I want her to wear makeup for another upcoming shoot and I believe Miss M. prefers the natural look. Hey I remember those days:)) Less is best especially when you have her personality!

It has certainly been fun working with you Miss M.  Good luck in your pageants!

FOR THE LOVE OF TEXTURES

I admit that I have become a photographer that absolutely loves using textures to enhance my portraits. My absolute favorites sets come from these amazing women: Shana Rae of Florabella Photography, Colleen of Chasing Dreams Photography and Jessica, from Jessica Drossin Photography. I must say I haven't a clue how they do it, but I know it takes lots of time and talent to sit down and create "art" that will look unique and give photographs that wow factor that in some cases often represents a painted canvas.

With some creative vision and persistence, using textures can actually help salvage certain photographs. For example in this portrait of my beautiful model Macy, I purposely over processed and over-exposed the RAW file in photoshop. Of course there were several steps I took in the before photo to get it that way, but for the purpose of this tutorial I am going to stick to why I did it.

I changed the colors in the backround using some selective coloring, curves to give it a warmer glow. Now Macy's skin is flawless and her color on the pale side so I could have used just a warm filter that would have done the trick, but for me it just didn't have enough depth nor the right hue I wanted for this image. By adding Chasing Dream's "Sun" Texture in an overlay blending mode I was able to create a nice warm hue and even cast a natural shadow effect on her arms. It also warmed up the entire photo and made it more eye appealing to me.

I don't like to erase or mask out the textures on the face and hands so I usually grab my lasso tool and select the areas around her, go to Select>Modify>Feather (setting the feather radius between 10-20) and then with the marching ants still visible, select Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur (I like the radius set at 98) hit okay and this removes the marching ants.

The result is a lovely portrait that maintains the color of the texture without the textured effects, in other words if the brushes are a netted look, grunge or other design element it won't be apparent in the final image.

Not bad huh? Plus in this particular image I really didn't need to do any skin tone adjustments as this texture worked perfectly!!!

Please feel free to try this and just have fun.

Welcome Baby R

I must say that photographing newborns can be the easiest or most difficult sessions to work (depending of course on babies schedule) but this little guy and his lovely parents were just naturals in front of the camera and after several hours, these fav's proved that a little  feeding and patience got the job done! 

Sweet Baby

This sweetie is all about the smiles! We met when she was a bit over 10 days old...and

and so tiny!  These sessions are precious and I so enjoy watching the proud parents (as tired as they are) just hovering over their newborn.  Even the pets in this house were impressed with this lovie.

A Sweet Bat Mitvah

I must say that this session was so much fun and a two part shoot for me.  I was fortunate enough to have been asked to photograph the Bat Mitvah Party at home after the service and as it turned out it was a gorgeous hot summer day and needless to say everyone was eager to done their swim suits and jump into the nearby pool.  So working quickly I gathered the family, friends and the girls for a fun session and began clicking away!  The proofs were on my Simply Candid Photography Website and I was thrilled that they loved them all.  These are just a few of my favorites. 

 Congratulations!

The Next Miss South Jersey Teen Winner

Gorgeous with a heart of gold! That's just one way to describe this very special teen whom I happened to have the distinct pleasure of photographing a few weeks ago. She's a natural beauty, a normal teenager and simply adores her parents and friends.

She placed third in the Miss South Jersey Teen pageant (I think she should have won, I mean just look at this face) and runner up to most photogenic, YES, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!

She also recently found out that she loves the world of Pageants...so keep your eyes and ears open because she just may be the Next Miss NJ or Miss America!

Presenting Miss M.

Welcome to my new Photography Blog!

Welcome to Simply Candid's Photography blog. I know it's way overdue (by a year or so), but thankfully my little business has been quite busy leaving me little time to write. However I've had so many recent inspirational shoots that I thought I would finally set aside a few hours to pursue my blog and share some of my work with my clients and friends:))

First let me say my daughter has truly been the main reason I pursued photography. She has not been very fond of the camera lately, but every now and then she'll "work it" for the camera and allow me to capture some very darling shots. Perhaps the challenge of capturing her darling expressions and the hours of trying to entertain her for "that amazing photo" has made me a more proficient child photographer. I guess we shall see about that!

Second, I am very grateful to all those that have continued to support and encourage my passion of photography over this past year. A big hug to my husband Dani, who continues to endure my endless weekend hours laboring in photoshop with post processing.

And then there are the countless photographers that continue to inspire me to exceed my own expectations.

Well, on to some sneek peeks of my recent photo sessions.