Marching band!

I was asked if I'd like to help with a fundraiser for the Volcano Vista High School marching band. Yes! I certainly would. What a fun experience for me - I got to meet some really great high school kids, enjoyed the cool uniforms, and I loved the instruments.

I don't know how they wear those hats, that would be tricky for me. But then my only marching band experience was in middle school, where funnily enough my husband and I marched in the same band at the same time (but did not know each other for many more years) to a rousing version of "Party All the Time". I bet you didn't know that that song had been arranged for marching band. It's a real shame that there was no youtube back then... or is it???

Anyway - here are some awesome kids and some great instrument pictures:








It was a fun challenge for me to come up with ideas for posing that would be interesting and artistic.


I wanted to get all the students a decent variety of proofs to choose from, including a good straight shot,


and I also wanted to show their love of music if I could.












The tuba players were especially impressive. That is a lot of instrument to haul around!








Although I went to a regular public high school, somehow I got through the whole thing without ever really knowing about the color guard. I guess I did not pay attention at half time or something. So it was a fun surprise to me that they toss and catch rifles.




I also really love to incorporate instruments and hobbies into my senior portrait sessions! You can get more information about my senior photography at my website here. If you're interested in a senior session, give me a call or email for more information - I'd love to chat with you about it!

School yearbook lady

Where have I been this last week? No, I didn't go to WPPI (though now I wish I had). I was right here, at the computer, as usual. The difference was, and this was only perceptible to myself probably, I wasn't working on photography, I was working on the kids' school yearbook. Yes, Science Night got over, and immediately it was yearbook crunch time. Last year I was the yearbook assistant, and this year I got promoted (by virtue of the previous committee chair's kids going to middle school). So I didn't do the school portraits for the kids. But nearly every other picture in the yearbook, and there are a LOT of them, was taken by me in the last week or two.

Including this super-fun center spread photo of the whole school. Go kids! About 200 of them asked me later that day "How did you get on the roof?" My answer: "I'm a really good jumper!" (They were not convinced, but I didn't want them to know how easy it really is.)



So the timing emergency was because my copy is due to the printers next Monday, which is spring break, and I had to have it edited/reviewed by the staff ahead of time. Today was my last chance. Last night at 2:00 am I finished these collages:





So cute - don't know how I managed to make them (and I was too tired to check the spelling...) These were 2 of the 20 or so collages I'd been working on.

THEN, just to keep with the tale, I tried to print out my rough draft for edits. Our old printer ran out of ink, so I installed the new one (a process in & of itself). The new printer ran completely through a cartridge of black. The last 2 pages I tried to print were nearly illegible. And I had no more ink left, so that's how it went down to the school.... it helps that I'm a volunteer with this... So it's an HP Photosmart C4750, FYI, and to me that is a crazy-lot of ink usage. I printed not quite 64 pages - granted they were maybe 50% photo or more - and now I need another $67 for more ink. YIKES. Might take this printer back to Costco & see if there's something a little more economical out there.

And that is the story of why I haven't gotten any photography done for a week... I apologize to all of you out there waiting for galleries! I need to sleep tonight instead of working, but I'll be posting a bunch of stuff in the next couple of days.

More preschool portrait favorites

I am finally finishing up my proofs for the preschool pictures, and oh wow, I love some of these! I had to add a few more... :) What darling kids!!! Maybe you can tell that I love the climber pictures. :)


I love this one because the kids LOVE the preschool's dramatic play areas so much - they have to take turns & they're always SO happy when they get their turn! (When I was taking pictures in there it was a big disappointment because they couldn't actually play!)


I did NOT touch his eyes with Photoshop. It's real. Wow.


Something about this one I especially love. How sweet is she???


And these two twins - could there be cuter boys??? I love the connection in this one.

School photographer

I have the blessing of being the school photographer for a really great charter school in our area. It's an elementary school called Mountain Mahogany Community School. They have about 100 children in K-4th grade (next year will include 5th too). They have a neat emphasis on being outdoors, gardening, and they even have chickens. They have an orchard, watermelons and cantaloupes growing around campus, and eat the fruit for class snacks.

So doing lots of pictures really fast is a lot different than doing an hour-long session with a few kids. But I feel like I almost always can get a good picture or two of the kids with a little effort. I usually give the families 2 proofs, one close up & one farther away. Some families come for family pics and I do some siblings too. It's a lot of work getting everything processed but so fun to get positive feedback from parents & sometimes even kids. I'm about halfway done getting the proofs processed at this point - not working on it today but full-force tomorrow...

Here's a small sample of pictures I especially liked:

Paradise Hills Community Preschool

This is our preschool - we love it! I am on the parent board & we put on a big celebration this week. It was a lot of work but we had incredible turnout & the party was so much fun! We had everything from horse rides to jumpers to face painting to games, cake walk, pizza, cotton candy (we made the cotton candy, it was fun!) & more. The mayor didn't come at the last second (I hear this is common with him) but we did have the morning news anchor for our MC (she was great!). I took this picture for the party invitations.