Alrighty one and all…..I would like to introduce to you the men of the “H” family!  Meet our Pastor and his two sons.  I particularly love the first shot!   The rustic, wildnerness, country surroundings totally suits them - even though they’re city slickers.  LOL.  These guys are such FUN  and I am so blessed to know them.  They are very dear to me and my family as they are great examples of Biblical manhood.  Their passion for the LORD and in their roles as men of faith is soooooooo encouraging to see! 

We had such a great time during our camping trip!  And the “H” men were good sports to pose for me for a little while.  :D  Thanks guys! 

My fellow photographer!  In this shot, doesn’t he remind you of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity movie — just with a camera??  LOL
 

After all of the hustle and bustle of the last several weeks, my big business projects are finally done.  Woo-hoo!  And the timing worked out perfectly to finish before our camping trip this past weekend.  We headed up to Happy Jack, AZ — up in the northern countryside of sunny Arizona. 

Ahhhhh…..  Peace, quiet, nature, serenity, rest, relaxation, **cough, cough**, feeling lightheaded, headache, coughing, congestion…  Ugh!  What happened??  Our trip ended with me getting sick.  Boo-hoo!   I was actually sick a couple of days prior to our trip, but was better by the time of the trip (or so I thought!).  I was pretty much fine until our last day.  Then the sickness came on again.  Oh well.  That’s just the way it goes sometimes.  :)  I am better now, though.  Yay.  :)

While we were camping, I did a couple of on-the-fly photo shoots with our friends and their children.  Can you blame me, with all the beauty of nature surrounding us????  :)  This week’s P52 challenge photos (I’m posting three — couldn’t resist!) comes from one of the shoots during our trip.  These photos are of total CUTIE-PIE, Miss. M — middle daughter to our pastor and his wife.  I have so many more great photos from this trip!  I will hopefully post more in the next several days.  For now, here are three of Miss. M.

FINALLY!

Here are a few samples from the League photo session I had from two weeks ago.  I am just now able to post them!  The prints arrived today and I am sooooooo pleased at how they turned out, especially considering the fact that the shots were taken during one of the worst lighting conditions of the day — midday!  The sun was shining its bright AZ shine and was literally right above my subjects.   To top it off, there was no shade I could take advantage of.   But hey…. you make do with what you have to work with, right?   In the end, they turned out great!  :)  My speedlight flash was my BEST FRIEND during this session!  LOL.

 The weather was a “cool”  102 degrees.  :)  The 2nd photog that I hired on for this session (Anthony from Phoenix - beginner photog from our church.  Thanks Anthony for doing a great job!) was taking the team photos and we both were out in the hot sun for 2 HOURS.  My husband and son came along as well to help with the orders.  I was soooo thankful they came!  Otherwise, it would’ve been quite crazy trying to do orders and taking pictures at the same time.  :)    I learned A LOT from my first sport session and look forward to hopefully doing more in the future  :)  It was a great experience!  We had 4 league teams that we  shot and 29 individual pictures.

Btw…consider these photos for this week’s P52 challenge.  Ignore the fact that they were not taken this week.  LOL!

This shot was actually taken several days after the session as he forgot to take his photo with me during the actual day.  I was able to make it out to photograph this handsome guy before one of their games.  I couldn’t resist trying to play around with it in b&w!  Notice the warmer lighting?  It was taken at 6pm.  :)

Busy, busy, busy….. that’s how my life has been for the past several weeks.  This week has been particularly busy with two major website design projects to work on, a BIG photo shoot last Saturday for a city Little League (pics to come shortly!), and finishing up our homeschool group yearbook!  Everything seems to be due all around the same time!   “Calgon….take me away!!!!”  (y’all remember that old commercial, right? LOL)

In the midst of all this craziness and a heavy focus on sports shots, I’ve been wanting to take a little break and take some lifestyle portrait shots again.  This afternoon I had a chance to do just that with adorable golden beauty, little miss “S”.  Isn’t she just the cutest???  She’s the 4yo daughter of our homeschool group’s Director.  I LOVE the sunshine highlighting her hair!  Without further adieu, here is this week’s P52 challenge photo.

OKAY, before I end this post, I want to critique this shot publicly…. 

My D200 is really challenging me with depth of field and crisp sharp focus.  Looking at this shot, I see that I have the subject’s eyes (the thing I really wanted to have in sharp focus) slightly behind the depth-of-field area of focus (ie: focus plane).  How can I tell?  Well, you can see her left shoulder and the center of the fence more in focus than her face/eyes.  I’m realizing now that I was standing a little too far back when I took this shot.  Had I come in a few inches closer, her eyes would’ve been in sharp focus!  As a photographer, it’s really important to pay attention to camera/subject distance in obtaining the DOF that you want.  As you can see, I have not mastered this completely.  LOL.  Live and learn, right???  :D

Below are some helpful links on DOF:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html  (online depth of field calculator)
http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/2009/05/group-photos-and-focus/  (great article explaining plane of focus and DOF!)

Blessings!