shutter-sweet

lazy sunday afternoon.

2009-05-24T00:50:00.000-07:00

I've got no mind to worry.

I haven't been very shutter-sweet lately, have I? I apolagise for this - but I haven't been very inspired. I've got a few concept ideas that I'd like to put into the works, but I've just got to get off my arse and organise a day to do it. That, and borrow the gear from work, because I'm sick of my own gear and I don't have the money to upgrade!

It was luke's birthday yesterday, so we had a nice day at home eating yummy breakfast and playing video games. We also went shopping at DFO and I managed to pick up 2 pairs of sweet tracksuit pants. (I'm wearing a pair right now. My legs are quite toasty.) I also ordered some special birthday cupcakes for the birthday boy, and I took a photo of them, but I haven't uploaded it yet so I'll post it another day.

Here are some pics from a couple of weddings I've done over the past month:

I'm off to make a cup of tea. Have a great sunday afternoon!

Ingrid and Justin's Wedding.

2009-04-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

Ye gods, where have I been for the past (almost) month? I knew I hadn't posted in a while, but I didn't realise that it had been THAT big a-while. Time seems to go so fast for me. So why don't my holidays feel like they're getting any closer?

Anyway, I digress.

Sharon and I photographed Ingrid and Justin's wedding last Saturday, on the Gold Coast. Ingrid's dress and flowers were AMAZING, not to mention her SHOES! LOVED her shoes. Actually, her whole get-up was freaking awesome.

Bond University was our backdrop for the ceremony and reception. I had never shot a wedding there before - it was different (nice, unusual...) Here is Justin waiting for his Bride amongst the huge columns:

and then we had fun with the architecture of the Uni for our bridal shoot:

All in all, a great day. And I have to say, I'm quite impressed by the reception room at Bond! For a Uni, they really delivered as a reception venue.

Away to bed with me, big days ahead. Somebody save me!

a bespoke favour.

2009-03-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Bespoke Press

Here's a little wedding related post. I want to give a shout out to Bespoke Press, who have created the most beautiful wedding favours and place settings that compliment their already amazing stationary designs.

Check out their blog post about it here.

Courtesy of Bespoke Press

I'm really liking this idea - tying everything in to match. As a photographer, I photograph a lot of weddings and I think, in recent times, place settings and favours have become a bit boring. I see a lot of the same thing over and over again, and I believe that people are just stuck for new and innovative ideas. I'll definitely be squawking about Bespoke's new range to Brides-To-Be. (And not only for weddings - they'd even be great for milestone birthdays or anniversaries!)

Something else wedding-related: one of Luke's best mates Nick announced that he's getting married to his long-term girlfriend Kelly in June. And we're invited! Hooray! Very excited about it (this will be the first time I've been to a wedding in my adult life when I haven't actually been WORKING!) and looking forward to enjoying it with Luke.

Nick and Kelly are having their reception at L'Esprit On The Water, on the Gold Coast. Love L'Esprit - definitely one of my favourite reception venues. My most favourite reception shots have been taken at L'Esprit - I'll include some of them here for you to look at:

Have a lovely mid-week, friends!

wool inspired.

2009-03-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hello, all!

For those of you who also follow Courtney's amazing blog, you would already know that her and her husband Paul came to stay with me and Luke for a little holiday last weekend. It was absolutely fabulous. We crammed in as much as we possibly could over the three days (I took Monday off work, and they left on Tuesday) and I believe we were thoroughly exhausted by the end. But it was so much fun. I miss having Courtney around, and I did my very best to convince the both of them to move to Brisbane (which wasn't hard. I think they were already convinced before they even arrived!)

I wanted to share some pictures with you, from Courtney and Paul's time with us. I took some promo shots of Courtney for her business The Inner Stitch, and I took some shots of her and Paul together, because I know they hadn't had anything like that done before.

I'm warning you - there may be a lot of photos in this post. Basically because I love them all.

I took Courtney outside with some wool and her needles and we started to muck around:

This is my favourite photo of Courtney:

And here are just some nice portraits of her - I think she deserved these. She hasn't been feeling very beautiful lately, and I know that she is. So I just captured it. I think her Husband and her Mother are impressed with these too!! Framed copies for all.

And here are some portraits of Courtney and Paul together that we shot in the park:

And then, we finished with some sunset shots. LOVE these:

Courtney is an amazing hand-dyer of wool. She has her own business called The Inner Stitch where she sells custom dyed skeins of wool. She also runs wool clubs that you can sign up to. If you're even vaguely interested in wool and fabric and knitting, you simply must check out her blog (where she's posted a couple of other, different photos from our weekend together) and her shop. I'm so proud of everything she's accomplished with her business - she's found something that she dearly loves and that she's very talented and skilled in. You rock, Courtney!

Have an amazing weekend, everyone!

Raylene and John's Wedding.

2009-03-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

I had fun on Mt Tamborine yesterday, photographing Raylene and John's wedding. Phew! It was a bit of a rush around (John's parents had had a bit of an accident literally the night before the wedding - John's dad was still in hospital and couldn't make it to the wedding, and his mum had a huge leg cast on!) but we all got there in the end. I send my best wishes to John's parents!

We headed on down to the Botanical Gardens for our photoshoot after the ceremony - just John, Raylene, and Raylene's two daughters Tamika and Breanna. Those girls are a bundle of energy! Tamika was only interested in catching frogs and picking flowers. I tell you, all my childcare photography skills came in handy!!

This is my favourite photo of the day. Look at the kookaburra!!! Kookies are one of my favourite animals and he was so close, I couldn't hide my exitement. With lots of urgent whispers, I got Raylene and John to stand under the sign and have a little kiss.

Then, we discovered, the little guy started to follow us! He walked down the path after us. So the girls thought they'd get down and have a chat.

Finally, I thought I'd share this image - not photographically perfect, (I was on the wrong setting, and just shot this before checking, naught me!) but I actually like the way it turned out... I don't know, it's sort of dreamy. I like it.

All the best, Raylene and John! And I send you my blessings for little Liam, due in June.

That's it from me for now. I've had a lazy sunday, drinking tea and reading. Now I'm off to have some dinner!

new purchases - it's a female thing.

2009-03-10T03:16:00.000-07:00

I want to share with you some of the pretty purchases I've made over the past couple of weeks.

Firstly, I saw a little print on etsy created by littlestflower that I just adored:

A wise owl printed on a page from an Enid Blyton book, and framed. Courtney and I had been talking about Enid Blyton books only a few days before, and it seemed like the perfect print for my office. When the package arrived, not only was my little owl inside, but another print that Jackie from littlestflower had included as a suprise!

More owls! And a girl can never get enough owls. I was quite a happy chicka. Thanks Jackie! Please head on over to Jackie's site to check out her sweet prints.

Then on Sunday, I trotted over to the Young Designer's Market in South Bank for a squiz. After a big night out celebrating a Hen's Night at Dracula's on the Coast (which, I have to say, I had never been to, even though I had spent my entire life up til a couple of years ago living about 7 minutes away from the place) I was looking to wind down. The market seemed perfect. So teemed with some cash and the Boy, I looked for something to purchase. And I found something!

This beautiful typewriter print by littlejanest. I am a fan of Alarna's blog, and have been following it for a while now, so I was quite excited when I found her stall! I snapped this up before anyone else could. It will go perfectly in my office with my owls. YAY.

I also bought these littlejanest cards as a present for courtney, who is coming to visit me next weekend:

I think they are just her style (the whole knitting and handbag thing screams courtney, really).

To Alarna - I love your stuff! Luke was impressed, too. Thank you! :)

And to top it all off - I found these on the kitchen bench yesterday morning. Although I did not purchase them, I assume Luke did, and I cracked up.

No one can say that we're not perfect for each other. Not when we share a love for lolcats.

That's it for now. But I will update soon with a feature on my new favourite Australian Wedding Photographer. We print his stuff at work and it's consistantly beautiful. Seriously thinking of flying him up to do my wedding, if I EVER get married...

Have a wet and wonderful tuesday, friends!

i'm sorry! here - have some education.

2009-03-02T04:18:00.000-08:00

And here I am, humbly kneeling before you, begging for forgiveness because it's been over a week since my last post.

I understand that this makes me a bad blogger. I understand that, when people are kind enough to think me good enough to want to follow my blog, I should repay their kindness by actually saying interesting things on a regular basis. All I can offer in my defense is - please be patient with me. I'm still trying to work out some sort of routine for my weekly life. This is poor (the excuse, not the routine... actually, now I see that both are!) but I am working on it.

Now, in the spirit of photography and the education of photography, I would like to post about some great courses that are available in the Brisbane area.

I've spoken to a few people in the industry, and it seems many agree that the education of photography has slowly died over the last few years as digital has taken over the market. But that doesn't make education any less important. I started out by just pointing and shooting and checking the screen on the back of my camera to make sure the image looked okay. But over the years I began to learn things from more experienced photographers than myself. I've been lucky to learn from a professional photographer who learned her craft back when film was it. Knowledge of shooting manually and using a bit of science was necessary, since you couldn't see the end result until after the job was finished. Oh - and there was no photoshop.

I believe it's absolutely true that - the more perfect you can get your images in-camera, and the less post-editing you need to do, the better your images are. It's a bit of science, a bit of creativity, and a whole lot of learning.

The course above is a groundwork course - it's for people who are absolute beginners, to people who have been shooting with their camera for a while now, but perhaps haven't had the chance to learn from other, more experienced photographers. You'd be surprised by the simplest things you'd learn that make a huge difference to your photography.

Here's a question for all of you that read this - what do you think makes a great picture?

think bakery

2009-02-22T00:06:00.000-08:00

While reading some of my favourite blogs over my morning cup of english breakfast (and it was good), I found poppytalk's post about thinkbakery.com.

This website is FANTASTIC! It's all about business, and helping people to grow their online businesses. They also have a blog about, well, blogging. And other stuff-and-things in relation to marketing, public relations etc. As someone with a fairly new blog, and not knowing a hell of a lot about online marketing and successful blogging, I think this website is such a vital little treasure.

I urge you all to check it out, even if you're a blogging pro. I think it's an idea worth supporting, for all those out there who are essentially clueless at one stage or another!

Thank you to poppytalk for blogging about it, and bringing it to our attention!

my creative space. (finally!)

2009-02-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

So, I'm getting in to this Creative Space thing that Kirsty over at the addictive kootoyoo orchestrates. Since everyone who's anyone is doin' it, I wanna do it, too. Include me!

This is my creative space. It's my office. Only it's kind of boring at the moment. I've got plans. These plans include paint. and rugs. and inspiration boards. and framed prints.

If you head on over to kootoyoo, you can check out everyone else's Creative Spaces. They'll light a creative fire under your butt if it tends to be lazy.

I'm now giving all my attention over to episodes of FireFly.

oh! p.s! it's friday tomorrow! :D

tag! you're it!

2009-02-18T05:18:00.000-08:00

oh, btw, edward and lilly tagged anyone who's up for it to select the 6th photo from the 6th folder listed on your computer and post it.

so here's mine.

an old folder, with an old photo. my parent's kitty. :)