I hope you all have had a lovely holiday, whatever it is that you celebrate!  I’ve been out of town these last few days for Christmas and have this next week free to spend time with family and catch up with old friends. It’s amazingly relaxing but also has given me a lot of time to think about where I am now in my photography and to reflect on this past year.

Something I realized in looking back is that just earlier this year I was booking clients primarily through my Flickr portfolio.  This was back when I hadn’t yet shot a wedding as a primary shooter and also when I met Anna, whose e-mail thanking me for her engagement photos still makes me smile a huge smile whenever I read it:

“Oh Jen- The pictures are SO beautiful!!! You did such an amazing job, we are speechless! Wow. We knew you were talented, but you really outdid yourself, thank you so much! We’ll treasure these pictures forever. Its rare that I like a picture of myself, but I feel like you really captured us in such a sweet way, some of them almost brought me to tears. We love the way you composed everything… the angles and lighting, the subdued vintage colors, all totally up our alley. Did you add in all those beautiful glowing sunbeams, or was that how the light showed up naturally? Either way I love how you edited them all… the light on the trees, the soft black and whites. The first image is one of our very favorites, it just captured us so perfectly and the tree limbs and shadows on the ground around us are so lovely.  Anyways, thanks again, we [...] are happy to give you a recommendation anytime.”

I remember receiving the e-mail and practically tearing up too. I know it’s going to sound cheesy when I say this (if you know me well at all, you’ll know I am the queen of cheese!), but it was the moment that I realized what a powerful gift photography can be. The taking of photos and processing of images is of course something I enjoy doing, but by far the biggest reason I keep doing it is because of how happy it makes people when they finally see their photos. My goal everytime I go out is to create images that evoke the same type of emotions that Anna so wonderfully expressed in her e-mail. And I will continue to make this the main goal of all of my shoots in 2010 and beyond.

I’ll be posting another update soon with some of my other goals for next year, but for now I just wanted to say Happy Holidays to you and yours, and best wishes for the New Year! May your 2010 be filled with good health, tremendous love, endless inspiration, and many moments that make you smile huge smiles!

Weeks ago I went on a photo adventure with fellow photographer Melissa DeSchamp.  I think our initial idea was to shoot the scenery at and around the Esplanade, but of course it turned into an informal portrait session as we shot each other and experimented with the light.  And what light it was!  Sigh.

Just goes to show you that the quality of light (we were shooting within an hour of sunset) and positioning of the photographer and subject impact the result, whether it’s hazy, sun-kissed, flare-filled, or bathed in warmth.

Sigh.

I’m beginning to offer albums now as part of my packages and have recently chosen a company that does wonderfully simple leather, flush-mount albums.  While I don’t currently have any images of what the books look like just yet, I’m excited to order sample albums to show clients and have begun to design some layouts in the process.  These aren’t necessarily what the final layouts will look like, but I want to share screenshots of a couple of the spreads as I’m starting to work on them.  They’re really fun to design!  Working on the layouts is bringing back memories from my high school Yearbook Committee days, where we spent hours and hours designing layouts by hand using graph paper, rulers, and wax pencils.  Thank goodness for Adobe InDesign, these days! :)

I prefer clean, simple layouts so that the focus is on the images themselves.  Each image below (from Amber and Will’s wedding) is a 2-page spread for a 10×10 album.