A Day In Salt Lake

My cousins from Texas are here to visit us up in Utah for a week, I'm so excited! 

Yesterday we spent most of the day in Salt Lake City with them and family friends. (Altogether we had nineteen people!)

 We started this rainy day off by getting on a train to Salt Lake. My younger cousins loved riding and looking out the window, while the older kids entertained themselves with apps on their phones and card games as the train went on, haha.

Once we got to Salt Lake we went through a Latter Day Saint museum, where the younger kids found a play area. After that we were supposed to go on a tour around the humanitarian building involved with the LDS Church, but the bus could only fit ten people... haha, so we decided to get something to eat instead since we were all hungry.

After a short list of restaurants were said, we decided to go to The Lion House near the Salt Lake Temple. There was a wait of 40 minutes, but it was worth it because the food was so good!! Homemade and perfect. 

Afterwards we went on a tour through the LDS Church Office Building. We got to go to the very top, and we could see everything!! Such beautiful views! 

Once the tour was over we had to hurry and catch our train back. We barely made back to the train in time, and had to sprint to the open doors. Overall, it was a good day spent!

(Expect more pictures of these cuties throughout the next few days!)

Rhonna's App Launch Party

Tonight I went to a app launch party for Rhonna Farrer's new app for Iphoneography editing! (It's now available on ITunes for those who want to make your phone's pictures look awesome on Instagram... or anywhere for that matter!) Rhonna is an amazingly creative and joyful person to be around, and I'm happy I got to see her! 

I had a great time at this fun party where the atmosphere was happy and carefree. I also loved meeting so many new and creative people tonight, I'm inspired by all of you! 

I was smart enough to bring my camera, so I could grab unplanned moments and the beautiful details of the night. I didn't get many, but I do love the pictures I was able to capture, and hope you love them too! 

Thanks for the invite, Rhonna, and so happy and excited for your new app's launch!

Sensational Seniors

I'm a photographer, and with that responsibility comes: Senior Pictures! It's a given that almost every photographer has taken senior pictures at one point in their life. To me taking senior pictures is actually really fun! I like getting to know people and making them feel special even if it's for an hour or so. So here are the most recent senior pictures I took at the beginning of May. This Senior's name is Abram and He is definitely sensational! He was up for anything and everything while this photo session was going on, and it was awesome! The location was one close to his house where he played while growing up, which I thought was really unique and cool. You're awesome Abram! 

Better Late Than Never

So I just realized I never put up pictures of my trip to Disney World with my family! I actually can't believe that I forgot since Disney World is like my favorite place ever. I did take a lot of pictures, but as always, I didn't take as many as I wanted to. Hopefully next time I'll be content with the amount. 

If I had to give some piece of advice to anyone going on vacation to Disney World, or anywhere for that matter, it would be: Don't be afraid! And what I mean by that is, Find new angles for things, don't get straight on shots, crop the image in camera in a different way, and don't be afraid to photograph whatever you see! (Make sure you stop to take the picture though, if you keep walking while looking through the viewfinder, you might run into someone on accident like I did and get mean looks, haha).

 Anyway, here are my favorites, enjoy!

 "Expedition Everest"

 "Krista's new friend"

 "Takin' a breather"

 "Sodas from around the world"

 "Practically Perfect"

 "Rode this the most"

 "To infinity and beyond"

 "Watching Emma become a princess"

 "Happily ever after"

 "Tangled"

 "Best friends"

 "Playing in the plants"

 "They love Pluto"

 "Time for an adventure"

 "Tony's"

 "Beautiful and bright"

 "The Magic Kingdom"

"Tale as old as time"

Fix it up!

So I decided to start this thing called: "Fix it up!" on my blog that I'll do every now and again. It's basically when I go through the previous pictures I've taken and find pictures that I really love, but I hate the way I've edited it the first time and decide to reedit the picture. I have this thing where I love the edit I do when I'm first correcting it, and then a couple of week or even a year later I hate it. haha, but thankfully I keep the original pictures straight from the camera so I can reedit the ones I don't like anymore at anytime. 

So today, I'm fixin' up some pictures I shot of my cousin, Lauren, last December while I was in Texas. Whenever I go down there, I end up taking pictures of Lauren and my other cousin Rachel. It's almost like a tradition, and I love it because they are so beautiful and are great to work with. I was going through this shoot last night and found this original picture of Lauren that I loved: 

As you can see the original is very dark, and doesn't show her features very well since it's all in shadows. And your eyes are pulled to the left of the picture where there is a bright white line in the upper corner. So I went on a small adventure to find the final edit I did of this picture to see if I made the corrections I noticed and this is what I found: 

It's a little better, but the reason I don't like it is her face is really blue! I think I tried to brighten her face because it was so dark, but it resulted in something blue aba de aba dye. Shadows are usually composed of cooler colors such as blues and purples that's why I believe while I was changing the exposure on her face I tinted it blue. So, I decided to fix in up! I took the original picture first shown above and reedited it to make a warmer, brighter, and prettier version:

See the difference?! I think it's so much better! It looks more natural and I helps her stand out more than the background. I know the eye still finds that big white splotch behind her head, but I don't really mind it too much though my professors would have a cow. 

Anyway here are the three pictures all shown together side by side:

Well I hope you enjoyed seeing a little of how I work. There are a lot of steps, and techniques involved while fixing just one picture, imagine doing twenty or thirty! It takes a lot of time and love :) If you have any questions feel free to ask!

-leanna

Toby

Today I had work from 6am-11am, but after that (as usual) I had nothing planned for the rest of the day. So when I got home, I decided to get inspired by some of my favorite photographers and I had a longing to pick up my camera and be creative! I haven't shot anything in a month, so I'm going a little crazy because I have this desire to produce something beautiful. And you know what, I feel like everyone has that desire every now and again, whether or not everyone gets the chance to create something, well that is an entirely different topic. But today I decided I was going to create (or try to) create something I was proud of. 

I got my camera set it to M and was ready to shoot something! But no one was home.... except my perfect angel dog, Toby. 

Ever since I first got him at 3 months old during the summer of my senior year in high school, I've been taking pictures of this pooch. He's trained to not be scared of the camera and occasionally I don't even have to bribe him to look into the lens. (Just imagine how my children are going to be)... He's such a hilarious little thing too, and is always making my heart shine with happiness. So I decided to take him outside and take some pictures of my favorite little man.

Sadly, this is the only picture I got (that was good) of him outside. My lens was a fixed one, and he just kept wanting to lay in my lap in the gorgeous weather. So I took him back inside and that's where I think I captured Tob's spirit.

I didn't get to try out all of the things I wanted to on my camera, but I'm very happy with how they all turned out. 

p.s. sorry for my black and white obsession. 

Here is a "behind the scenes" if you want to call it that, enjoy!

 "Too bright outside"

"Pirate Toby"

"Nast hair"