fun fun weekend!

We are having an AWESOME weekend. Katie, her husband, Nathan, and their two girls are here for the weekend. We've eaten SO MUCH and the kids have played well together. Yesterday morning, after dressing change, we went to downtown Kernersville and I took some photos (with Katie's direction, she's the one who really knows what she's doing) of their family. Since Katie's always the one taking them, they have hardly any of the four of them together. We had a good time, despite the cold, and got a few super cute ones! The boys (minus Jonah, who was overdue for a nap) went to the Wake vs. Virginia game (WAKE FINALLY WON ONE!). Katie and I put Jonah and Quinn down to nap and we...


... acted like 15 year old girls, put on girly dresses, leggings, and boots, went out in the yard and took photos of each other. Yep, we sure did. And it was so fun, and we laughed A LOT. Katie did super great clean edits and I played with my Totally Rad presets and turned us funny colors. Cause that's just how I roll. Here are a few of my favorites. (And oh my word, I am DIGGIN' my haircut. Shannon at Mane Event rocks my socks.) These are Katie's edits.

photography workshop march 5th in concord

For those of you who live around here and are interested in a photography workshop, Amber (http://amberherlocker.com) is offering another one on March 5th in downtown Concord (only an hour from Winston-Salem). If you are interested, sign up for the newsletter HERE so you can find out about registration. I think early bird registration ($125) opened today, but is only good for the first five registrants. The class has 15 spots, and the regular price is $150. 

The location was great, lunch is provided, and it's a basic, easy to understand, fun workshop for those of you who have a DSLR and just haven't taken the time (or had the brain power, in my case) to figure it out. You can register HERE but make sure you sign up for the newsletter too in case you miss out on Early Bird. You'll need to know when regular registration opens.

You can see Amber's professional site HERE and her photography blog HERE. I promise you'll have a great day and learn a ton! Happy snapping! (or shooting with fine pieces of glass (or something) as we like to say in the biz.)

(Photos by Amber Herlocker)

cute dog, cute baby

We put Jonah's little tent up for him to play with. He was scared of it at first but is warming up to it now. However, there is one in our house who thinks it's the best thing since bacon flavored dog treats. Deac sleeps in it at night and spends a good portion of the day camping out there. (Get it, camping out?) How can I ever take it down when he's turned it into his own little dog house?

I don't really have much to say about these except that I think Jonah is the cutest.

I think he looks like his Uncle Peyton (my brother) in this one. Or maybe Matt. Or maybe both of them. Oh, never mind.

tryin' to learn me somethin'

Oh my goodness. I learned SO MUCH today and had so much fun being with new friends, figuring out my camera, and learning how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed work together to get the right exposure. I knew a little about each separately but was clueless as to how they all worked together. Check out Amber Herlocker's site to see work from our wonderful teacher. She's in Concord, NC, if you're interested. It actually only ended up being an hour from here.

The below images are from today. They are far from perfect, but I'm proud of them because they were all taken in Manual and I didn't use the flash once. Hooray! They have not been edited at all, except that I cropped a few. I could have fixed some of the exposure and white balance issues in Lightroom, but I really wanted to show what I was able to get straight out of camera. (And I want to have them to look back on as I hopefully get to learn more.)

Sue, you'll never know what this day and getting to learn again meant to me. I am a big geeky school nerd and was completely enthralled with the chance to learn. Plus, you got me out of the house and gave me a "me" day. I really needed it. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being Jesus to me. 

To Amber's credit, she told us never to back our subjects up straight against the wall. So that's the first thing I did. Sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed, I'm not a good listener. :)

A lot of these were over exposed, but I kind of liked them anyway.

Yep, she's the mom to two kids. I know.