New Year's Eve Wedding

On New Year's Eve I was honored to photograph Christina and Miguel's wedding. I was very impressed by Miguel's initiative to help make his Bride's day a memorable one. Christina's vintage loves combined with her modern loves gave this wedding a unique quality that I fell in love with. I can truly say that their wedding helped define the direction I want to go in. Christina looked gorgeous and she knew how to work the camera for her bridal pictures. When it came time to photograph the groom, Miguel's laid back attitude helped command the attention of the camera. He looked so natural and I know that had to have been a hard thing to do when you are on a wedding rush. I had such an amazing time with Christina and Miguel and you can truly see the love they have for each other by the way they look for one another across the room when they were separated by friends and family and the way they unknowingly reach to hold hands when they are together. Here's a glimpse into this amazing day. To see their entire gallery click here

 

Gus the Camera Man from KHOU 11 News.

You may have heard I was on our local news station a few days ago in Houston, TX. They were doing a story about Shoe of the Month Clubs and wanted to see some of my shoe collection and interview me all about it. I belong to ShoeDazzle, yes Kim Kardashian is the Co-Founder of this business. However, this is a BRILLENT idea. I won’t go into talking about the shoes because you can watch the interview here.

Anyways, I was to take my shoe collection down to their studio and that meant seeing how the camera guy works his lighting and being able to sit in the green room! I was in the green room of the Deborah Duncan Show. In the pictures there is a huge photo of her and I believe her son on the wall. It is a gorgeous picture done in wrapped canvas.

So, I was interviewed by Tiffany Craig. You can tell she had been in the business a while because her line of questioning wasn’t just a list of questions. She made it into a conversation and that made it easy to ignore the camera and just talk about another one of my passions…MY SHOES! She was very easy to talk to and genuinely interested in what I had to say. She was very petite and super sweet. I also learned later that she was proposed to the night before and of course she said YES! So, Tiffany if you need a wedding photographer I am available ;) and Congratulations.

Another interesting character was Gus the camera man. He is quite, has a dry sense of humor and takes his job very seriously. I did manage to get him to laugh a few times and we really hit it off when we started to talk about lighting. He showed me his three part set up: One soft box light to my right side, a small spotlight to my left and a small pin light right behind me (These are in the pictures below). He uses battery operated lights because they need to be on the go a lot and may not have power sources next to where their story is. But the one brilliant thing that Gus had was his secret diffuser for his lights. He uses something so simple and so cheap….he uses WAX PAPER…I KNOW BRILLIANT RIGHT?! I have to try this out. He just clipped it on with a few clothes pins and he was good to go. In fact, Gus gave me his stash of wax paper and clothes pins as a parting gift. To top it all of Gus let me hold his camera! This camera was HEAVY. I think it weighed close to 15 – 20 lbs. I will never complain about my 7 lb camera again! He showed me how to zoom in and out and I was surprised that it is not color. It is black and white with little lines going through the picture. Kind like if you were to take a black and white picture of your TV or your computer. When you check out the interview watch how steady Gus can move the camera with one hand lowered close to the ground. That is talent people…and lots of muscle! Thank you for all the goodies Gus; you are a one cool cat! 

It was a great experience and at first I was skeptical to go on there. I use to be a model and super skinny and tone. Now after marriage, bed rest and a baby I am a size 10 and just self conscious a lot. A lot of times I let my mind get in the way of me living life. I am trying to be more comfortable in my own skin and trying to not let negative thoughts take control me. I think this was a huge step out of my comfort zone and I have to say, I didn't look all that bad either!

Here a few picture of the experience: 

 

New Year and New Changes in Packages

First let me say, I am NOT increasing prices. I just can’t do it right now in this economy. When so many of us have to scrap together what we can for the extra stuff, the last thing I want to do is make a special memory cost more. However, I am changing things up a bit and here are some of the reasons why. The only way I can justify increasing the price of packages is if I do these things: Take classes to improve my skills, have my photos critiqued and to make sure my equipment is able to be kept up (camera cleaned, website cost, printing cost, branding cost and so on). Since I have already established I am NOT increasing prices here are the changes I will be making. See old prices here:

1.         1. The Extraordinary Series will be the only package that has the CD included. 

2.         2. The Basic Package and the Lasting Impressions Package will have more prints added to them in place of    the CD being removed. 

3.         3. There will be no more white bordered pictures (Lasting Impression Prints) vs. black bordered pictures. I hope this will lessen the confusion when choosing a package. 

Some other changes you will see are:

1.         1. Starting in July 2012 I will have my studio up and running and will be able to start to offer in studio and on  location photography.

2      2. You will see a new look coming about the same time the studio opens. I am in the process of re-branding  my business with web designers and sprucing up my blog as well. 

        3. I will be using only professional equipment. This is how I started and this how I will be going. I do not use  off brand flashes or lenses. This is more expensive but I believe it is worth it.

4      4. I do already have 4 new classes booked for the upcoming year. I am addicted to photography!

My dreams for 2012 for my business

  1.  Opening up my studio.

        2. Buy a few more lenses to complete my lens need.

    

        3. Gaining new clients and friends. 

4.        4. Continue to build my craft and refine my style.

5.       5. HAVE FUN!!! I do love what I do after all. This is my passion. I am a Photographer ~ Thanks J*. 

6.       6. Continue to keep my business DEBT FREE BABY!

I know these past few years have been hard on EVERYONE. Everyone in this country has felt the sting of it in some way or another. We have been living in the studio for a year, strangers are renting out our home and life has been HARD. We started taking the Dave Ramsey Financial Freedom Class and slowly but surely we are working our way out of this hole and we will be in our new home next June! Just in time for my daughter to turn 2. She has never spent one night in her room that her Daddy and Uncles worked so hard to decorate for her while I was in the hospital. My biggest dream is to watch her sleep in her own room that was made just for her. 

Merry Christmas everyone and I wish all of you the best New Year ever! Thank you for helping me make my dreams come true. Without you guys, my art is nothing.

XOXO

Kimberlee Peterson

Unity Among Families of Military Heros

I think I have been avoiding writing and posting these pictures. I don’t think the pictures are terrible. I guess it is because it is the first time I saw my dad’s headstone and was able to lay a wreath at his grave. In all honesty, it is the first Christmas function I have been involved in with my dad since I was a little girl. My mom always told me my dad loved me to the best of his ability. I did get to reconnect with him before he passed and did get a half way apology from him about running out on me. He also was able to meet his only grandchild before he passed. You can see those pictures here. He was very proud of her.

The experience was joyful, sad and had a sense of unity. My father was buried in the new section since he passed away a few months ago. My Aunt passed two months after him and she is 7 rows behind him. So, when laying the wreaths down there was a flood of emotions from everyone around me. People were laughing as they reminisced about their loved ones. Others were crying because the pain was just too new. I saw military placing the wreaths and then saluting the graves and children laying down wreaths at their father and mother’s graves. In the misted on all of the emotions there was a sense of peace between us. You could look someone else in the eyes and just know we were all feeling the same thing and we were not alone. Overall there was pride…pride in those who served our country and pride that so many people showed up to help remember our loved ones. 

I am not really sure how to close this blog so I will just show you some of the pictures from that day and of my father. You can see the rest here. 

The Art of Criticism

Today I took a leap…not a flying leap, a leap of faith. Faith in myself and my art. I submitted one of my pictures to be critiqued. I use to do this often and then sort of fell off the wagon.  Part of the reason was because the critiques were being based on their personal style and not the overall ascetics of the picture. The other reason was because some of the places I was going got caught up in a lot of drama. I can understand some of the drama. Here you are putting your art out there and wearing your heart on your sleeve and then someone comes and rips it apart. Luckily, this never happened to me (probably because I played it safe) but I have seen a few places run off some new talent and I would feel awful for those people. 

So, I joined this new forum called Chic Critique. They just recently started the forum which is cool because you can learn and grow with the site. They also have a very unique way that everyone critiques each other. They call it the Sandwich Method. This means that when you are critiquing others, or they are critiquing you, that they first say something positive about the image, and then say what you can improve on or constructive criticism followed by another positive comment.  I like this because this cushions the ego a bit but it keeps away the photogs that would rip another photog a new one over his/her picture. 

I am happy to say that I did get some very positive feedback on my picture and she was super sweet about all of it. It reminds me of what Jasmine Star says to think about when being critiqued. She says to think about three things before you take in any criticism: 1. is the criticism constructive? 2: Is the source trustworthy? 3: Is the intent to help and not harm? If you get a yes from all three of those then take the constructive criticism in and learn and grow from it. In Jasmine’s case she was blowing out her skies. (I do this all of the time too). She says in her new magazine Exposed that she has improved on it some but she still does it and she is okay with that.  

After your work is out there to be picked apart it can be scary but it is a necessary part of improving your art. Not to mention, you will learn new tricks and probably make some new friends, and that is never a bad thing. 

It's Been A While

I know it has been a while since I have written on the blog but there is a good reason…besides that I am busy. I have been doing a lot of thinking. I have been reflecting on this past year, my business turning one and what the future holds. I have been sabotaging myself in a lot of ways.  I have been comparing my work to others, I have been playing it safe out of fear that no one will like my style and I have been tossing around the idea of concentrating on just ONE...as in the number 1…area of photography to take up and become specialized in that. I would love to tell you the answers to all of this but the truth is I am still mulling it all over in my head. So for now I will share with you a session of my daughter at the Pumpkin Patch. If you see me on face book I will always say my daughter is my hardest client. She is comfortable with me and she is very high energy. So, these shots consisted of my mom, my husband and me wrangling her in to certain areas and just shooting how she interacts with the environment.  The session only lasted about 45 minutes but believe me we were WORN OUT afterwards. You may notice a few bracelets in the pictures…that is called bribery!

$10,000 Holiday Bloggies Bash by Laura Winslow Photography

Photogs this is an AWESOME give away. One person will walk away with $10,000 worth of goodies! My favorite with the gift certificate to use at Crave Photography. Andee is an amazing person and photographer and mentoring with her has made me a better photographer. Follow the link below to check out all of the goodies and how to enter.


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