For the past few days, I have been very busy in Charleston, South Carolina learning all that I can from amazing creatives at the Creative at Heart conference. One of the most important things I took away was to focus on the clients I have, not the ones I'm trying to get. All of my couples and families are incredibly special to me. Everything I have is because others believed in me and trusted me enough to let me photograph the most important time in their lives. I get so much back from all of the joy in my clients. You have all helped me reach a point that I thought was just a distant dream. While in Charleston, my fellow photographer friend, Marlayna (marlaynaphotography.com), and I dug deep and pretty much got to the root of what we want from our businesses. It was refreshing to hear "you're doing just fine" from Mary Marantz (justinandmaryweddings.com), and to be true to our story from Shay Cochrane (shaycochrane.com). Our brand should be authentic and in this creative world we need to be a positive community that builds with each other, not one that tears each other down. I'm blown away by the amount of information that I've taken in and I'm so excited for what is to come! Post conference, Marlayna and I did some exploring of the city. We got to see the Market, Rainbow Row, The Angel Oak, and Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams (who also...

Two weekends ago my best friend, Christy, got married to the love of her life, Nate. I was in the bridal party of this beautiful wedding, and what a change it is from photographing weddings to participating! I actually got to dance! Every wedding I photograph I'm always silently singing along to the music, or tapping my foot, or even doing a light variation of the Night at the Roxbury head bob. I always keep it 100% professional, though :P. But at my best friend's wedding, Shawn and I completely put our dance training to good use and it was a blast! When the weekend was over I was sad about leaving, and even now I'm tearing up a little reliving all of the great moments I had with Christy, Nate, and their family. They now all live in North Carolina and I just need for teleportation to be a thing. Enough sappy stuff. Shawn and I ended up staying an extra day in the South and I just cannot believe how breathtaking it was. We strolled around the wedding site, which was at this great spot called Oldfield River Club and really enjoyed the change of scenery. I now want more than ever to photograph a wedding down in South Carolina or Georgia because those trees are on a totally different level. We went over to the Hilton Head area and determined that it will be our next vacation spot :P. Ate lunch next to the water, played some...

On Tuesday my family and I went to the carnival at Harundale Plaza, it was still daylight out so there wasn't that many people out yet, which made the day really great! My niece and nephew are 10 and 8, having them run around in a crowded area never sounds like a fun time, being able to walk around with them and take photographs without that worry of watching them like a hawk as they zig zag through groups was definitely a relief. Since they pretty much had the whole park to themselves there was no lines and they rode all the "non-scary" rides in about 30 mins....and they rode those rides two or three times that has to be some kind of record, hahah! Shawn and I even got to ride some of the rides, which was exciting - I actually forgot how scary that giant slide is. But of course Shawn had more of an exciting time since he got to ride the ferris wheel AND the bumper cars, my nephew is crazy about Shawn, so as soon as we got into the carnival Danny exclaimed, "SHAWN AND ME ARE GOING ON THE FERRIS WHEEL!" :) So cute.  I wish every day could be like this.                         Such a fun day! ...

This Christmas was pretty cool. I received a lot of great camera stuff from my mom and step-dad and even got a Kinect from them too! What was more fun than the things I got was the fact that the previous night I had spent the whole day with parents and, since I usually stay next door at my grandma's house, I spent the night in my old room. It was a lot of fun getting to wake up on Christmas, go into my parent's room, and bug them at 7:30am, instead of having to call them, and then walk over, and blah blah blah boring stuff! Unfortunately, my mom wouldn't wake up, so I had to sit for 30 minutes with my dog, Thor, by the Christmas tree. I started thinking how his health and spunk haven't been what they use to be and that he's already 10 years old. I decided right there that I would show how Thor's Christmas went, it was a fun little project for the morning and helped past the time while my mom and step-dad slept (but seriously? Who sleeps on Christmas?).   Thor waiting patiently (much better than me) FINALLY! Mom woke up! Ready for presentssssssss   Hahaha   Wasting nooo time (he also stole a lot of his Busy Bones behind our backs)   After chowing on his treats, it was time for breakfast. But Thor's begging got him kicked out of the kitchen :P Thanking Mom for his...