For the past month I've been working on submitting some of my 2015 weddings to different inspiration blogs. Yesterday, I received my 4th rejection and I have to tell you: it sucks. Every wedding Shawn and I photograph I feel the improvement in us as a partners and as photographers, but being sent denials starts to wear on me. It makes me feel completely inadequate and almost as if all the progress I see is not real. Nothing really compares to skimming an email for the word "unfortunately", and then shutting down when you see it. There isn't any way to prepare for it or deal with it any better. But the more I've put our work out there, the shorter my "shut down" time has become. What use to take half of a day of repeatedly analyzing and thinking of what I possibly did wrong has now turned into responding with a "thank you for your consideration" and moving on. My photos might not be for everyone or every blog, but I do know that there is a place out there for myself and others with a similar style. It's just about digging through all those rejections and finding the eventual acceptance email. Disclaimer: In the process of writing my thank you emails, I do sit for about 5 minutes just staring at the words, wishing they could wrap me up in a tight hug, haha. Everyone has to face rejection at some point in their...

Two weekends ago, Shawn and I decided that it would be really fun to go camping. He had received A LOT of camping gear from his parents, my parents, and me this past Christmas, so we had to start using it at some point! We travelled out to Elk Neck State Park up in North East, Maryland (this isn't the general area of the park, it's the name of the town where the park was located, this made my parents really confused for some reason :P.) When we finally were finished shopping at the local Walmart for food, extra sweat pants, and blankets (it was freezing) we finally made it to our campsite. It was around 10:30 pm and pitch black out, we didn't know where the other campsites were located and we thought we heard water nearby, but we couldn't be sure. Shawn, being the expert wilderness man he is, quickly set up the tent and I sorta helped move all our stuff in - I don't think I was very helpful because I was busy taking night pictures, which I will show but not until the end of this post since they are my favorite! We fell asleep pretty quickly and the next day it rained the entire morning and was forecasted to rain most of the day. When we caught a break in the downpour Shawn and I were starving so we got the stove, the sausage, and the pancake mix ready and made the fastest...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, EVERYONE!!! Even though everyone makes a big deal out of it being a romantic, Ineedaboyfriendorgirlfriendtoenjoyit, day I've always thought of it as kind of a day to celebrate with anyone. It's never been a hated day in my eyes, I mean, I get candy from my step-dad, my mom tells me she loves me (she does that all the time, but it's a "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, I LOVE YOU thing) it's just a good day to either spend it with family or a significant other. Maybe I'm the only one that looks at it that way, but I guess my parents never made me feel like it was a day that HAD to be spent with a boyfriend, heck, before I had boyfriends they would take me and my step-sister out to dinner with them. So, YEAH, moral of this story is - you don't need to blacklist this day just because you don't get taken out to a fancy dinner with a girlfriend or boyfriend, your family can help make the day just as happy :).  ANYWAY, last month I tried to make my own stamps, I was very happy with the results! I know I just got done saying how YOU DON'T NEED NO MAN, but I do have one and he does make me very happy, so my motivation to...

Wahhhhh, I haven't updated in forever! Okay, two weeks. A little update: I've been sick for the past two weeks, so I haven't been able to do much posting. I'm going to be posting TWICE this week, tonight, (obviously) and then tomorrow (which will be a Halloween-ish blog). I feel like I need to make-up for what I have not posted! And since I am feeling kinda better, I'm able to concentrate on something other than a cup of tea and the inside of my eye lids :P. ANY WHO! Two weekends ago my boyfriend, Shawn, and I took a little trip to Patapsco State Park, we had visited there before (I wrote a blog on that time as well) but that time was just a hiking adventure. THIS time had food involved, which made it an infinity times more cool!    Our graffiti table   We had apple slices Black bottom cuppiecakes and....   BIRTHDAY PLATES THAT WERE 99 CENTS!    We actually had a lot more food (sandwiches, chips, and watermelon), but we ate those items too quickly :P. After our lunch time was over we started walking around the park, it was chilly and all fall like with leaves everywhere and orange and yellow colors, really, really splendid.               Hmmmm, the day was perfect...

First, I really love old photographs and it doesn't matter to me if it is my family or someone else's family, I just looooove them! Second, my grandma found a tin full of old family photos in my great grandma's house, so, naturally, I swiped the tin and took it to my apartment to look through. As I started sifting through the photos I noticed there were A LOT from when my great grandpa was in (I think) the Korean War, which were really interesting because I had only seen a few photographs of him from when he was younger. Half of the photos of him were with his buddies, a few were with random women (before he married my great grandma), and then the rest were shots of the army equipment and the land. As I neared the bottom of the tin I found a SUPPPPER old photo of my great grandma when she was probably 12 years old. I sat and stared at it for a little while because I see my great grandma how she is now and how she has been for my entire life, but then I see this photo of a little girl that claims to be her, it makes me slightly teary eye'd to see the younger her, I can't really explain it. But I know that it makes me love photographs even more. Of couse there were the other standard...

So on Saturday, my boyfriend, Shawn, and I went to Patapsco State Park because it was close to my house and we wanted to go walk some trails. It was a pretty cool day (temperature wise) and fun to get out and do something natury :). I took my camera and took a bunch of pictures of the trails, trees, and of course Shawn :P. He actually didn't mind me having my camera pointed at him most of the time, he is a big ham so I think he enjoyed it quite a bit. Anyway, we stayed out there for about an hour and a half and then walked back since the park was closing at 8:30 and it was currently 8:40 :P. I took a little looksy at the images and decided that I haven't played enough with this pack of filters I got for Photoshop, so I did that! Got some cool results with it and I only used like....4 of the different color effects on my images and there are about 100 others! I gots a lot of fun ahead of me! :D IMAGE TIME!     ...

So, the semester is over and Christmas is upon us. Maryland had it's first semi awesome snow-fall, which was....ACTUALLY AWESOME! I went outside and, of course, took photos :). I don't have much to write in this entry, so I'll just show some photos from my time spent outside in the beautiful wonderfullness that is snow.   At this point, I started to have a camera love affair with my shoes. I have a bunch more images, but I thought two were enough :P And finally, a silly image of myself that shows the level of happy that snow gives me. I truly love snow and winter in general <3 Less than a week until Christmas! EEEEEEEE :D. I am so excited for Christmas this year! The first time in two years I have actually been happy for Christmas to be right around the corner :) I fell off the wagon with the blog updating these past couple of weeks, I promise I will try to not let that happen again :) ...

Well, I haven't updated in a while, I have been super swamped with projects at school, tests, papers, internship, etc. Anyway, I'm here now! I have some exciting news, I received my NEW camera!!! EEEEKK, I haven't had much time to play with it, but yesterday my niece and nephew were over, so I got the chance to take some pictures of them and some photos of the stuff around me. I had to use my niece as a subject for one of my classes, I'll post those photos once I'm done worrying about it. So, for today, there are no photos from summer! Hahaha, these photos are all from yesterday and I'm totally in love with my new Nikon. Reading in 2015. What the heck was I thinking with my editing XD. ...