A nature photographer, I am not, but during an editing break this afternoon I ran across this shot that I took this past October. It's the view from underneath my favorite tree in our front yard. A little out of season, but pretty nonetheless. Raise your hand (or comment...?) if you like trees like I do. :)

Got some fun photographs from one of my presentations at WPPI...see if you can spot you :)

apparently my presentation style is very similar to how one would direct traffic ... while in concert ... while sending someone to their room ...

aw, i love those smiles :)

Thanks, again, for showing up - and for the fun documentation!

Just returned from a busy, busy, wonderful week in Las Vegas - the WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) Convention, with an estimated 15,000 photographers in attendance from all over the world. I so enjoyed the entire week, kicking off with two days of intense print judging of some very cool categories, including photojournalism, humor, fashion, and nature & landscape. I had the great opportunity to judge alongside some immensely talented individuals, even if I didn't agree with all their judgements ;). But that was kind of the coolest part of it - challenging each others' opinions and sharing such an intense interest in all of the work. On Tuesday, I had a blast presenting my platform program on children's portrait photography. The good news is that I was thrilled to see a fantastic turnout of photographers ..... The bad news is that the room was so full that they had to start turning away photographers who were hoping to get into the room about 20 minutes before the presentation actually started. Quite a lot of them, actually, so I was asked to offer an encore presentation the next day, which was also a really amazing experience. I think it had everything to do with the luckiness of the city. All in all, I had the great honor or presenting to about 700 photographers. Darn good-looking ones, too, I might add ;) A huge thanks to all those who have written in response to seeing the programs, too. It means a great deal to me. I would be remiss if I didn't sent a special thanks to Lisa Walter and Rachel Garrison for their unbelievable down-to-the-wire recreation of a fabulous slideshow put together originally by Kaitlin Rogers (who created such a lovely piece). Long story short, we had to re-up the show the day of the presentation, but they did a fabulous job, and they turned it around just in the nick of time. One last cool thing - just before I left for Vegas I was honored to be selected as WPPI's monthly spotlight photographer, with a really sweet writeup in their newsletter. Thanks for the recognition, it is so appreciated....here's a glimpse of the article...

I also got some great images while out in Vegas or had some great ones sent to me - I'll be posting some of those very soon!!

Ginny was such a treat to photograph. After about 5 minutes, she was completely relaxed and confident in front of the camera, which I think comes through so beautifully in the photographs. Even more than photographing this session, I enjoyed seeing her husband, Ben, stop dead in his tracks, jaw halfway to the floor, when he spotted Ginny's portrait displayed at the entrance to their reception. I think he and Ginny's mom may still be duking it out for that portrait... I love this giggle from Ginny at the very start of the shoot, before working out all of those nerves. Adorable!

This is the image she chose for the portrait. It was just as I was shooting this, that I realized she was a spitting image of Julianne Moore. It had been bugging me all afternoon.

And an especially gorgeous expression to end on.