kalileenstraphoto blog

Jenn and Greg-San Diego Wedding

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:23:37 +0000

I wanted to post these pictures last night but forced myself to go to bed early! Hopefully I can meet my goal this week of going to bed by 10pm and working out three times this week. I must pause because Lena wants to play toys with me. How can I possibly sit down and force myself to play with stuffed animals. Lena also insists on me making them talk and gets mad if I don’t do different voices for each of the different animals. Ok the toy session wasn’t as bad as I thought. So now a little about Jenn and Greg. Well more about Jen because we are friends. Jen and I met in college at BYU-Idaho. Jen is one of those girls who no one could ever say anything bad about because their is nothing bad to say. She is someone who people gravitate towards because she is so much fun to be around. She always makes you feel good about yourself and is completely selfless. Jen also has a wild side, this brings to mind many crazy nights. One night in particular involved us driving around Provo Utah and Jen throwing mashed potatoes out a car window and some attractive young men. I got to meet Jen and Greg together for the first time during the Styled shoot. Throughout the session Jen couldn’t stop talking about Greg and telling me about things that he liked and things he didn’t like. I thought it was adorable how she shared a little of his personality with me, but even more adorable that every time she shared something she would glance over at him and give him a smile to let him know how much she loved every bit of him. Their wedding day was just as adorable as the couple. Many pieces of the wedding were a little more special than any decorator could duplicate. Jen made her own veil! Their reception was strung with lights by Jens father. Greg’s ring was made from a skate board and I loved the snap shot pictures of Jen and Greg that were hung around the pool. Jen’s flowers by Moranda Fielding who the bride highly recommends. Cassie my sister was my fabulous second shooter for the day. Jen and Greg were married in the LDS San Deigo Temple and we took their portraits at a private beach in Laguna. I was honored to be Jen and Greg’s wedding photographer and was so happy to be able to share that special day with them.

Jen you are beautiful inside and out

Jen and her girls

just waiting for Jen and Greg to come out of the temple

i love taking portraits at the beach especially a private one in Laguna!

Can't say enough about how much I loved her boquet!

Some of the details! The deserts were so yummy.

Here is the beach I keep raving about. I miss the beach

the bridal party

Sneak Peak-Lisa and Luke

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 05:34:44 +0000

I hate sneak peaks. I want to post ALL my favorites and I want to stay up until 1 am editing them. But I am just not going to do that right now. I must remind myself that I have church tomorrow and I will be on my own with my two little ones because the hubby will be working. I just downloaded the pictures from Lisa and Luke’s E session and three things must be said. #1- Lisa and Luke you two are so photogenic and natural in front of the camera. #2- I had so much fun taking your engagement pictures on Friday. #3- Lisa you are beautiful. #4- I can’t WAIT until your wedding. Today I played catch up with photo editing and office work and I have my husband to thank because he took both the kids out for the day so I could get it done. Thanks Jake I love you.

Oh and one more thing. I know you probably could care less but I did not meet my goal of working out three times this week and going to be by ten. Pretty lame but I tried working out last night after my engagement session and my lame-0 gym was closed. Apparently they close early on weekends, which I had no idea because since we moved we switched from 24 hour fitness to a smaller gym and the times are different and I didn’t think to check. Also I have been getting off the computer at around 10:30 every night which puts me going to bed at around 11:00. I need to do better next week. I think I need an alarm on my computer that goes off at 9:45. Do they make alarms for your computer? Something to look into…and I have said to much. Oh one last thing. Since I couldn’t go to the gym last night I watched this movie by my self because my husband was modding his fj80 and he would never be caught dead watching this movie. I really liked it. I love cooking and I will tell you more about that another time.

Sneak Peak-Jenn and Greg San Diego Wedding

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:27:04 +0000

FAQ- how to chose final pictures part 2

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:27:07 +0000

So after re-reading the post I wrote last night I realized I left some stuff out. I forgot to mention how I actually go about selecting the pictures. I use adobe bridge for my work flow and bridge allows you to rate your pictures. I go through and star or rate my favorites. I only go through them once. The hardest part about rating my pictures was for me to learn how to not be wishy washy about a picture. Either the pictures is good enough to keep or not (this is where my rule of thumb comes into play) I also want to re-emphasize the fact that I only go through them once. In the world of business time is valuable so anything I can do to save time will benefit. After I have stared my favorites I sort them by rating and delete all the ones that were not selected. I took a screen shot pictures of this process below. By the way I did make it to bed just a few minutes after 10pm last night. My goal has been to work out three times a week and be in bed by 10pm every night. So far so good. I often fall into the bad habit of staying up really late when I have lots of pictures to edit so this time around I am going to make sure I take care of myself better. I have found that I am actually more productive when I go to bed earlier and work out.

FAQ- how to choose final pictures

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:31:04 +0000

It’s 10:08 and I made a goal this week to be in bed by 10pm every night so I am going to make this fast. My fingers are typing away as fast as they can so maybe when you read this post you will whizz through it because I just said that. Tonight I was trying to finish narrowing down the pictures for Kristen and Brett’s wedding and remembered all the questions I have had from aspiring photographers and curious clients about how I go about doing this. I could probably spend a good hour on the subject but here is the condensed version. When I first upload pictures from a wedding I go through them all and immediately chose my favorites to post on my blog. I only chose any where from 20-40 pictures to post. Here is the kicker about this, if I go through a set a pictures and chose my favorites and then do the same thing the next day my choices may change a bit. It kind of depends on my mood. But the way I choose my favorites is pretty easy I usually gasp or sigh because I love it THAT much, then I know it’s a keeper. You really don’t want to be around me when I am looking at a wedding right after I have shot it because I get pretty excited. After I have chosen my favorites I edit those and post them on my blog. Once I have done that I finish narrowing down the rest of the pictures. Here is a little rule of thumb I use: 1. If it is blurry delete it, although some blurry pictures are actually creative and I will keep them but most of them are not so they go 2. Some one walked in front of the camera or any disruption it goes 3. weird looking faces or eyes closed 4. Way over exposed or under exposed 5. really poorly composed 6. Duplicates chose the best. What I mean on that last one is if I have taken some family pictures and I took 10 all together I will choose only 1-3 of the best out of the group. Something else I think about when I am narrowing down pictures is, does this picture help tell the story of the day and is it meaning full? Maybe a picture of grandma hugging the bride isn’t composed very well but because it helps tell the story it will not get deleted. I know this is a mouth full and not at all well written but the bottom line is try to end up with a set of pictures that looks professional and also helps relive the wedding day and experience the emotion and fun that was felt through out the day. To get me in workshop mode I will try to post some more FAQ’s. And just to let you in on my recipes on the pictures below I used all TOTALLY RAD actions on them: Lux soft, Get faded winter, Botwell Magic glasses and Vignette and blur. I am not sure what opacities on each but they were not 100% on any one action.

“H” Family

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:25:37 +0000

There have been very small, as in very short amounts of time where I have had just a twinkling of a thought that it might be fun to have twins. Then I went to nursing school and that little twinkling disappeared. Then I remember being in a doctors office and a beautiful young mother had a double stroller with the two most adorable baby girls all dolled up with pink bows and pink little matching jammies and blankets and I think I maybe wanted twins for about a whole minuet straight. After taking these pictures and then spending time looking at the pictures afterward I am sure I wanted twins for the longest I ever had before. It had to been at least 5 minuets before all the horrible thoughts about the no sleeping during the new born stage and how huge and stretched out my stomach would get before I decided that no, I really would never wish to have twins. I think mothers who have twins are special to be able to handle such a task. Although I never wish to have twins of my own, or at least not for more than 5 minuets at a time I DO wish to take more pictures of twins. I love capturing the special bond between the two. I will leave you with that but also a little surprise is the announcement of my next WORKSHOP!!!!!!! I will give you all the details in an up coming post but seriously get excited because it is going to ROCK and I am going to teach you so much if you come.