DailyPhotos > Shelly  > Other > Shelly's Photo Blog 2008
This gallery is a melange of my photographic styles as well as a look into my daily life. I try to capture something new every day or else to find something that fits the day. It's a great excuse to carry my camera with me more often than not, and it allows me to stop and take those pictures that need to be taken.

To see what 2007 looked like, click on this link: http://spccreative.smugmug.com/gallery/2958746_n6VBs#238075802
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Shelly > July 14, 2008 ME! Here's a HUGE salute to each of you who turns out wonderful SP's over and over. That's so much harder to do than it looks, and I'm asking -- BEGGING for your advice and suggestions! (not that I plan to make the SP thing a regular event, but it is a skill I need to improve) I had my lights and backdrop set up, and was waiting for people to come in for headshots, so I decided to play around a bit. First because autofocus would have picked up on the backdrop, I put a big cardboard sign on my stool and focused manually on that. Then I used my timer and ran around to try and put my face in the right place. It would have been comical to watch, and when someone walked in I jumped up and said I was "playing with my lights." That part was kind of embarrassing, but not too much. I don't get embarrassed like I used to. This is a pretty serious crop because I was about out of the frame anyway. There was nothing more to leave in at the top left, and I've become a fan of very tight headshots. I've never considered myself very photogenic and now have decided that I probably don't wear enough makeup, but I kind of liked this one because I look happy and not too goofy. Ran it through several different filters before I picked this one with a friendly glamor/faded effect. It is what it is -- and that's my Picture of the Day and I'm a stickin' to it.
Shelly > December 26, 2008 Twitterpated! I did an engagement shoot this morning with a lovely young couple. The groom and one of our sons were very close friends in high school and college, and Mike and I love him like one of our own. The bride is quickly stealing our hearts too! You'll see more in the days ahead, I'm sure, but this one is so much fun I just couldn't resist putting it up right away, and I already see some things I want to do differently -- but not right now. That's what I get for posting dailies on the spur of the moment.
Shelly > December 26, 2008 Twitterpated! I did an engagement shoot this morning with a lovely young couple. The groom and one of our sons were very close friends in high school and college, and Mike and I love him like one of our own. The bride is quickly stealing our hearts too! You'll see more in the days ahead, I'm sure, but this one is so much fun I just couldn't resist putting it up right away, and I already see some things I want to do differently -- but not right now. That's what I get for posting dailies on the spur of the moment.
Shelly > December 25, 2008 Toblerone and a Twenty Anyone who has spent Christmas with us within the last four or five years knows the story about the Toblerones and the Twenty Dollar Bills. Tonight I'll share it with you -- my photo friends -- as a way of saying how blessed I am to consider you a part of my second family . . . here goes . . . For people with blended families or with other baggage in their lives, Christmas is not alway an easy time. Sometimes our most fervent prayer is just to get through the holiday and into a new year. We worry about meeting expectations, honoring traditions we may not quite understand, keeping everyone happy, juggling visitation schedules with other parents and with twice as many sets of grandparents as traditional families have, and more. Simply buying gifts for five kids can be very hard -- treating everyone fairly, trying to find each one something they'll appreciate. Then there are the stocking stuffers -- those fun little items that should coax smiles out of jaded young teens but instead just get ignored, tossed aside, or trashed. It really became a pointless tradition, robbing the joy from a day that should be sublime. So . . . one year we decided to rein in the frivolous gift giving, focus on a few carefully-chosen items and spend the day playing games and enjoying each other's company. The kids, after all, were nearly grown. None believed in Santa anymore, and sometimes it seemed like torture making them sit together in one room to open stockings and gifts together. On that Christmas Eve as we laid out our few carefully selected goodies, I had a BIG meltdown. My practical back to basics plan had backfired . . . There simply wasn't enough "STUFF," and I felt like I had failed the family. Whether they wanted the silly little stocking gifts or not, I knew that they would expect them. Between sobs, I tried to explain my emotions to Mike, but he was already ahead of me. "Put on your shoes," he said. "We're going to buy useless plastic items." We got into his truck and headed toward the nearest 24 hour Walmart to find that it had closed five minutes earlier at midnight. Across the street,though, we found a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy. To our shock, that place was so busy we nearly didn't find a parking place. The folks in the aisles were not the people we had seen cramming the malls and shopping centers, buying the latest and greatest overpriced electronics and jewelry by the bag-full for the past six weeks. They were manual laborers coming off their late shift, stopping to add a gift for the surprise visiting relative. They were medical technicians, picking up hairbrushes and hand lotion for the patients who had no visitors. They were young fathers, thankful to find an open store for a bottle of baby Tylenol. There was a drunken Santa with his beard askew and coat unbuttoned, scanning the racks of paperback novels. They were young men with their latest paychecks, looking for perfume and bath salts for their brides. They were young couples on their way home from parties, but looking for snacks to take the edge off their first Christmases without their families. These were people for whom an all night pharmacy may have been their only opportunity to provide Christmas gifts for their families. They were people we didn't know, but people who touched our hearts deeply. We walked up and down every aisle, people watching but of course we never found the elusive gift item that would restore our naively-sought Christmas magic. On the way out of the store, we found five Toblerone bars -- one for each son and a favorite of everyone. That was our ticket. After a quick stop at the ATM machine on the way home we wrapped $20 bills around each one. On Christmas morning when the lamest of stocking loot had been explored and our gifts unwrapped, Mike told the kids about our midnight trip and why we had taken it. He told them how we wanted to give them each a magical Christmas that would fill them with sweet memories for years to come -- but that the best we could do was to let each one know that we loved him very much and we were just happy to have them with us to celebrate the birth of our Savior. He told them that our celebration was not one of presents and toys, but a celebration of our family -- battered, patched, and scarred as it was. It was a celebration of redemption, gratitude and grace. Every year we repeat the Toblerone tale and pass out a similar bar to every young person who joins us as we celebrate Christmas. We think about the "midnight masses" at all-night drugstores across the country and we count our many many blessings.
Shelly > December 23, 2008 Under Mawmaw's watchful eye, Jumpin' Jett checks out the Christmas goodies in Leslie's kitchen. He was actually in motion too. THis is practically a series with parts of his head in some shots and none of him at all in others . . .
Shelly > December 22, 2008 Brinley models her version of Santa-wear. It's amazing what you can do with crepe paper and quilt batting these days.
Shelly > December 21, 2008 The cousins have a firepole for a quick escape from the kids' rooms into their game room. It didn't take long for Olivia to learn how to slide down just like the biggest and best of 'em.
Shelly > December 20, 2008 And the Winner Is . . . (Sorry, just a snapshot) We had our family Christmas get together this weekend. Amid all the food, fun, food, food and food we split into the three branches of the family -- the Porsch, Hays and Twitty Clans. Each family had a roll of red crepe paper, a sheet of black construction paper, a roll of masking tape and a bag of batting and seven minutes to dress up one person like Santa Claus. Who won? Was it Uncle Donald, Mawmaw, or my nephew, Jett? Let's just say it's the first time any of us can remember that Mawmaw has NOT won first place in a family competition. This was a GREAT activity to break up the day and get everyone involved in a little sillines across the generations. I'd highly recommend it.
Shelly > December 18 Isn't She Lovely? Remember Mawmaw from my Thanksgiving pictures? Well, here she is around the time of her wedding . . . and here's a link to her recent picture. http://spccreative.smugmug.com/gallery/4550624_LCxaW#429560928_CxaLK I've had this picture of her on my desk for several months because I wanted to try my hand at restoring it. Here's the original and my current state (note I haven't said final yet) Did all kinds of work on the edges first. Then I realized that the proprtion was so long and skinny that we couldn't get a standard print out of it. That's why I added the torn paper frame. I'm not so sure I love the frame enough to leave it -- or if I should just try to build out the edges from the original. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Shelly > December 17, 2008 The original to this photo was a simple sweet image. Two people, fully dressed and sitting upon a beautifully-made bed. Once I added some different treatments and silhouetted the couple, it just came alive. "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." -- Mignon McLaughlin
Shelly > December 16, 2008 "When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let go." -- Carol Burnett Just a sample from a recent family session. Melt My Heart!
Shelly > December 15, 2008 The Snowglobe Next Door Okay . . . I know that 45 degrees is really not that cold, and I feel very badly for those in the northeast who are covered in snow and ice and without power this week. Seriously -- I can't imagine how they cope. For us . . . anything in the 40's is FRIGID! In the nine years that we have lived in Houston I have become terribly soft in regards to cold weather. That's why I turned our neighbor's house into a snowglobe. I finally figured out why it was so chilly inside, and it was that we had forgotton to turn the AC OFF and to switch over to heat. Actually nothing was running, so I suppose we'll appreciate the slightest benefit in our next electric bill.
Shelly > December 5, 2008 Found this really handsome family rolling around in the leaves, so I stopped them and asked if I could take their picture. They were just SO nice! ; D
Shelly > December 4, 2008 Curl Up and Dye A hairdresser in LaGrange, TX has a wonderful sense of humor. This salon next door to the historic cemetery has called out to me the last three or four times I have passed through town. It seems like the only times I travel, it is because I am on my way someplace. DOH! Taking the time for unassigned photo stops is a luxury that I still don't afford myself often enough. This stop on the way home from our Thanksgiving gathering was planned from the get-go. Is it bad to laugh in the cemetery? "Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you." --Elsie DeWolfe, Pioneering Interior Decorator
Shelly > December 3, 2008 Mawmaw More Thanksgiving Blessings Revealed This is my grandmother, Hannah! She is nearly 93 years old, lives on her own, and is by far the most popular person at dominoes and at the Wal-Mart Coffee Clatch. She's even the organizer of a new "walking group" in her hometown. Why? Probably because of the philosophy that has defined her life as long as I can remember. "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." And she has PLENTY to say! Bet you thought that was Thumper's line . Thumper learned it from Mawmaw when she fed him specially prepared salads on her back porch.
December 16, 2008

"When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let go." -- Carol Burnett

Just a sample from a recent family session. Melt My Heart!
Shelly > December 16, 2008 "When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let go." -- Carol Burnett Just a sample from a recent family session. Melt My Heart!
December 16, 2008

"When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let go." -- Carol Burnett

Just a sample from a recent family session. Melt My Heart!
Camera: Canon (Canon Eos 40d) |
more details: exif |
original size: 3888px x 2592px |
Current: 600px x 400px |
Other sizes: S • Medium • L |
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