Puppy Photography

Tony, Amy, and the kids came to visit for Thanksgiving and brought the puppies with them.  I was excited to see everybody and was sad to see them leave yesterday.  But while they were here I got to have a little fun photographing the puppies.  They'll be 6 weeks old tomorrow and in two weeks I get to go pick them up and bring them home with me.  Originally I was just going to bring one puppy home but my mom fell in love with the brown puppy who has a very sweet disposition so I'm bringing them both back.  My puppy is the black and brown one who is very spunky and playful.  I decided to name her Lulu and my mom is still working on her name but right now she's thinking about Nina.  The kids call my mom Nana so she thought it would be cute to have her be Nana's Nina. 

my little lulu bear

Katie & Andy

Went out to Lakeside Park yesterday morning to photograph my good friend Katie and her husband Andy.  Even though it was pretty windy it was still a beautiful morning and fairly warm for November.  Fortunately there were still lots of colorful leaves on the ground, not so much in the trees but they were very good sports and I got some great shots of the two of them.  These are a few of my favorite photographs of the day.

The Puppies

In about 6 weeks, if the puppy is healthy and ready to leave mom, I'll be bringing a new puppy home.  So nothing too artsy about this one I just wanted to share a few photos of the 2 week old puppies.  Not sure which one I'm going to pick yet but they are really adorable.  They are both girls and one looks exactly like the mom and the other exactly like the dad.  That's right people, just try and resist all the cuteness.

little bird egg

One of my favorite photographs I did last week is of this tiny little bird egg.  I was photographing for Madison Magazine at Sardine and while I was waiting for the food to come out to be photographed I spotted this tiny little bird egg sitting on a table on the patio.  Off and on all day it had been raining and while I wasn't able to get onto the patio I was able to quickly set up a shot through the glass doors.  At first I was sad to see this little egg all alone but when I looked closer the bird had already hatched and the shell was all that was left.  I'm kind of in love with this photograph right now.

Wyatt

I have alot of super cute photos to share this week.  It's all about babies and tiny little cute things.  Maybe I have babies on the brain, possibly a product of turning 30 in a month from today...  I don't know but in the last week I photographed my friend's adorable little toddler, a tiny bird egg, and puppies.  Especially after seeing my niece and nephews in their halloween costumes this past weekend I'm on total cute overload.  Gotta love it.  So the weekend before halloween I went out to the little farmer, the best pumpkin, apple picking, and all around awesome place to go in October, to photograph my friend, Leslie's, son Wyatt.  Very cute little guy with lots of energy.  We chased him all over the place, pumpkin fields, apple trees, fuzzy animals but we had a great time and we had caramel apples afterward so all in all it was a good day.  We got some great photographs and here a few of my favorite.

Portrait with Sarah

I had a great time this past weekend photographing with my good friend Sarah and her two puppy dogs.  Yes we call them puppies even if they are old and gray.  We went out to Hobbs woods which has tons of great walking trails and we discovered is the place to go for fall portraits.  The colors were amazing and there are so many different spots to do photography.  But since that is one of the only places here that allows you bring your dog, everybody, their grandma, and their dog were there.  Fortunately we were able to find a couple great places to photograph that didn't have other people around which allowed Ashley and Hunter to calm down and allowed me to get some beautiful shots.  Here are some of my favorite shots of the day. 

Mirrors

Over the summer I worked on a couple painting projects for when I have my own place again.  One project I've been wanting to do for a while is painting the frames of a bunch of mirrors to later hang as a collage.  I bought 8 mirrors in different sizes and shapes and painted them three different colors.  I might add more mirrors later but I thought 8 was a good start.  It was fun trying to find different mirrors but I had the most luck at Goodwill and found all the mirrors there.

I started by taping off the edges of the mirror with a painters tape.  There are a variety of ways you could attack this project, you could remove the mirrors, tape them off, use a scrapper to scrape the paint off later, or just paint really carefully.  I would suggest sanding the surface of the frame a little bit as well to help the primer stick.  I prefer painting with a brush but you could use a spray primer too.  I primed all of the frames with two coats and let them dry over night. 

After the primer dried, I painted the frames in black, turquoise, and chartreuse. I painted them each a couple coats until the finish was nice and even.  To give the frames a little more depth I painted watered down black paint onto the colored frames and wiped it off with a rag.  This leaves the black paint in the carved areas making the raised areas pop out (see below). 

Let the paint dry, remove the tape or scrape off the paint on the mirrors and you have gorgeous refurbished mirrors to hang on the wall.  Most of the furniture I own is hand me downs or bought second hand so to give things a personality and a new life is important to me.  I can't wait to hang these up in my own place someday soon.