Open for Business

Last night after lots of debating, learning new tricks and tips to add to the arsenal of mental notes I already have in my "photography" brain folder, I decided to post an add on Craigslist advertising my photography business. I'm by no means a professional, I'm definitely still considering myself and amateur and just wanting to put my name out there. In less than 12 hours I got a phone call from a local golf course looking to use my work as an advertisement on their score cards. After a few phone calls to check out the legitimacy Josh and I decided this was a smart move. I will be placed as their featured photographer!! I'm pretty stoked and maybe they picked me because I'm new and they knew I'd jump on the opportunity to get my name out there...I dont know. But for $400 I kind of held back for a few hours. I wasn't sure this was worth the money, and still am not 100% sure, but they are currently advertising 40,000 golfers a year, 40,000x5 hours of golf=200,000 of advertising, I can deal with it. Best part is I can pay in payments!! I'm ecstatic and over joyed by the opportunity and the possibility that soon I'll have a decent amount of income coming in to my house. It'll be a lot of hard work, I realize this, but I'm ok with it. A job isn't supposed to be easy.
I've opened up a facebook page for my followers (the whole 6 of you right now) to follow if you'd like https://www.facebook.com/pages/Navillus-Photography/504492819596887?bookmark_t=page

I'm currently offering $50 mini sessions to start building a bigger portfolio. So its a great time to get a few new family portraits at a great price. You also get a cd with edited pics and copyright! Check it out, bring your friends!!

Below are some pictures I took using umbrella's and flash this weekend, courtesy of my mother and sister in laws who have been amazing in helping me with my journey into the photography world. I'm debating whether its worth buying them or just umbrella lights or a few soft boxes....oh decisions.

Big boy!!

I can't believe it's been almost 6 years since my oldest boy was born. By far the roughest pregnancy and the roughest first year I had to go through, but it was all worth it. During my pregnancy with him I worked like a dog as a manager in a maternity store (you'd think they'd give me a break considering the business...no), on top of that I had this horrendous rash. After months of trying to figure it out my ob sent me to a dermatologist who said it was a pregnancy rash that would get worse with subsequent babies. I almost cried. This rash covered my arms and my entire torso, I'd wake up scratching myself and was often bleeding at that point. I was miserable!! However, thankfully the steroids my ob had given me decided to kick in before I purchased the expensive creams the pharmacy was ordering for me! And even more fortunate, I never got that rash again with the last to pregnancies, YAY!!! As for M's first year, the poor kid...he was so tiny. He was born 7lb 13oz and 2 weeks early for induction scheduled prior to my rash dissolving because we were all kind of worried this wouldn't go away until the rash was gone. Anyhow, healthy baby, completely healthy, great hair, perfect. Then we get home...within a week he was throwing up every drop of breast milk he took in. The pediatrician of course said it was normal and to just watch his weight. We watched it for a year and because he never dropped of the charts nothing was ever done. He was 3% for his weight most of that first year. Right around 11 months he finally quit throwing his food up, finally! and he got pretty dang chubby. Now he sits around 45-50% for his weight but he's rather short, which I blame for the lack of care he was given during that first year, I should've been more proactive, I blame myself for not seeking out another doctor....Anyhow, his birthday is next week on the 7th, I'm super excited for it, we're doing a Lego theme. He wanted the Hulk but Lego is something I can create myself for a little less I think :) Yesterday we went out while the weather was semi decent and took some pics. They turned out amazing of course, all thanks to my dslr and my awesome editing skills, seriously I'm getting pretty damned good at making my pictures go from nice to amazing if I do say so myself :). Here's a little collage I put together of the best ones.

Photo-blog post

Im sooooo sooo soo excited to finally have a new camera, an actual dslr and not a freakin Coolpix with no sort of manual settings. I ended up with a Nikon D3100, just because its ridiculous to spend $100 more just to have more megapixels that I don't currently really need. It probably makes it better that I've done the research and learned a ton of things before buying one otherwise I would be completely intimidated and only use the auto settings which work for some things sure but really knowing your manual settings will produce much better photos. For instance, when I do close ups of products for Navillus Creations (www.facebook.com/navilluscreations) I try to set it to A so that I can control the f-stop which will give me that blurred back groud/clear foreground look. However when I wanted to take pictures of the snow falling today I set it to S to control the shutter speed and actually catch some of the snow flakes falling in the photo (it took me a while to figure this out, if it says its to bright, it's too bright, it will NOT take a picture). On another note, I love taking pics of my kids. I use Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 (super old I know) because my uber awesome inlaws let me use their copy which they use in their own PRO-photography pictures. Id like to get Elements soon just because it has features the outdated program I have doesn't and some of the features work way better and take a lot less time. Anyhow, here's some recent pics I've taken and edited in the last couple days, yes they're of my kids, and I'm obsessed with them all :) Got Some of Teagan reading today which turned out super cute but have to edit it a little before posting. With luck I'll have a part time gig with photography by this summer. Have a family shoot in the works as soon as it gets a little warmer out for one of my oldest and best friends. And another next month for Navillus Creations because I desperately need images of photo props since no one ever returns images after I send them $40 in retail worth of items...GRRR!! But yea, we'll see, itd be nice just to start making a someone steady income in the near future.

He has underwear on his head and over his pants, thanks daddy.

you'd think he was stressed over coloring lol

no mommy, no I did not just steal more licorice.
Actually Teagan was twirling around in the background of this one, cant tell can ya?!

What Maddox does best...eat

this was a super dark photo so when I took the shadowing out it looked funny
I think the lower saturation made it turn out pretty well though :)

my love bug, he's so cute

this is the "I ate it, now what?!" look