Halloween Costume Photo Special – No Tricks, Only Treats

You know your kids are going to be the cutest ones on the block.

After all, you’ve been planning their costumes since before the Fourth of July.

Do you really want to  trust these precious memories to a telephone snapshot?    Of course not.

Come on out to the park and let’s do this right.

Once you reserve your time slot, we’ll meet at a Katy area park on Sunday afternoon, October 24.  The exact location depends upon who signs up and of course, weather and park conditions.   Come dressed and ready to go because we’ll only have about 15-20 minutes per child.  That’s long enough to relax and mug for the camera, but still quick enough to accommodate most young attention spans.

Afterward, you’ll receive your very own online password-protected photo gallery and a coupon  for two five-by-seven prints per child or an equivalent value that  you can use toward larger prints or gift items.

Now that’s one sweet deal!

Call 281.773.7465 or e-mail to reserve your time.   We’ll have a SPOOK-Tacular time.

Little Things

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” —  Albert Einstein

An albino praying mantis paid us a visit today.  He made me smile, so I had to stop and share this friendly little fellow with you as well.   I was on the phone with a colleague when my son came home after his classes and told me to go outside and look.   To me, that was worth checking out.  We enjoyed watching him for a while . . . and then he was gone.

Cheers For The End of NOT Football Season

Last week we officially marked the END of  “NOT Football Season.”

With the beginning of the school  year, schedules become jam-packed and action-filled but the best thing is that it is finally time for football. As much as I have learned to enjoy the game, it’s the overall experience that really revs my engines.      As a certified “Band Geek,” for years I felt like the only reason for a football game was to provide an opening and closing act for halftime.

Then I realized what I had been missing for so long.

NOW  . . .  I love it all:  Pickup trucks with antenna flags.  Drum cadences and marching music. Shimmery pompoms and pretty girls jumping up and down.  Waving at old friends in the stands. Inflatable helmets. Cool breezes, although we don’t usually feel them in this part of the country until several weeks into the season. The sound of football pads and helmets crashing into each other.  Hummingbird-sized moths and crickets dive-bombing the fans.  Teenage boys who have just discovered face paint.  Band kids who have written their own cheers for different instrument sections.  “Too BAH  . . . Tooo BAH!” . . .   Scrumptious sunsets.  The smell of sweaty kids intermingled with  freshly popped corn.

And one of the best feelings of all . . . TOUCHDOWN!  MUSTANGS SCORE!

One of my favorite images from 2009. I sure hope to capture more of these this season.

One of my favorite parts of football, naturally,  is photographing the games.  I feel incredibly privileged to be allowed on the sidelines at our local  high school games, and I truly believe that each  of the kids on the field should have access to quality photos of themselves in their shining moments.  This means that in addition to the athletes, I need to capture images of the student trainers, the band, the cheerleaders and mascots, the drill team, the fans in the stands.   Hopefully they will be sharing these images with their own kids 15 to 30 years from now.

Not too long ago, the Athletic Booster club at our high school asked me to help with the program that they sell each week at the football games.  Now, these programs are not your standard stadium leaflets with just the names, numbers and positions of each player.  Our boosters sell ads — LOTS of ads —  to local businesses and to parents who buy half and full page spaces honoring their kids.  The printed programs are spiral bound and bigger than most high-fashion magazines that you find on he newsstands today.

Maybe I’m a little bit crazy for what I did, but since the team had to print a new cover each week any way, I suggested that they change it up a bit with new action photos on the front  rather than the same basic design week after week.  They LOVED the idea and while I bit off a pretty hefty project, it pushed me to develop my graphic art layout skills.    Remember . . . I am a PHOTOGRAPHER, and not a graphic artist.  Still, I know what works.

We started creating a new cover for every game and also stepped up the print quality.  In the center of every program a couple of other very talented photographers and I provide bold and shiny color-plate pages with action photos from the previous week’s game. I usually provide two pages of football action and two more pages featuring the band, cheerleaders, drill team and fans. Quite a few parents have told me how much they love these programs, and because they never know if their students will appear inside, they have a little added incentive to purchase a new book at each game.  This raises a nice tidy sum of money for the Athletic Booster Club.   Once a year we dedicate a program cover to the band as well, acknowledging the grit and determination of approximately 300 more students who take to the field as if going to battle.   I was in MY high school band (Go Midland Lee Rebels) and my sons were all in band too.  I KNOW how hard these kids work. Thankfully our football coach and the board of our athletic boosters know how hard they work  as well.  They have been totally supportive of the band issue, which I think is REALLY cool.

In 2008, the first year I was involved,  our program chair entered  one of our books into a competition for the  National High School Sports Publication Awards and we won the Gold Medal for schools over a particular size with parent involvement.  We chose not to enter in 2009, opting instead to let another school somewhere else enjoy the prestige and excitement that we enjoyed so much.   I’m proud to have contributed to that award but the real thrill I get every week is looking up into the stands and seeing parents and students studying the new programs, looking for photos, and showing them off to each other throughout the evening.

Here’s the program cover for our pre-district season opener this year . . . followed by the inside “action” pages.

Imagine my surprise this year when a couple of photographers from other parts of the country contacted me, asking for tips on creating collages and layouts for their own local schools.  WOW! I still feel like a bit of a newcomer in this area,.  Still, because I spent so many hours in the School of Hard Knocks working on these projects, I believe I have an obligation to help others with their work . . . to the extent of my capabilities. The color pages on the inside are always a little different each week, but here are the ones that we included in the first program of the season in 2010.

Each week as new programs come out, our new covers and action pages will appear in the Sports section of my web site.  It’s kind of fun to look back at programs from the last couple of years and wonder what path we’ll take in the days ahead.

Okay . . . I’m having issues making my links work on the blog page, but if you’ll go to THIS LINK:  Cut and paste it if you have to . . .

http://www.spccreative.com/Sports/Program-Covers-Collages

You should be able to see all published covers and action pages from the last two years as well as new pages as they are released.

Happy Football Season Everyone.  Enjoy FALL!

Catch ’em when you Can

“Didn’t I just walk them into Kindergarten last week?”

It’s something I’ve heard my friends all across the country saying over the last few days as they’ve sent their kiddos off to college.    Truth is, the time really does fly and our nests begin to empty before wer’re really ready.   Betty, however, is a very wise mom.  She knew that her college age daughter who was home for the summer would be out the door again  in a few short weeks and that her two younger sons would be right behind her in the blink of an eye.

We met at  Peckham Park for a portrait session earlier this summer, and our  portraits with all three kids together will only become more and more precious over the years.

I absolutely love to see how different families interact with each other.  They laughed, shared private jokes and all had a wonderful attitude.

Barefoot portraits are something I love for a number of reasons, and that’s what we chose to do for this session.

Still the flip flops that we used to move from one location to the next were just hard to resist.

And there’s nothing more fun or endearing than a memory of kids who aren’t afraid to ham it up for the camera.

Kudos Sis!  Thanks for the eyes!   And guys, thank you for playing along.

The Right Time? Now, of Course

WHOOSH!

Everyone expects their senior year in high school to fly by in record time, but come graduation, they all realize that it went even faster than they ever expected. With graduation festivities behind her, Kristyn, a 2010 graduate of Cinco Ranch High School  realized that she she still needed a good set of  portraits before heading off to college, so she gave me a call.

I’m so glad she did too.

We met at a park early one morning with skies threatening rain  and a humidity level that threatened every trick  known to moisture.  Fogged lenses, frizzy hair,  and  just downright steamy conditions are the norm for Houston mornings, and this day was only a little more extreme than the rest.   We were able to get a few outdoor images in the slow drizzle  before quickly winding up our session under the shelter of a covered picnic area and an underground walkway.

I had recently picked up a colorful umbrella to use as a prop — so I was delighted to pull it out for a while.

With all those bright hues and Kristyn’s sunny outlook, we managed to pretty-well banish any rainy day blues.

Nice Day for Ducks — Seriously

Note to self:  Always carry duck food for park sessions.  You never know when you might need it.

This funny little guy followed us around pecking at our feet the whole time we were shooting, but every time we tried to build a good picture around him (or her), he just ran off quacking. The quacks sounded more like laughs if you ask me, and it was like he was playing a game with us.  The punky topknot on his head made us both laugh right back at him too.

Rainy-Day shoots are fun.  They create unique opportunities  but it’s oh so tricky to deliberately schedule them.

Still, I do look forward to doing more in the very near future, especially with clients as easygoing and pleasant as Kristyn was.

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