You may have heard that we’ve got a new Grand Dane. That’s right, our kiddos made us proud grand-pup-parents again with this handsome guy, and we couldn’t be happier.
They brought him over for dinner last week so we had to dash up to the studio for a few quick baby portraits. He is a Great Dane, so we know he won’t stay this small for long. Get a load of those PAWS!
We don’t play in the studio often together when the kids come over, but decided this would be a great occasion for our daughter in love to step into the gorgeous lilac dress that we recently added to our studio collection. Isn’t she a dream?
Laughter and puppy breath. Sooooo sweet! We had a wonderful time playing together and it is going to be so much fun watching this pup grow up. His name is Dos, and he’s the second official mascot of Grateful Dane Distilling Co. right here in Houston, Texas.
The next time you are enjoying a cold locally craft distilled beverage and wonder if there really is a Dane behind the label, now you know!
The original Grateful Dane, Jaeger, will never be replaced. He left a pretty big pawprint on our hearts to fill, but I believe Dos has begun filling that space quite nicely.
It’s time to shake the dust off my blogging fingers and let the high school class of 2020 know that SPCcreative is back up and running and ready to create the perfect senior portraits for you.
The past two years have been hard for us here at SPCcreative. It was two years ago just last week that Hurricane Harvey ate our home and our studio, trying his hardest to knock us to the ground. The road back has not been a fun or easy one, but finally we are in a very good place and feel blessed beyond measure, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.
Over these two years, I pulled back drastically from my business to take care of our rebuilding efforts and to do my best to stay calm and focused. During that time period I did not actively market our services, and only took on a few select clients one at a time. As much as I love working with seniors, it was my choice that I only photographed SIX of them over those two years. Yep, just six. But that was good. Each session brought us new challenges that made me wonder if I should be shooting at all. Some days I could barely even find my camera. Still in spite of our need to wing it, every single one of these kids absolutely ROCKED their sessions. Check ’em out!
You’ve got to hand it to them, the kids who came to us for portraits in 2018 and 2019 were great sports. We improvised like never before, providing hair and makeup in among hanging painters drop cloths while balancing ourselves on paint buckets and hopping over stacks of flooring material.
Oh … and it was all dusty. SO.VERY. DUSTY.
We blocked up windows with black plastic and moved backdrops and lights into whatever room could offer us just a little space. We adjusted our outdoor angles to cleverly hide the contractor’s porta potty.
We laughed.
What other choice did we have?
Thankfully most of the outdoor sets in our Studio backlot survived being submerged. We tossed a few things, hosed the mud off the rest, added fresh paint here and there, and brought in a few new fun props to pull off some fun fresh concepts. Oh, and the piano! What a find! How many studios do YOU know with their very own outdoor piano?
Class of 2020 — Here’s Lookin’ at You.
This year’s gonna be so bright you’ll def need shades.
We’re currently booking senior portrait experiences for the class of 2020. With only a couple of openings left in October and November, it’s already time to plan ahead into spring break. The best dates are filling fast.
Let’s mix your look and personality with our expertise. Together we’ll create the senior portraits you’ve dreamed of. Call the studio today at 281.773.7465. Let’s start planning your portraits now.
I simply MUST share my favorite new Christmas Tradition with you. If you do something twice during the holidays and you enjoy it, it becomes a tradition, right?
THIS is how the Wallace Family of Katy, Texas rolls!
Seriously, they’ve got to be the FUNNEST Christmas Family in Texas.
You see, It all started when Mom, Jenny, called in 2017 looking for a fun and unique family Christmas card. They had a general concept in mind, but needed a pro to help them pull it off. Oh my goodness! It was exactly the project that had been bubbling in my own brain for quite a while, and suddenly these people just called me to create it! How does that even happen? Did I ever tell you how much I LOVE my job?
As we began planning for our session, I reached out to one of my photography instructors and friends, Dan McLanahan. Dan is very well-known in professional circles for his amazing skills and talents, but my brain at this time was all-consumed by the reknown “Friday Night Food Fight” composite that he had created a year before. Click on this link to check it out! Dan gave me some pointers to help make our session go smoothly, and he also offered a gentle but extremely helpful critique during the post-production stages of Christmas Kitchen Chaos 2017.
The magic of a project like this comes in compiling several photographs until one composite image is complete. I don’t know what part of this scenario I enjoyed the most.
It could have been Scott’s flaming skillet. (Yes we used real fire).
Or Jenny’s flying flour which looked so realistic because the sons hid behind the island throwing flour and mashed potato flakes into the air until we captured our perfect messy cloud.
Maybe it was Braden’s athletic skills catching a football mid-air with his LEFT hand so that we could still see his face –HOW MANY TIMES?
Josh’s feigned boredom with the whole scenario absolutely cracked me up because it couldn’t have been further from reality. In fact, he offered keen thoughts, insight, and even served as a voice-activated lightstand throughout the session both last year and this year.
However, the story I LOVE to tell about this shoot is about the family dog, Brinkley. This dog is so well-trained that he absolutely refused to steal the lasagna off the counter. In order to make that scenario happen, we had to send dad to another part of the house while Jenny and the sons coerced and tempted him.
This was my first ever attempt at a relatively complex composite image, and it was so much fun. The Christmas card recipients started asking what this year’s card would look like, and the Wallaces quickly realized that they couldn’t ever go back to a traditional smiling family portrait card.
When they called me this year, we sat down together and brainstormed until we came up with a new concept.
Deck the Halls — Wallace Style
The family has actually experienced a couple of real-life falling Christmas tree incidents, so they knew that their friends and relatives would understand the significance.
Everyone maintained their basic persona from 2017. Jenny’s tripping over her own enthusiasm, and so surprised that she’s practically juggling the ornaments as they smash to the floor. Josh is once again absorbed in his technology and light untangling mess. Braden’s adding Santa to the top of the tree — Elf Style. And of course we’ve got Scott, once again about to burn down the house with his Griswold-inspired electrical connection.
We even included last year’s card on the television screen at the back of the room.
Best memory from this year’s photography session? The pure thrill on the guys’ faces when they got to actually throw glass ornaments up into the air, allowing them to smash on the ground. Josh said it was the one thing that you’re always told not to do.
“Don’t drop the ornaments, don’t let them break, be careful with them. Don’t make a mess.”
But on this one day we shattered ornaments on the floor and made a royal mess.
Merry Christmas from SPCcreative Photography via The Wallace Family.
Keveney Evanne is one of those people who just draws you in with a feeling of calm confidence all wrapped up with a big, bold, energetic twist.
And after spending some time with her, I left feeling refreshed and confident. Now, if THAT wasn’t backwards! After all, as a photographer I consider a large part of my job to be putting my client at ease and making HER feel comfortable enough to bare her soul for my lens. In this case, it’s almost as if the energy was reversed.
That really comes as no surprise, though, because Keveney IS The Energy Wizard. and I was delighted to work with her as she re-branded her personal coaching business, Keveneyevanne.com.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that in talking with her to plan her photography session, I was a little bit — okay, a good bit — out of my element. After all, I’m just a small town gal from Midland-Gosh-Dern-Texas who never was even exposed to concepts like chakras, auric cleansing, or universal law. The theories always intrigued me but I truly knew nothing of them.
Please don’t laugh, but my first though was, “How do we illustrate Keveney’s work without falling into Harry Potter meets Fairy Godmother?”
Ha! It wasn’t hard at all.
Keveney’s brand is solid and grounded because she works with high-level professionals who don’t mess around. Still, she is serenely uplifting. She uses a palette of deep rich plum and violet along with natural elements, calmexpressions peppered with joyful invitation.
She helps people like lawyers, engineers, doctors, professional coaches — and even their pets– break free from the the illusions of what society says their life should be. Together they align their goals and actions with their intuition, otherwise known as their “gut.”
Keveney describes herself as a free spirit who had achieved a wildly successful life with a thriving legal career, beautiful home, loving husband, two great dogs, and more. Still she became disenchanted, so she started to wander.
She didn’t just aimlessly amble around until she found something palatable. She set aside her legal practice and took on adventures that could conceivably become another “Eat, Pray, Love” genre novel. She practiced yoga in Costa Rica. She cooked alongside award-winning Native American chefs and built a sweat lodge with shamans in New Mexico. She studied with a world renowned animal communicator at a horse rescue in the Texas Panhandle. She learned about ancient healing and energetic technologies… And she played on the beaches of California.
Now settled back in Houston, she puts all that she has learned together to help others move past their history to a different and fulfilling mindset.
I loved working with her — and have learned so much just by hanging out with her for a while. It will be fun to watch her prosper along with her clients.
This is Brandon. He’s graduating in just a few short weeks from Kempner High School, and I’m so glad that we were able to photograph this handsome young man.
Planning his senior portrait session presented quite a challenge. He was scheduled to come in last fall, but because of Hurricane Harvey, our entire studio, both inside and out was a shambles. He and his mom graciously and patiently offered to wait while we mucked out and rebuilt our flooded home and studio, and we felt certain that we’d be ready to roll before Spring Break. Then spring rolled around, and because contractors and supplies have been in such short supply, we were nowhere near ready.
BUT — I had committed to photograph Brandon and by-golly, we were going to make that happen. I took it as added incentive to start whipping my studio backlot into shape. By the time his newly scheduled appointment rolled around, we had about half of our sets refurbished. Our landscaping was still a big mess for the most part.
YET — with creative camera angles and a lot of hard work, there is always a way.
It took a little extra maneuvering, but I”ll bet you would never guess that if Brandon (or the camera) moved just a few inches to the right or left, his portraits by the tree (below) would have included a…
wait for it… wait for it…
A bright blue PORTA-POTTY!
My absolute FAVORITE images, though, were the ones we created to highlight his weight lifting. I managed to rig up a makeshift studio in an empty room, and I’m so glad we did.
THESE simply couldn’t have come out any better.
I love working with dramatic lighting patterns!
Summer’s on its way in, so I hope Brandon gets a chance to relax at the beach with his family and friends before heading off to college
I also LOVE the fact that we managed to catch a sweet “mom-kiss” before everything wrapped up.
Brandon just might miss his mother and her home-cooking when he heads off to UT San Antonio in the fall — and I KNOW that she will miss him. This fun image should make the road home seem just a little bit shorter.
