by Shelly | Aug 4, 2014 | senior gals, senior portraits, sports |
Have you noticed a trend with my seniors lately?
Scroll back through my last few senior posts… Beautiful… Sweet… GORGEOUS… SUPER COOL… Amazing…Stunning.
Well, here’s another. Meet Maddi! She ABSOLUTELY SPARKLES on her own, but having Cintya Velderrain bring her professional hair and makeup skills to the shoot — PURE WIN!
I first met Maddi a year ago when one of her friends came to view and select his senior portraits at SPCcreative Photography. You can probably imagine how THRILLED I was to see her walk through my doors again!
Get a load of those EYES! Oh MY!
Because she swam with the varsity swim team at Seven Lakes High School, Maddi and her mom wanted to create some fun and unique images that highlighted her swimming talents, so we decided to incorporate her bright green flippers and her goggles with a white formal gown. How cute is THAT?
Maddi has spent a good part of her summer coaching a kids’ swim team in her neighborhood,
but as that is wrapping up, she’s packing up her room and getting ready to head off to college where she is bound to be a head-turner.
Congratulations on your graduation, Maddi, and BEST Wishes for a great first year of college. When the finals drive you nearly batty, just come back and see me at the studio
where
LIFE’s A BEACH!
by Shelly | May 8, 2013 | senior guys, senior portraits, sports |
Most of my readers know that for the past six years I’ve spent a good portion of my time in the fall photographing football games for the Taylor Mustangs and providing them with fresh artwork for their program covers and inserts for just about every home game. So…whether the guys know it or not, I feel a special bond with each of the players. That’s why I got excited about taking Tyler’s senior portraits. Playing the position of Linebacker — Number 48 — he was one of MY Mustangs.
After some exciting travels that he has planned for the summer, Tyler plans to study at Tarleton State University in Stephenville.
It was a pleasure getting to know him a little bit better during our session. He is handsome, polite, laid-back and self-assured, and enjoys hunting expeditions with his dad when schedules allow.
Tyler I thoroughly enjoyed being your “Ninja Photographer,” and hope you enjoy your images for years and years to come.
by Shelly | Feb 28, 2013 | men, sports |
It’s been a while since this lifestyle session took place, but since the Houston Stock Show and Rodeo is in town,it seems like this is an appropriate time to share a few images from a dusty early morning in West Texas .
I’ve known John since we were both scrawny little fourth graders — and that was more than just a few years ago.
We totally drifted into separate worlds as life and families came along, but became reacquainted through Facebook a few years ago. Not only is he a skilled horseman, but he’s also become very thoughtful and talented writer.
When I was back in Midland a while back, I had an opportunity to ride out to his property which he calls Rancho Notso Grande. (GOTTA love that name) so I could photograph him working and caring for his magnificent animals.
What a treat!
by Shelly | Sep 7, 2010 | event, sports |
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!
by Shelly | May 20, 2010 | event, sports |
Athletes are truly amazing. Maybe they’re even a little bit crazy, but I stand in awe of anyone who will even ATTEMPT to swim more than a mile in open waters before hopping onto a bike for a 53 mile ride and then run a half marathon.
That’s what they were doing at the Iron Man 70.3 in Galveston recently. And I got to do what I do best, photograph the event. Once again I was thankful to be in my flat black quasi-athletic sketchers shoes, working at my own respectable pace while, allowing the other folks to enjoy the wind in their hair thanks to their featherweight bikes, super fancy running shoes, and years of arduous training.
There was a time in my life that I could swim pretty dern far, albeit one slow stroke at a time. A bicycle was my primary mode of transportation, and I could rack up the miles with the best of ’em. But running — well, that just never happened. I went through a phase where I thought it would be cool to run — or jog — or whatever they called it for fun and fitness, but never could even get up to a mile before the stitch in my side put me back in the slow plodders lane.
I love to live vicariously through the events I photograph, and I hope that my work can provide memories for participants years down the road. Once I processed the Ironman pictures and delivered them to my client, I didn’t really think about them again — until this week when I got the nicest message from her. She loved the pictures, and I’ll never get tired of hearing that.
The call sent me back into my files to relive the Ironman Triathlon all over again. And I’m not even out of breath. Click here to see the event as it unfolded. I’ve decided I love triathlons. I could definitely do this again.
by Shelly | May 3, 2010 | event, sports |
Fresh Start – Each day the sun comes up and brings new blessings and challenges…
Today Shelly’s Photo Blog takes on an exciting new direction, and I hope you’ll join me on this journey.
In 2007 I started a an online photo gallery that I titled “Shelly’s Photo Blog” and joined an online community of photographers who post one picture every day. I joined seeking constructive criticism and challenges that would force me to grow and improve my skills. The criticism was skimpy, but the encouragement — HUGE. The challenges and friendships have become priceless.
Still, I knew that what I called my blog was not really a blog and that I needed to the switch for a number of reasons.
So . . . Shelly’s Photo Blog as we know it is going into the archives to be replaced by a real live blog with all the bells and whistles. Watch for other exciting changes and touchpoints in the days ahead.
As always. I promise that it’s going to be a fun ride.
For the die hard fans (HI MOM) who want to go back to the old pictures . . . you can always come back to the archives for links to the old dailies galleries. They do provide a nice trip down memory lane.
