We've Moved!!!

For family that is now having a heart attack wondering how on earth we up and moved our house without telling any one, I'm sorry. :-) That's not what I meant!

I am SO unbelievably excited to tell you all we've moved the blog to a custom new blog that I absolutely love! It's been a long time coming and took many hours/days/weeks/months to pull together, but I really like it a lot. Well, mostly. I keep fiddling with little settings here and there, but for the most part it's great. If you like getting the e-mail notifications, you can sign up to receive emails every time I post. It's also set up to work with your favorite RSS reader, so you can follow it that way, too.

What I'm most excited about is all of the new features I have planned (and started) on the new blog. I will be doing short reviews on venues and vendors I've worked with, in hopes to provide you with an outsiders opinion and view point. There are many great ones out there!

Second, I've started a "Top Things Every Bride Should Know" feature. These are entirely from my perspective (that of a wedding photographer and former bride). It's my plan to offer tips on things to hopefully help brides have enough knowledge to make educated decisions on wedding day items (with a HUGE slant towards photography - I am after all a photographer!)

For my family, I will still include some images of the kids, but I think those are going to be fewer as I do more of that on Facebook and can control who sees pictures of my "babies". Speaking of Facebook - I'm on there, too! I have my personal page and a fan page for Jenifer Lyn Photography. Add me! I'd love to keep in touch!

Lastly, but MOST certainly not least, thank you to everyone who has supported me so much through everything. Without your support I don't know how I could have done all of this.

OneWed Vendor of the Year!

Thanks to the wonderful couples I worked with last year, I am so excited to share with you that OneWed has named Jenifer Lyn Photography one of their Best Wedding Vendors of 2008!!!! Click here to view the story behind the list and to download the full PDF list to view.

It is such an honor for me! Thank you to all the couples I worked with in 2008 - you are all very special to me.

Welcome 2009!

Just a brief note to welcome 2009! I am way behind on blogging. I just can't seem to catch up. And for months I've been beating myself up for it. It's 2009 and I am now starting fresh. It's a new year, new expectations. I do hope to get a few of the weddings/engagement sessions blogged from last year, but I'm not going to promise anything to you or myself. As a very wise man once said, "Keep moving forward", or as the whole quote goes:

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
~ Walt Disney

(Since I don't have any images of Walt - the man - I am including a quick image of the kids at Disney World, from earlier this year)

With the start of 2009 comes my look back to 2008 and all that I was able to accomplish as a business owner as well as all that we were able to do as a family and I am very proud of all of that. In such tumultuous times it's very easy to get down (and this cold NE weather doesn't always help) by focusing on things that aren't going as well as we would like. But what is more important is that we focus on all the great in our life. And that is where you all come in. Thank you for reading my blog, viewing my work, and more importantly, being a part of my life in some way.

Here's to a great 2009 for all and I hope you all are able to accomplish for yourselves what you set out to.

Engagement Session, CT Style

When Steve and Roslyn told me they wanted to have their engagement session done at the same location that they are getting married at in September, I was ecstatic! You see, they are getting married in Madison, CT, a venue that is just over two hours away from me (or just under, depending on traffic and driving speed). So I wasn't sure I was going to get a chance to see it in person before photographing their wedding. Let me tell you - it is GORGEOUS!

They are getting married on the beach at the Surf Club in Madison and I am so excited to be joining them!

There are so many great places to take photos there, so we just walked around finding new places to go - it was fun!

Here are a couple of my favorites:

I thought these canoes were really cool and I LOVE the colors...

This one really struck me as an instant favorite. I just love everything about it!

I took over 150 images of them all total, so if you have time to spare and would like look through the rest of them, you can view them here.

Karine and Henry Tie the Knot!

It was a rainy, chilly New England morning when I left my house to meet Karine and Henry at the church they were to be married. I arrived early, earlier than just about everyone, so I took the time to walk around the outside of the church and get some images out there. At that point it was still misting out and very chilly - I was fearful that we would not be able to get many formals outside after the wedding. The gray clouds in the background pretty much sum it up:

The guests soon began to arrive and fill up the church. Henry was there looking great, waiting patienly for Karine to arrive. While the guests filtered in to their seats, the church was filled with the wonderful sounds of a string quartet. They were just amazing.

About 5 minutes before the ceremony was to begin, Karine pulls up in this, a gorgeous Rolls Royce:
The ceremony was beautiful and really expressed the love between Karine and Henry.

After the ceremony was over, we stopped to take a few formals outside of the church. The weather had improved only slightly - now it was just overcast and cold. Since the reception was a few miles away, at the Daniel Webster Inn, Karine and Henty decided we should try to see what the weather was like there, so in the Rolls they climbed and off we went! But not before the ceremonious first toast...with a wonderfully chilled bottle of Veuve Clicquot (my favorite - it's French!).
How cute are they?!

When we got to the reception - wouldn't you know it? The sky went totally blue and the bright sun shone everywhere. It actually got very hot while we were doing the formals. I was so excited for them. While there I got these two images - two of my favorites:

It was a really short day for me and I wasn't scheduled to take any photos during the reception, but I couldn't help but sneak a peek. The Daniel Webster Inn is really quaint and pretty inside. It is a really nice place to have a wedding. While inside, I grabbed this image of the cake:

I'm only going to post one more image, since this post has found itself quite lengthy already. I just wanted to take a moment to thank Karine and Henry for choosing me to share their day with. You are two wonderful people and I wish you all the best.

Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?

A Special Anniversary Session

Did you know that the traditional first year anniversary gift is paper?

I promise this has meaning, so please stick with me.

I've been asked by so many people what I think they should get their spouse for the "Paper" anniversary. I must confess, I'm not the most creative when coming up with truly different gift ideas for anyone outside my immediate family. And even then I sometimes have a hard time deciding on gifts that have that "wow" factor. But I have heard so many great responses - books, stationary, tickets to events, even stock certificates. But when I was asked to help create a first anniversary gift, I was so excited! I hadn't really thought of doing an anniversary session, but I was very happy to experience yet another first in my career.

She came to me with a very specific request: she wanted me to get images of her in ways that hadn't been done before. She wanted close ups of her eyes, her neck, and her lips - her husband's favorites! The idea was that the images would be framed in simple, elegant black frames with large white mattes, arranged on the wall in their bedroom closest to his side of the bed. Can you think of anything more perfect?

While I have done many "detail" images in which I do close ups of rings, flowers, details on dresses, I have never been tasked with singling out just portions of a person's face. This was definitely an area that I was unfamiliar with. But I like a challenge.

I started with the image of the eyes - I thought that would be the easiest. Come to find out - it wasn't! She has these beautiful green eyes with nice long eye lashes. I was hoping to capture not only her great lashes, but also her spirit. A person's eyes say so much about them and one thing as a photographer you cannot do is try to fake emotion where there isn't any. It took about 20 minutes to get the right angle and then another 10 minutes to work on the emotion. It was an amazing learning experience for both of us.

Here is the final image she decided on. I just love it.

I then moved to her lips. But again I was faced with the hard task of figuring out what the best angle was to fully capture her lips in the way I knew she wanted. Having been through the eye exercise, the lips were easier:

The neck proved to be as challenging as I expected. I wanted to show enough the neck to know what it is, yet not so much of her face, since it would take the focus away from the neck. Here I needed to really work on not only the angle to take the photograph from, but also the angle of the light. This image came out better than I hoped. It is my favorite of them all:

She knew she wanted to do four images to balance the collage on the wall, but hadn't decided on what to do for the fourth image. This last one happened more by accident than anything. As I was setting my camera up for one of the other images, I saw her hand laying there. I turned my camera and took this image:

I converted them to a warm sepia tone afterwards in Photoshop. They aren't a true black and white - more of a brown and white. But I love them. Now, imagine if you will, all of them together in separate, matching black frames and it was the perfect first anniversary gift. Since I didn't want to spoil the surprise, I waited until she gave them to her husband to post here, but I have been told he LOVES them.

Dawn & Matt are having a baby!!

When Dawn asked me to come and do a Lifestyle Maternity session with her and her cute belly - I can't even tell you how excited I was! Since I have really been focused on photographing weddings, this was going to be my first maternity sesson ever. And now that I have done one, I really REALLY like them! So if you know any ladies who are pregnant and would like to do a maternity session, please send them my way. I really wish I could have done something like this when I was pregnant.

Dawn and Matt are an unbelievably cute couple and they are both so excited to welcome their new addition. Thank you so much for picking me to document this part of your lives, too!

While I was getting the settings ready on my camera, I took a couple of photographs of the new crib, just waiting and I thought this one was really cute:

When we started, Dawn was wearing a nice little black dress. Isn't she SO cute?!

Then I thought we'd try something different - I love this angle.

Then Matt came in...aren't they just amazing? Can you feel the cute through the screen?

And no family session would be complete without Belle...

This one is my FAVORITE:

And then we tried something a little different, which I LOVE!

Behind on Blogging - AGAIN!

I really thought it would get easier for me to get blog posts up - I really did! I guess I completely underestimated how truly busy I was about to get. This post will be my feeble attempt at playing quick catch up and then I will try my best to post up images from the many things I have been doing in the last couple of months. I will take this time to apologize to all my family who have given me a hard time about not posting updated images of the kids and to all my clients who have asked me when I'm going to blog again.

As I think back, I realize I have had an amazing couple of months. Here is a sampling of what I have been doing with all that time:

• An awesome Lifestyle Maternity session
• A really cool Anniversary "present"
• A wonderful wedding
• A dinner dance for Ron's law school
• A spectacular Lifestyle e-session
• The most amazing trip to Disney World - ever

Since I refuse to blog and not include any images, I'm putting in a couple of the kids from when we snuck into the not-quite-open-yet new playground at RJ's school.

Wedding - Christy and Jim!

I can't stress enough how wonderful this wedding was! Everyone was so nice and really took to us like we were part of their circle of friends.

Christy and Jim got married a couple weeks ago (they just got back from their honeymoon a few days ago!) in sunny, but COLD Portsmouth, NH. The ceremony and reception were indoors in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Harborside Hotel. It was so pretty out that day, but very cold and windy. So we all opted to stay indoors for all the images. Which worked out well, since the Sherton has a great grand staircase that just made for great formals.

Congratulations, again, Christy and Jim and thanks SOOOOOOOOOOOO much for letting us share your day with you!

So, without further ado, I'm embedding a slideshow here on my blog so you can see some of my favorite images from the day. Just click on the Play button in the middle to start it.

New Canon!

I've been wanting a point and shoot camera for a while now. I seem to find myself at different occasions wanting my camera, but not wanting to bring my whole DSLR kit everywhere. For example, we are leaving for Disney in 55 days (or so I've been told!) and I really want to be able to get some images of the kids at the parks, but I REALLY don't want to have all my gear with me.

So I think I finally have the answer! Today we bought a Canon Powershot Digital Elph. This thing is soooooo cute. And at 7.1 megapixels, it's got some good-sized files. Plus, it fits in my pocket!!!!

We just bought it today, so I haven't had too much time to play with it, but it seems pretty good. It can actually capture these cute little videos, too. I mean, I can't compete with MGM or anything, but I can capture videos and share them with family who can't see the kids everyday.

I took the following image with it set on fully automatic. I take this time to also introduce our new living room set up....we moved the couches and added in a huge white bookcase. I love it!!
I

Notice RJ hamming it up for the new camera?!

The auto flash went off - I'm not crazy about that, but I'll read the manual and figure out how to get a little more control over it.

Now, I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm going to try to post a 12 second video of the kids fooling around for the camera. They are sooo cute!

We have our first little league baseball practice tomorrow (weather permitting), so I think I'll bring it with me and test it out some more.

Until then, have a great night!

Portsmouth Fun!

Portsmouth, NH is just a wonderful place! It's so cute! We arrived at Sheraton Harborside on Friday around 3, checked in, and took a tour of the hotel to get an idea of where everything was going to take place on Saturday.

While in our travels we were fortunate to run into Lee, the Catering Manager for the event. She is wonderful! She took the time to show us around and give us the timeline of the events and show us the different places where everything was taking place. I honestly can't say enough good things about her - she's so sweet!!

By this time it was dinner time, so we found our way over to Cafe Mirabelle - a quaint French restaurant. Since it had snowed earlier that day and it was still extremely cold out, the restaurant was very empty. So we were able to get a seat in the upper level window, overlooking Portsmouth. It was wonderful! The food was fantastic and the staff was great. I was so glad Ron took the time to research area restaurants and found this, or we never would have had the chance to try it out. We will definitely go back!

We went back to the hotel and had a couple drinks in the lounge - it was nice. Of course, I had my camera with me and played around with a few things. Here are a couple, starting with Ron on the phone (behind my very tasty martini):


With this next one, I was trying for long exposure out the window to capture the lights and boats in the water outside the hotel. It came out kind of cool....

The wedding coverage didn't start until 3 on Saturday, so we got up early, ate breakfast at the hotel and took a walk around the area. When we came around the corner, we found this great church:

This image is actually a composite of two images I took. When we went out, I had only brought my 50mm lens and it was not wide enough to get the whole church, even from across the street. Adobe's CS3 does a great job pulling the images together - it's really cool!

Then we turned to our right and saw this scene down the street - it's just sooooo New England-y isn't it?!

As you look closer at the image, though, this pink sign stuck out like a sore thumb from behind the flag pole!!! Notice anything interesting?! My maiden name is Gregoire (which isn't extremely common) so it was really cool to see!!

As you can see from the outfits of the people on the street, it was FREEZING cold out, with a wind chill that I swear felt like 12 degrees. So we didn't spend too much time outside! We grabbed a bite to eat at the Portsmouth Brewery. Since we were working, we didn't have a beer, but they had like 20 of them on the blackboard. The food was really good.

Well, that's about it, leading up to the wedding. I will blog with images from the wedding in the next day or two once I've had a chance to go through them all. I will say, it was a great wedding and I am so glad Christy and Jim chose us to share their day with them and their family/friends.

More to come soon!

Free Photoshop Online??!!

A couple of days ago I read about Photshop Express from Dane Sander's blog (he's GREAT!); then today I read a post about it from Gary Fong, so I decided I needed to check it out.

This site is AMAZING! it allows you to import your images from your computer, or from various sites - including Facebook and Picasa (two I use). THEN you can touch the images up through various very user-friendly tools. Right online! For free!

Adobe has really done something great here. I really like their products and this is yet another great one.

Google Apps

While I'm talking about cool technology, I've also spent a bunch of time in Google's world and they really have created a TON of cool applications. I've been using their reader for a while now and I love it. If you check multiple blogs to see when /if they've been updated, the reader is a great tool. Just copy and paste the URL into the Add subcriptions box and it will track them for you. It's so wonderful, I think I've added WAY too many!!! But I can easily bypass those I don't want to read.

Upcoming Wedding!

Ok, I'm done promoting the fun technology I've found lately....I'm off to pack for a very exciting wedding in Portsmouth, NH!!! We leave later today and have the wedding tomorrow. I'm sooooooo excited. This couple is great and we are going to have a BLAST! Plus it gives us a chance to check out some other venues up in NH that we also have weddings at this year.

The Kids and Karate

I haven't done a karate post in a while, so here it goes!





<--and of course, I HAD to start with this one....I think the image just speaks for itself!!

This past Saturday the kids graduated to their next belts in karate. A couple months ago, RJ graduated through the ranks on the Ranger side - which is what they call the little kids (generally under 6 or 7) and moved to the Young Adult side of the studio. He loves the new moves he's learning - and the best part? He gets to learn how to use the 'weapons'!! Every two months, they learn how to use the new tool. It's really great watching him progress through the moves.

Maddy is doing really well, too. She loves karate! She has so much energy and really puts it to good use in class. She is one little girl you won't want to mess with!

Here they are getting their belts. First, Maddy-Belle (as she likes to be called!). As she was getting her belt, you can see what RJ was doing! It surprises me how silly they STILL get even though my camera is in their face all the time. They are soooo cute!! Notice the complete lack of front teeth on RJ - he's just starting to get the bottom ones in to replace those that he lost last January.

And here is RJ getting his belt:

Whenever I post about the kids, I like to try to get an even number of images per child, so I don't appear as if I'm favoring. For all the moms out there (including my own!), I'm sure you know what I mean!!! So I include this last one, simply because I think it is cool. And I assure you, both of my children are in it!

Since Ron couldn't come, I asked Maddy to take a picture of RJ with my cell phone so we could send it to him. The blig blur on the right is Maddy's cute piggy tail and RJ is one of the small figures in focus on the phone!

Have a great day, everyone!!!

More from the Swearing In

I promised more images from Ron's swearing in ceremony the other night, and I'm actually going through with that promise! I am still so very proud of Ron and I know he will do a great job. I also want to take this time to thank everyone for all the kind words. We've received so many emails and blog comments from people sending along their congratulations. Without the support of friends and family like you, I'm not sure we could do everything we're trying to do right now.

On to the images! The first one was taken by my father-in-law before we left the house. I'm not loving that angle for me, but it is nice to have a family photo. I think I need to set up a better one someday soon.

This next one was taken by none other than Miss Maddy-Belle. For a 4 (almost 5!) year old, she's pretty good! I take that back, I think she composes better than some adults I know. I think I see a future for her in the business!

Last, but certainly not least, this is Ron taking his oath just after I pinned the badge on him. I love the flag in the background. The man you see is one of the selectmen in the town.

Sergeant Ron!

Tonight I had the wonderful pleasure of pinning a brand new gold badge on Ron to signify his promotion to Sergeant!!!! We are so proud of him!

It's late, I need to get the kiddies to bed and I will post more tomorrow, but for now, here is an image of me pinning the badge on him:

YEAH!!!!!!

Special thanks to Dad Sellon for taking such a great photograph!!