woods

The Hogues

This was a great experience for me. Not only did I get to work with friends, and horses that I love, I got to add a new skill. This was my very first family session with horses and I must say, I am proud of the work. In fact, the sun was a bigger struggle than posing the horses.

I have a small confession to make. Every time I turn over a client shoot, I get a little bit of anxiety. The anxiety occurs when delivering the final images. I know other artists feel the same way, but non-photographers don’t know what it’s like to hand over the images you’ve spent days, even weeks staring at, perfecting, making each image follow my vision and aesthetic. I find solace in that, if my client wanted a different aesthetic than mine, they would have asked someone else. Which of course makes sense, but it the moment of the handoff, I only think. I hope they love it. They did love itI!!, and I hope you all love it too.

ASAD 2022

The year 2022 was filled with so many highs, and some very low, lows. 2022 brought travel, and weddings, animal snuggles. new friends, and family get togethers. Although some unexpected, I’m grateful to have seen them. 2022 also brought me lots of laughter, and new opportunities for growth in myself, and my art.

As some of you know, the year 2022 started out rough for me. New Years day, I was on a plane heading to my grandpa’s funeral. Although the circumstances were not ideal, I enjoyed seeing family that I have not seen in many years. I loved playing games and reminiscing with them about their childhoods and mine. My grandma is my only remaining grandparent, and I will forever cherish our conversations from this week. I am thankful that she sees me as someone she could talk to, and help her through her grief.

With the United States opening back up from covid, this brought on more travel. Not long after we got home from being in Ohio, my parents came to see me. I also traveled back to Ohio two other times this year. I flew in for my life long best friend’s bridal shower and bachelorette weekend, and then again for her wedding. I also traveled to New York City. I have been there five times, and I do not think I will ever stop being surprised by its beauty and culture.

Everyone that has ever met me knows that I have a love of animals, my favorite being a horse. Growing up in a suburb of Cleveland, its definitely not a typical favorite animal. My bedroom growing up was always covered in horse statues, pictures, toys, etc. After the loss of Molly, I decided it was time to become formally trained. This year, I started my journey towards horsemanship, and hopefully lead to hunter jumper. Bailey was the first horse I felt a bond with at The Equestrian Center. She was very patient with me and helped me through the beginning challenges. The center lost Bailey unexpectedly, and it broke my heart. After riding a few horses, who were all wonderful I found Brigand. I typically use the the phrase “he's a dream” when I talk about him. He pushes me to be better, work harder, and also to expect the unexpected. I am truly grateful for my trainer and friend, Janet, and the entire equestrian center. This is the first time in my life, I have had friends that are also horse people.

I always talk about the things I wish I could improve in the future of my videos. In the past, it was about video organization. I fixed this problem by creating folders per month and adding them at the end of every month, then going and creating that months section of the video. This has helped me a great deal and I definitely will continue it in the future. I was underwhelmed with some of my phones camera quality, but I upgraded my phone so I hope that will improve future videos. Something I really want to improve on will definitely be the blog writing itself. I struggle with writing out the synapsis of my year, and even my art.

I hope you enjoy 2022’s a second a day video, and I can not wait to hear what you think! The link is below, and please do not forget to look for 2023 in the future!

I have four more blog posts, saved in my drafts and I am working to get them to you soon.


If you cannot see the video this blog, click here.

Links to other blogs in yearly order are here!

2021
2020
2019

McConnells Mill in the Winter

     Every time I have sat down to write out this blog, the weather would decide to snow. I took this as an omen to work on it later because I am so tired of the cold weather, and did not want to jinx the warm weather change. I chose today to finally try this again because we have hopefully hit the  no-snow time of year again!

      My friend Nicole, her fiance Brian, and I decided to go hiking at McConnells Mill.  We went in the very beginning of March. It was a very sunny day, in fact the first weekend it reached forty degrees. We knew we had to do something in this heat wave, so we decided to hike and take pictures of the snow and ice finally starting to melt, and our adventures along the way. We hiked up some cliffs, walked along windy snow covered trails, and even went off the trails a little bit. One of my favorite parts of the trip, was going to see a huge frozen waterfall that was turned into icicles. In order for us to get to it, we had to climb up a lot of stairs that had been turned into ice slides. Everyone was struggling on the stairs, but me being as clumsy as I am probably fell down the stairs about six times. (mostly on the way down). 

     I will include some images and behind the scenes images from our adventure, and also a video of me falling down some stairs for you to enjoy, even though I look like a baby deer on ice. (you gotta be able to laugh at yourself right?!).  Nicole is also a fellow photographer, whose link will be down at the bottom as well as McConnell's Mill.

Visit McConnels Mill! : http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/findapark/mcconnellsmill/

Nicole Iagnemma's nature photography: http://www.nicdreamcatcher.com/

 

 

Family Portraits

     About a month a go, I photographed a fellow photographer, and my friend Nicole with her fiancé and his brother for a surprise present to make and give to the mother of the boys on a mug. this was such a fun (and muddy) time! We had to coral the boys a few times while we hiked to the perfect place which just happened to have been on top of a really steep, muddy, big hill. while Nicole and i took out time, the boys both made their way up by running up. needless to say these country boys got a little bit muddy even before the shoot began! Boys will be boys... :]

Please enjoy these images of wonderful people in some candid and precious moments from our day!

Nicole's photography website: www.nicdreamcatcher.com