I moved!

I'm pleased to announce that julieboydphotography.com is now up and running, so I decided to move my blog over to my official site!  Please refer to http://www.julieboydphotography.com/blog for my latest posts.  Thank you!

Lucas vs Georgia

I couldn't resist sharing these pictures of my pup, Georgia, playing with my nephew, Lucas, in my backyard.

11/52 On His Mind

I knew I was going to have to play catch-up this week and do something fast and relatively easy. Luckily, I had a random idea last night to play with layers and merge a portrait with a natural scene. Since Brian was around, I talked him into posing for a quick shot (Thank you so much B-Cal! ♥). Not my best, not my worst. Hopefully once I knock school out of my schedule I'll have more time to plan out shoots.

10/52

I know, I know, I'm late posting for this week (or should I say last week). I went from working part time, to full time at a new job, and started my last class as a graduate student. AND I'm still writing my thesis. Life is beyond crazy right now. I don't know how I'm going to make time to continue with my project, but I'm not giving up yet! I keep hearing Tim Gunn’s voice in my head saying, “Make it work,” and I intend to.

Thank you Allison for being a stellar model! You can never go wrong with good company and an ocean view. 

More shots from the day:

I really love this tower. I considered using it as the official photo for this week, but the lighting is terrible.  I'll have to venture back down to the same spot for a sunset shoot.

9/52 The Umbrella Man

I can't thank Garrett enough for helping me out with this one. I made him bike down to a secluded spot in Aliso Canyon, and he was more than happy to go on my little adventure. We shot a bunch of different ideas, and I'm really happy with how many turned out well. As usual, the "official" week nine photo is first, followed by by other favorites from the day.

 

8/52

On the Road

As I mentioned in the post below, last week I was up in Mammoth snowboarding.  I brought my camera along in case I had the opportunity to stop along Highway 395 to take a few shots.  Since we left before dawn, I was really hoping my travel companions would let me stop to take some shots of the sunrise, but I only had a few minutes while we stopped for gas in Lone Pine.  On the way back, we  took a little side trip to see Convict Lake in all of it's frozen over glory.  I didn't really get any spectacular shots, but I though I would share them anyway.

First light on Mount Whitney

Convict Lake (Best seen against a black background)

Convict Lake looking south

7/52 Spirited Away

I was up in Mammoth snowboarding for about half of this week, and working the other, which made shooting anything really difficult to coordinate.  Luckily, Brian volunteered to model for this idea, and we were able to get it done yesterday afternoon (Thank you so much Brian!!!).  I'm not entirely thrilled with how it turned out; I liked the lighting coming through the trees when we arrived at the location, but I think the concept might need a more dark, somber background. Maybe I'll come back to this idea again and experiment with other set ups further down the line.

6/52 Ornamental

The ornamental pear trees in my neighborhood are already in bloom thanks to a random week of 80-degree weather.  Since my sister has a collection of kimonos, we thought it would be cool for her to don one and do some shots among the blossoms. I am really happy with how they turned out and once again had a hard time deciding which shot I liked best, so here are a few. The first is my "official" week six image, and the rest are close runners up.

Many thanks to Rachelle for going through the hassle of dressing herself while I awkwardly tried to help, braving bee infested trees, and scaling our wall with a sprained ankle. You're the best!   

Happy 1st Birthday Eli!

Saturday we celebrated my beautiful niece's first birthday. I had a great time visiting with family, getting annihilated by Nerf darts, and taking photos, of course.  Here are some of my favorites of the kids being silly...  well, kids.

5/52

I'm a little late posting for week 5, but I had a pretty full weekend and no time to edit until today. A HUGE thanks to Kyle and Jessica for helping me out on this one. There were so many great shots that I had a hard time choosing which to use, so I decided to post a few of the other ones I liked. The first is the official one I'm using for my project. I like the lighting best, and how the wider shot shows off more of the environment.

Big Sur

Last month Brian and I went on a road trip up the coast through Big Sur.  Here are some of my favorite shots from the journey.

4/52 Head in the Clouds

It's been raining for most of the week, and I'm still sick, so I decided it would be in my best interest to shoot indoors again.  I went for something a bit different this week, or as Brian will probably say when he sees this, "You got reaaaally weird with it." Haha.

3/52

So... I'm not too thrilled about this picture, but I've been home sick all week, so I haven't been able to venture out to shoot anything on location.  I really hesitated to post it, but my sister reassured me that 52 is a big number and I'm probably not going to have the time to produce something fantastic every week.  The perfectionist in me hated hearing that, but I knew she was right.  I took this in an upstairs room of my house as the sun was setting yesterday.  I know there are a lot of anti lens flare people out there, but I don't care, I like the effect and intentionally use it a handful of  my photographs. Anyway, hopefully I'll be better next week so I can get back out there and bring to life one of my more conceptual ideas. Have a good weekend everyone!

2/52

For the past week my mind has been buzzing with ideas for my Project 52.  I am beyond excited for all of the weeks ahead!  I wish I could do a shoot everyday... if only it paid the bills.

Today, I planned a  shoot with my sister, but as I was getting ready to head out I noticed the sky was too hazy for the shot I had envisioned, so I decided to save it for another week.  I wanted to make the best of the diffused light though, so I grabbed my camera bag and tripod and headed out to the woods behind my house to do a shot of myself.  I am learning that self-portraits are really hard to do; getting the correct framing and focus is challenging when you are by yourself... not to mention you also have to worry about positioning yourself so that you can't see the remote trigger in your hand (I think you could see mine in about 80% of the shots I took, haha).  In addition, I had added pressure to nail a good shot today because I'm leaving for Boston tomorrow and won't be back until next week.  Anyway, I am really pleased that this shot turned out because I love all the triangles throughout the scene. I count 18... what about you guys?

  

Project 52

The start of a new year means the start of resolutions.  This year instead of vowing to eat healthier or run more (which I still want to do), I am giving myself a more unique resolution; I plan on completing a photo challenge which will involve me creating one fine art image each week.  I’ve let school consume too much of my life for the past two-and-a-half years and I dearly miss getting out and doing creative shoots.  Hopefully this challenge will help me grow as a photographer and give me a rad portfolio come December 31, 2013.

I set out to capture image 1 of 52 yesterday.  A HUGE thank you to my amazing boyfriend, Brian, who tagged along and helped out. I wasn't sure what I wanted to shoot, so we hopped in the car and drove through Santiago Canyon until we came upon a spot where we could park and not feel like the hillbilly's who put up all the "no trespassing" signs would chase us down with their shot guns. Turns out the trail we hiked up was quite popular, so we had to deal with some looky-loos bugging us. Stupid people. Anyway, I experimented with a couple of different set ups, and this image turned out to be my favorite. I've got to start location scouting for more secluded places for the weeks ahead...