Our Christmas Card!

This was the picture I took for our Christmas card this year. That my dad sends to hundreds of people (a lot I don't know). So here's one just for you!

Merry Christmas from Bob, Amy and Robert Lyford! We hope you have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! Yes those are drunk Santa's! Last year I was in Buckhead with a friend of mine going out to dinner and we saw this line of Santa's bar hoping so what do we do, we go to my car get my camera and start hanging out with them. Some were a little inappropriate but I think I got some really cool shots. For one they even set me up on the bar to photograph them and they loved the attention. Turns out they were a group of Rugby players that does this every year to celebrate the holidays. This image almost made it to my portfolio but we decided it was a little too crude. It was still a night I won't forget and I'm glad I have the images to show for it. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a Santa mooning you!

Found my glasses!

Yesterday I got a phone call from my mom saying Amy guess what your glasses were in my car I tried to put them on thinking they were mine and they didn't work. So now after 3 months of no glasses I can edit in peace once again! So those glasses up there yup there back on my face!

Yay Flordia!

Yay, were heading to the beach to see my grandparents! This is a picture I took last time I was there, I know your jealous. I can't wait to go out and take more pictures to come back and show you guys. Every time I go my granddad, who shares my love for photography takes me around and we go take pictures together!

My finale!

This video is about my time at Gwinnett Tech! I talk about my trip to Spain, my internship and my overall experence at Gwinnett Tech!

Spain!

In September of 2007 I got a chance to go to Spain to study abroad, it was absolutely amazing! we went to Madrid and Barcelona, this is just one of the beautiful sites we had a chance to see. We visited many different museums and Cathedrals. We also got a chance to visit a photography studio there and it was really interesting to see how a studio is another country is run. Unfortunately my hard drive crashed shortly after the trip and I lost a good amount of my images, but I still have some really nice ones and it was an amazing experience! In the video above I tell a little more about my trip!

Studio Burns!

Studio Burns Is the photography studio I interned for while at Gwinnett Tech. It was absolutely amazing! Jerry Burns and Guy Welch. They do all kinds of work from commercial shots to model shoots. One thing I really loved about working there was they really are a family and we just so welcoming. Jerry is also head of the Photography department at Portfolio Center and I think it was really cool that's where most of his assistants have come from throughout the years. Over-all it was an amazing experience and I learned so much. Lets see I became amazing at getting coffee and lunch not to mention studio up-keep, but of course I also got to do fun stuff like help with lighting and I learned a lot about client customer relations. I met some AMAZING people and wouldn't trade that experience for the world.

Me Mounting!

This is a little video I did for fun while mounting some pictures people bought from me before I framed them. Don't forget to have fun with every aspect of your work!

Annie Leibovitz!

I'm sure you all recognise the name Annie Leibovitz, This is my absolute favorite picture she's done. A while back I went to the High Museum and that's where I first saw this image of Nicole Kidman, and feel in love with it. I love the composure of the scene, Nicole's stance and most of all the lighting it amazing! Her work is inspirational and amazing a great photographer to look up to!

I'm ready!

WOW! now there's a serious photographer. This was a picture Demetrius took of me while we were out shooting, Ok so one of the cameras is his, yes the Cannon. To a lot of people it looks silly to have two cameras on you, but after being in a photo journalistic situation you realize changing your lens during the action is time consuming and potently dangerous for your camera in certain situations. It's great to have one camera with a wide angle lens and one with a zoom lens because you never know witch your going to need in a situation and you have to be able to change between the two in a heart beat.

The book signing!

Today Joanne Addison had her book signing for Midnight with Mimi! I was so excited, you may remember me mentioning how I took the picture of her and her grandchildren for the back of the book. I was not allowed to buy a book because my friend's getting me a copy for Christmas but I did buy a copy for my family and get it signed. It was exciting, I even signed a couple copies of peoples books because I was the photographer!

I'm flying

This is a shot I took of my friend Marc after his first solo flight! I love it because he's shaking his dad's hand and he Marc looks so genuinely happy and proud! It was a really fun shoot and I was so excited to be there for his first solo flight!

Gelling!

This is the gelling shot I just showed you in my video below! I did this in complete darkness with a long exposure and used flashlights with a pink gel over them for the front of the graves and a yellow gel for the back. It was scary at first to go in grave sat night, and don't worry I never went alone, but it turned out to be fun and worth it for this image!

I also figured you would like to see the images I talked about in my video, here they are and all the other images from my portfolio!

Welcome to The Gallery at Gwinnett Tech!

This is a video I did to tell you a little bit about my photography work and have a little fun. I especially made it for friends and family who can not travel to see my work currently on display at Gwinnett tech. It's a little cheesy but hey I like cheese. A special thanks to my videographers, Sammi Kate, Justin Nesbit and Joshua Bohn! Enjoy!

The many sides of Joshua!

This are a group of pictures I took of my boyfriend Joshua, who's always willing to be my model when I'm testing out new lighting or when I have some crazy idea. I don't usually play with putting photos together like this but I feel like I needed all four pictures to make my image complete. He's very expressive and has a billion different facial expressions, I enjoyed combining some of them to show the different sides of Joshua!

The Hawks!

A friend of ours recently took me and Demetrius to a Hawks game. We had our cameras with us because we had been shooting downtown and didn't have time to take them home. We didn't expect to be able to get in the stadium with them but we did! We were like two kids in a candy store with our zoom lens on and not being to far from the action to begin with. We got some cool shots and I just enjoyed being able to get close-up shots of the Hawks like that. They have always been my favorite basketball team and I've always loved going to games with my dad and brother, I'm excited to give them some of the shots I took of some of their favorite players! The Hawks won that night to the Wizards with a close call at the end. Their record this season is 10-W 6-L, I know my Hawks can make it to the playoffs this season, let's do it!

Photo Restoration!

This is my mothers Wedding photo, that I found with a plastic knife stuck to it and decided to restore it! It took me forever, as you can see I started with just color correcting it and getting the actual image to look pleasing. Then the fun began, the obvious thing I had to fix was the giant discolored line going over my mom. Let's just say there was a LOT of patch tool and clone stamp going on and went back and forth a lot between the two. The hardest parts were her right arm, her Bouquet, and her Vail mainly because I didn't have much information that matched well to replace the dirty parts with. I decided to add a couple touches in the end like taking out the picture frame in the background, to make the picture look that much more pleasing. I am very happy with the results especially because I did this when I was first learning photoshop. Photo restoration is great method and skill to know because a lot of people have old photos they want to fix and preserve including turning it into a digital file. So if if ever need a photo restored let me know!

It's raining cats and dogs!

I thought you all might enjoy this! This is one of the first images I created using differnt pictures and combining them on photoshop (almost 2 years ago now). The different pictures are the roof, Demetrius, and all of the animal pictures are seperate pictures. I just thought it was a fun idea, and I also see I could have done a little more to it to make it realistic, but i think it's really cool for the knowledge I had of photoshop back then. ENJOY!

Missionaries!

Last year around this time I was photographing my Photo Journalism final four. My topic was Missionaries and I followed two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I was very interested in the subject and excited and nervous to shoot. It was hard at first because I felt uncomfortable shooting at times such as prayer. Everyone was so welcoming that I was soon comfortable! It was an amazing opportunity and I was so excited to see the looks on their faces when I showed them my images. These missionaries are an amazing group of people and I felt privileged to be able to photograph them.

The Polaroid Pogo

"Reinventing instant photography for the digital age"
It all makes sense to me now that this new Polaroid printer is out, why they got rid of what we all know as Polaroids. Now making a printer that you can easily print from your camera phone(using blue tooth Technology) or digital camera(connecting to printer directly to your camera) with no ink Technology. It seems as though it will appeal to the same type of audience as before, of course just in our new technological age. It seems very fun for instant prints (only 2x3) that you can peel off the back to make a sticker. It will be interesting to see where they go from here!

LEGO graphics

As many of you all know I work for LEGO. Over the time I've been with them, I've observed our boxes many times. I've always been impressed with the quality of the graphics and how they make the LEGO set fit into a real environment. They also add small touches that really help, such as on this box they dirt on the tires and seeing the movement. Through my interest I found out that all the LEGO photographers and graphic designers are in Denmark, so that probably wouldn't be a possibility, but I do truly admire their work.

My Executive Portrait!

I noticed it was that time, for the upper quarter students at Gwinnett Tech to take their executive portraits. I figured everybody would enjoy seeing my executive portrait from last year, which made it to my portfolio. I Shot the head of the Dental program at Gwinnett Tech and this is actually the 2nd shot I took. The 1st one I was going to turn in had his students surrounding him holding fake teeth which was interesting also. But I did this little thing where I tripped over my hard drive and Lost all of my images from 4th and 5th quarter. Luckily he let me re-shoot him and this shot turned out better than my original! I remember this being a great shoot to learn how to shoot on location and under a time limit.

pssstt. don't forget to back-up your hard-drive!

Jim Martin Rally

This past Wednesday Demetrius Freeman and I went out and shot The Jim Martin Rally at the Clark Atlanta Campus. This was one of my favorite shots that i got because of the expression in this woman's face, there's nothing like being able to capture the true emotions of somebody!

There were over 3,000 supporters waiting to hear Jim Martin and Bill Clinton Speak. It took so long for Bill to get there that we were starting to leave, but of course when we did that he showed up and we got to hear him speak. It was a great experience!

"The moment it clicks"

I got the pleasure of first hearing about this book by Joe McNally (An amazing photojournalist who is known for his work in National Geographic and so much more) before it came out! I was at a seminar where Joe was speaking and talking about his photography life, showing pictures and telling all the details about them. I also was very excited to hear about how much detail he described in the book about how he got shots and how they were set-up. I learned a lot from the seminar but what stuck out to me the most is when Joe McNally said "The most important piece of equipment is your attitude" That can be easy to forget sometimes and it's nice to know such an amazing photographer goes by that rule. The book is a great read, because it's such a great learning tool for lighting composure and it's so interesting to hear about Joe's life!

A blind LEGO builder!

Yesterday I got the Opportunity to shoot the creation of a blind LEGO builder. The photo's will be going into a future article in Brick Journal Magazine, to go along with an Article Scott Lyttle wrote about her and how she's able to build without seeing her bricks or creation. It was truly interesting and inspiring to see. I'll let everybody know when the article has been published.

More about my work!

This Is an interview Stephany DuBose did of me where I tell you a little bit about the photography work I like to shoot. It was a lot of fun and I hope you get to know me a litter further from it! Check it out!

It went Great!

So yesterday my group gave our Wedding Toast Speech about my Teddy Bears. It went great! My Teddy bears are actually married now! These are two more images that appeared on my PowerPoint I was showing during my speech about Hubert and Princess. Everybody responded really well to the pictures, actually giving somebody an image to look at while your describing something can make a big difference in a presentation. Also I had so much fun with it, I love being able to be creative and tell a story with images!

Image for About the Author

This is the picture I took of Mimi and her grandchildren, that is in the back of the book Midnight with Mimi for the about the author. It is also on the books website. Marrissa Jonas and Demetrius Freeman were my assistants and we had a lot of fun! It's a little crazy trying to get 11 people to all look at you and pose, but the family was great, I got a lot of really fun shots also and it was a fun learning experience!

Midnight with Mimi!

I'm so excited! Midnight with Mimi a delightful new children's book is now officially published and for sale! The book is based on a true story about Mimi and one of her grandchildren Caroline. Joanna Addison(Mimi), the author is my best friends grandmother and I have had the pleasure to be around while the book was being created, and be the official photographer for the picture on the back of the book of her and her grandchildren. One of the very interesting things Mimi spent a lot of time with was having the illustrations look similar to her and even the layout of her home. The illustrator Jessia Lawrence spent a lot of time studying the house and re-drawing images to fit what Mimi wanted to portray, in the end the extra time and effort was worth it I think! You can own a copy yourself, I know I can't wait to get mine!

A TeddyBear Wedding!

I'm currently in a speech class an have to do a Special occasion Speech. So my group decided to do a wedding toast and not just any wedding toast but one for my TeddyBears Hubert and Princess. During my part of the speech I am showing pictures of them together while they dated, this is one of the many I took, this was such a shoot and I loved having an excuse to carry my TeddyBears around!

One big headache

So I went to the Mac Store today to decide what computer to buy, and I already am bad at decision making. So I'm trying to decide weather to buy the old Macbook or the new Macbook. The new Macbook is made out of Titanium and has better graphics, a larger hard drive and is $300 more.I can't decide if it's work $300 more. So I'm still trying to decide and would love any input especially if anybody has the new one

A favorite

I've gotten a lot of great feed-back about this image. I spent a lot of time in photoshop working on it to make it the image I wanted and I feel I definatly did that!
It's two pictures, 1.) an old church 2.) a brown paper bag. and I mostly messed with the opacitiy of each and used some other techniques also.
The church in this photo was the church that my boss grew up in and she took me here to take pictures. She actually hadn't seen this image until last week. I was so excited to show her and she completly loved it. I love how much it means to her and can't wait to give her a copy! It's also a favorite of Johns and one of my best friends dad Steve, everyone tells responds to it differntly and I enjoy hearing what everybody thinks.

A little encouragement

Yesterday John and his wife took me, Marissa, and Demetrius out to dinner(it was supposed to be the other way around but we weren't fast enough). We just wanted to thank him for everything he's done for us. This guy is AMAZING. I have to say I have no idea how I would have gotten through the photography program if it wasn't for John! He always made sure we were taken care of, he'd stay for late labs, always made sure we had the equipment we needed, and always made sure we were going in the right direction. He always encouraged me and pushed me to do my best because he truly believed in me. I'm so glad he's been a part of my life and I hope he realizes how truly blessed I feel to know him. We all need somebody who truly believes in us and won't give up. I hope I can be that person to somebody one day, I feel so lucky to have gained a true friend.

Interview with Sam!

This is an interview I did of Samantha Magroski, A current photography student at Gwinnett Technical College. It was a lot of fun and I was excited to get to know her further!

A Tribute to Polaroids!!

So I was thinking today about how much I'm going to miss my ability to use Polaroids for my 4x5 camera. I love using my 4x5 and have never really used it without Polaroids. I can't really imagine not using them and getting the exact exposure and scence I envision for Chromes. I only have about 1/2 a box left and my realities already here. Its just makes me sad because it shows that digital really is taking over and people are almost forgetting film even exists. I know people are adapting to not using Polaroids and i'm sure I will, but I will never forget you Polaroids..NEVER!

I know your wondering

I know a lot of people have seen this picture and wondered the story behind it because well I know its a differnt side nobody has seen. Well here it is, I took this image about 9 months ago. It was to express a lonely time in my life when I was trying to get over an old relationship. It was therapy to put an actual image to my feelings. It explains how I felt alone, vulnerable and curled up into a little ball where nobody could reach me. I took this for my personal use and never expected to use it for anything, especially not my portfolio where everybody would be seeing it. One day I decided to show my instructor and she feel in love with it. It's been interesting to show people because it's so personal to me and it also shows another side to my photography.

MEGAPIXELS!

Am I the only person who finds it crazy that there are point and shoots with 10 megapixels and more? as much as our DSLR's? How does that make any sence. Theres no way the use for those cameras need that many megapixels for their use. Heres a one of the many articles I found about it. Yes megapixels matter but it has gotten rediculous, don't forget about the other factors that help produce a nice image.

Looking for a good midrange camera

Recently my friend Rue asked if I could help her find a good camera that was a little more than a point and shoot but not as advanced as my camera (an SLR), and it be in the $300 range.
Here's what I came up with:
The Canon SX 110 IS- I liked because it's known to be fast and it's ISO range is 80-3200. 9 mpix

The Canon SX 100 IS- The older version of the 110 doesn't have as wide of range for the ISO. 8 mpix. Both have the 10x optical zoom, but the 100 is currently cheaper than the 110.

The Canon s5 IS- has a 12x zoom and a feature I really enjoy is it has a hot shoe adapter for a flash. 8 mpix
After looking at only Canons because Those were the ones she wanted me to predominately look at I decided to compare some other brands.

The Fujifilm Finepix s2000 HD- has a 15x zoom and a 100-6400 ISO range. 10 mpix. But also had something none of the Canons had a reduced power usage! All four of the cameras I mentioned take AA batteries witch is no fun replacing, but with reduced power usage and a cheaper price tag, I would consider the Fuji.

Of course I had to throw in a Nikon Camera so I looked at the Nikon P80- With an 18x zoom and a Lithium Ion battery pack. Both great features. 10 mpix, but this camera is a little more expensive than the others.
Overall I would recommend any of them for my friend and think it depends on what features you want, and how much money you want to spend, overall they all compare pretty closely.

A fun idea!

For my 20th birthday I set-up lightes outside of my house to photograph all of my guests. It was so much fun and this is just one of the shots I got. Here you can view others from the shoot. Photographing guests at a party is a great idea to play with things such as lighting plus your guests will all love having their own photo shoot!

Show moved to Gwinnett Tech!

Last week me and my fellow graduates moved our show from Art Station to the school (Gwinnett Tech). It was great to see everybody again and sad becuase it was really the last time we would all be together.

About to go Insane!

So, you see those beautiful glasses up there^. Well I lost them like 2 months ago and I think I'm about to go crazy. I don't need them to see all the time, I need them for computer work and photographing (How my eyes got bad in the first place) so it doesn't bother me unless I'm doing one of those two things (which I do a lot). So hopefully I find them soon, If not I guess.. I'll go get new ones

getting my name out there!

Yesterday I went to the Beehive co-op and meet with the owner to show her some of my work. The Beehive co-op is a boutique in Buckhead where different vendors rent a space to sell their items, things such as clothes, jewelery and lots of artsy stuff. Just to get an idea of if I wanted to sell my photography there I spoke with the owner about what shes looking for and prices. She enjoyed a lot of my fine art work and thought it would fit well. I also handed her my business card to give to any of her vendors that might want product photography. I probably won't try to sell work there yet, but it was good to get an idea of what type of work places like to sell and how people respond to my portfolio and just get my name out there!

MAKING HISTORY

This is just one of the amazing pictures Demetrius Freeman has taken while following the Obama Campaign. Demetrius plans to go out and shooting events now that he's our president to finish his story and I'm very excited to see how it turns out!

So I woke up at 5:30 this morning to go vote. I'll admit even two days ago I wasn't going to vote. Yes I am one of those people to isn't a big fan of politics and has been really sick from hearing so much about it.I decided to vote mostly for the things in my community I am concerned for. I'm glad I did one of the things in my community to vote on was to pass a law so that land deveopers could use public school funding, what if that were to pass? Theres still time to voice your opinion!

The images from the "Falling shoot"

This video is of the final images from each model from the Falling Fairy Tales shoot on America's next top model.

Falling Fairy Tales

So a little while back I was watching America's Next Top Model and fell in love with this shoot! It was cycle 6 Episode 4 the Falling Fairy Tales shoot. Each model dressed up like a Fairy Tale and had to fall and still protray the character. I love the shoot because of the creativity and because they had to go that much further for the shot. The Photographer was Tracy Bayne, who I recently looked up and is a fashion photographer that really looks like she always works had to show the personal beauty of each model!

The Nikon D90

So recently the Nikon D90 came out and i've been checking it out and comparing it to my D80 to decide if it's worth the upgrade.

Their are many specific features I noticed that they upgraded and I would appreciate such as: A better dust reduction system, better noise reduction, more frames per second (4.5), an improved auto focus and mor accurate white balancing!

The features i'm not sure I care for are the new face detection, live view (might grow to like it) and the movie mode.

Overall it seems like a great camera and I'm still considering the upgrade.

Check out someone elses comparison.

Delivered!

I just delivered "The Scale" and Carlos was so excited! He invited me inside his home and we looked at where we thought it would go nicely. He has to move some of his artwork around but will probably place it in his hallway or kitchen.

about "The Scale"

After I finished framing "The Scale" I wrote a paragraph about the image and a little thank you letter. I also included a polaroid from the shoot and my bussiness card so if the buyer wanted to contact me they'd have my infrormation right there. I feel this step further is important in promoting yourself and people love knowing the history of the artist and piece they bought!

A Cereal bag for a soft box!

Today while at lunch with Stephanie Richardson, we were disscussing how expensive lighting is and she mentioned to me how she had heard a cereal bag and and off camera flash works extremly well and obviously doesn't cost much. So I came home and researched it. Micheal Stewart has an article about this "Trix flash Modifier" and I think I might just give it a try. Take a look at the article for yourself!

My mentor

Today was amazing! I met up with Stehanie Richardson, one of the people I interned for at Studio Burns. We went to Art Station to view mine and my fellow graduates work, I was so excited to show her because she's been such a mentor to me and I think so highly of her! I was especially excited to show her how this shot turned out because she helped me think through how I wanted this image portrayed before I shot it. We discussed what props I was going to use, the background and how the colors would look together, how the lighting was going to look and even what mood or scene I was trying to create with this photograph. Being able to discuss a shot and your vision for it before it's shot is extremly helpful!