Love and Taxes

Today is a special day for us, it's our 4th anniversary!

What are we doing to celebrate? Taxes. Yep, we're scheduled to meet with a CPA tonight followed by dinner.
Not near as romantic as some of our previous gifts: a vacuum cleaner (1st anniversary), dehumidifier (2nd), or a dishwasher (3rd), but not nearly as expensive either! Actually, if Mr. CPA does his thing right, Uncle Sam will be sending us $, to make our anniversary a positive financial experience!

Sacred Heart Co-Cathedral

Chad and I have been given the opportunity to photograph a wedding at the new Sacred Heart Co-Cathedral at downtown Houston in December. Now that I have seen the beauty of this church and the grandeur of the Cathedral, I am beyond excited!
It will seat 2,000 people, it is surrounded by beautiful stained glass, and has 8 foot Italian wood sculptures in its 6 shrines.

Chad and I plan to check it out for myself in the next few months and we are delighted!

Does anyone know of other couples getting married here?

Easter Photo Shoot

I had the opportunity to photograph the Phillips family while they were in town this Easter. I'm not done processing all the photos yet, but I wanted to post 2 of my instant favorites.

Little Hailey has inspired me. Watch for the "Holidays" gallery coming soon to my website!

On being MIA... and Astros photos!

Where have I been?

I've been missing for a while. One weekend I had on old friend in town, the next weekend Chad and I traveled to Las Vegas for WPPI, the following weekend we celebrated Easter with family, and tonight we went to an Astros Pre-season game.

I'll catch y'all up on the details of everything else in a bit, but for now, I thought I'd post some of the photos from the Astros game tonight. Chad took some, I took some. We were playing around with a new telephoto lens and I got brave hacking up one of Chad's photographs in Photoshop.

Sea of Green

Winding Up

Hunter Pence tossing the ball with the bat boy

Waiting in the Dugout

This was Chad's photo of 3rd base. I turned it B&W and then added the texture (it's actually green marble).

Chad's photo of Wandy Rodriquez

Sunday, Glorious Sunday

I met with a couple today whom I adored! They are both very sweet and easy going (not to mention, a cute couple making my job even easier)!

I started off the meeting at a downtown Starbucks by getting too excited and spinning my laptop around, spilling hot coffee all down my dear Chad's jeans. Sadly, I felt worse that I didn't have the prints or the album that I ordered because they are both arriving later this week. (Chad's a tough boy, he can take it.) :)

After that meeting, since we were downtown, I went to check out the Kim Son since I will be shooting a reception there in December. While I was down there, ironically, I got a call from the December bride's sister (who hired me to take their Christmas card photos in the fall) whose sister-in-law and niece were in town. Her niece needed head shots for a Vietnamese pageant this summer. Chad and I headed over to the west side and took some awesome photos at Terry Hershey Park.

Below are a few of my favorites of Brittany and her mom, Jackie, from our shoot.

This is where Brittany gets her good looks!

My favorite!

Now, if you ask me, Brittany has this thing in the bag! We have our 1st place winner right here! She is so adorable!
I can't wait for the traditional Vietnamese dress and swimsuit shoots!


On a side note, congratulations to our friends Brian and Sarah on their newest arrival, Olivia Shannon!

Tall, Grande, and Venti

As I mentioned in my previous post, I finally got my prices up on my website for almost everything I plan to offer. I even posted the prices for my wedding packages! It's a controversial subject for many photographers (placing your prices on your website), and that you should meet a potential client in person before giving your prices (I guess so that you can rely on your charm), but I decided that I will try to be as open as possible to anyone who would consider hiring me for their wedding.

Anyway, aside from the serious stuff, the real purpose of this blog posting is to get advice from YOU, the reader for names to my new wedding packages!

I have 3 packages, currently named I, II, and III (yes, boring. I know.) But I need new names!

• Silver, Gold, Platinum (blah & cheezy w/ a "z")


• Small Brown Bag, Medium Brown Bag, Large Brown Bag (playing off of the Niemann/Neiman Marcus thing, but with Bloomie's)


• Swing, Sommerset, Signature (these are names of Tiffany & Co. collections)


• Decaf, Caffeinated, Half-caff-double-decaff


• Vogue, Glamour, Cosmo (okay, this so isn't me)


• Empire, A-Line, Princess


• Unleaded, Premium, Diesel


• Dad always liked you best, Middle child syndrome, Spoiled brat (I think I'm on to something here!)


• Vanilla, Strawberry, Chocolate

Leave me a comment, let me know your favorite, or leave a new suggestion!

Thanks!

(Special thanks, to Chad, Lindsay, and the folks on Flickr's SWPB for the ideas!)

Updates to the Website and Prices!

Hello to all my devoted readers! All 3 of you... (Hi Mom!)

Anyway, I just wanted to notify everyone of some special little updates. I just changed the pricing of my portrait sessions. As before, there is a $75 sitting fee, but now I am including a $25 print credit! You can use it to get $25 off of a canvas, $25 off of a CD, or even $25 of free prints!

Speaking of canvases, I have also updated my website with bunches of new items in bunches of new sizes. Canvas prints (aka Gallery Wraps), board mounted prints, albums, etc.

Check it out, take a look around, read my new FAQ page, suggest a new FAQ if it is something that you think I am FA (frequently asked... I guess).

See you soon!

Thanks,
Kel