Happy New Year!

No resolutions for Moi…but I do have a New Years Word!

The heck with New Years Resolutions- there like saying I’ll drive to Pudunk Idaho but with no GPS or road map. I always need to create a way to focus my thoughts & energies. Otherwise I just bounce from shiny thing to shiny thing! I need a plan…I need a WORD! This New year I have a theme or a word. It will be my north star, my soul’s compass guiding me to how I want to live this year, where I want to go and helping me become who I want to be.

I very much like entering the New Year this way. Not just some goals or resolutions to make and break, but a new attitude, a real focus for my year. So decide on a New Years word. It might even help to look up the exact meaning. Then WRITE IT DOWN! Post it where you will see it everyday. Move it over in your mind often to keep it fresh. When making decisions and choices say your word, does this choice or decision fit in the focus of your theme for your year? Embody it, embrace it, live it! This word will become the GPS to where you will go and what you will be this year.

I love the idea of having a New Years Word. Everyone should have one. Need some word ideas to get you started?

Creative, Clarity, Empowered, Faithful, Grateful, Happy, Joyful, Open, Vibrant, Enough, Zenful, Peaceful, Simplicity, Inspired, Kind….
RELEASE…This is my word for 2011!
release- verb: to set free from restraint, confinement; to relieve from something that confines, burdens, or oppresses

RELEASE…release clutter… release negatives…just release …. The list goes on but you now know what my New Years word is. My North Star, guiding word that everything will be measured through in 2011….release.

May 2011 be as awesome as 2010 was!

Steven and Candace Happy 5th Anniversary

I have so much to get caught up on after the holidays but just couldn’t miss wishing Candace and Steven a happy 5th anniversary. Here is a short video I did to remind them of their special day. I can’t believe how quickly the time goes. It is interesting to look back and see how much my work and shooting has changed and progressed in the last 5 years but also to see how this couple has grown and changed.

There are still happily married with two adorable little kids, a boy and girl. If you go to my album titled Abby and Family you can see some pictures of this adorable family that I got to take about 10 months ago.

Many couples that I have the privilege of capturing their wedding day memories once they have their photos and albums, unless they stay local and contact me for family pictures or something I really don’t know what or where they are or how their lives are going. (though this seems to be changing with Facebook). With Steven and Candace it was different. I have known Candace and her family for the last 12 years and have watched her grow into this amazing woman and mother.

Steven and Candace got married in January at 4PM coming out at 5) which if you looked out your window today you know that didn’t leave much light. You will see that after the family and group photos I got to really test my skills and we were shooting in very low light. Not bad except we didn’t want to shorten up the depth of field as we still needed shots with the temple in focus. It was a lot of changing setting but I got some of my favorite shots of them as the sun went lower in the sky. In the pictures at the end with the golden windows behind them, those are the window of the celestial room at the Redlands Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day where they got married.

Because this is a couple that I have known for years and love them and their families I had to take a picture of myself with the couple just for me.

I hope I’m around to wish them a happy golden wedding anniversary.