Several months ago, I had the opportunity to second shoot for Ciras Photography. They are the husband & wife photography duo made up of Jesse and Heather Ciras, but that day Heather had a prior engagement (how punny) and so I offered to help Jesse out.  It was one of their THREE wedding gigs that they had booked that fall weekend, and despite having already shot two others the couple days leading up to it, Jesse was still surprisingly upbeat and totally game for whatever came our way.  I spent the day helping him capture Sarah and Kevin’s celebration with their family and friends at  Zukas Hilltop Barn in Spencer, MA. Some of my favorites:

Thanks so much, Jesse and Heather, for having me along!  I had a blast and hope to get to work with you again someday!

I know Christmas is over, but this is my favorite photo from that day, totally representative of what Christmas was and always should be.

(My older sister M with her ridiculously adorable baby)

Kind of unrelated, but a funny story: my sister was going through her old memory boxes over the holidays and found a card that my brother Bobby and I had given her for her birthday when we were kids.  Just a folded piece of red construction paper with a photo of us pasted on the front. I think I was 9 and he was 7.  It was a joint card, where inside we had each written a message to her, mine on top and his right below. I just about died laughing when she showed it to me:

Dear M, You are the best sister I have ever had.  Maybe it’s because you are the only sister I’ve ever had.  I love you! Love, Jenny.

Dear M, You are the best sister I have ever had.  I love you! Love, Bobby.

In my defense, I really think my brother was just copying whatever I had written above and omitting anything that wasn’t applicable to him. Regardless though, the combination of messages is pretty entertaining. :)

I mentioned one of my goals for 2010 in my previous post, and while I do have many others, it turns out I have one big, over-arching photography-related goal for this year and that is simply this: to blog more. Why?  I realized that while I started my blog last spring and had all the intentions of being consistent with it, I didn’t end up sharing nearly as much as I wanted.  Part of it is that blogging required way more time than I originally anticipated, but now that I understand the commitment, I’m planning on sticking to it!  By blogging more, I’m also simultaneously accomplishing a few of my other goals, which are:

1) to really force myself to shoot more.  This is the perfect space to share my recent images, whether professional or personal, and I don’t think I’ve taken advantage of it nearly enough yet.

2) to write more, therefore reflect more (and, therefore, have more of a record of my year). While one of the main goals of starting my blog was to serve as a portfolio of my work, it was also to keep track of my progress, and to keep track of my life throughout the year. I’m excited to create a more complete photojournal for 2010.

3) to share more. I’m hoping this will open up a space where I can share more non-wedding photography related images. Where you’ll get to know more of me through my personal images and my descriptions (even if the writing is the part I dread the most!).

4) to really spend time on my own work instead of looking to others’ work for motivation. This is not to say that I won’t look to others for inspiration–far from it–but I’ve found myself guilty of wanting to be better than others than working on how to better myself. This is definitely a tough one, and one I will really try to get right this year, not just professionally but personally.

So, what does all this mean exactly? It means I’m hoping to start blogging at least twice a week this upcoming year. I know it doesn’t sound like that much, but for someone who has been slacking and blogging barely once a week or once every two weeks, it is quite the goal. It also means that I want all of you–readers and followers–to hold me accountable to this. Leave a comment, or send me an e-mail when I’m missing. Oh, and thanks so much in advance. :)

In addition to this, I do have some personal goals that I want to work on this year, one of which is to really practice gratitude. Back in December of 2008, I started a daily gratitude journal where I wrote five things that I was thankful for each day. I kept it up for a while, but slowly started getting less into it as the months wore on, and officially stopped writing in August. While I don’t plan to formally start up a journal again, I do want to continue the practice of reflecting on what I have, appreciating even the littlest things in life, and being more open and receptive of people. I remember my change in perspective when I was practicing gratitude, and it’s something I want to get reacquainted with. It really is that the more love you give out, more you receive in return.

And, lastly, a few photos to start this blogging train off.  For a change, these are photos not taken by me but by my brother, who kindly got some precious images of me with my nephew B on Christmas Eve.

Here’s to an exciting new year! :)

I hope you all have had a lovely holiday, whatever it is that you celebrate!  I’ve been out of town these last few days for Christmas and have this next week free to spend time with family and catch up with old friends. It’s amazingly relaxing but also has given me a lot of time to think about where I am now in my photography and to reflect on this past year.

Something I realized in looking back is that just earlier this year I was booking clients primarily through my Flickr portfolio.  This was back when I hadn’t yet shot a wedding as a primary shooter and also when I met Anna, whose e-mail thanking me for her engagement photos still makes me smile a huge smile whenever I read it:

“Oh Jen- The pictures are SO beautiful!!! You did such an amazing job, we are speechless! Wow. We knew you were talented, but you really outdid yourself, thank you so much! We’ll treasure these pictures forever. Its rare that I like a picture of myself, but I feel like you really captured us in such a sweet way, some of them almost brought me to tears. We love the way you composed everything… the angles and lighting, the subdued vintage colors, all totally up our alley. Did you add in all those beautiful glowing sunbeams, or was that how the light showed up naturally? Either way I love how you edited them all… the light on the trees, the soft black and whites. The first image is one of our very favorites, it just captured us so perfectly and the tree limbs and shadows on the ground around us are so lovely.  Anyways, thanks again, we […] are happy to give you a recommendation anytime.”

I remember receiving the e-mail and practically tearing up too. I know it’s going to sound cheesy when I say this (if you know me well at all, you’ll know I am the queen of cheese!), but it was the moment that I realized what a powerful gift photography can be. The taking of photos and processing of images is of course something I enjoy doing, but by far the biggest reason I keep doing it is because of how happy it makes people when they finally see their photos. My goal everytime I go out is to create images that evoke the same type of emotions that Anna so wonderfully expressed in her e-mail. And I will continue to make this the main goal of all of my shoots in 2010 and beyond.

I’ll be posting another update soon with some of my other goals for next year, but for now I just wanted to say Happy Holidays to you and yours, and best wishes for the New Year! May your 2010 be filled with good health, tremendous love, endless inspiration, and many moments that make you smile huge smiles!

Weeks ago I went on a photo adventure with fellow photographer Melissa DeSchamp.  I think our initial idea was to shoot the scenery at and around the Esplanade, but of course it turned into an informal portrait session as we shot each other and experimented with the light.  And what light it was!  Sigh.

Just goes to show you that the quality of light (we were shooting within an hour of sunset) and positioning of the photographer and subject impact the result, whether it’s hazy, sun-kissed, flare-filled, or bathed in warmth.

Sigh.