The Colorado Springs Photographer

EXTREME Seniors - Class of 2009

We just announced a brand new portrait session for our Colorado Springs, and Front Range high school seniors for their Senior photography and portraits. We call it our EXTREME session, and we're looking for 2 young people, a male and a female, to do a session with and we'll do it completely free and we'll even give you a great 10x20 mounted wall poster from your session, also for free!

What's the catch? No catch. Really.
We're just starting this type of session and we want to have some samples to show to our 2009 prospective clients.

What's an EXTREME portrait session?
Pick your favorite activity: mountain biking, rock climbing, bungee jumping... whatever. Many photographers will do a session with you with some of your gear from your activity. You know... you with your bike. That's OK, but we're proposing to do the senior's photography while he or she is actively participating in the activity.

That's right. We'll come to Garden of the Gods with you and get some great photos of you rock climbing. We'll head to the trails with you to get some fantastic portraits of you on your mountain bike. So, now you can have some portraits that are truly YOU.

So, we're looking for a male and female model to let us do a session of you in your activity. Again, we'll do the session for free (some qualifications and restrictions have to apply), and then we'll design and give you a 10x20 mounted wall poster for free.

Interested in being one of our models? Give us a call. We'll get some information from you and see if we can make it happen.

Are you a 2009 senior interested in having an EXTREME session done for your senior portrait photography?
For seniors who call us to book an EXTREME portrait session for this summer, if you call or email us BEFORE JUNE 25, we'll take 33% off the session fee. Contact us before JUNE 25 to get this discount. After June 25, our normal session fee will apply.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from you!

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Senior Photographer

Family Portrait Month - June 7 thru July 7

Things have finally warmed up and greened up here in Colorado Springs! So, you know what that means? Great photography and great portraits outside in the Colorado Springs area.

We're marking the occassion by announcing Family Portrait Month, which we have decided will run between June 7th and July 7th. There's a great promotion which is part of Family Portrait Month, so keep reading.

What a great time to get your photographer to do family portraits in Colorado Springs... The college-bound kids are still around so you can get them in the portrait before they head off to school. The weather is warm enough that you won't have to bundle up in sweaters and coats. Plus, the flowers and trees look great right now!

Do you need any more reasons than that to get your portraits done?

Oh, yeah... A Promotion!

Get 15% Off During Family Portrait Month
For those families who get their portraits done in Family Portrait Month, we're offering a 15% discount off any packages, reprints, and enlargements ordered from your session.

But, to get the promotion, you have to have your session done during Family Portrait Month, June 7 - July 7.

So don't wait. Call us right away and book the session before the month is over.
Save money.
Have a great time.
Look great.

Thanks for reading.

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer

You gotta love baby portraits!

This is Brianna and her dad, Jeremy, and it is one of my all-time favorite baby portraits.

Jeremy owns a construction and roofing company and is a big, strong, rough looking guy with these giant hands.

Brianna is a tiny little baby girl.

I love the contrast between the dark shirt and light skin; and the giant rough hands and the frail, soft little body; and the tough dad, and the trusting baby.

These are the images that move me to do what I do.

I hope you love this image as much as I do and as much as Brianna's mom and dad do.

Here's what they had to say about their portraits.

"Tracy, we are both very happy with the baby portraits of Brianna.  It's going to be so hard to choose, because they are all SO adorable! Thanks, again, for getting this done so quickly for us. We are VERY pleased!"
Denise & Jeremy Chester,
Falcon, Colorado

Thanks for reading!

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs BABY Photographer

A Day away

Friday, March 21, the first full day of Spring, our family and 2 other families, had an opportunity to get away for a day of sledding and tubing up in the mountains!

There were 20 children in the 3 families, 3 tubes, and a bunch of sleds, so the ingredients were all there for a great time. We started off at a place called Bear Trap Ranch, but the snow there was bad and very slow, plus we were attended by a couple of ranch employees. So, one of the adults among us went farther up the road and found a great place by the St. Peter's Dome trail.

It felt great to be in the mountains on a sunny, warm day. I'd like to say that I was away from the camera, but, as you can see, I had it with me and took over 330 photos.  I just can't put it down, I guess.

Thanks for reading,

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer

Featured Favorite... March

Last year, we photographed a wedding in March for Brett and Deb. They are definitely some of our favorite people who we have had the pleasure of working for.

Brett and Deb are now expecting a new baby, and we're very excited because we are planning to be there to do the baby's 1st Moments session after he's born!!

The weekend after their honeymoon, we had a great time getting all their family together and friends together for the "unveiling" of their wedding DVD slideshow. Deb's mom made spaghetti. We had a fantastic dinner, then all gathered around for the show.

What a great time!

Thanks, Brett and Deb, for being such great customers, and congratulations on the upcoming new little one next month.

We can't wait to meet him! :-)

-Tracy

The Colorado Springs Photographer

First "First Moments" Session of 2008

"Tracy, Thank you SO much for all your work on Isaac's portraits!

I cried through the whole slideshow! We LOVE how they turned out and are so glad that we did this.

Thanks, again."

Isaac's parents got things rolling in 2008, as he was the first baby born at the new Memorial Hospital in 2008.

Isaac's mom had just purchased her First Moments session a few days earlier, in anticipation of her husband leaving for Iraq. Neither of them thought Dad would be around for the baby's birth due to his deployment, but SURPRISE! Isaac made his appearance about a week before Dad had to leave.

It was an emotional event for everyone.

Isaac's parents were presented with their First Moments DVD slideshow, which you can see here, as well as their online gallery the very next evening after we photographed. We wanted to make sure that Dad got to see it before leaving.

Congratulations to Mom, Dad, and Isaac!

The Goal of First Moments

Our purpose in making available a program like this is to provide parents of new-borns a way to capture, in a candid, relaxed way, the fun emotion and excitement of having a new little one. It's important to us to arrive within the first couple of days after the baby is born so that everything is still fresh and new to the new family. We can do the session at the hospital or at the home of the family... wherever they are most comfortable with us being.

In addition to the candid, photojournalistic style of photography, we also make it our goal to capture some great portraits of baby too!

If you, or someone you know is interested in having this special time of their lives captured like this, we are having a special through the month of January. Save 20% if you order your First Moments session before January 31st. Call us, Email us. Whatever you need to do, but make sure you get ahold of us before the end of January to save 20%.

Thanks for reading.

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs BABY Photographer

Beginners Photography Class for 2008

We began offering photography classes for beginners earlier this year.

The class is really geared towards homeschoolers since it is during the day on a weekday, but any student who is available and interested is welcome to join us.

If you want information about the class, you can get it on our 2008 Homeschool Beginners Photography Class page on our web site.

Thanks for reading!

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer

Time for a break

We've been pretty busy doing family portrait sessions recently, but we did have a chance to take a break recently and enjoy a hike in Waldo Canyon.

Can you believe that I'm a Colorado Springs native and I've never been hiking in Waldo Canyon before?

So, here is a show of snapshots we took on that hike. This is posted using our new YouTube integration with our slideshow software.

Thanks for reading.

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer

The Very Scary Histogram

We know many of you have digital cameras, and love to take your own family photographs. Perhaps you, like many other people, have been disappointed in the quality of the images you get from your camera. You had your camera set on automatic, but it just doesn't look right when you view it on the computer.

The histogram: That scary little chart that is your secret weapon!

(Image borrowed from Adorama Imaging's 100 in 100 web page - see information below)

Photography is the art and science of recording light. In fact, that is what the word "photography" means: light writing. Since the heart of capturing light is exposure, here are a couple tips to help you with this, sometimes, complicated task.

There are 4 settings on your camera which will allow you to achieve a great exposure:

• Shutter speed - represented in increments which appear on your camera as 1000, 500, 250, 125, 60, 30, 15, 8, 4, 2, 1. There are also many increments in between, above, and below these on many cameras. The numbers listed here are "full" stops. Numbers in between are either 1/3 or 1/2 stops. For example, you may see on your camera, 125, 160, 200, 250... etc. 125 and 250 are the "full" stops, while 160 and 200 are 1/3 stops in between.
  Make sense so far?
• Aperture - represented by "full" and incremental stops on your camera also. The "full" stops are 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32. When you see these written, perhaps in your owners manual, you may see them preceeded by the letter "f". These are also known as f-stops, and appear, in writing, like "f16," etc.
• ISO - in the film days, this was known as ASA. It was the "speed" of the film and represented the size of the grain on the film. The digital cameras use the same concept. The higher the ISO number you use, the more grain (known in the digital realm as "noise") you will have in your image.
• White balance - in the film days, the equivalent of WB was the type of film you used. There were cool  films and warm films. There were films that you could use to balance the green tint of flourescent lights, and films you could use to balance the red light in a late afternoon sun. If you didn't have the right kind of film in your camera for the conditions in which you were shooting, you could put a balancing filter on your lens.

All 4 of these elements must be in place for you to be able to capture the perfect exposure. Of course, today's cameras can do all of that for you. But, what if you have your camera set on full-automatic, but you want to be able to tell if it is capturing an exposure that matches what your eye sees?

Here's where the histogram will help you

The histogram, perhaps not available on many of the lower-end cameras, will show you if you captured a good exposure or not.

"A histogram is a graph of 256 vertical bars, one for each tonality in an 8-bit image. (For a 16-bit image it will show it reduced to 8-bit.) The left end represents black, and the right end, white.

The two ends are very important. In most cases you want them to tail off as shown here. You don't want them to "push up against the wall" unless the image has a lot of dark or light."

These quotes are from a great web page called 100 in 100, published by Adorama Imaging. You can read the whole article on histograms, plus view the menu of all the photography tips they have published so far. They will be publishing 1 tip each day for 100 days. So far, I think they're up to  62 as of today.

So, whether you're a pro, an aspiring pro, or just a hobbyist, these tips will be good information to have!

Hope this helps.
Thanks for reading.

Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer

The Colors are flyin'

  Can you believe that after all the cold and windy weather we've had that there are still places - little pockets - around town that have great colors?

But, it's not going to last so now is the time to do Family Portraits outside.

What if, for example, you've got family coming in from out of town for Thanksgiving? You want a portrait of the whole gang, but the colors are all gone by then?

Believe it or not, we have some outdoor locations that we like to use that still look great even in the late fall.

Or, if you would like, we can even do your portrait at your home. We've done that for families in the past, and we've got a session like that coming up in a couple weeks.

So, if you would like to have a portrait of everyone together, you can simply ask us about our Family Reunion Package.

Thanks for reading!

-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer