I Just Love Portraits (Sunday Post for Missed Ones)

I love taking portraits.

I genuinely don't care who they are of, where they are or when I take them, I simply enjoy any opportunity to photograph a persons' style and personality. 

I had a professor last year who questioned my love of portraits (he prefers nature, still life etc.) and I had the most difficult time attempting to explain to him what I love about them. 

Truth is, I don't really know, I just do. 

Portraits of friends, portraits of random people or even portraits of myself. I get so much joy out of taking them, editing them, posting them and going back to revisit past ones.

My wish for every photographer is that they find some aspect of photography that makes them as happy photographing people makes me. 

.because photography is suppose to be fun. 

.point blank.

.Find what makes it fun for you and embrace it.

(Also, I sincerely apologize for missing almost a month of posts!! School got super needy all of the sudden, but it's slowing down now and I won't let it happen again until this time next semester :)  )

~Karalee

How to Take Pictures in a New Dorm Room

How to Take Pictures in a New Dorm Room 

{A Step-by-Step Guide}

* indicates an optional step

Step 1: Convince your roommate to stand in the middle of the room.

Step 2: Make her stand there as you adjust camera settings, curtains and blinds until you are able to achieve the lighting you were aiming for.

Step 3: [Using two tacks] Pin up a super fancy backdrop (*cough cough* bed sheet bought at Target specifically for this purpose)

Step 4: Allow your roommate to tuck the bottom of the super fancy backdrop out of the way when not in use (because she did let you put it over her doorway, after all.)

Step 5: Bribe your roommate to stand in the middle of the room [in front of the sheet] for you again.

Step 6: Continue adjusting things to achieve desired "look".

*Step 7: Invite your friend with newly dyed pink hair to come pose for you.

*Step 8: Tell her to pose like she is Gwen Stefani and she knows how awesome she is.

*Step 9: Introduce a fun prop (such as this pretty blue chair that complements her hair color wonderfully)

Step 10: Load them to your computer and have lots of fun editing!!

And that's the end.

~Karalee

The Fourth {a Monday post by Rachel}

{{Okay, I swore I would never say this, but doing Mondays is getting really hard. Every Monday I work an 8 hour work shift. And it makes for very little time to do a FTP post if I have anything else I am going to be doing that day.

You don't even want to know how many times I pushed the snooze button for my FTP reminder alarm, seriously. and just about the first time I can squeeze this post in, it's already past 10 at night.

So, if, at all possible, you have a Tuesday or a Thursday (Thursday would be the best) and Monday works just fine for you, and you would be willing to trade, PLEASE email me. You don't know what this would mean to me. I really don't want to quit FTP for the Summer, but if this keeps up, I really don't know... Work takes eight+ hours out of the day, and I do have a life besides it.

Thanks for listening to this ramble. :P

so, if you are a Tues or Thurs who can do Mon and is willing to trade, shoot me an email! Thankee!}}

(didn't get many great pictures of fireworks, but I got a great movie, which I will be showing you on my main blog, Summer Breeze)

The Fourth of July has never been a huge holiday in my family. We do the same thing every year.

The younger kids (or whoever wants) goes to our local parade, when we get back we chill and later in the day we go to our local fireworks.

We usually eat Zip-packs (aka foil dinners)

and we always put our flag up.

This year it was a little different, instead of eating Zip-packs we went to a party.

Well, either way, we don't do much to celebrate our independence. Which kind of stinks, because our independence is a big thing in this country. That's the reason why the Pilgrims first came here. They came here to be able to worship however they wanted- they wanted the Freedom of religion, and because of their want for that, we got an amazing country. During that time, God was on the lips of almost everyone. 

Now, this country is much changed since then, anyone can see that.

It came a long way since the Pilgrims first landed on what used to be the Indian's and Spanish's country/land/place where they lived. We now have so many other freedoms, the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of petition, etc.

Another thing that is very important in our country which used to be a big issue is Racial Equality.

Do you see?

We live in a great country. 

Sure, in some ways it used to be better, but just for a second, look at different countries or provinces, for example, look at Europe, China. 

Yeah, we got it quite good.

So next time you think America is so bad, just look where else you could live.

Guess That Picture:

Last time's picture:

If you guessed earbud, you were correct!

This weeks picture (is pretty easy...):

What IS that?

xo,

Rachel Nicole

The Lake House.

Ha, isn't that the name of a scary movie??

Well, I promise this isn't scary....Unless it's the quality of my pictures. :)

We spent the week at my family's lake house the other week, so I just had to take some pictures.

{If you want to see some ranting I did, feel free to check out THIS POST from my personal blog!}

 Ha, this was an old phone charger that I left over there one time!  {Luckily, I got a new phone last month! :)}

 I just like the pattern of this bag. :)

 I hate making up the bunkbeds, because you can never get the covers straight! {Well, I didn't really try this time... :)}

 I brought Kanani along, and did a photoshoot with her... If you want to see those pictures, you can go to my blog HERE.

 Whenever my nieces and nephews come over to our lake house, we always end up playing UNO.

 I think we have like three or four kinds of UNO over there... Original, flash, attack, and possibly spin, I can't remember. :)

 I thought this clock was pretty photogenic. :)

Don't you think so?? :D

Which picture was your favorite??

I have more from the lake house, but I didn't figure y'all would want to scroll through a whole pile of pictures, so I'll save those for next time! :)

Have a great week, y'all!