{DFW Photographer} Featuring Jamal Turner

I couldn’t help but do a post about this guy.  Jamal is a student at my school, (he has officially graduated early because he is going to college this semester to do spring training.)

Right now I’m watching him participate in the Under Armour High School All American Bowl Game on the white team, number 3.  Jamal is our varsity football quarterback and has been widely recruited across the country to play football beginning next year.  Jamal decided to go to Nebraska after much consideration, and needless to say, we are all excited about his new journey he is about to begin.  (Looks like I’m going to become a Husker fan next year, along with a *cringe* Sooner fan as well…but that is for a later explanation, and another kid.)

Now, I normally would hesitate to post his picture on here as well as his last name, but seeing has how if you click on the links above you’ll find out his last name, where he’s going to college, and you could probably even find out his weight, I don’t think a post commending him on his achievements is going to hurt.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to take some pictures for Jamal for our homecoming court portraits, so I decided to post a couple of the shots here tonight in honor of good luck to him and his game.

One of the incredible features about Jamal is learning of how he has overcome loss and hardship throughout a lot of his life already.  The first week of school, he tragically lost his mother.  I admire Jamal for his motivation to keep going; he actually played in the game the next night because “because it’s what my mom would have wanted.” All this after loosing an older brother just a couple of years before. 

He is strong, has perseverance, and a talented athlete.  I wish him the best of luck throughout the rest of his life!

Senior Season

Right now it's senior season---it's all about the seniors in high school, or some in college as well!  Kids are gearing up and getting ready to assemble their graduation invitations, and of course, add in their super cool new wallet picture they had taken during their senior session with their photographer.

I love senior photography.  You can be so creative with it, and there are no set rules anymore to senior pictures; well, except the only rule may be, "express yourself!"  This is the time where it is all about that person and their achievements so far in life, and the bridge to the next level.  From now on, they fully determine what happens in their future, whether they decide to go to work, technical school, college, military, or some other endeavor.  This week I've had orders for three senior sessions and I'm so excited to have gotten the prints in today!  I love coming home to that package of prints from my lab and seeing the hard work I have put into my projects in tangible form.  I love preparing the prints, making sure they are packaged well enough for delivery to my clients and preparing everything just right.

Tomorrow I'm delivering a new product that I'll be offering with senior print orders from now on that is super cool! It totally fits with what a senior session should be all about---creative and expressive of the individual.  However, I'm not planning on revealing this until tomorrow, because I want my client to see the product in hand first!  (Don't worry, the pictures are already taken.)

So, make sure that when you have your senior pictures done, they are reflective of your personality and creativity...after all, it is your time to shine!!!

'Till Next Time...

Laura's Senior Shoot, (Grand Prairie Senior Photographer)

Cliff is so awesome, he is also supportive in my endeavors.  He demonstrates this by doing things such as putting my business card up on his work bulletin board to advertise for my photography. It actually worked as well!  Cliff's co worker asked me to do a senior session for her daughter, Laura, who is graduating from South Grand Prairie High School this spring.
This weekend we did her senior shoot at Cedar Hill State Park.

Laura is so pretty.  She's pretty quiet, but anything she says it is something worth saying. Laura told me she is planning on going to college in sunny Florida and major in film making---how exciting is that!?  Congratulations Laura and I enjoyed our session the other day!

SHHS Cheer

Lately I have been quite busy at work, and I just got busier. 
Aside from my teaching job at Sam Houston High I also do the webmaster work there and design/maintain the website.  Well, that led to doing some poster design work for our drill team, which ended up pretty cool!  If I had the file with me I would show you, but then again, I guess you could drop by www.aisd.net/sam and see the drill team's spring show and tryout ads for yourself. 

Well, our cheer sponsor saw the posters and really liked the work, so I was asked to do some more work....design a cheerleading tryout poster.  Since then, another high school in our district has also asked me to design their drill team poster...it's really kindof neat because I enjoy doing this type of stuff, but it is added work too!

Back to the cheerleading squad though.  Today after school, we met on the football field and did a little mini shoot for the tryout poster.  Here's one of my favorite shots of the day:

Don't these kids look great!  The afternoon was perfect.  It was cloudy and I had my flash...all was good.  The only thing I did to this image was resize it for the web and darken the grass just a tad...just to give it some "umph."  This crowd was fun to work with and I look forward to getting their tryout poster put together next week. 

I know the pose is a little done before, but I still like getting the grass behind them. The darkness somewhat balanced out the white of their uniforms and just looked really good with it. 

When we finished, some of the girls asked me how to get some pictures for themselves and I told them I also do senior pictures as well.  So, girls and guy....I look forward to hopefully doing senior portraits for y'all at some point!

Well, that's it for now, have a good weekend!

Ryan's Senior Photo Session

This past Sunday (before the Super Bowl,) I was able to shoot a senior session for my cousin, Ryan, who is graduating this spring from Mansfield ISD. 
Ryan has changed quite a bit from running away from my sister and me at family functions to now being very social and I do enjoy conversation with him. 
Ever since Ryan was young, he's greatly enjoyed roller coasters, even designing them on pieces of manilla paper and using crayons when he was around nine years old.  Since then, he's still heavily into roller coasters and is a super intelligent person.  I have no doubts he will go far in his life. 
Mandy is his friend and came along with us on Sunday to help make sure he wore that special shirt for his mom and we did a few shots of them together and of her as well.  She is beautiful and is graduating this May as well. 

Here are some images from the session:

We also did some pictures of Mandy as well:

This day was perfect for shooting.  It was cloudy, so we could shoot at any time.  It was definitely cold though.  Ryan and Mandy both were troopers though and we tried to take frequent breaks to warm up in the car.




















I think we are going to come back to this location on the porch with the chair, I want to get a photo of Mandy in some really nice dress with her heels kicked up.  It would be super cute don't you think?

Here's a sneak peak of some of the images we got of both of them together.  More will come tomorrow!

Day 12-14: 21 Day Body Makeover

So, I have fallen behind on my blogging.  My apologies. :(
This weekend has been pretty crazy and now I'm just now getting to updating the blog.

Friday night we went to the grocery store and bought some more produce, six pounds of carrots, 2 pounds of lunchmeat, and I'm sure we bought at least 2 more pounds of grapes.

Oh Lord! Help me last until next Sunday!  I'm so ready to eat sweet things and potatoes, wheat, dairy, and corn things again!  I'm getting tired of grilled chicken breasts and fish.

Tonight was successful.  We celebrated the Super Bowl (boo Saints!) at Cliff's parents' house and we cooked dinner. 
Grilled chicken breast, baked carrots, steamed broccoli and cauliflower were all on the menu.  It was good.  The carrots were some of the BEST tasting carrots I have ever had.  I just sliced them up, added salt and pepper, a little water, and a good helping of butter and put them in the oven for an hour.  They were so very tasty.

We ate Pappadeaux for Saturday night's dinner--the Cedar Plank Salmon.  It was very good as well.  The only thing I was uneasy about was that the fish was not completely cooked all the way through.  They cooked it more like a steak, so it was a little pinker in the core of the helping of meat.

I'm missing actually eating something for breakfast in the mornings.  A cold "shake" isn't exactly what anyone wants to start their day with on a cold morning.  I'd much rather start my day with Cream of Wheat, or waffles. That is okay, I'll get to have my waffles next Monday morning as soon as we get done with this cleanse.

On a side note:
We looked at 10 houses on Friday afternoon after I got off work.  I think we've narrowed 20 houses down to three.  Now, to look at some more and view those again.  (Oh! decisions decisions!)

Today I did a photo shoot for my cousin Ryan, who is graduating from high school in June.  We had some fun and got some good shots.  I'll make sure and post separately for that tomorrow.....along with viewing goodies. :)