New Workshop Dates Announced!!!

We are excited to announce the next set of workshop dates!!! Mark them on your calendar and register to hold your space!!

Registration for both of the workshops will begin at 1:00 am on Monday, August 10th. Last time we sold out within a week, so make sure that you mark your calendar to make sure that you get a spot! We don't want anyone to miss out.

BEGINNERS WORKSHOP

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Kimberly Jarman Photography Studio
126 W. Main St. Mesa, AZ 85201

Registration begins at 5:30 PM

$179 for the workshop ($149 early bird before October 15, 2009)
$79 non-refundable deposit holds your space; $100 balance due at the door.

*Credit cards accepted.

Only 20 seats available.

To Register for the Beginner Photography Workshop please click here. Registration will begin Monday, August 10, 2009.

INTERMEDIATE WORKSHOP

Saturday, January 16, 2010
1:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Kimberly Jarman Photography Studio
126 W. Main St. Mesa, AZ 85201

Registration begins at 12:30 pm.

$359 for the workshop ($329 early bird before October 15th, 2009)
$159 non-refundable deposit holds your space; $200 balance due at the door.

*Credit cards accepted.

Only 20 seats available.

To Register for the Intermediate Photography Workshop please click here. Registration will begin Monday, August 10, 2009.

-----------

We are so excited to have you join us for these workshops. If you have questions please visit our workshop website at www.createbetterimages.com and use the contact section to email us.

Create Better Images Video

Jen and I are so excited to share with you this amazing video that Serendipity Videography created for us to show you a little more about our Create Better Images Workshops! If you don't already know, Jennifer Bowen and I put on workshops for those who want to learn how to use their camera better. Right now we have a Beginners workshop and a Intermediate workshop. This video is specifically for the Intermediate workshop and really does a great job giving you a little glimpse of what to expect.

I have to give a huge Thank You to Serendipity Videography for doing this promo video for us. They are amazing and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. If you ever need a wedding video or a promo video give them a shout out. They are amazing!

Be sure to check out our dedicated workshop website at: www.createbetterimages.com

Create Better Images from Serendipity Videography on Vimeo.

Keri and Jerod | Beverly Hills, CA | Wedding Photography

July was a wonderful month for me. I went to Hawaii on Vacation, my baby turned 1, and Keri and Jerod had me come out to California to photograph their wedding! LOVE it!!!

Keri and Jerod's wedding was one that I will never forget. They are such an amazing couple and have such a great story. They met at UCLA 8 years ago. They are both youth pastors for their church so there were tons of youth age kids at the wedding. It really was a fun party.

The great thing for me is that I got to leave the Arizona heat and go to California to photograph this wedding. An added bonus was that the wedding was on the corner of Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica BLVD, right near all the Rodeo Drive shops. I had such a fantastic time photographing everyone.

The wedding party was so much fun and the family was so gracious. I got to know a lot of them and was so taken aback by their friendliness and generosity. I really felt like I was photographing a friends wedding and I LOVED it.

We started out the day at the Intercontinental Hotel on Avenue of the Stars BLVD in Los Angeles. This was an amazing hotel and I was so excited to see that they had rented a suite to get ready in. This is something I really suggest to the girls is to rent a suite where you can all stay the night before and then get ready in it. It gives you a lot of room to put all of your stuff and usually has the best light for pictures.






The girls bought Lotto tickets. I think one of them won $8!!!





Keri's mom was so cute! I really enjoyed getting to know her. She had a camera in hand taking pictures of the whole thing and she looked like a pro crouching down for the perfect shot!






Keri and Jerod are big Disney fans so Keri's wedding band had Mickey Mouse... well it wasn't her "real" wedding band but it is the one that she had for the wedding. They haven't picked out the real one yet, but this was perfect for their big day.









I was so thankful that Keri and Jerod met before the wedding for pictures. It really allowed us to get some great shots. This was their first look. Jerod was in awe of how amazing Keri looked!



A new favorite.



I LOVED this wedding party.. so much fun!






Love these.







The flowers were beautiful. Party Posies in Torrance did a great job.


Keri is the most creative bride I have ever seen in my life. She is a graphic designer and pretty much made all of her details including these programs. They were jam packed with so much fun stuff, cross word puzzles, trivia, and a ton of other stuff. I was amazed!


She also made all her decorations. In all of the boxes there were door prizes for the guests at the end. Such a great idea. Everything was over the top and very good. Even the cake toppers were cartoon characthers of themselves.



The Ceremony was beautiful and included Keri and Jerod reading letters that they had written to their parents. I don't think there was a dry eye in the crowd.







And this is probably one of the most special shots of all day. Usually I don't post the "kissing" picture, but this is a special Kissing picture. Keri and Jerod decided to wait to kiss until their wedding day... so this was their first Kiss. It was a short and sweet Kiss that I had to catch quickly. I even got in trouble by the head lady at the church for interupting the service:(:( ( Really I didn't. I was very respectful, but there were some crazy rules at this church and I guess I broke one). I had to get it and so glad I did.



We then headed out to do more pictures of them.. this time kissing ones were involved!! We got some great pictures.. these 2 are some of my favorites.












Love this one too!



Isn't Keri Beautiful!









Total LA... so love this picture.






Thanks Keri, Jerod, Friends, and family. I had an amazing time with you all.

Jacob's Headshots | Arizona Headshots | Photography

Musicians are fun to photograph!!! A few weeks ago I photographed head shots for Jacob. He is a conductor and needed some headshots for promotional material. We had a great time getting some really great shots for him to use.

I love doing head shots because I do them differently than the traditional head shot and I give you a lot more options than you would normally get. If you need new headshots feel free to shoot me over an email.

I {Heart} Gifts!!!

I have to admit it... I LOVE gifts. I feel special when people give them to me. My heart pitter patters and they make me smile. I mean when you get a gift from someone it really makes a difference... Especially when it's homemade!!!

Mique was one of our Create Better Images Workshop attendees. She actually won our giveaway that we did. (We gave 1 seat away to a deserving person). She has an amazing story of finding her love for photography and an amazing heart for what she wants to do with her photography. She is an inspiration. You can read her story here.

When she arrived the day of the workshop she gave both Jennifer and I a framed hand made picture of a camera with our logos embroidered. It was awesome!!! I had to share a picture of this amazing talent. I didn't even know you could do this... (I don't sew or embroider, so this is cool to me!!)

Anyways thank you Mique. I really appreciate the gift!!!

The Lautz Family | Pinetop Arizona Photography | Pictures in the Pines

I am blessed to have the job that I have. Really, what could be better than being able to get to know amazing families and people and photograph pictures that are going to be displayed all over their house for years to come. I truly love what I do.

Meet the Lautz Family. While I was in Pinetop at the beginning of June I was taking pictures for "Pictures in the Pines". An annual photoshoot I do every year in the Pinetop area. It allows for families to get some very different and fun pictures out of the heat! The Lautz family is from Tucson and are living in Pinetop for the summer, so the asked me to take pictures of them.

We went out to one of my "secret" locations and had a blast. The brand new addition to the family came along as well and kept us very entertained!

Isn't this guy the sweetest? He was showing me how old he was!! LOVE it!



These are some of my favorite family pictures!









Classic.



A boy and his new best friend!






We had to get some of Karl and Lisa alone. They did great!



And yes, that is a true action shot. They were just having a little fun and I caught the action! Some very sweet shots as well.




Thank you so much Lautz Family. I'm so excited for this weekend to show you your prints and pick out frames. Gonna be so much fun!

Workshop Recap!!!

Two weeks ago Jennifer Bowen and I held our 3rd Create Better Images workshop. We have had a lot of interest in these workshops and when we announced our Beginners and Intermediate workshop we sold out within 2 weeks! We were shocked and so honored that people wanted to come and learn from us!! Thank you so much for all those that attended, we had an amazing time with you all.

--------

Before I begin with the recap I have to give a huge thanks to our sponsors for this workshop.

ZuZu's Petals in Downtown Mesa - they provided the beautiful centerpieces in our detail pictures below.

Gina, owner of Fiori Floral for providing the beautiful boquet for our Bride and Groom shoot.

------------

For those who want to learn more about these workshops, we have created a blogsite which goes into detail of what the beginners and intermediate class entails. To give a little recap, the beginners class if for those who want to learn how to use their camera better and how to take better pictures. We teach the basics and teach people how to take their camera off the little green box and learn how to shoot manually. Our Intermediate class goes more in depth by teaching posing techniques, client interaction, and we also have a model shoot. It's all a lot of fun and there is so much that happens throughout the day.

We started the day early with our beginners class and had a lot of fun with them. Jennifer got some really fun shots of the attendees taking pictures of her while learning how to practice backlit photography. We had a packed house with 20 begginers!!







A group shot of all the Beginner attendees!!



We then moved into the Intermediate workshop after a short break. A few of the beginners attendees also attended the Intermediate workshop, which proved to be a great thing for them since they were able to work on the skills that they learned earlier in the live shoot.

There were a ton of cameras, people, and chaos, but we had a lot of fun.



The wonderful family we were shooting were such troopers!! Can you imagine 20+ photographers taking pictures of you... the kids were a little overwhelmed, but they did great and we got some amazing shots.









Jen and I both showed the attendees how we would work with a family and directed part of the shooting. We then let some of the attendees direct a little as well.



Yes, overwhelming for the kiddos.. can you imagine? LOL. We actually had people pulling over on the side of the street asking us what was going on.









The 2nd part of our live shoot was with Cristi and her cousin... funny story! Cristi's husband was out of town for the shoot, so she asked her cousing to step in as the groom. It did end up giving us a few laughs but they were both troopers. I got a ton of great pictures of Cristi, she is beautiful.






And a huge thank you to to Gina, owner of Fiori Floral for donating this gorgeous bouquet!






Here are a few more pictures of all the attendees shooting. What a fun day!









Cristi, our wonderful model/photographer friend took this picture of the intermediate group. A few were missing and i'm so sad we didn't get an entire big picture of us all.


Thank you everyone who attended. We really enjoyed having you.

For those of you are still interested in our workshops, we will be announcing the next one in a few months so continue to check up our blogs so that you can jump in as soon as it is announced.

To read some blog reviews by those in attendance, click here, here , here, here, here and here!
Wow, that's a lot of clicks!!! (Am I missing anyone? Please leave a comment with your blog link if so.)

To learn more about our workshops in general and find out details on the next one, click here.