The Weekend: BBQ, Rodeo & Hipstamatic

This weekend was one of those weekends you wish would never end...delicious food, good times with family, great weather and fun! This weekend we went to my husbands home town to visit his family and take in the local fair - it was perfect! First thing on Saturday morning we loaded up and headed to Lexington for a trip to eat the #1 BBQ in the state of Texas - oh my Lord, was it good! And it was exactly as I imagined it to be...a tiny building with seating inside and out, the pits all outside wafting delicious smelling smoke from the fires, and people smiling and just happy to be there. Snow's BBQ is open one day a week - Saturday and they are open from 8:30 til it's gone - and believe me when I tell you, it runs out quick. We got there at around 9:30 and they were already out of pork, and by 10:30 or so they were out of everything but brisket. They start the fire around 4pm on Friday and let it get good and hot and then throw the BBQ on around midnight and let it cook all night. People come from all over for the BBQ voted in 2008 as the Best in Texas. Here are a few shots from Saturday morning.


Ms. Tootsie - pit boss

Later that night we went to the fair and watched the rodeo. I choose not to bring my camera, but recently downloaded the Hipstamatic app on iPhone, so I wanted to try that out. OMG! I love it!!! It's so fun and you can download different lenses and packages - check out a few of the shots...

Groovy, right?!?! We had such a great weekend and hope that you did as well!

Have a fabulous day~

raquel

Week 41 | I Heart Beef Photo Challenge & $250 Giveaway!

I am nowhere close to being a vegetarian so when I saw the prize for this weeks I Heart Faces challenge, I had to enter. I am however, very conscious of where my food comes from and so I thought I would enter this...

My husbands' parents live on a small cattle farm down south and we love to visit. Cattle have sweet faces and I like to take tons of pictures while I'm there. But these sweet faces are where our food comes from, so I never forget that and am always thankful. Amen.

Head on over the I Heart Faces for more photos for this challenge!

Hearts...

Happy Saturday!
I just saw the new challenge on Photo Freaks blog - Hearts - so I thought I would enter this...

My sweet friends Natalie & Aaron let me take some belly pictures before their precious son was born.

Working on a new and improved blog (whew! I've got a lot to learn!) since I'm having so much fun! I want to make it something of my own, so I will let you know when (and if) I ever get it finished!
Hope y'all are having a great weekend~
raquel

Constructive Feedback Friday

Happy Friday! Another week has flown by and the weekend is upon us...hmmmm...what to do?

Well, I will be spending time with my two favorite boys (gorgeous husband and lovable furr-baby) and hopefully take some fab pix! I guess a little house cleaning is also in order - boo!
Anyway....

It's constructive feedback Friday over at I heart Faces this week, so I've chosen this picture - a photo I took of my best friends son and his girlfriend (aren't they CUTE?!?). I would love any feedback and CC you can give me! I'm not sure about the skin tones as my monitor is not calibrated yet (working on it though).

Have a Fabulous weekend!

raquel

Family

Do you ever just feel super lucky?! I've been having that feeling for days now. My husband and I are blessed with wonderful family and when you get to spend time with them it makes you appreciate it all the more. His parents were in town to visit this past weekend and we enjoyed having them so much! They are full of love and happiness that we found each other!
My parents live pretty far away, but we talk alot and they are coming for the first time to our house on Christmas - I already can't wait!!! I'm like a little kid I'm so excited! They are also thrilled for us and love him just like they've known him forever!

Here is a family photo from our recent wedding taken by our FAB photographer Jeff Persichette (Frisco Photography)...




Appreciate your family every single day. I do.

Have a fabulous day!
raquel

Hip Hip Horay - it's Friday!!!

This week has gone by in a flash, but I'm still super happy it's Friday! My sweetie got a new truck this week, so we went for ice cream and a joy ride last night - the sweet pup even got to go - he loves the wind in his face!

My husbands parents are coming in this weekend, so lots of cleaning and straightening to do. But first, I have to finish up the week strong!


OH! And it's fix it Friday - here is my fix for today's shot taken by Kelly Hoskins (http://kidnappedbysuburbia.com/) .

Original:



Fix:

Check out I heart Faces for more fixes!

I am going to try and take lots of pix this weekend and will blog all about it next week!

Have a fabulous day!

raquel

Tic Toc, tic toc...

I haven't blogged in over a week - yikes! Time slips by too fast these days. In fact that is what I've been thinking about lately. I was complaining to my wonderful husband that I hadn't taken any new shots lately and his response was: "You've been busy baby", and my response was: "That's no excuse!". Both statements are true, but...how do all you ladies out there do it? I mean, I don't even have a little one at home and I struggle with getting everything in that I want to. And besides not taking photos every day like I want to, I think about:

~getting together with friends I haven't caught up with in a while
~learning more about photography every single day
~staying thin and working out (uggghhhh!)
~spending time with my family (both sides of our family)
~giving the pup enough attention
~giving my husband enough attention :)
~cooking for my husband more
~excelling at my new job
~shopping (ok, that's just something I like to do, but never seem to get to)
~telling those close to me how much I love them every time I think of them
~projects that need to get done at the house
~the future
~and on and on the list goes

So, time keeps slipping by at NASCAR pace, but we all need to take time to enjoy the little moments in life. Well, that is my goal each and every day from here on out!
Hopefully, I will be able to remember that when I am racing around Dallas like a mad woman!
Have a fabulous day!
raquel

Week 38: Smirk Photo Challenge

I'm a day late on this photo challenge over at I heart Faces, but there is still time to enter! This weeks theme is smirk - here is my entry of my sweet little cousin giving me hers!

Have a fabulous day!

Monday? Already?

How did that happen?!
The past week or so has been a blur and unfortunately I haven't had a chance to take any pictures lately and I'm itching to get my eyeball back to the viewfinder :) Well, that's not totally true...I took some pictures for my new company (stock photos) on Friday and it turns out they are going to put them into our brochures and on our website. Kinda cool, right? My first published photos - yay me!!! I won't bother to put them up here, cuz they are a little less than exciting.
On a different note...
My most wonderful-fabulous-husband and I had the BEST weekend together...we laughed and giggled and cuddled and enjoyed just each other. Don't you just love it when you have a great weekend like that? We are big Top Chef fans, and so on Saturday night we decided to take a Top Chef recipe from the website and try to recreate it together....HA! Let me just say, the food was just ok (we're no Top Chef's), but we had so much fun cooking it together - and wow! Did we make a mess :) But it was a super fun night and I think we are going to do another Top Chef date night again soon. I highly recommend it :)

Have a fabulous day (what's left of it!)
raquel

A new schedule to get used to...

A new job = a new routine to get used to! For the last couple of months I have been able to stay home (because I have the most fabulous husband in the world!!! I know what you're thinking - but no mine is!!!) and now I must get used to a new schedule and less time to work on photography. Oh, the real world comes with so many issues....
Anyway, I wanted to post a few more pictures of my photo shoot with Maritza and her precious son Elijah today - they were so wonderful to shoot - you can definitely see where he gets his striking good looks from :) I hope I will get to take pictures of this precious family for years to come; can you imagine what a heartbreaker he is going to be someday?!

Enjoy and have a fabulous day!
raquel

Week 37 - Vroom, Vroom

Happy Monday!!!
Alot has happened in the past week - I returned from my wonderful trip back home, I got a new job (starting tomorrow) and had a FUN photo shoot with the most adorable mother and her son this past weekend. I could have taken pictures of them all weekend long!
The challenge over at I heart Faces this week is Vroom, Vroom - and we just happened to get some adorable shots of little E on a tractor, so I thought this would be perfect!
Head on over to I heart faces for more great entries for this challenge!
Have a fabulous day!

Home again, home again!

Ahhhh....the weekend was so fantastic! Family, home cookin', games and fun! I love Labor Day weekend. For over 15 years my family has been getting together for "the family campout" and each year I crave it more and more. I've been in Dallas for 10 years now, so I only get to see alot of my family this one time of year since they are all back in Iowa.
This year we were short several people because everyone seems to have some form of the flu - yuck! We missed them dearly, but we partied it up for all of them - playing crazy Minute-to-win-it inspired games, eating like we've never eaten before, enjoying the Fabulous weather (we got lucky there) and laughing and visiting.
I love my family - they are crazy and fun!
Cheers to next Labor Day - I'm already looking forward to it.
Have a fabulous day!
raquel

Self Portrait

So, I am trying to get better about taking photos every day. I've found that I am a little sporadic and not staying focused :) So, I've signed up for a few challenges each week to keep me on track. This weeks challenge in one of my groups is Self Portraits. Not a huge fan, but ok.

Let's go for it!

Self portraits are a little tough to get great focus, but this didn't turn out too bad, considering it was my first time seriously trying. I just converted it to black & white - because let's face it - everyone looks good in black & white :)

Have a fabulous day!

I heart Faces: Photojournalism

So, it's another challenge over at I heart Faces and this week it is photojournalism: use an image or images to tell a story. I immediately thought of these two pictures I took of a friend of mine before she had her first child. Daisy, her first baby, was so sweet that day and catching these two pictures one after the other made me so happy! It was such a precious moment! Hope you enjoy and head on over to I heart Faces for tons of great photojournalism photos!

It's going to be a great week!

Ahhh...the weekend was FAB and I feel like it's going to be a GREAT week! I'm so excited I can hardly sleep. Why, you ask? Nothing specific, I just feel like good things are happening...is that weird?? Oh, and we are on our way to the midwest this Friday to see my family, which is something I look forward to every year - Labor Day is my favorite holiday :)

Anyway, it was a great weekend and I even got some snaps of my husband when we took a walk through old downtown on Sunday. I love taking pictures of him - it makes my heart flutter every time :)

Here are a couple of shots. It was pretty bright out, so trying to manage the light was tricky.

I hope ya'll had a super weekend!!

Fix it Friday #68 (#2 for me :))

Happy Friday!!!

A lot has happened this week and one thing that I'm excited about it the Jasmine Star Creative Live training I've gotten this week. Although I am not a wedding photographer and Jasmine is a fabulous one, I've learned so much from her and plan to put it into practice. Like blogging. More than just once a week. For anyone who has seen this pathetic attempt at a blog and anyone who might take a look - I am making it my mission to do a great job at telling my photographic journey through my blog - more than once a week! So get ready, cause I'm chatty!!!



Now on to the Fix it Friday pic...

Here is what I did:

In Lightroom I adjusted the exposure and added some recovery

Then I straightened and cropped the picture

and added some pretty blue to the sky with the gradient tool

I then lightened her pretty face with the brush tool and bumped up the colors (mostly the grass and her dress) in the HSL tool

I know there is some additional tweaking in there, but that is the jest of it - I'm no Lightroom teacher, so if you have any q's drop me a line!



The Original:

My first Fix it Friday

I heart Faces has a Fix it Friday photo each week to play around with editing, so I thought I would give it a try! This little boy is so precious, and the photo so crisp, I didn't do too much on the first edit.

The Original

In Lightroom, I cropped his brother out of the picture and applied a pre-set I created called raquel1.

In the second edit I played around with some funky pre-sets and thought this was kind of groovy (although it takes away from his beautiful eyes)!

Head on over the i heart faces.com for lots more entries!
Happy Friday the 13th!

raquel

Surprise at I heart faces!

This weeks theme is Surprise! So here is a picture of my good friends baby boy Miles, who should not be surprised I am pointing the camera at him :) I do it every time I see him!

Head on over to iheartfaces.com for more great surprise pix!

A sweet family

I had the privilege recently to photograph a Mother and her two daughters (with a meet up photography group) - they were wonderful! Here are a couple of shots...

Avery guarding the backyard...

Isn't he so CUTE?!? I just love that sweet furry boy!

Have a great day!