arizona wedding photography ~ brenda eden photography

{Egg Hunt}

I'm trying different ways of processing with this image, trying to give it a creamy pink cast. I like the way it turned out.

{Platinum girl}

One more image from last year's Easter Egg Hunt and portrait session. I like using Photoshop to get different looks in the images I create. I was kind of going for the look of platinum here. Platinum is so beautiful, you can read about it here. Also, her hair was pretty fly-a-way, so I fixed it a little bit, but left some of the fly-aways, because I like the way it looks. I do a lot of what I think of as "behind the scenes" photoshopping for my client's images. I don't usually even get around to telling people what I did to the images to make them look a certain way, but that's just something to know: If I take your photos, I spend a big chunk of time making them look awesome in Photoshop. You will never get images from me that are just straight out of the camera. I work on them a lot! 

{Sunflowers & Sparklers}

Eek! I am so excited to share these! For a long time, for years and years actually probably, I have wanted to create portraits of people amidst sunflowers. When I was taking photo classes in college, I took some photos of some of my friends out in front of wild sunflowers that grew alongside the road next to a farm and I have always wanted to do that again. (I should see if I can find those photos and post them - they were in black and white film.)

I loved how these kids were so at home with nature. Tall grass, june bugs, bird poop, climbing up on the little hill where some of the sunflowers are growing, a sudden rain and dust storm - nothing fazed them. And when I looked back at the photos, I was really struck by the sweetness of the siblings toward each other. These kids just really love each other and it was so cool to see that I had caught little looks between them here and there. Scroll down and see what I mean - I'm especially thinking of the middle son looking at his older sister and the older sister with her hand on her youngest brother's head for a moment while they are all playing with the last sparkler, before we called it a night and went inside and had pizza! Oh and I especially love the look of the two boys as their mom is handing out the sparklers. See her hand in the top part of the frame and then see their expressions? That is exactly what I was hoping for when I started thinking about doing this kind of portrait shoot. I wanted to capture summer, the essence of summer and the joy and excitement that I think you can only feel when you are that age. Oh! My! Goodness! Sparklers!

These kids were total troopers. It was hot, of course, I mean it's July and it's Arizona, but they put up with the heat and we got some relief from a dust storm that started blowing in just as we were starting to shoot. It was a mild dust storm (compared to the massive dust storm we got two nights later) but it turned the sky a yellowish color and so if you scroll down a bit, you will see what I mean. When I was editing these photos, I tried to un-yellow them. I always shoot photos in camera raw and so I can change the color temperature, and I tried for a while before I remembered, hey! the sky really was very yellow due to the yellow dust the storm was blowing in. And luckily that dust storm also brought a little rain, and so if you notice the images where the two older kids are dancing? Well, it had just started to rain. Which made us all do a happy dance since it's been ages since we saw rain.

For this shoot, I finally got to use my Ralph Lauren paint that I got on clearance at Home Depot. I painted an old door with the bright blue metallic paint and faced it against a north wall (which makes for pretty light) and got to photograph the sister. (I have gold and silver and purple paint that I want to use on future shoots, and so it was cool to see that I really like the results with this paint.)

This shoot was so much fun! I definitely want to do more like this, with even more sparklers and more sunflowers. Thanks H. family for being so awesome! :)

♥♥♥ Baby's first birthday ♥♥♥

This baby girl having her first birthday party is my little second cousin twice removed. (I had to consult wikipedia's page on cousins to know what degree of cousins we are.) 

Her cake was adorable and really delicious.

Purple dress with flowers = soo darling.

An old-fashioned baby piano!

So how exactly are you related if you are second cousins twice removed? Well, for me and this little doll here,  it means that Rebecca and her husband David (who was born around 1868, possibly on May 23rd) are the ancestors we have in common. David was my great-grandfather and would be her great-great-great grandfather. I hope I am getting that right. I've heard my mom talk a lot about her grandfather David and while I never got to meet David, he must have been a very wonderful grandfather, my mom has so many sweet stories about him.

♥♥♥♥ Happy Birthday Baby K!!! We had so much fun at your party! :)♥♥♥♥