Here's a gallery from our 4th of July celebration as a family. We did the 4th of July car show at Les Gove park in Auburn. I didn't get any photos of the car show this year. I was pretty busy chasing my 3 year old. But got lots of family photos. Enjoy! This was my first year trying to capture fireworks in manual mode with my new 50mm lens. I was pretty happy with the results. But needed more fireworks. I took these in our neighborhood so I was a bit limited on how many went off and when and where they were going off. I think had we gone to a professional show I would have gotten some stunning shots. So I am very excited to capture next year's 4th of July celebration. :)
A few months back I took some photos of my daughter playing with my 35mm film camera. It was the first DSLR I bought. She had fun playing with it and looking through it. Looks like photography may run in our family. LOL! I also had the most gorgeous light and sun flair that day too!
Meet Kaleigh, Nichole, Emily, & Sloane all Bethel High school Class of 2014 seniors! All best friends who do everything together, including cheer. It was so much fun being able to capture some senior photos of them together since they do everything else together and are joined at the hip. Kaleigh, Nichole, & Emily are all going to Central Washington University and Sloane is going to Arizona State University. These girls were filled with so much fun and energy! We got some great shots! They made some great accomplishments too! Sloane got to be class valedictorian and Kaleigh had quite the list of accomplishments to along with honor society! Plus all the girls did DECA. I have never seen so many rope cords. I only had one rope cord when I graduated as did most of my class. So really you girls should be very proud of your accomplishments. Congratulation's on a stellar senior year! Good luck at college! You will all set the world on fire! Like this session? Are you a class of 2015 HS or college senior?? contact me today to setup your photo session! On the blog today is this cute couple who wanted to redo there wedding photos. The bride told me when they got married a few years ago, they just didn't get the photos they paid for. Or some of the shots they wanted. So we set up a picture reshoot. It was almost like a vow renewal minus all the extra people. I even made her bouquet. Yup not only am I a photographer but it would appear that I have the skills to be a decent florist too! This couple was so much fun to photograph and there photos came out GEORGEOUS! Take a look for yourself. :) Robin has many loves of course I didn't list any of these in an order of favoritism. One, is her Mustang which is currently in pieces....so we took a few photos of her in it literally :) when she's done building it she won't be able to do half of the things we did. Second, is her Datsun pickup, which she drove to her first Good Guys car show last year, along with me and my '67 Cougar as it was the Cougar's first year at Good Guys too. Which was pretty cool. Third, is her dog Kya, so I stuck Robin and Kya in the back of her truck for some cute photos! Fourth, the reason she is going off to college to become a CHEF! She is going to school in Hyde Park, New York to go to the Culinary Institute of America. So I took some photos of Robin in her coat with her HUGE chef knife. Fifth, the beach so we went down to Dash Pointe state park and got some AMAZING sun flair and beachy shots with some silhouettes. Finally her sixth favorite thing her boyfriend Alan. So while we were at the beach he joined us for some cute couples photos! I had so much fun shooting Robin's senior session. She was a blast to work with. Congratulations on college at the Culinary Institute of American and Congratulations from graduating from Todd Beamer High School Robin! Good luck and come back and open an AMAZING Seattle restaurant! We can't wait! My friend Julie called me last week and said she needed some graduation photos done as she is getting ready to send out announcements for Graduating from UW. Three colleges in the last ten years and she is finally done and has all her degrees! I couldn't be more proud of her. I was pretty excited that she called me. She said that she wanted to go the UW campus and the glass museum in Tacoma for her pictures! I was excited. The glass museum is our favorite stomping grounds and neither of us had been there together in a really long time! I hope you enjoy these amazing photographs! We had so much fun...... Recently I had the chance to photograph two Boudoir sessions. I have been dying to start doing boudoir photography but hadn't had the option to start doing it. If I were to shoot boudoir I think it would be best shot out of my home or a studio. Since my home isn't fairly large and the lighting isn't fairly amazing, I have held off on doing this type of photography. I recently met another photographer. Who primarily shoots boudoir. She shoots from her home and has AMAZING lighting. She recently started doing boudoir hotel events. Where she books a hotel room and then as many sessions as she can possibly squeeze into the time that she has the room. I decided while I liked the concept I didn't like how much it would cost me, which meant I would have to charge more for my sessions in order to make a profit and I would like to remain affordable to my clients. So while I am not opposed to the hotel thing, I think I am going to keep looking at my options. So I was able to do two sessions recently at The Hotel Murano in Tacoma. I did a boudoir workshop with the photographers network I joined. I am so confident with my images and the lighting from my session that I actually have a session booked the first weekend in June. I am extremely excited about this! I am even considering doing a hotel event in the future. So for now, I am thinking about traveling to do in home boudoir and doing boudoir out of my home. I have lighting kit so it is doable. My daughter starts preschool this fall and will be gone from 9:30-12:30 so I will be able to book a session or maybe even two a day if anyone is interested in doing boudoir. Which leaves me to the why's of boudoir. I know a lot of people who think boudoir is very controversial and dirty. For me boudoir is art and beautiful and fun. In fact I am so excited about this that I even have my own session booked. I think boudoir is a great way to make yourself feel good about how you look and feel. To get your hair and makeup done and feel pampered and to get dressed up and feel sexy and beautiful. Weather it's just for you or your spouse. It is the most amazing confidence booster, and makes a great gift for the one you love. I don't do boudoir because I am someone who likes exploiting peoples bodies, but because I like making other people feel more confident about there bodies. I know a lot of photographers share there boudoir images on there websites, blogs, and Facebook. I also know a few who do not share any of that online and only share images with potential clients in person. I give my clients the options to have the images shared, and they get to pick which images are shared. Also we don't keep your session. So make sure that you make a backup of your session. I only keep the images from the clients that are okay with me sharing there images on social media and only the ones they tell me I can share. All other images get destroyed after you get your copies. So if you don't want your session shared at all then I make your disc and give it to you and then I delete all my copies. So here are a few from my first sessions I hope you like them :) There will be more listed in the gallery I am only going to post a few here. A few weeks ago I had the chance to take some wedding photographs for a couple. They were so much fun to work with and the photographs came out beautiful! I had a blast shooting at Gene Coulon Park in Renton. It is always such a beautiful location no matter the time of year. I love all the different areas you can shoot in. From woodland to beach, even with a little bit of a city/pike place feel (just not as busy depending on the time of day and the weather you may have) it was pretty quiet when we were there. Plus all the different colors, textures, and flowers. I was in pure heaven! Hope you enjoy the pics! Congratulations Kashari and Alex on your wedding! Once again, Congratulations to the happy couple! May you be blessed with many years of happiness. :)
So remember a few weeks back when I posted my images from my fun filled double senior session shoot in the colorful graffiti garages off of antique row in Tacoma? Remember the push I made as a photographer to shoot in those garages because I had never done so and always wanted too, but was worried because they were going to paint over them? Well my friends it has happened. The urban setting is gone. I am so saddened to see such a historic Tacoma landmark wiped off the map like it never existed. I can only imagine it was due to many things. I hear there were parties going on in the garages late at night. During the day I saw people smoking from paraphernalia, in fact I even found some used paraphernalia of some kind in the garage while we were there shooting just left behind. Honestly, while painting over the graffiti may take the cool look factor away from the garage I don't think it will stop the parties or the drugs. So I find myself wondering why the rest of us are getting punished. It makes me sad that the people who can't follow the rules and want to do things they shouldn't have to ruin it for those of us who just liked looking at the garage or even perhaps painting in it? What will covering up this graffiti and it's outlet mean for the city of Tacoma? Will it mean more graffiti now to show up in other places it doesn't belong? I actually thought Tacoma was a fairly clean beautiful city and that because of the garage that the graffiti art was minimal in other areas of the city. Why? because it was in the garage. Now you have taken away the confinement. It won't surprise me if you start finding it throughout the city in protest to loosing the space. I am also curious to see how this will affect the Rebel Riot car show which is held on Antique Row every year, old cars line the streets and the garage, along with pin up girls and LOTS of photographers doing pin up sessions. It should make this years show very interesting not having that backdrop. So to all of you photographers who got to experience the garages feel blessed. For those of you who never did I hope this white surface doesn't last long. :( Those bright colored walls made me fall in love with my manual settings like I had never loved them before. I had found a new appreciation for what I did inside those walls. I hope they get to come back one day. |
Crystal Spear is a local photographer from Enumclaw, Wa who specializes in natural light and outdoor photography. She loves photographing, weddings, couples, families, seniors, and much more! Archives
February 2020
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