Meet me in St. Louie ...

Spent the day out with my parents after a morning at Grant's Farm. We went down to eat at Crown Candy but ended up at La Mancha Coffeehouse for a coffee and treat break :) (side note - cool place, they had a kids area with toys... it's family owned and the owners have elementary age children that sometimes come to work with them!). They actually display artwork there and I asked about maybe displaying and selling some of my prints, the girl took a business card (man those come in handy! :P) and I guess we'll see what happens. (Here comes a rant ...) I mean, I'm not that overly concerned about getting my work up. Yes, that would definitely be awesome if I could display and/or sell it ... but really, I take the pictures for myself. I don't care if Joe Schmoe loves it - I care that I love it. (End rant)

So after our coffee break we decided to check out what Old North St. Louis Restoration Group has done for 14th Street. It's nice, the buildings look great - except they're empty! But we did find a cute store called Rambles (another place I could sell my work :D) and there was an art studio for teens and a barber shop ... but all these beautiful buildings that have been restored are sitting there waiting for businesses! It made me wish I owned a business to put in down there! LOL

Anyways ... here's some shots from that day!

Can I Share with You...

Some of the things I've been seeing this summer?

My husband has teased me about recently turning my camera bag into my purse - calling me a major dork! But let me tell you, it has only benefited me because now I can truly live like my high school photography teacher told us, which was that "a great photographer always has their camera on them". Having to carry a purse, laptop bag (6/7 days of the week usually) and a camera bag just wasn't happening. Then I thought to myself, why don't I just transfer the items I use constantly to my camera bag (I'm a big purse, lots of pockets kind of girl because I carry things that I don't ever use but think "I may need that at some point today"). So it was nice to "downsize" my purse plus add my camera to it as well. Of course, with the teasing of my husband I have decided to maybe splurge and find a nice looking designer camera bag to kind of, well you know class it up. :D

Ok, just an excuse to go purse shopping haha, but I've realized I really don't care how it looks, because now I have my camera at my disposal and it's paid off!! The pictures at the top (before you hit the Smokies) were taken simply because I just happened to actually have my camera with me that day. Had I not switched bags, I would have just taken my purse and would have seen these things but not been able to capture them! So major dork or not ... it's worth it :)

Brown Family Portraits

This was a special shoot for me - my first non-family/friend portrait session. They had won a free session at Greenhouse Preschool's Desert Auction (as well as one of my Busch Stadium prints!). It was my pleasure to work with this family. So energetic and fun and even with a hot afternoon, the kids were still easy to work with - as long as we saw the animals! :D

Willoughby Farms in Collinsville is an amazing place for pictures. I was shocked by all the things they had set up, including the animals for kids to see. There was even a playground to play on. I definitely want to go back on my own and venture around and check it all out. I made sure to get there a little bit early so I could check the place out - since I had never been before! I picked out a few different spots I thought would be great for photos. Then as we were taking pictures other opportunities arose - like the playground (I had ventured that far back).

Here's a few of my favorites from that day!