Texas World Speedway / College Station, TX

Eeeek! Almost a year since my last post. My bad...  I should probably update this thing considering we don't have any of the three cars above anymore, OR the mini cooper. LOL (dont worry...still have awesome mustangs :-p )But anywho...

If you follow our photo biz on facebook, you know we were out of town for a few days last weekend! What were we doing? Well Justin was racing our '08 Shelby GT500 around Texas World Speedway! Last fall, Justin participated in his first road course driving event through The Driver's Edge at MSR Houston. He'd wanted to do this for awhile and for years he had claimed just how great of a driver he was. He was hooked within the first lap! We finished that weekend, and once the 2012 schedule came out, we decided to figure out what else he could attend. Our first event of 2012 was last weekend at TWS. What a fun track!!! The history behind it is fun enough to just be there... but to get to drive on the same course...the same bank... as A.J Foyt, Darrell Waltrip, Richard Petty, Mario Andretti, and other household NASCAR names...... gah, way cool! It was sad to see the stands falling down tho...you can't go up there anymore. :(

So how does The Driver's Edge work? Check out the website if you want to read in depth...But it's a 2 day learning event. There's basically 4 run groups: green, blue, yellow, & red. Green & Blue groups have instructors riding along with you. Beginners start in green and you may or may not spend more than one weekend there. Justin was promoted to blue during his first weekend out at MSR, and got to run in blue group during the afternoon of day 2. I think there's also a "blue solo" group, and that he was just promoted to that! Getting to yellow will be a little more difficult tho. Green, Blue, and Yellow groups cannot take any passengers other than the instructors. Red can tho! And at any of the driver's edge events...it's free to spectate. And for a $25 charity donation, anyone can ride along in a run session with a red group driver or an instructor. Each group gets four 20 minute run sessions per day, and you also get classroom instruction in between. The Driver's Edge has mottos like "Your Performance Car Needs a Performance Driver" and "We Don't Care What You Drive; We Care How Well You Drive It." Everything you learn on the track, you can apply to your day to day driving. You'll see alllllll sorts of cars out there too - trailered Ferraris, BMW's with paper plates, full out race cars with roll cages and entirely gutted interiors, miata's of all different year models... It's like a car show really, but everyone just happens to be driving 'round and 'round really fast instead of worrying about how clean their car is ;)

As soon as we got home from Texas World Speedway, Justin signed up for the next event there in June! Buuuut, our next event is actually in April at MSR Houston. But guess who's driving? ME! I'm kind of skeered... I'm a drag racer. I don't do too well with turns. Hehe!

I didn't get to take very many photos this go 'round, because I headed back to Houston early Saturday morning to shoot a wedding. But I made it back to college station late Saturday night and captured what I could on Sunday. Here's a few!

Wish me luck in April!!! And if you ever get a chance to do a ride-a-long...do eeeeet! :)

Family & Photos

I'm so happy my family trusts me to do their portraits for them. They support me to the fullest and knowing I created something that will be seen for many many many years and beyond my years, is really cool. The latest pics belong to my cousin Chris & his wife Rachel...just posted part of their session over on my photo blog.

Trash The Dress!

I cant believe I havent posted this yet!

that said...

A few weeks ago was my trash the dress session. I know I was facebooking and tweeting about it...but not here. My bad. Trash the dress. What dress? My wedding dress. *gasp* but whyyyy. I'd rather have this artwork than a big box with a stuffy dress in it that i'll never wear again. It was soooo much fun.

Here's the scoop on my photog(s).

My wedding photographer, Leslie Spurlock (from McKinney/Dallas area), and her 2nd shooter Todd (from San Antonio) were in town for a wedding at Moody Gardens. We met at my place of work early Sunday morning (with permission of course!), and then we went to a car wash! My friend from highschool Megan, of Greathouse Photography, was in town for a few weeks and with Leslie's ok, she tagged along for the session too. The last thing I expected...Leslie posted a preview of my pics immmmmediately. even before the wedding she shot the same weekend. They were fabulous and I cant wait to see the rest of them. She just got back from a wedding in Italy tho! And i told her she could wait to edit my photos til she got back since she had so much to do before she left. As a photog myself, I can relate to what little bit of stress that may have relieved her of. lol! Megan was a sweetheart tho, and I didnt expect her to just load her memory cards on my computer, but she diiiiid. And then she let me edit them. wowzers!! Want to know why I think that's cool?...

well if you visit Leslie's FB fan page, Greathouse Photography's FB page, or my FB page...you can see how each of us saw the image because they're all edited differently :)

Oh you might want to see them huh? Here's a few!

From Megan's camera, with my edits:

And here's a few of Leslie's!

Black & White Wednesday - Family

Ok...so Emily left a comment on my last Vegas post...and it's just habit that i click on the names of the people that comment, even if I know exactly where it's going to lead me, and even tho I had just read her blog the day before. The last post i read was a submission for The Trendy Treehouse. but when i read her blog this morning...i see a new submission, to a new site I hadnt seen before, The Long Road to China. I glanced around there quickly...and now im pretty sure I'll spend the rest of my morning reading it from start to finish. LOL but not before I finish this post... Man. I've been meaning to start doing photography submissions for quite some time... A popular one is I Heart Faces. that's actually the first one i knew of...and i hadnt started submitting there either. Mainly 'cause it looked overwhelming, and I hadnt had the time to sit down and actually figure out what the heck to do with it. So here's to hoping this post sparks me to do that. Back to Black & White Wednesdays... I much enjoy processing in black & white. There's so many techniques to it. After today, I hope to also let you know which techniques I used, and also start posting these on my photography blog if not here also. That's the plan. And it has to start somewhere. (and i realize i posted this on the photo blog already - but im just trying to kick myself in the butt to get this going and motivate me for future weeks, yay!)

This is my cousin Justin and his wife and little boy. I took this Saturday, because Evan's about 6 months old now. He was getting sleepy towards the end. Evan Jeremy Ray is named after Justin's brother who was killed in action in Iraq.

Photo Overload.

Last month I attended a photography workshop - hosted by my oh so lovely wedding photographer Leslie Spurlock. I've started blogging the images from there. I look at these photos and smile. I feel quite accomplished looking at how far I've grown as an artist in a year or so's time. I hope to just continue growing and learning as much as possible. I love it so much. I dont have any plans to make the jump to being a full time photographer anytime soon. I dont need to. I enjoy it almost as much as i enjoy my day job, and sometimes those two worlds collide too! So until those world's become one, if they ever do, - I'll just keep pushing forward with both. I already feel like I've succeeded in both, so anything further from here is just a plain ol' blessing.

If you'd like to check out the cool stuff from the workshop, hop on over to my photo blog!

Congrats to Chris & Rachel!

My cousin Chris married his longtime sweetheart, Rachel, this past Saturday evening. I posted her bridal shower here and on the knot also cause it was awesome. I like to post wedding related things here when i can, because i still post over there from time time, so this might help someone in the planning stages. Pretty soon, ill be posting as i help my best friend print and put together her invitations for her wedding in April! Yay!! But back to Chris & Rachel for today :) Their first choice for photographer was Akil Bennett, but he ended up being booked on their wedding day. I wish i knew who he referred them too so I could link to her as well - I'll ask Rachel when they get back from their Vegas honeymoon! But Akil did shoot Rachel's bridal portraits and the large display she had was gorgeous! The wedding took place at Northwest Forest Conference Center in Cypress, TX. Id never been there before, but it's a neat place. They were married at the gazebo, La Terrazo, and judging from the website, the reception was held in The Courtyard. Here's a few photos from my seat on the far edge of the groom's side.

Our 1st Christmas - Married!

Look how cute this ornament Justin's mom got for us is!

Technically it's our 4th Christmas together, but it's our first married one. This year our tree was red and silver. i bought a ton of new ornaments. Trumpets and snowflakes and music notes mostly. i loved the tree to pieces. Here's a few fave ornaments!

Apparently my "holiday" thing is snowmen. This is in my entryway.

And this was in my living room looking into the kitchen.

 
And here's our typical - lets take a picture in front of the tree shot - at 9PM Christmas day. lol

 We spent Christmas Eve at my in-law's house, eating finger foods, and watching Four Christmases. I'd seen it a couple times - but Justin hadn't yet and i was so excited for him to finally see it. He laughed the whole way through and now understands why i wanted him to see it so bad :)

We went back to the in-law's house Christmas morning to open presents. They live about a mile away in the same neighborhood. Here we are opening gifts.

I got a huge new curling iron that I wanted, some new hair products, a beautiful black and white diamond necklace, lots of other jewelry and giftcards, a purse, a standup black jewelry chest and other random things. We got some new bath towels and a huge george forman grill to replace the itty bitty one Justin uses so much. Justin got a mustang barstool from me, along with a few mustang shirts and an awesome hat, and his keypad for his box, and other small things. I think we came out well. Immediately after that, we hopped in the truck to drive 3 1/2 hrs to Franklin, TX to spend Christmas lunch at my great grandma's house. It was Justin's first real get together/luncheon with my family. We opened more presents, and had some reallllly good food. We took our annual family holiday photo of whoever is there that year. See:

It's one of the funnest things. We've been doing this as long as i can remember. And Uncle Charlie (far left) always sets up his tripod and uses his timer and ruuuuuns back to the group. Everyone chants for him and we're all lucky to be looking at the camera when the shutter finally clicks. haha!

Also took an individual photo of my immediate family this year at my mom's request :) One of just mom and us and one with mammaw and aunt laura

Liz and I proceed to go outside and snap a few new shots of her and I before we left.

Overall, it truly was a fabulously blessed Christmas. I hope it was for you all too!  Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Everyone!

Houston Snow 2009

It snowed in Houston again y'all. Like, the earliest recorded ever. And it snowed for a good 4-6 hrs 'round here. Weather's been crazy since. hot cold moist foggy cold warm rain. it changes daily. just like that. But snow is fun, even when it's short lived, because we rarely see it here. I know if you're in Colorado or something, you're probably as sick of it, as we are the sun. But it's exciting, and about an hr into it, we had to take pictures.