This month for the photo blog challenge the theme is "Close up" and it is one of my favorites.  As a portrait photographer I photograph people all the time, and I try to get a variety of shots including various poses and distances, but I always seem to gravitate to the close up photos.  I think this is why I like doing headshots so much.  

Here are a few of my favorite close up pictures for this month along with more of a story on each than I usually have.

I was asked to take some pictures of my nephew for a project where he was fishing, and then following up with the whole process of preparing the fish to be eaten.  My sweet niece pictured here, was watching the fish being cleaned, and I think the look on her face is the look of someone thinking really hard about becoming a vegetarian.

Every month I have lunch with my chapter of The National Association of Professional Women and this month I brought my camera to get some photos of the group.  This is our chapter president, and I loved the way the light looked, and how engaged she was in the conversation.

I had the opportunity to do a senior portrait session where I captured these two close ups that show contrasting emotions.  As much as I love smiles in my portraits, there is something beautiful about sadness as well.

Speaking of smiles, I left my absolute favorite close up for last. How could you not be charmed by those cute dimples, and freckles?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the pictures in the comment section below.

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I have always been a do-it-yourself type of a person.  I was raised with an independent spirit where self reliance was highly valued, so it made a lot of sense to do things yourself before spending money to have someone else do it.  Why shouldn't photography work that way too?

I actually started taking selfies, long before they were a trend.  When I got my first SLR camera in college (note the lack of a D at the beginning because it was pre-digital) I utilized the timer to take out of focus, poorly exposed self portraits, then I got a Polaroid and was able to get instant feedback on my out of focus self portraits.  Now that I have an iPhone I have collection of distorted selfies with myself and my husband at various tourist attractions.  Last week we took these selfies to a whole new level.  Now, to be clear, I don't think it is groundbreaking at all, the technology was simply my DSLR on a tripod, operated with a remote.

I had the lights set up in the studio, and ended up with some extra time.  I started by taking my own headshot:

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The process was pretty tedious, because I had a precarious tower of things from the studio set up so that I could set the focus before using the remote.  Then I would get into place, take 5-6 photos while trying to think happy, smiling thoughts and use all my posing knowledge to make myself look ok.  Then I would go back to the camera, assess the results, make adjustments, reset the tower, set the focus and try again.  It took over an hour, and over 100 tries to get a picture I liked.  To be fair, I did pull out the fan and have some fun getting silly with wind, but the point is that it was pretty inefficient.  If I had actually hired a professional, I could have had the same results in 10 minutes.

After I got my headshot, my husband came by and I decided we could get a new picture of ourselves.  This way  I could skip the tower of stuff to set the focus because my husband could stand in. The results are included here for humor and as a cautionary tale.

There are so many things that could have been easily adjusted to make a decent picture if somebody had been looking through the camera lens and making adjustments, like making sure we were both in the frame, keeping weird creepy hands under control, putting an end to general cheesiness and shenanigans...

When you need to make a choice, choose wisely between professional and DIY.

This month the Photo Blogging Challenge theme was Happy.  How awesome is that?  I like to be happy.  Who doesn't like to be happy?  I was lucky enough to be the photographer at a very happy occasion this past weekend.  A lovely young couple got married, and here are just a few photos from the happy, happy day!