Christmas thoughts

My Grandparent the foundation of many of our family Christmas traditions.

The Holidays a time to gather with family and friends and be filled with Holiday cheer. So as I do my final preparations for Christmas, I realized nobody I know ever has a Norman Rockwell painting type Christmas, they are more like the Griswold family Christmas, without cousin Eddy. Everyone has their family traditions, and quirks but those are what make the holidays special. Family traditions are steeped in history, and can come from the old country, can be passed down from generation to generation or just ingrained into your psyche as the only proper way to do things because “they have always been done that way” thus shape your view of the world. The traditions are what makes things feel like home or the occasion is complete. So as we gather with family we should all take a step back and reminisce about the good times, and realize people grow up/old, traditions morph as the family changes and grows but never forget were we came from or how we got to where we are. We should also not fear change as things aren't frozen in time and will never be perfect no matter how hard we try. Just remember it is not perfection that makes the holidays special, it is the imperfections that make it special.

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The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae . The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time. I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...

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Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

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