The Bergevin Family

I got a great message that an old friend of mine had called into the office and was in desperate need of immediate pictures of her family. My friend Renee and her husband Jeremy are missionaries to Mongolia. They are back in the States for the next year and they needed and updated family photo for their prayer cards. They have 4 beautiful daughters (2 of which I hadn't met until the day I did the session!) Maggie is 7 years old, Lydia is 6 years old, Johanna is 4 years old and Clara will be 2 next month!

Renee and I have been friends since Kindergarten. I find it so hard to believe that I am old enough to have a friend for 27 years! LOL Since the session was last minute, I ended up taking my boys with me. It would have been fine if we had stayed at their house, but once we went to the park, it was more than I could handle. So no more will I take my children on photo shoots with me! This was the first and LAST time that will ever happen! LOL Christian did enjoy playing with Clara, so we will be sure to have a play date soon!

As you are saying your prayers, please remember Renee and her family. They are such wonderful, devoted Christians and I am proud to be her friend of 27 years!

An Amazing Trip!

This past week was amazing. I attended the WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) Convention in Las Vegas.

I put in usually 20 hour days and I have never been more excited or learned so many new things. I challenged myself to learn some new things, stepping outside of my comfortable Photojournalism world. I learned some new portrait techniques and some very cool art techniques (look for some playing with that very soon.)

But one of the biggest things that I learned was that everyone has their own way of doing things and as long as it is what you want, it is good. There is nothing wrong with me not knowing a ton of classic portrait stuff. Just exposing myself to it will allow me to follow some of the classic techniques, but in my own photojournalistic way. I learned that everyone does things their own way. We would go to hear different platform speakers so that we could combine our notes and recordings to learn the most. And inevitably, someone that Shan went to hear would do things one way and the person I went to hear did things completely opposite. But both methods worked for them.

So it helped me to feel better about doing things my way. Shan and I have very different approaches to a lot of things in photography, but we are both successful with what we do. His way isn't better than my way and mine isn't better than his. But each is the best for ourselves.

So while I am going to be taking my photography to the next level, I will always stick true to my style and my love of photojournalism! And I am determined to leave my mark on this world!