Meet Garrett. He’s an excellent saxophone player active in multiple high school bands, a star athlete, marching band drum major, and an outstanding student in addition to being a natural in front of the camera.

Here’s a collage of our favorites from our session:

And a gallery of all of the edited images:

Filed under: High School Seniors by Lisa
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Designing templates has become a bit of an obsession for me lately. It’s fun having a variety of ways to present pictures and they’re equally awesome for displaying online or printing as large format prints available from a variety of labs on any media. My newest creation is a customizable calendar template for 2011. The first version is a horizontal single-page 12 month calendar designed to be printed 11″ x 14″.

These are versatile calendar images that can be customized by adding either a new background layer with the color of your choice or a variety of background images available from your favorite digital design shop. The papers shown are from Sassy Designs. The branding area is completely customizable as well; just replace my logo with your own and you’re all set! These make great add-on items or client gifts.

The next one, slightly more ambitious, is a vertically oriented 11″ x 14″ design with an image collage at the top and either a 12-month or 16-month option. Individual months have been included as layers with their own clipping mask as well to allow this to be printed as a multiple page wall calendar instead of a single page.

Like the first one, this calendar can be customized by changing background color or image and replacing my branding information with your own. Each of the calendar months is on its own layer as is the year so it can be easily adapted for future use. The font (Echelon) is not included but can be downloaded from several free font sites.

And now: a giveaway! If you’re intrigued, you can download a free sample of the horizontal version with limited options for customization here. As an added bonus you can download the 2011 Calendar brush set I created here. If you’re interested in purchasing either the fully customizable template for either calendar or in having me create a finished calendar for you out of your own images, email me using the “Contact” link above and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Stay tuned! I’ll be uploading some of my other templates here soon so they can be used by other people to create new works of art. All of the above were created in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and have not been tested in any other program.

Filed under: Freebies, Products and Services, Templates by Lisa
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Last weekend found me in Florence, Oregon for the Rhody Days parade and festival. Oregon City High School and the combined Middle Schools marching bands were invited to perform in the parade. Naturally, I took photos of more than just our own bands. The parade opened with a color guard.

Small-town parades are such fun. There were marching bands, clowns, and classic cars.

The One More Time Around Again marching band is always fun.

There were Equestrians to Emergency Response vehicles and a little bit of everything.

And we can’t forget the Royal Court, Queen Rhododendra and her Princesses.

Of course, the biggest hit for me and the reason I was there was to see our local kids perform.

They rocked, as always. I’m so proud of our kids; each and every one of them is a star and together they are truly inspiring.

Filed under: Events and Parties, Live Entertainment by Lisa
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T-man takes Tae Kwon Do nearby, and I had the opportunity to go capture a couple his classes in action recently. It’s really great watching these 5-8 year olds paying attention, following direction, and showing tremendous enthusiasm and in some cases, exceptional skill. T-man is one of those exceptionally gifted students and I felt privileged to spend some time with his class. His mom asked me to take the best of the images and put them into a collage. As it happens, I had been working on a new collage template that was just perfect to fit the bill.

T-man Tae Kwon Do collage

Here’s a slideshow of moments that will effectively sum up what these kids do during their class-time.

Filed under: Children and Teens, Uncategorized by Lisa
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With the recent downturn in our economy, my clients are trying to economize even on the things that are most important to them. (Aren’t we all?) They often love all of their images but can’t reasonably afford to have prints made from all of them. My alternative suggestion is a large-format collage created from their favorites from our session. Some templates have a variety of different options. All are available in a multitude of sizes printed on a variety of modern media.

This one is configurable in several ways

A variation on the one shown above.

The above configuration is one of my favorites

Filed under: Products and Services, Uncategorized by Lisa
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Paisley is already a year old! Well nearly. We had her “practice cake-smash session” this week so she would know what to do with her real birthday cake for her party, and to get some shots for invitations and such. She was a great sport and had a lot of fun.

Here are a couple of my favorites plus a gallery of the rest of her images.

Paisley's cake collage

She's a princess alright.

Thanks to Paisley and her mom for another wonderful session. And Happy Birthday!!

Filed under: Babies and Toddlers by Lisa
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Sheryl decided to celebrate her birthday in a rather unusual and inspiring way this year, and she invited me along to capture the action.

Filed under: Events and Parties by Lisa
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Back to catching up on blogging my sessions. In this episode:  sisters!

Filed under: Babies and Toddlers, Children and Teens by Lisa
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Last summer I had the pleasure of aiming my camera in several directions at once for an hour trying to catch these two holding still. Actually, it wasn’t as challenging as that sounded. They had a bit of trouble warming up to the camera, then suddenly they both wanted their picture taken *right now*! Fun! I couldn’t share them earlier because their mini-session was purchased as a Christmas gift for a friend.

Filed under: Children and Teens by Lisa
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I had a great time photographing this lovely senior, Leah. We spent a fun couple of hours wandering around finding fun places for portraits. She has a great eye for settings and knows just how to work the camera for the best shot. Here are a few of my favorites from our time together.

Filed under: High School Seniors by Lisa
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