Jacob { Class of 2017}

“You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!” 
― Dr. Suess

     

When did this crazy cousin get this tall, this handsome, 

and since when is he allowed to graduate?!

Just kidding. I'm proud of you, kid!

xoxo

-Anna Rose

IT'S DECEMBER {PERSONAL}

 "It's beginning to lot like Christmas!"

..... in some state other than Iowa.

Thankfully tho, I did just make a short trip to Minnesota, where they had snow in abundance!

The next things on my to-do list are:

- Survive Finals Week

- Graduate from college

- Don't die

xoxo,
Anna Rose

Catching Up on Life || Part 1

It's crazy how quickly this little blog of mine can get left in the dust when it comes to living life, traveling the world, and being a college student.

And wowsers! So much has gone on.... Let's see.... What's been going on?
Ahh yes. So far this year, I've finished out a spring semester of school, shot 2 weddings, gone to Europe for 22 days with my school's chorale, flown home to Washington for 3 days, lived in Minnesota for the parts of the summer I wasn't traveling and now I'm back at school, knocking this last semester out of the water and finishing college like a boss (hopefully)

That took basically no time to write, but lets me honest, this year has been packed and my life has changed so much especially because of my Europe trip. So now, I'm going to do my best to catch up on life and let you all know what this entire year has looked like!

Now, welcome to Season 1 Episode 1 of Catching Up on Life with Anna!

I'll jump right into the middle of the semester, because lets be honest, you all don't really want to hear about all the homework and tests and late nights from college. So let's start in March!

Instead of taking spring break, my chorale traveled to Colorado, stopping at churches and singing the whole way. This is the second year that I've traveled with them around the country for spring break, and it was definitely incredible!
While we were in Colorado, we got to sing in the United States Air Force Academy Chapel, which sounded amazing.

The sunsets were so stunning, and slightly surpassed the ones that I've seen in Iowa. But only slightly. :)

We got to visit the Garden of the Gods for part of a day and that was pretty much a dream afternoon for a photographer. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of the little details of my life. Stay tuned for more and I'll do my best to keep going with the updates!

-Anna Rose

{Caleb + Megan} Engagement

I just want to start out by warning you. This is no "normal" engagement session. I loved getting to take pictures of this Lumberjack and his cute lil' gal. 

Caleb, the lumberjack, is my cousin and Megan, the cute lil' gal, is a good friend of mine from college. Because of the distance between us, I never got to know Caleb very well.

That is, until I ended up at the same college as him. The same college where He met his girl. 

It's pretty obvious from these pictures that Caleb is pretty much crazy about Megan. His entire face lights up when she enters the room. 

Megan is so full of joy and loves to laugh. But let me tell you, the way that she laughs for Caleb is adorable! She does this little giggle which is just adorable! 

Anyways! Enough raving about how cute these two are together... I'll let you see for yourself!

P.S. Girls, if you can, find a guy like this one. *I can say that because I'm his cousin* 

 He designed this ring HIMSELF. 

Talk about creativity and talent!

xoxo,

Anna Rose

The Editing Process >> For Photographers >> In which I get outside my comfort zone

I decided to leap outside of my comfort zone and show ya'll these unedited, partially edited and then finally, fully edited pictures. Before I show you the pictures though, I want you to understand something.

My goal with editing pictures is to make each image look as close to real life as possible, a camera, no matter how good, cannot capture exactly what it looked like, so my goal is to recreate the real setting, and make it look real again. 

Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'm going to start with this picture. It's a favorite from a recent engagement session. 

To start out with the composition... I love the rule of thirds, but I also believe that it should be broken. 

I also love using depth of field, which is why I left the tree in the foreground. I could have easily taken a step to the right and taken it out of the image, but it adds a certain amount of interest, and it breaks up the picture a little bit.

Okay, so the original. 

Then I added my favorite homemade preset, which basically just pops the exposure, clarity and contrast. This is almost always the first preset I go to when editing. It's my fav. :) 

Okay, now you'll notice that in her flannel and in the trees, there's a little bit of purple, that's actually not there in real life and the purplish color clashes with his red flannel, so I removed the slight chromatic aberration and that fixed it right away!

Okay, now that those steps are taken care of, I simply do a little bit of dodging and burning, and brush on a little bit of graininess into his beard, so it stands out and I'm done!

Even though I love this tree, I think it's a little bit distracting, so I stuck it in black and white and that took care of it right away!

And that's it! Super easy, simple and doesn't take much time at all!

Have fun editing!

xoxo,

Anna Rose