Family Photos 2011

We finally got out and did some new family photos. We waited until the last part of October so I was worried the weather was going to be bad. But we have had such a mild year the weather was perfect. I went with my friend Tineka and her family, she took photos of my family and I took photos of hers. They all turned out great.

Sydnie age 4 2011

Brianne age 7 2011

Kaylee age 10 2011

The Exciting World of Micro Stock

Just a quick post today. I haven't posted in so long and I am so behind. I hope to get caught up soon. I have been really busy lately. I decided to start into stock photography, it has been really time consuming, I have been spending most of my free time away from being a mom into taking and editing photos for stock.

For those of you who don't know what stock is let me give a brief explaination. Companies who need photos for presentations, brochures, magazine articles and advertisements will use a stock company to find the image they need. They can search through millions of images to find the one that is just right for what they are doing. They pay the company to have limited use of the photo and that company pays me a portion. They don't own the photo but have the right to use it, so one photo can be used many times by many different companies. Even hundreds of times if it is a really popular photo.

I have reached my first two mile stones and thought I would share a link to my portfolio so you could see what I have been up to. My first two milestones reached are: #1: I have 100 photos approved in my portfolio (all photos must pass a review and be accepted, if they don't feel like the photo has commercial value or is of poor quality they won't accept it) #2 I have sold over 100 images so far, seems like a lot until you remember I only get between .25 and $25 per photo and I hardly ever get the $25 mostly just between .25 and 2.00 per image. My goal by the end of the year is to have around 1000 photos in my portfolio. It will be a lot of work but by then I should be able to slow down a bit and should be able to see a return of several $100 dollars per month. So wish me luck, here is the link to my portfolio you can see all the photos I have been working of for the past month and a half:

My shutterstock portfolio

I probably won't be posting my photos on here anymore, except just my family snapshots, people steal photos from blogs like this all the time and I don't want to have to take the time to watermark everything. So keep checking back I will post a link to my portfolio on my sidebar so you can see what I have been up to lately.

A Fun Summer

I have been a slacker and I have not been updating this blog like I should. I think part of the problem is I take all of my Photos in RAW format now and they have to be converted to JPEG before I can put them on here. It's just one more step I have to do before posting so it slows me down a bit. I forced myself to sit down today and get everything since the last time I posted. Get ready for a whole bunch of photos. I decided to start with the most recent first and work my way backwards.

Granite (Thornton Family Reunion 2011)

We had a lot of fun this year at Granite. Greg and his family came and we haven't seen them for a couple years so it was good to catch up with them and for the cousins to get reacquainted. These first pictures are of some of the younger cousins, we walked down to Granite Creek so the kids could look for snail shells and to find branches for Grandpa to make willow whistles. Usually you can wade in the creek some but this year the water was so high the kids just had fun throwing rocks in.

Hannah, Haden, Kaylee, Brianne, Sydnie, Izzy, and Trinity. At Granite Creek posing in front of the open door rock structure.

One more in front of the creek

Busy at work collecting rocks

On the last day some of us had the great idea to go on a hike. I must say most of us were ill prepared for the type of hike this was. It was a bit of a mix of mountain climbing and the rest was very steep and slippery with no trail to follow. At one point I thought, "I really don't want to go any further, but at the same time I don't want to go back the way I came either." So I pressed on hoping that we would find an easier way down. Luckily we did, but it wasn't without its hazards, between loose rocks and branches I managed to scrape and bruise my legs up pretty well.

We finally managed to make it to the top. I have to say the view was pretty amazing and there is nothing quite like accomplishing something like that.

Here is the whole hiking group minus myself, from left to right: C.J. , Mike, Sean, Whitney, Brad, Nick, and if you look in the upper right corner of the picture you will see Shaun risking his life trying to get back to a more safe spot on the mountain.

I took this one right after we reached the top, my nephew Sean and I were the first ones up.

This is of Whitney and Nick on our way down from the Arch

We always have a lot of fun at the pool "Granite Hot Springs" This year we got to swim two of the days we were there.
Sydnie with her cousin Katie:

Kaylee doing back flips in the pool:

Brianne just chilin' in the pool:

Sydnie with her Grandma and Grandpa Thornton:

About a week before we went to Granite Shaun and I took the girls up to strawberry reservoir to do some cray fishing. Shaun always tries to catch a few trout while we are there too. Here is Kaylee holding his catch:

Kaylee found a big hook and decided to see if she could snag any crayfish with out any bait. She actually managed to catch quite a few with it. She was pretty proud of herself:

We also took the girls one night to the lake by our house, we don't really have any areas with sandy beaches but they still had fun throwing rocks in the water and swimming a bit.

Brianne and Lu lu:

Sydnie carefully walking through the rocks:

I am the activity day leader for Kaylees age. We took a Field trip to the temple. I took pictures of all the girls. Here is me and Kaylee:

For the fourth we went to Idaho Falls for the first time in several years. We had fun seeing family and going to the parade. We were sad not to be able to stay for the fireworks but Shaun had to work early the next morning so we went and watched fireworks near our home instead.

We sat with the Jacksons and My mom and dad at the parade:

I had to throw these in. Kaylee gets pretty creative sometimes and she decided to make costumes out of construction paper for everyone. Sydnies favorite animal is a penguin so of course she made a penguin costume for sydnie:

Here is all three of them Kaylee is an elephant, and Brianne made her own. I think she was a dog.

For the Huls family reunion we decided to visit Shauns sister Katie in San Diego. The whole family(minus Shaun's two Brothers) Rented a beach house just a couple blocks from the beach in La Jolla. The kids had fun playing in the Ocean, going to San Diego Zoo, Sea World, a Padres Baseball Game and swimming in the pool at Katies apartment. We also stopped at some friends house who live near L.A. and it was fun to see their house and have a swimming and BBQ party.

On the way to San Fransisco we stopped in Las Vegas to spend a night and break up the drive. The girls had fun touring Las Vegas and riding a few rides:

I had to include this one:

We had fun at the M&M factory:

One of the first days we were there we went to San Diego zoo. It was fun it was just our family plus Natalies little boy Kegan. My girls were happy to have one of their cousins come along with them. We were amazed at this peacock who was more than happy to show off his feathers and let everyone come up really close to him.

More goofy photos at the zoo:

while we were in San Diego we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. Katie insisted on taking some photos of us before we left. We had a good time eating at a local Italian restaurant and getting some cheesecake to go at the cheesecake factory.

And finally Way back in May Sydnie had her first dance recital. Here is the whole class:

Sydnie was rotten at the dance recital she just laid on the floor during the whole dance and wouldn't do anything. I was worried she would do the same at the recital. But just before the dance started I figured out why she was acting so silly. She wanted to be under the orange light on the stage (it's her favorite color) so I switched some girls around and let her be under the orange light. It worked! She danced her little heart out and even started laughing in the middle of the dance.

Sydnie positioned herself front and center and I couldn't help laughing a little bit at my little show off:

The end hopefully I won't let myself get so far behind again.

I Won Another Ribbon!

I have been anxiously awaiting the results of this challenge all week. I had a good score and new I would most likely win something, but I did not expect to win first place! I really loved these photos I took a couple weeks ago, but you never know if others will like them too. I am really excited about this because it is my first ribbon for a landscape. I wrote more about it on my photoblog http://www.jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/ plus the full sized image looks much better so be sure to look at it there. Also check my photo out on the front page of this website: http://www.dpchallenge.com/ it will be there for the rest of the week.

My first blue ribbon!

I have been trying for months now and I finally did it! I got first place in a photo contest I entered! I won't re post it. Just look at my Valentine post from last week, it is the one of Kaylee with the hearts in her eyes. If you want to check my blue ribbon out click on this link http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

This week I also had fun taking pictures of my sister Nancy's kids and my friend Amber's little girl Breelyn.

Here is my favorite one of all the pictures I took that weekend, it is of my youngest niece Chloe. I think I am going to enter her in a photo contest. If she doesn't win a prize it won't be because she isn't cute enough that is for sure.

To look at more photos of Nancy's cute kids and the photo shoot I did with Breelyn, check out my photo website at http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/

Hooray! I won at last!

I finally feel like I might be getting somewhere with my little hobby. I finally won a ribbon for one of my photos! I entered this photo of Kaylee in a challenge called "Got Milk" and I got 3rd place! I got this little ribbon next to my picture and my photo is on the front page of the dpchallenge website for a whole week! So check it out http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

My ribbon winning entry:

Killing two birds with one stone

I was going to post a few pictures from my weekend in Idaho, but I included them all in my photo blog and I am too lazy to repost them here. So if you would like to look at my photos for the week follow the link below or click on the side bar link.

http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com

My 365 Project

So I recently got a bug for photography, and like everything I do, once I start it sort of becomes an obsession until I get it figured out. I have always been interested in photography, but it all seemed too complicated and overwhelming. It seemed easy to put off, because I was busy doing other things. Finally, after talking to a friend, who is also into photography, I decided it was about time to learn how to use my camera that I have had for almost three years now. I have been experimenting with new techniques I have learned and wanted some place to display them. So I spent today designing a new site for my photos. I have heard of other photographers doing a 365 project and thought this would be fun to try. You are suppose to take one picture a day for a whole year. It is a great way to build a portfolio and improve your picture taking skills. So here it is http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/ I hope you will check it out. I really would like to have a whole group of sites like mine linked to each other, so we can share photo's and ideas and knowledge, kind of like a photo club online. Let me know if your interested!!!

Love this girl!!! This is just one of several pictures featured on my new site.

Fall Craft Show

I've been meaning to post these pictures for awhile. The Mini Bazaar actually started its fall show last week, so we are already into the second week of a 6 week show. I thought I better quit putting off posting these pictures. Here is what has been keeping me busy for the last month.

whoops, I didn't realize until I uploaded this picture that the H had been turned funny. Oh well you get the idea.

I thought these would make good baptism gifts. They are cuter than they look in the picture, they have a glass like overlay on the front, kind of like those cute necklaces you see everywhere.

Same thing with these. They also have that glass like overlay on them.

I took some pictures of the Idaho Falls and Salt Lake City Temples and mounted them with a finish that looks like an oil painting. You can't really see it in these pictures, but they turned out really nice. I think I am going to apply the same affect on my next set of family photos. Not only does it make them look better it also protects them as well.

These have been my big sellers. Only a week and I am almost sold out. I applied the same coating as my temple pictures and they turned out better that I even expected. I did quite a few different sayings but only pictured a few.

These turned out fun. I had a lot of fun working with photoshop on these. It allowed me to do some fun lettering with more detail than I can get with vinyl lettering.

Another version. I've got this one hanging on my mantel.

In addition I also did a bunch of flowers for your hair as well as some cute headbands. I didn't take any pictures. But an example is the one on Nancy's baby Chloe's head. I mostly did them for older kids and grown ups but am working on doing an adjustable headband for babies.

Chloe Jackson

Nancy had her baby a few weeks ago, and when I was in Idaho last weekend, I got to practice my photo taking skills on my new niece. I have been trying to learn how to use the manual settings on my camera. I still haven't got them completely figured out, but it really helped make these pictures turn out a lot better than what I have done in the past. I was able to adjust how much light I let into the camera, so even though the lighting wasn't the best, I was still able to take some pretty good pictures. Normally, I would have had to use the flash and I just hate what the flash does to pictures.

Here is the announcement I made for Nancy, with some of the favorite pictures I took.

Obviously, this was one of my two favorites, since it was featured prominently in the announcement. I was excited to finally take a picture that I didn't have to edit the heck out of to make it look decent.

Here is my other favorite. Again not much editing, just a little in the background. I had to make it darker, because the cloth we used to bundle her in was a little see through.

I just loved the composition on this one.


Here is a fun overlay I tried. The picture was cute without the editing, but I thought this technique turned out kind of cool.

This one I decided to crop and put on a background, because it just wouldn't crop the way I wanted it to otherwise.



This one I put a old paper overlay on. Its kind of hard to see the effect with it so small but if you click on it you can see the detail of the effect.


Here is one more editing technique I was experimenting with. I like it, but I like the original better I think.

Here is just one more, I love her face, so sweet, but the lighting wasn't the best. When I cropped it in close it went a little grainy. So I decided to go with the grainy look, and applied the old paper overlay, to make it look like we did it on purpose.