This year, I am SO excited about a blog circle I am doing with some amazingly talented photographers. Each month, we will be exploring a different kind of light. Last month, it was window light. You can see those images right here!  And this month, we are exploring un-natural light, or artificial light… pretty much, any kind of light that doesn’t come from the sun! I was really excited about this month and also excited about another little thing that has been brewing in my head, so I figured I would combine both of those ideas into one, which brings me to my first image!

I’ve been wanting to miniaturize my kids for a while and finally got around to completing one of my ideas! I’m super happy with how it turned out! I shot the soap, bubbles, and my son with strobes and then manipulated the images in Photoshop to create my little baby boy sliding down a bar of soap!

I have other ideas but wasn’t sure that I wanted to do them with artificial light, so this is the only miniaturized kid for now!

And here are some other images shot with artificial light:

My daughter lit from the bedside lamp at night:

My daughter’s hands lit by a candle and my phone (Brightest Flashlight ap) held by my son, camera right:

And then a bunch of pictures shot in the rain and lit by my car’s headlights! This was short, but fun!

I’m pretty sure my daughter is attacking my son with the umbrella here.These were a challenge but SO fun! I seriously am just loving the idea behind this project and hope you do too! I hope to learn how to use light in new ways and was especially excited to play more with artificial light!

So, how this works is you get to go check out another amazing photographer who has also used artificial light this month! Go check out the wonderfully talented Bethesda, MD newborn, baby, and family photographer, Tonya Teran of Tonya Teran Photography! I love her work and if she’s sharing pictures of her kiddos, watch out. They’re ADORABLE.

If you like what you see, you can follow me on Facebook! …

I’m so excited to be starting a new blog circle adventure with this fabulously talented group of photographers! We want to push ourselves this year with exploring light. Each month, we will pick a different type of light, and post images that we have shot using that type of light! This month, our theme is window light! We chose window light this month since for many people across the United States, the weather has been less than sunny and warm, so shooting indoors seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately for me, I was busy shooting outside since the weather has been fabulous. So, alas, I didn’t have too many window light images. Thankfully I had a cooperative cat.

Let’s get started!

These were actually shot on Christmas day, but seeing I didn’t have too many of my kids in window light, I’m including it.

I visited my sweet friend who just so happens to have a darling son and a gorgeous kitchen with lovely window light. Score.

This cat spends most nights outside all night, and then sleeps on our bed all day. Silly kitty.

And I think these count as window light? A couple of quick shots of my little dude after picking him up from school. He’s in the car with the window up. I liked the hazy look of them.

Next up is the multi-talented photographer, designer, illustrator, editing genius, Lynn Nalty of Square Balloon!

Go check it out!

And if you want to see more of my work, check me out on Facebook!

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The holidays have ended and things have simmered back down. I finally have a little time to blog some recent favorites.

First, my family. My insane, crazy, chaotic, annoying, hilarious, perfect perfect family. This Christmas the entire Morita family converged upon the same area all at once, for the first time ever. We have never gotten a family picture that included every member of our family…until now. And this was no easy task. We had to figure out a color scheme. We needed to coordinate without appearing matchy matchy. We needed a location that accommodate our big family. We needed a miracle. And um, yeah, it helped to have someone who just so happens to know how to photoshop, as multiple head swaps were in order. Go me!

The favorite family member is on the far left, in case you were wondering.

Dang, I love those people. Every single one of them. I am beyond blessed to have such an amazing (and beautiful) family. They make me whole.

Getting pictures of my kids lately has been entirely tricky. They know all my tricks, and simply aren’t interested in supporting my photographer obsession. Shame on them. So, I get what I can get, and sometimes I get lucky.

If it looks like my son is enjoying being hugged by his sister, trust me when I tell you, he does not. Lol. He’s more cringing with a smile on his face. And since I like to show off my picture editing, here’s a little before and after. The grass was a little icky, seeing that it hasn’t rained here in, oh, I don’t know, forever.

 Here’s how my son really feels about holding his sister’s hand. The pure torture I put him through.

And another before and after. This was mostly edited using Adobe Lightroom. I love how easy it is to edit one image, getting the color how I want it, and then syncing all my other images with the click of a button. Lightroom has sped up my workflow tremendously! I only brought this one into Photoshop to add the tree on the right. I just felt like it helped frame them better.

How about a couple pictures of my family? I’ll be back later to post more. But for now:

My brother and his daughter. Father and daughter. Perfection.

When he blew the bubble, I was expecting it to be much much bigger. My niece’s reaction simply didn’t seem appropriate for the size of the bubble. See what I mean? I think my Photoshop tricks payed off here, wouldn’t you say?

My beautiful nephew:

My handsome nephew:

His beautiful twin sister:

And one of my kids where for whatever reason, they just cooperated. Wait…was I begging? Threatening? Bribing? Yeah… probably.

I’m hoping to be better at blogging this year. We’ll see how that goes, seeing that my kids have ALMOST put an entire boycott on me and my camera.

If you are looking at these images and wanting to get color like I do, then you should definitely check out my SHINE workshop. You’ll learn how to better use adobe photoshop and lightroom. I promise. For more information, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE.

And just in case I don’t get better at blogging, you can always follow me on Facebook! …