I just love Brett’s family. They are a wonderful family. I have had the privilage of photographing them two times before. Well, now they added the fourth baby to the family (Brett), and I did the newborn session this week! Brett was wonderful. Thank you for sharing Brett with me this week!

A photographer friend of mine showed me this teacup that she saw on the web. She said that they were for sale at Wal-mart. Well, I called about 6 Wal-mart stores to try and find it. I was a little disappointed with the wait and response time at most of the Wal-mart Stores. I waited 20 minutes to get someone to help me at the Holland Wal-mart. Any way… after being on the phone for 1 1/2 hours, I finally found one at the Wal-mart in Kalamazoo. So, I drove all the way out there to get it! Then, I couldn’t wait to try it out. My girlfriend was over today with her daughter, Emerson. I begged her to let me try it out with Emerson. (I really didn’t have to beg too hard, she said yes right away when I asked.) So, here it is, my first tea cup image. I LOVE it. I can’t wait to use it again!

I am a GEMS leader at my church. I lead the 8th grade girls. They asked me if I could take some pictures and put together a slideshow at our church. So, Ive been working on that. This is my favorite picture in the slideshow. We were at an overnight party, and there was a ring machine in the arcade. The girls really liked the rings!

Last Saturday I did Laird’s 3 month old portraits. I did his newborn portraits 3 months ago. It is fun to see how much babies change in that time period. One thing that hasn’t changed is that he still has a lot of hair! His dad is a Green Bay Packers fan, so I made this collage for them!

So, I finally decided to sell some of my old stuff on eBay. Since I switched to digital I haven’t used my 35mm cameras in 2 years. It is time to get them into a good home where they might be used. So, I put them on eBay tonight. I have never sold anything on eBay before, so I am excited to see how it goes. The sad part about it is that I am selling my 35mm Pentax camera that I paid a lot of money for. I paid over $650 for it when I bought it a few years ago. Now, I’ll be lucky to get my buy it now price for $200. I know the lens is worth that alone. So, if you know anyone who is going to take the photography course at GRCC, or anyone who wants to get a deal on a nice camera, check it out. Here are the items I have listed…
Pentax Camera
Nikon Camera
Flash that can be used on either camera
I’ll probably be selling some more stuff later. I need to do some house keeping.

Ok, how many of you noticed the updated blog? I spent all day yesterday working on it. Yes, ALL DAY! (At least 7 hours…) Here is what I did. I first had to update to the new version of Blogger. This wasn’t really a big deal, but the problem I had is I lost all my changes I had made to the original template. So, I had to change all the colors back to match my website colors.

Then, I made a new header. That is the picture thing on the top that says “Kari Douma Photography”. After I made it, I had to figure out how to get it there. I was reading a lot of information on the Internet, and learning where to change the html code. Those of you who don’t know what html code is, it is the instructions that your computer reads on how to make your site work. It is very confusing… I am still confused about it. Then once I got the new one up, I had to figure out how to take the old one out, because there were now two headers. Once I got the ohter one out, I also made the new header clickable, to take you too my website. (More html code!) Cool hugh? I thought it was!

After that I added some links at the bottom. These are other photographers from around the world that are great photographers! They are in a photographers forum that I frequent on the Internet. I get great inspiration from a lot of them! So, if you ever want to have fun browsing some sites, check them out.

So, even though my blog does not look much different, it took a LONG time to get it changed. I hope you enjoy it!

Last week I did Lori’s maternity pictures. Her two boys came along and we did some with them too. Owen didn’t really want to get his picture taken, but we did get some anyway. Nathan showed me his muscle man pose, even if it was supposed to be a maternity session!

My daughter has been part of Odyssey of the Mind for the last 5-6 months. They have been practicing twice a week after school since October. This is how it works. The kids pick a problem (skit) to do. The problem that our team picked was called around the world in eight minutes. There is no script, and they are not told what to do. There are certain requirements that they have to follow. They had to have a main character that visited three different places. Two of the three places had to be real places. One had to be a make believe place. On of the three places had to be Arctic. There had to be a reason for the main character to go to all three places. They could not travel in time, and they could not leave Earth. They had a time limit of 8 minutes for their skit. The kids had to do EVERYTHING themselves. They had to come up with the story line, make the sets, props, and costumes. They had to pick out and buy their things themselves. The parent coaches could not help them at all. They were there just to help them think through the ideas, and guide them in the process. It was amazing what they could create and do themselves!

There was also a spontaneous problem that they had to do. This was secretive problem. They had to go into a room with the door closed, and solve a problem. No parents or coaches were allowed into the room. The reason it is so secretive is because it is spontaneous. They don’t want any team to find out the problem before it is their turn. Here are some examples of spontaneous problems.

Anyway, our team came in third place at the regional competition last Saturday. So, we get to advance to the state finals in Traverse City next month. My daughter was so excited. She was smiling ear to ear, and said, “This is the biggest accomplishment I ever had!” Here are some pictures from the day.

Makenna is One! I was privileged to do Makennas newborn portraits, and now her one year old portraits! We had a great time. Makenna is soooo good. She made my job easy. It wasn’t too hard to get a smile out of her! Makenna had her portrait taken in a white sundress and bonnet that has been in the family for years. A lot of her mother’s cousins had their portraits done in the same dress. So, this was special! Her grandma also brought a birthday cake along to celebrate. Makenna wasn’t so sure about making a mess… she didn’t really like the cake on her hands. (Maybe she will grow up to be a cleanie!)

Wow! I am finally done…. I have been working on my website for the last 2-3 weeks. It doesn’t seem like it would take that long… but it does! I posted all new images on my site. There were still just a couple of old favorites that I couldn’t bear to get rid of.

First, I had to pick out which images to use. That took me almost a full day by itself. I went through all my sessions from last season, looking for which images I wanted to use. Once I picked them out, I transferred them into a “website” folder on my computer. Then, I sorted them out into categories. Then I had to cull them down even more, because I still had too many. Finally, I had my selection done.

Then, the real work began! I had to edit each one of the images. Most people don’t realize what goes into editing the images. When I take a picture, it looks OK, but the computer really brings the image to life. I do things like get rid of distracting elements (this is mostly in the photojournalism wedding photography), soften skin and clean up blemishes, whiten teeth, burn down the edges of the image, adjust the color and saturation, or turn the image to black and white. Even that is not as simple as it sounds. There are different methods of making an image black and white, so it takes time to get it just right!

After I got all the images edited, I had to size them right for the web, and put them on my website. Once they were on my website, I asked my photographer friends for critique. I got a few suggestions from them, and ended up changing and redoing a few things. I added two weddings to my wedding galleries. This way a potential bride can see a lot of images from one wedding, to see if she likes my style.

So, now I can say that I think I am DONE! That is a big check off my to do list! If you have any comments or suggestions, let me know! I was going to post some of my favorites, but blogger seems to be having trouble with uploading photos… I hope they get it worked out soon.