$50 Shutterfly Credit Giveaway Winner!!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered my $50 Shutterfly credit giveaway that ended last night!

The winning comment was chosen at random by http://www.random.org

And...
that...
winner...
was...

 
Comment #9!!

Congratulations Tara!!  I will be emailing you shortly to confirm your email and let you know about claiming your prize!

Thanks again everyone!!  Have a great week! :)

Shutterfly GIVEAWAY! (Ends 10/29)

It's that time of year again!!  Holiday cards!! Can you believe it?  I swear, the older I get, the faster that clock ticks.  My calendar is already filling up with holiday photo sessions and I'm mentally prepping myself to be non-stop busy for the rest of the year....thank goodness I thrive on busy! :)

To help you out with your holiday budget, I'm doing a giveaway, sponsored by Shutterfly, for $50.00 off your total order!!  Check out their Special Offers page to see all the amazing cards and gifts that you can get from them.  I've been doing my Christmas cards through Shutterfly for several years now. :)

And if you're absolutely Shutterfly obsessed, here's all the ways that you can see what they're up to!

Shutterfly Social Media
Facebook 
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram: Shutterfly
Google+
Blog

Now I need to figure out which design I'm going to get for my own cards!!  Aghhh, too many options!!

GIVEAWAY

One lucky Avery James Photography reader will win $50.00 off of their total Shutterfly order!  (Cannot be combined with other promos and does not include shipping).

MANDATORY ENTRY

Comment below and tell me your favorite thing about the winter holiday season!  Be sure to leave your email address as well so that i can contact you if you win!

EXTRA ENTRIES

(Do any or all of the following, leaving a separate comment for each entry.)

• "Like" Avery James Photography on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AveryJamesPhotography (Leave Facebook name)
• Post a comment on my Avery James Photography Facebook page or on one of the photos (one entry only)
• Share my Avery James Photography Facebook page with your friends on your Facebook page (one entry only)
• Follow @AveryJamesPhoto on Twitter (leave twitter ID)
• Tweet about the giveaway (one entry only)

This giveaway ends at 11:59pm Pacific Time on October 29, 2012.  The winner will be selected by random draw and will have 24 hours to respond to my notification email before another winner is selected.

Good luck!!! :) :)

Shutterfly Contest - Win a Trip for 4 to the Bahamas!

Hey fellow photo lovers!!  

Shutterfly is doing a super fun contest with an amazing prize - a trip for 4 to the Bahamas PLUS a professional photo shoot while you're there!!  Plus you get a gift from Shutterfly just for entering, can't beat it. :)  All you have to do is submit one of your photos that fit the weekly theme, this week's theme is Water Fun!

Just go to this link to enter (Facebook contest): http://bit.ly/sweepS 
There's 2 more weeks of contests as well so keep entering!!

Details are below.  Good luck!!

(And yes, I got a freebie myself for posting this, but I do love Shutterfly products and have quite a few of their photo books at home already!)

Long Live Summer – Facebook Photo Contest details (US residents only) 

 7/9 – 8/12 Multi-week summer themed photo sweepstakes with instant win prizes. http://bit.ly/sweepS

Win a trip for four to The Bahamas and a professional photo shoot so you’ll remember your vacation forever.  All you need to do is upload your favorite photo and caption based on the theme of the week.  Get a gift from Shutterfly just for entering! You can enter at any point during the 5-week sweepstakes period.

PHOTO THEMES

•       Week 1(7/9): Americana - ended

•       Week 2 (7/16): Great Outdoors - ended

•       Week 3 (7/23): Water Fun – current week

•       Week 4 (7/30): Sports & Activities

•       Week 5 (8/6): Parties & Celebrations

PRIZES

•       Instant win prizes just for submitting a photo!
•       Weekly prizes (contestants can enter one time/week)
•       Weekly featured photos: up to 5 weekly entries will be selected from the gallery and featured on the Facebook fan page.
•       Grand prize: trip for 4 to Bahamas, 4 nights, family photo shoot
•       Shutterfly Sweepstakes - Official Rules

Pauline and Family

I'm back (again) peeps!  Had to take a little time out for some personal things I was dealing with, but life is back on track and boy is it busy!!

Work is beginning to pick back up from the after-Christmas-slump.  My son's 6th birthday is only a couple weeks away and I'm still trying to figure out what to do for it!  My "little" sister's 21st birthday is the week after that and we're planning a Las Vegas trip to celebrate.  AND on top of all that and the day-to-day stuff, I'm moving in a week and a half and have a total of 3 boxes packed so far!!  But I work well under pressure and always find a way to make it all work. :)

Today I wanted to share some photos back from November of some of the most photogenic and beautiful clients I have.  This whole family needs to be in a magazine or something.  Am I wrong??

Actually, I love the littlest girl's look soooo much, that I chose her as one of the two models I'll be using in the advertisements for a new upcoming service I'll be offering - I don't have a name or catchy slogan for it yet, but they'll basically be mini photo shoots for little girl's birthday parties complete with professional hair and makeup design.  I can't wait to roll it out, but we're not quite ready yet. :)

Well I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day whether coupled up, single, parenting, chilling with the pets, or whatever it is you did.  I spent the afternoon and evening with my son and had a lovely movie date to go see Chronicle.  Interesting movie, we liked it. :)

I'll be back tomorrow (I hope!) with more pics! :)

New Fine Art Prints For Sale!

Since I just recently discovered this cool Facebook app that lets you put your Etsy shop on your business page (check mine out, the link is in the left hand column titled "Etsy Shop" under my profile pic), I decided to relist all my old items that had long ago expired.  It had been well over a year since I sold anything or even bothered to market any of it.  Just got burned out and bored I guess.

I didn't have a whole lot to relist, but I picked my favorite items and put them up.  Well yesterday morning I got an order for one of my fabric frames!  This one, which is one of my favorites:

Zebra Print Frame

So of course, once I got that sale coming through I got all excited and motivated.  So I spent yesterday morning searching through all my e-files and preparing new fine art prints to stock my shop with.  I stopped about halfway through all my pictures because I just got tired of it, but I got quite a few new prints up!  I want to get to the fabric store soon too so I can make some new frames! :)

Here's my Etsy shop link:

Avery James Photography on Etsy

And here's the new prints I just put up!  They're all 8x10 prints and sell for $24.00 each.  Please inquire about larger or smaller sizes. :) :)  crystal@averyjamesphotography.com

"Glory"

"Through the Woods"

"Splash of Purple"

"Beauty Blossoming"

"Nature's Splendor"

"Los Angeles At Dusk"

"Pretty in Pink"

And don't forget!!  I'm offering free advertising on my blog for a month!!  Details here.

Free Ad Space for 1 month!

Yup!  You heard right - free ad space for 1 month here on my Avery James Photography blog!

Interested??

Details:
120 x 90px size button

It'd be great to get photography related sponsors such as the following, but I am open to all advertisers at this point:

• Etsy shops that sell photo props, baby and children accessories and clothing, photo frames, graphic design, etc.
• Blogs with photography tips and tutorials
• Photography equipment suppliers
• Photo printers

Other types of advertisers (big and small) I'd love to support:

• Bloggers (crafters, artists, moms, couponers, giveaways, fashion, beauty, travel)
• Small businesses
• Children's boutiques
• Beauty
• Fashion
• Travel
• Music

Those are all my preferred advertisers, but again, I will consider all businesses, big and small.

Please email me your button (make it attractive!) and website link to: crystal@averyjamesphotography.com

Thank you!! :)

Oh, and a picture for today.  Another picture of my little boy from the pics I took for our Christmas cards. :) :)  How cute is he???  :) :)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

::tears:: just got home from a great tearjerker movie:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

It's got so many different emotional pieces going on throughout the movie that I think many people will find something they can relate to.  My heart definitely went out to the mother in the movie and I cried like a baby for the last 20 minutes as everything was coming to a head.

Basically the movie is based around a young boy whose father died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  That part of the story alone is heartbreaking.  Then he has this journey to try and find a connection to his father through a mystery of sorts that he is trying to solve.

As he met so many people along his path, I was reminded at how each person that I meet in my life, if even for only a brief time, affects me in some way and the person that I am.  Or that I may affect many people along my path in ways that I may never even realize.  It's an outstanding realization when you sit and really think about it.

The mother in the story is struggling with so many things - her own grief at losing her husband in such a tragic way, and having to raise and console a son who clearly favored his father for the relationship that they had.  Watching your child fall apart and hurt so deeply and not being able to do anything to help ease their pain is heart wrenching to watch.  This is about the time I started bawling in the movie theater.

There are a few other characters who each have their own little shining light and struggles, and together they all created a great movie.  I could have done without the face full of tears, but that's when you know a movie is good - when it makes you feel emotions so strongly that you can't control them.

Check out the trailer. :)

Laura and Family

Another set of photos from pretty far back, I am posting completely out of order and scattered.  I'm just browsing through folders on my computer realizing how many shoots I haven't blogged yet...there's a LOT!  Probably half a year's worth.  Shame on me!

My favorite part of my job is being able to check back in with families year after year (sometimes multiple times a year) and seeing how the kids progress and grow each time.  It's an amazing perk of the world I live in. :) :)   I actually hadn't seen this family for 2 years before this shoot though.  It's honestly more crazy to me to think that I've been doing this photography thing for longer than that.  The twists and turns that life takes...it's an adventure every day. :)  What will tomorrow bring???

On with the smiles (and what great smiles this family has!!)

80's Party!

So here's one of those personal posts I was telling you about a few days ago.  Gonna try and squeeze lots more of these in this blog. :) :)

Last night my honey and I headed over to an 80's birthday party for two of my friends.  I'm really not a fan of dressing up whatsoever...and although I lived my childhood in the 80's, I really had nothing to show for it wardrobe wise.  The most I could get my hands on was a hair crimper and leg warmers from some friends.  Once my bf's mom and sister found out that we were going to an 80's party though, they both brought out their costume arsenal and dressed me up, and I had to admit, it was actually pretty cute.  The gloves were definitely my favorite part.  I had to pass on the giant Madonna-looking bow though...my hair was gonna be crimped and that was as far as I was going.

I did find out that I actually liked my crimpy, frizzy hair.  I'm used to my hair being pretty flat and straight all the time, so the body that the frizz gave to my hair was pretty awesome, lol. :) :)

What's your favorite 80's fashion piece??

Me and my love (don't mind the missing tooth...it's a long story)

My pretty, sparkly, rainbow-y eyes. :) :)

Us and the birthday boy and girl :) :)  She made her own Michael Jackson costume - how awesome is that??  And he's from the Smooth Criminal video.

Yana and Family

The little girl in this post was sooooo absolutely adorable!!!  She was so well behaved and happy just about the entire shoot, and it was a LONG shoot.  She just kept smiling and laughing and her personality was just so infectious, I couldn't help but smile back the entire time.  How cute is she???  I'd love to think I'll get to shoot with them again, but unfortunately they were just enjoying a vacation in the Palos Verdes, CA area (where I live) when they found my services on the internet.  But perhaps if they make it out this way again then I'll be able to capture more pictures of this little doll. :) :)

Getting to Know Me...

I'd really love to take this blog in a new direction...well, maybe not a NEW one, but perhaps a tiered one...if that makes any sense...it does to me at least. :)

This obviously is my photography blog, but I'd like it to be more than that.  I want to find a way to combine my photography with my life with my interests with my stories with all of you out there in the blog world and with me in general.

With that said, I may just post a little of this and a little of that randomness...because personally I love randomness.  For example, I always put my ipod on shuffle when I listen to it vs searching for my favorite songs...most of the time I don't even listen to my ipod because I'd prefer to listen to one of my many mixes on Pandora because I never know what song will come up next.  I also came across this Etsy shop app on Facebook that brings up a random shop everytime you refresh the page.  That stuff just tickles me. LoL. :)  I'm definitely not a Type A personality, that's for sure.

So my point is, that I hope to use this blog in a more personal way.  You'll get to know me as more than just a photographer...there's a real, live, breathing woman behind that camera and I've been known to have a lot to say from time to time.  Hopefully it'll interest you. :)

Look for more posts like this in between my client photos, but there shall always be at least one photo in a post.  This one is of my son that I took around Christmastime to use on our Christmas cards.  It's taken in Palos Verdes, CA where we live.  Absolute paradise in the city is what I think of this place. :)

Kathleen and Family

I'm back!  Two days in a row!  Go me! :)

Today I'm blogging pictures from another one of my regular client's recent shoots.  Love this family too!!  They are just so absolutely sweet and the kids are adorable.  The kids all kept running and tackling and hugging me and during the shoot which I thought was so cute.  I love being able to form relationships with the families that I see on a continued basis.  An extra perk to my job. :) :)

Also, after I blogged yesterday's post, I realized that I never blogged that same family's last shoot....but I think their pics are on a different hard drive that I need to get plugged in...and I also don't think I ever blogged this post's family's photos from last year either.  So I'll get both of those up in a future post. :) :)

On with this pics! :)