This past weekend my husband and I took a trip to New Orleans for the weekend and had a blast and wished we could have stayed longer.  There is just the vibe there we don’t have back in Dallas.  It’s cool, relaxed, and fun.  We had no plans, no schedule and it was awesome (well we did actually have our hotel booked before we went).  I did take my camera (I mean how could I not) so I could do some street photography.  I could have spent weeks just walking the French Quarter taking pictures and never get bored.  I took so many pictures I’m breaking it up into 3 or 4 blog posts.  This one will feature street photography with people, the real life of New Orleans. The 2nd blog post will focus on the building and architecture of New Orleans. I’m still deciding what the focus will be for the other posts, one for sure will be nightlife (that’s a must).  So enjoy the pictures

You could still see beads from Mardi Gras all over New Orleans

I can’t begin to share with you how inspiring the city of New Orleans is (if you’ve been there you know).  I feel like my creative juices have been recharged and I’m so ready for wedding season to begin

If you are interested in any of these pictures, I do have them online and available for purchase, click here

Photography is a part of me; it’s more than a passion it’s a must.  I honestly could not imagine doing anything else and being happy.  And I think life is too short to not enjoy what you do.  There is no greater joy to me than capturing people and emotion and knowing I captured this moment in time. And for me, weddings are the perfect place for the type of photography I love.  It basically boils down to, I love capturing love.  I really really do.  A marriage is committing to spend your life with another,  and a wedding is the start of that.  All the gleaming smiles, the happy tears, the nervous chuckles, I love all of it.  I know the pictures I take as one starts this journey of marriage with their true love will be treasured for generations.  The pictures I take today will be looked at in awe by this couple’s children and grandchildren as they flip through their parent/grandparents wedding album.  Just knowing this brings tears to my eyes because what I do means something and matters.  The pictures I take today will still bring back those same feelings 10, 20, 50 years later for the bride and groom and their families.  After all, pictures are not just pictures, they are memories frozen in time so what I do is not photography but capturing moments and memories for people.  I don’t think it gets any better than that.  As I type this, it gets me super excited that the wedding season in Texas is almost here. I’m so excited and can’t wait to capture more fun weddings this year.  

I write this also in hopes of inspiring other photographers. I’ve read on lots of boards, people are discouraged for many many reasons.  It is hard being a business owner and an artist as at times we are so hard on ourselves.  But please I encourage you to look inside and remember why it is you do this.  Answer the questions, Why do I love photography? And please don’t just remember, write it down.  Every time your find your self getting down or being negative go back and read it.  We all need reminders from time to time why it is we love what we do.

If you have been following my blog for awhile then you know that I also love doing street photography (view here & here)  as well as being a wedding photographer.  I decided to combine both loves and photograph an engagement session in the style of street photography.  The hustle and bustle of the city, the bright lights, and the energy of the people are some of the many reasons why I love photographing in the city.  The style of photographing that makes you feel like you are in that moment.  I also really love capturing the love between two people and there is no greater joy than that.  So here is the combination of the two, please leave a comment or email me at kandsphoto at gmail dot com and let me know what you think

I’m so thankful to Sergio and Lacey for being the great friends that they are and braving the cold, almost freezing, night so I could capture this vision I had in my head.  I asked them to be my subjects for this shoot because they love the city life as much as I do.  They love the energy of the city and the life it breaths.  There is always new moments happening to capture with new people and new adventures.  It’s the perfect place to people watch

I do plan on doing lots more of this type of engagements and currently I will run a special for this type of session. So let me know if this is something you want to do for your engagement session and we can capture your own love story.

I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving and enjoyed spending time with their loved ones.  Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, its time to turn the focus to Christmas, YAY!!!!  It’s my favorite time of year.  This year Ray and I braced Black Friday at Target for a Christmas Tree and decorations, yep that’s us the one person standing in line for 2 hours at 1am without a TV.  We wanted a grown-up Christmas tree this year so we could retire our sad Charlie Brown tree from CVS that my parents bought us 5 years ago to go into our apartment.  We ended up taking it to our house and have been here 4 years and this will be the first year that we have a real (well fake but you know what I mean) tree.   I can’t begin to tell you how excited we are, yep we’re silly but it means something to us  We have also started buying little Christmas things to help decorate the house and get into the spirit of Christmas.  Plus we will be hosting Christmas this year so we want our house to look festive when everyone comes into town.  I hope you enjoy the pictures and feel free to share yours as well as I always love to be inspired

If you a regular follower of our blog then you might remember that I said I was going to start taking some more pictures for me and doing more street photography.  So I found time between my weddings and sessions to go out and take some pictures in Dallas.  Its so much fun to walk around just taking pictures with no stress or set schedule.  Of course you know I love weddings and capturing couples in love but street photography is a lot fun as well.  So here is the fruit of that labor.  These were taken in Downtown Dallas and on the SMU campus.  I would love to hear your thoughts

If you missed the blog I posted awhile back that had some New York street photography, click here