Kristi Eckrich »

I’m excited to announce that I am now officially “Aunt Kristi!” Ella May entered the world at 11:30 AM this morning, weighing in at 6 lbs. and 3.8 oz. and 19.5 inches long. She has brilliant red hair, too!

Gotta love those tiny newborn feet and toes!:

The nurse had just awakened her for her first bath. She was not at all happy!:

Hair washing:

“Is this craziness over yet?!?!?”:

Proud Dad holding his new daughter:

Mom, Dad and baby are all doing very well. Many more photos of this little princess will be appearing here in the near future…stay tuned!

In keeping with my goal to continue posting unblogged photos from 2008, here is a mini session I did with Aaron at Thanksgiving. Aaron and I had dinner at my grandmother’s in Waynesboro (Corey and Trevor had dinner with his parents since his stepbrother was visiting from NYC) and I was determined to get some photos of Aaron at the little brick Mennonite church across the street. After a “slight” bribe that had a little something to do with…ahem…a new Bakugan toy, he heartily agreed to pose for me. I must say he did a fantastic job and more than earned his bribe!

A slight vintage effect using a combination of Totally Rad Actions:

Another vintage effect:

Have a great weekend!

I am absolutely loving my new set of actions, Totally Rad Actions 2: The Revenge. I decided to play around and apply a few of them to some of my Phoenix images. I love the look I got by running “Pool Party” and “Wish You Were Here” to the palm tree shots:

They remind me of on old, faded vintage postcard! A lot of awesome vintage looks can be achieved with the TRA2 actions. If you are a pro photographer, or even a serious amateur, I highly recommend this set of actions. I also have the original Totally Rad Actions set and in combination with TRA2 the possibilities are endless!

Hi! I’m finally back!

Last month I had the opportunity to attend Imaging USA in Phoenix, AZ with another local photographer and friend. Imaging USA is an annual photography conference sponsored by Professional Photographers of America. It was a very intense 3 days of learning, learning, and more learning! My brain hurt by the time it was over, but that was a good thing. With a full-time non-photography job and a family to take care of, it is important to me that I make the most of the limited photo sessions I am able to schedule, in addition to being able to increase my photo business and maybe even drop back my daytime work hours in the process. The knowledge I brought home from Imaging will hopefully help me accomplish these goals during this coming year.

Amazingly, I did not take many photos during this trip. Our schedule was so jam-packed with conference events there wasn’t really much time for photo taking. However, there was no way I was coming home completely photo-less! So I would like to share a few of what I did manage to capture.

This was the view from our hotel room:

This is the moon rising during sunset (another view from the hotel room):

I had never been to Arizona, or any warm location before now. We’re the weird family who likes to go to cold destinations like Alaska and Iceland! Anyway, I had never before seen palm trees, orange trees or cacti out in their natural habitat. So of course, I had to have photos of some Arizona foliage!

This is a huge mirror sculpture located in the west lobby of the Phoenix Convention Center (where Imaging USA was held). That’s me on the steps taking the photo!:

Have a great weekend everyone!

My apologies for the lack of a website or blog since Tuesday afternoon. My hosting company notified me of expiration of my domain name on the day of expiration while I was out of town and 2000 miles across the country! I am now back home, have renewed my domain registration, and once again have a functional website!

Since I didn’t get around to posting a ton photos from this past year, I’ve decided to do a series of “year in review” posts so I can finally share some of them!

I’m going to start all the way back in late January of last year, when Trevor was at the height of his interest in snowboarding. We didn’t get much snow last year, but whenever it did snow a little bit, Trevor was out in the backyard practicing his moves. His favorite Playstation game at the time was “SSX Snowboarding”, and he carefully studied the moves in the game so that he could recreate them in the backyard. Although it was funny watching the look of concentration on his face while he did this, he actually did quite well with some of the moves!

Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! The boys had a good time opening Santa’s gifts Christmas morning, and were quite excited upon opening the Guitar Hero World Tour that they had been requesting since, oh…summer?!? Another big item that they received from “Santa” was a Daisy pellet gun (which will, of course, be used under strict supervision). Various DVDs, Legos and Matchbox playsets rounded out the 2008 take.

Trevor’s reaction to Guitar Hero:

Aaron was happy with this Matchbox Haunted House set that he had been asking for:

Sammy and Mikey enjoying their Christmas present:

And yes, believe it or not…the boys actually got out of bed, got dressed, and watched some cartoons while waiting for us to get up before opening their presents! I’m looking forward to enjoying some downtime before going back to work on Monday. The boys and I took in a movie today (Marley & Me) and I’m really not sure yet what we’ll get into over the weekend!

Over the next few days, I’ll be making some design changes to my blog.  Please excuse any strange occurrences you may encounter from time to time!

My apologies once again for a lack of timely updates.  Perhaps I can get away with blaming it on my new baby…a 24″ iMac that I decided to give myself for Christmas this year! Now that I finally have all my files transferred over from my PC, and Photoshop up and running, I am in heaven!  This thing is the Taj Mahal compared to my clunky Dell.  I added additional memory and it runs soooo fast…and it doesn’t CRASH when I batch in Photoshop!  Anyone who is on the fence about whether or not to switch to a Mac, I’m telling you to do it now!  Yes, Macs are pricier than PCs, but…you truly get what you pay for.  Now that my public service announcement for the week is out of the way, I’m going to get back to having fun with my new toy!

Brett was quite the good sport as I dragged him all over downtown Carlisle for his senior photos. Brett is an EMT and volunteer firefighter, and the firehouse we visited provided the perfect backdrop for his uniforms. The shot with the fire engine behind him was completely unplanned, as there just happened to be a fire call a few minutes after we began shooting! I had him run out to the sidewalk so I could catch the fire engine roaring out of the garage in the background. Brett, I hope you enjoy your sneak peeks!