I have had issues with my blog….it is corrupt for some reason.  I am not sure if it is still saying that after we managed to get some kind of spam blocker up.  I am currently working on the new blog and it should air soon!  The minor tweaks are being worked on so stay tune!  If you want to check up on my current happenings until then you can find me on twitter.  www.twitter.com/bshepard or facebook is good too!  brooke schwab shepard is my account name.  I can’t wait for you to see the new blog.  It is going to be better!  Stay tuned!

i am excited to get to share this fun session with you all. lara and bruce get married next month and i can’t wait to shoot their wedding. the only downfall on their wedding is that it is not in mexico! kidding lara! the are a really creative couple and were up for just about anything! we had a blast….lets just say they are so much fun and really gave me some wonderful photo ops. there might be too many pictures posted….but i could not resist.

i have so many pictures from my time in the pacific northwest. i think i shot too many and it has become a task to go through them all and edit them. i am getting there though. here are a couple more from the trip that i had to share. we had the chance to go see whales….it was wonderful seeing them in their natural habitat. we went out with a company that did a great job at finding them. we end up in canada when we finally found them…i have never been there. whales are so amazing and it was fun to experience that with stella. she kept yelling out “whale….1-2-3″. she was so excited to see them and made a little friend on the boat. they were great whale watchers. it was so neat to see them in action. one whale stuck his head out of the water and it looked like he was checking us out. josh also played around with my camera and took some sunset photos. he really like to take pictures. we fell in love taking picture. i miss those days when we would go on dates and take photos of random things. that sounds weird. we took lots of photos downtown and around the area. the good old days when life was slower. that is a whole other topic….will blog later.

not our boat! just a random boat.

where are the whales?

there is the mama.

our captain. i love the map.

lots of animals on the way there. these sea lions were enjoying the sun.

these were the cute babies! reminded me of free willey when i was younger. that was my favorite when i was younger. the sound track was kickin.

if you look closely you can see the whale popping up to take a peek at something. looks like it is checking out the folks on the shore.

this little guy was the cutest kid! stella was checking him out! he reminded me of our good friends little boy.

i love shooting seniors….don’t do them that often but when i do i feel really inspired. they are full of life and have so much ahead of them. k was a great subject and it was wonderful getting to know her. she was a sweet spirit to capture.

here are the cutest girls ever. i had such a fun time capturing these three girls. they are full of life and personality. the older two dressed themselves and that is always fun to see. the middle child wore two different styles of crocs. it was so funny to me how they can dress themselves. i wonder what she was thinking when she chose to do that. they were so fun. i am behind on posting sessions. this summer has been busy! good but long nights! will continue blogging my sessions….leave a comment too! also, get ready for a fun surprise! it is soon to be finished!

i love this family! i have been capturing them ever since they were prego with georgia. i can’t believe that they are expecting a little boy soon! they live in colorado right now and i hope to go fly there to take photos of the baby soon. is this not the most beautiful family ever!

just having fun…. we were being silly here.

we were so excited to meet the ogomori family while in seattle. my friend hailey works with karina and told her I was coming to seattle….and they wanted me to capture their little family. we had a great time with their session. they were both laid back and excited to take pictures of isana. the baby was so alert at such a small age. you know that he was thinking hard! i really enjoyed our session together. congrats on your beautiful baby boy!

this summer it has been a goal of mine to get pictures taken of our family. i always get to capture photos of others and usually it is next to impossible to do the same for my family. i can’t take the picture so i decided to have someone else to it for me! we were heading to seattle this summer to visit our friends so why not have a photographer in seattle do them! and i had the perfect photographer in mind…sarah rhoads. we loved taking photos and i am sure that this is the start of many. the last time we were all in a photo together was when stella was born and when she was 7 days old. long time ago! leave a comment to let me know what you think of them! i am going to get a really big one made and will need your help choosing….there are more to come.

i can’t believe that it has been 10 years since i have been out of high school! it was fun attending the lamar high school reunion! we went out to eat at ibiza to eat before hand and had a great time catching up. i have not seen some of these girls for 10 years! i attended preschool with sara m., went to middle school with kristen and sara m., high school with kelli (shot her wedding), elizabeth and sara s. lots of years with these girls! it was fun catching up and laughing. i know that i have changed a lot since high school and it was fun seeing how we all have changed. it was really fun seeing so many faces on friday. i saw people from elementary school, middle school, high school and college. i can say that it was fun seeing how people have changed and see how some have not. i can’t wait to attend my 20th! here is a photo that stephanie took of all the girls. i have flats on….so i am not this short!

a lot of people have asked me what i do to my images….some times i don’t even know what i do! i don’t want this to sound like i don’t know what i am doing. i just have more of a free style about my editing and how i want the picture to feel at that moment. usually i will do one of two things when editing photos:

1) i will import to light room and do a rough edit of my photos and then export to jpgs and after that i will edit from bridge to photoshop. i usually choose my top favorites when editing (10 or so). i will run some fun actions that i have created or purchased.

2) edit right out of photoshop. this is normal for me to do. i will play with the exposure some and add fill light and whatever else to it if needed!!!

the following image really did not need much work. i shot the photo at 1/2500 at f 7.1 at 50 iso. i had my 24-70 mm lense on too. this photo was shot in raw and processed in photoshop raw. here is what i did: i just brought up the exposure slightly to see the clouds more, i pushed the fill light up to 100 to see the red in the boys shirt, added some black (10%), a pinch of brightness, contrast (100%), and clarity was brought to 100%. that was that!

original raw image

edited image.