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Category Archives: Personal Safari

The other day, I posted on Facebook about how much I don’t like pants. For me, it’s not, “What would you do-ooo-ooh…for a Klondike bar?” It’s more like this: “What would I do to NOT wear pants?”

The answer? Pretty much anything.

Denver summers are hot, mostly dry and generally nasty. Who would wear pants in the kind of heat we got this year? Not me. Also, I just don’t really like pants. Especially any kind of leg-wear that falls into the “work apparel” category (e.g. slacks…ew). No, thank you.

So I decided to not wear pants for thirty days. Only skirts, dresses, or shorts. I called this: Beyond the Pants. Or, in Instagram terms: #BeyondthePants. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it the whole month, but I did make it to day twenty. I’m glad I forayed into the battle against unnecessary leg fashion, as I happened to learn a few things:

1) I have A LOT of skirts and dresses, probably more than I’ll ever need, and it’s pretty evident that I have a thing for polka dots.

2) Having to shave everyday is pretty sucky. Same goes for obligatory toenail polish touch-ups.

3) While pants often are the equivalent to jail for your stems, I definitely have a better appreciation of all two-legged clothing items now.

I didn’t miss pants, per se. It was more that I missed things associated with pants. I missed being able to bend over to pick up Sherman’s turds without worrying that my whole booty was going to pop out. I missed POCKETS. I missed jeans a little bit, especially paired with knee-high wool socks and boots. Fall fashion is the best.

Anyway, through Instagram, I documented all twenty outfits of this rather pointless clothing challenge. Here are all of my #BeyondthePants outfits. Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

Sherman the Corgi and I are here to announce the details for the 1st Annual Urban Safari Giveaway!

| WHAT YOU CAN WIN |

Grand Prize: A one-hour portrait session with twenty of your favorite images on a disc in color and black and white (value: $275)

A complimentary 16×20″ canvas wrap from your upcoming or previous photo shoot (value: $110)

A complimentary 8×11″ hardbound photo book from your upcoming or previous photo shoot (value: $28)

| HOW TO ENTER |

On your computer or tablet (sorry, mobile users), invite five of your most awesome friends to “like” Urban Safari Photography.

To do this, go to our Facebook page here and take a look at the righthand column of this page and type in your friends’ names where it says, “Invite Your Friends to Like this Page”.

Once you’ve finished inviting your friends, write on Urban Safari’s wall saying that you have invited your friends to “like” us. After that, you’re automatically entered in the contest!

SHARE this blog post on your personal Facebook wall to receive a BONUS entry! Mention that you’ve shared this blog post in the same comment on our Facebook wall to receive the bonus entry.

| DURATION |

Contest will end on Thursday, August 15th. Three different winners will be selected via a random drawing and announced on Friday, August 16th.

| SMALL PRINT |

Max two entries per person. Prizes must be redeemed or scheduled by October 31, 2013.

Message me with any questions at [email protected]! I’m looking forward to giving back to you all as you’ve been such AMAZING fans, friends and clients over the past three years that I’ve been in business. THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart!

// Awesome photos of me and my corgi by Hannah Pobar of Hannah Truly //

Today is a super special day: I found out that a few photos that I took of Allyson Conklin, a lovely friend of mine who owns Allyson Conklin PR, were published on Forbes.com along with a superb article that she wrote about breaking into the public relations business. Congratulations to us! I’m pretty excited to have had my work credited in a hugely-well-known national news website. :)

So…I’m pretty excited to say that one of the most awesome photography pages on Facebook, Photographers Connection, shared one of my all-time favorite images yesterday! Every week, they host a new “challenge” that asks their Facebook fans to submit their favorite images that fit a certain theme; this week’s theme is love, and so I decided to submit an image from Jessie and Tim’s engagement session in Georgetown. As I sat down for my anti-Valentine’s Day dinner with a lovely lady friend, I got a Facebook notification that they had shared my image! I’m super grateful that they chose one of my photos to display to all of their some 18,000+ fans. Yes, it’s a small victory but I’m happy. What a lovely little Valentine’s Day treat! Eeeeeee!

I hope you all had an amazing week and Valentine’s Day. Check back next Monday for more from Jen and Neil’s destination wedding in India!

See more from Jessie + Tim: Colorado wedding photos on the Urban Safari blog!

For today’s featured blog post, I’d like to publish some photos from the first-ever safari that fellow photography enthusiast Brandon and I took way back on Saturday, August 2nd, 2009. I mean, this is THE safari. The original, one-and-only photo adventure that spurred me on to learning as much as I possibly could about photography. This is where Urban Safari Photography began, long before I ever even knew I could have a future career as a photographer, and long before the idea of Urban Safari Photography was ever conceived.

When these photos were taken, I was very new to the game, had just learned the terms “f-stop” and “aperture” and had an intolerably short haircut (word to the wise, ladies: proceed with caution when considering an A-line hairstyle, as it takes an eternity to grow out). I constantly oversaturated my images by jacking up the contrast in post-processing and wasn’t quite sure what it took to really compose a solid photo.

I didn’t have PhotoShop or Lightroom, any prime lenses or flashes, and I didn’t even shoot in RAW; JPEGs all the way! But, we all start somewhere, right? And for me, it all started in downtown Denver with Brandon, my Canon Rebel Xsi and its horrible little kit lens. For the sake of simply having fun doodling around in PhotoShop and being artsy fartsy, I’ve “remixed” the original photos with some of my favorite, vintage-y Florabella actions. Enjoy and thank you for stopping by!

Update, 6/24/2014: Who knew this one day would spur on a new, full-time career? Read more here!

Thursday Throwback
Thursday Throwback
Thursday Throwback

Denver Photography | Locations Used

Denver Center for Performing Arts | Union Station, before any of the new construction began | Pool at my old apartment on Poet’s Row in Capitol Hill

A few years ago, when I had purchased my very first DSLR (a Canon Rebel Xsi), my friend Brandon and I would spend our Saturdays dinking around Colorado just taking photos. This was before the inception of Urban Safari, and we would either take silly pictures of each other or pictures of rather plain things like leaves, buildings, fire hydrants, etc. We called these our safaris, and I always looked forward to a full day of shooting anything and everything with one of my very best friends. Since I have begun to focus more on portrait and wedding photography, it’s been harder to fit these more “personal” safaris into my schedule. As my business began to grow, my Saturdays (and Sundays) became more about editing, blogging or going out and photographing a client. Don’t get me wrong; I am over-the-moon with how much my business has expanded and I am so thankful for all of my WONDERFUL clients. But you know, sometimes it’s just nice to take pictures of…stuff. A rock on the street. An empty beer can laying crushed in an alley. Squirrels. The 16th Street Mall. Just…stuff. So over the past few days, I spent a little time doodling around my neighborhood near the Capitol Building just taking photos of things. It was refreshing to just be there with my camera, and so it has birthed a new goal for 2013: to spend more time with just me and my cameras.

Below are some of the photos of the first personal safari of 2013. I borrowed a nice wide-angle lens from my colleague Alex to photograph the new Colorado Supreme Court and Colorado Court of Appeals Building at 14th and Broadway in the daytime, and then I busted out my wide-angle zoom lens and my telephoto lenses for a nighttime shoot with an amazing friend of mine and bride-to-be Jessie. We spent a little time at the new Clyfford Still Museum and the City and County Building, where I got to practice some off-camera flash, which is an area of photography that I am also aiming to improve upon this year. Hope you love some quick photos from my little safaris from the past few days! Also, I’ve posted a list of the gear I used for these photos at the bottom of the page in case anyone is interested. Enjoy!

Denver Photography
Denver Photography
Denver Photography

Gear List:

  • Canon EOS 5d Mark II
  • Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM lens
  • Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens
  • Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM medium telephoto lens
  • Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM wide-angle lens
  • Canon Speedlite 430EX II
  • Canon Speedlite 580EX II
  • PocketWizard Mini TT1
  • PocketWizard FlexTT5
  • Gary Fong Lightsphere
  • Buttloads of Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries

I think it’s safe to say that I never really planned on being a photographer. I went to school for French and education at Colorado State University, as I knew early on in high school that I was destined to be a teacher, and you won’t find a single course related to photography on my college transcript (which, by the way, I now totally regret).

For a little while, photography was just a hobby to me; I had (and still have) an old Canon point-and-shoot camera that I would tote around Fort Collins and take pictures of random storefronts, icicles and railroad crossing signs. I figured that I was going to be a teacher and nothing else for my whole life, so what was the point in working towards another career?

From the moment we are asked “What do you want to be when you grow up”?, we are often coached to only give one answer and one answer alone. Doctor. Firefighter. Rockstar. Astronaut. Veterinarian. Painter. Seven-year-old me wanted to be an olympic figure skater. In the mid-90s, my answer to this question was that I wanted to be an FBI agent, thanks to my obsessive addiction to watching The X-Files. That was before I rediscovered my love for French in high school, and from then on, my career dream shifted towards teaching French. Photography wasn’t even on my radar back then.

I’ve been a teacher at Northglenn High School for almost four years now, and like other teachers will say, I have the best group of kids on the planet. But a few years ago, it came to my attention that hey…maybe I’ll have two careers. Maybe I’m meant to do more than just one thing, to be more than just a teacher. Maybe I’m meant to travel the world with my camera, capturing moments on opposite sides of the world for a newspaper or a magazine. Maybe I’m supposed to teach during the school year and have summers off to focus on weddings. Or maybe I’m meant to do something completely unrelated to teaching and photography.

Right now, it seems that I’m doing okay in balancing my life as a teacher and my life as a photographer. Sure, there are still plenty of days where I’m overwhelmed and don’t think that the workload for both careers will ever end. Grade papers or edit photos? How about both?

As far as the immediate future goes, I have no plans of leaving my post as a French teacher at Northglenn High School, nor do I see any signs of my photography slowing down. I dream of breaking into the photojournalism world and of maybe being a high school principal. I don’t know where the cards will fall yet, but for now, life is good.

So, today, I’d like to spotlight the couple that propelled me into this amazing world of photography. A little over two years ago, I was visiting some friends in Durango when I was contacted by the pretty blonde in this picture, Jes, to take some engagement photos of her and her fiancé Mark. I was dumbfounded. At this point, I had only taken photos of things, not people. Of course I accepted, but with a pretty distinct warning label: I have no idea what I’m doing.

Despite my lack of experience with portrait photography, Jes and Mark had faith in my newfound abilities and it never once wavered. After the engagement sessions (we did two), Jes asked me to do her wedding photography the following summer. I was elated but scared shitless. I knew just as much about photographing a wedding as I did about aerospace engineering…aka, next to nothing. Even still, Jes and Mark were excited to have me (ME!) be their photographer.

From then on, I spent most of my time educating myself about how to grow as a photographer: how to compose striking images and edit them properly all the while figuring out what it took to be a successful businesswoman. I still continue with these tasks every day, as it can only go up from here. And “here” is a place I would never be if it hadn’t been for Jes and Mark, whom I love dearly and to whom I owe a huge chunk of my successes as a photographer. I am so grateful for their support and encouragement, and I hope you love a little throwback of one of the very first engagement photos I ever took.

See how Jes + Mark’s Durango wedding turned out here on the Urban Safari blog!

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