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Recent Posts
- Senior Portraits of the Day: Matt | Reedley Senior Portrait Photographer
- Senior Portrait of the Day: Dalton | Reedley Senior Portrait Photographer
- Senior Portrait of the Day: Kenia | Carruthers Senior Portrait Photographer
- Senior Portrait of the Day: Roman | Kingsburg Senior Portrait Photographer
- The Hernandez Family | Reedley Family Lifestyle Portrait Photographer
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Tag Archives: personal
A Decade
I’d like to take a moment from our regularly scheduled posts to thank Lisa for an amazing 10 years. Today marks our 10-year anniversary. In a decade we’ve witnessed several big changes in the world, given birth to two beautiful children, had a lot of adventures, make a few mistakes, tried and failed, tried and succeeded, loved, cried, learned, bought a few houses, lived in six different places, and gotten to know each other pretty well.
If I could go back 10 years and do it all again, the only thing I wouldn’t change is marrying you. I had no idea what I was getting into when we decided to get married. You can’t know those kinds of things in advance. Bit that was good, because the journey would have been more than I could comprehend at the time.
Thanks for being my wife, my partner, my very best sparring-mate, a great example to me as a parent, and a terrific listener. I’m blessed by you in ways I’ll never be able to fully express.
Here’s to another 10 years (or whatever time God gives us on this earth).
Warm and Cool | Central Valley Landscape Photographer
These two images just deserve to be juxtaposed. Together they represent a great sample of warm and cool tones in color theory. One is from Trent’s Senior Portrait session, and the other is from Wes’s Senior Portrait session. The opportunity to make pictures like this is definitely one of the perks of working with cool people in beautiful places!
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Also tagged color theory, colors, cool, landscape, outtakes, scenic, warm
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Personal Work | Fresno Landscape Photographer
Making images is like a sport – you have to keep doing it, or you get rusty. You have to actively engage your brain in image-making to improve. So I do that. Here are some incidental landscape pictures I made the other day during a senior portrait session. Enjoy!
MCC Sale | Fresno Lifestyle Photographer
One of my favorite annual events is the West Coast MCC Relief Sale. It’s an event that raises money for world relief while providing fun activities and traditional Mennonite food. I’ll be honest: aside from interaction with the Mennonite community, the food is my favorite part!
The event is on the campus of Fresno Pacific University, and features an auction, live broom-making demos, and art show (in which I’ve participated for the past few years), and more good, traditional Mennonite food than you can shake a stick at! Liam and I split a particularly marvelous bowl of homemade Huckleberry Ice Cream.
Here’s the Facebook page for the event: West Coast MCC Sale.
Here’s an article about the food on Taste Fresno: Mennonite Munchies.
I’ll post a few pictures here, but if you want to see the rest, you can find them at the Shinn Photo Facebook page!
Tahoe
I recently rediscovered my childhood love for Lake Tahoe. I went skiing with my dad and brothers during the First Annual Shinn Men’s Retreat (a tradition which I really look forward to continuing).
I’ve just started working on my images from that trip, and there aren’t many. But it doesn’t take much to show Tahoe’s beauty. I hesitate to share this picture online, because it’s a massive panorama, and it really deserves to be seen in person – in print. My dad and I made the exposures for this pano at sunrise, on a morning that didn’t present us much of a sunrise. But the lake was still (as it often is), and the snow on the mountains make for extra-special reflections. Enjoy!
Thankful for Clara
Clara recently started preschool at the beginning of January! She’d been looking forward to going to Chapter One for months and months since Liam is there and she looks up to him so much. We had a few staffing changes here at the studio, which helped us make the decision to have Clara start preschool a little earlier than we had first planned. It has been a great move for her and for all of us at Shinn Photo! Clara really likes the fact that she AND Liam are at Chapter One, and the teachers tell us they have mini parties when they see each other in the hallway or out on the playground. Sometimes I wish I could be a fly on the wall at Chapter One to see them! I’d also love to see the interactions they have with their peers and their teachers. Sometimes I wonder what funny things Liam says that the teachers talk about later!
In Clara’s honor, I’d like to share a few pictures and memories of her growing up coming to work with Mommy and Daddy at the studio.
So… when you own your own business, there is NO SUCH THING as maternity/paternity leave. This is a fact of life and I’m not complaining because there are many perks and blessings that come as a result of Shinn Photo. Remember, I’m not complaining! I remember wrapping her up in a sling and heading into the studio when she was about a week old to meet with a childhood friend who was on the brink of engagement. I think Clara slept through the whole thing! She was an easy baby and slept well; there were times that we would simply lay her on the floor in a pile of blankets for her nap. We did have a crib at the old studio (on 10th Street right around the corner from our current location) but it was right next to the computer work station which was in the same room as the shooting area–not an ideal arrangement for baby care or client interaction. When we moved to our new studio on G Street in February of 2009, we were thankful for the bank vault behind “customer land” where she could nap and play.
During Clara’s first year of life, Rachel helped to care for her when we were at work. We would trade off caring for and playing with Clara and doing work. Rachel and I really enjoyed this time together with each other and with Clara. Because of the time spent together, Rachel is called Auntie Rachel or Ra-Ra.
Clara loved the swing and this is how we found her one day when we didn’t buckle her in! She didn’t fall, though! Wow!
At the beginning of 2010, Alma joined our team and we had two more hands and one more heart to care for Clara. As she became mobile, it got more difficult to get work done. We would had a three cycle routine that allowed each of us time with her and time to get work done. I remember many walks around downtown to occupy time or get her out of the studio when clients were here. There were times that we would have to creatively take her out of a client’s sound reach because of her crying, but I think we did pretty well keeping the studio environment quiet and welcoming. I’m sure there were times that we didn’t do so well and I was probably really stressed out, but none of those memories come to mind right now! 
I am thankful for all of the memories that Clara will have of her early life and am excited about all the memories and adventures that are ahead for her! As a mom, it’s so comforting to know that my kids are taken care of and engaged when they’re at Chapter One. I’m thankful that when I’m at the studio, I have the time and mind space to work on creating and connecting with people!
I am looking forward to all of the clients we’ll meet this year and have the pleasure of photographing. We are constantly striving to do things more effectively and efficiently and run our business from our hearts.
We love what we do!
Sunset, snow and clouds
I was on the way back from making Senior Portraits in the snow with Jesikah and her mom when we came across this sunset. I yanked the steering wheel and skidded to a halt, jumping out of the car to make a few pictures before the light left altogether. I love how the curtain of fog creates a carpet over the valley floor beneath the rays of the setting sun. It’s nice to know that above the fog, God’s still enjoying good weather!
Featured Wall: My Office
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally re-decorated my office walls. I’ve been staring at blank gray since I moved in, but this marks an end to it! I’ve decorated with some of my early lighthouse picture, shot on black and white film at Portland Head Light on Cape Elizabeth, just south of Portland, Maine. The prints are hand-made by a master printer, and they’re part of a set that my wife is slowly moving out of our living room. The framed piece in the center is my Emerald Shellback certificate. It was bestowed on me by Davy Jones and Neptunus Rex upon crossing the equator at 00000 Longitude. It’s part of a tradition passed down from mariner to mariner continuously since the 1200s, though today’s version involves fewer physical risks than in ages past. Stop by the studio some time and read the certificate; it’s quite amusing.
I like the blend of photos and other materials from a thematic perspective. I’m also happy about the overall color scheme – works decently well with the clean lines and drab colors in the rest of the office.
Thanks to Laura Corulli for helping me with placement and arranging! Her art gallery skills are well-appreciated at Shinn Photo.
Till next time,
Andrew
Veteran’s Day 2011
I imagined being able to die for my country. What I never imagined was Liam and Clara. Somehow, the bravado-soaked idea of going off to sacrifice myself was so much more appealing before I became a father. This veteran’s day, I want to especially honor those who have sacrificed for our country and left people behind to do it.
I think of the men I served with aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Bear who talked about the daily realities of leaving children of all ages to get underway on missions of various sorts. Sometimes they were away from teenage children while on drug patrols off the coast of Central America, and sometimes they braved the bitter cold of a north Atlantic fisheries patrol while missing a toddler back home.
Veterans – men and women who have served our country from the freezing winds of the Delaware River to the dusty streets of Kabul, have sacrificed varying portions of their lives to defend a county and a set of ideals much larger than themselves. If we want to honor those sacrifices, the best we can do is to uphold those ideals and work on building the perfect society for which they fought.
We need to build a society where we reach out to our fellow man before the government feels the pressure to meet his needs. We need to build a foreign policy based on humility rather than hubris. We need to foster political dialogue that focuses more on ideas than positions and the greater good rather than political strategy. We may not all don uniforms, but we can all work to defend free speech and expression.
Let’s pay our Veterans the honor of sacrificing partisanship for the greater good and hubris for humility. Lord know they deserve it!
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