Ugh, It’s been a busy several weeks. I wish I’d thought ahead and written a ton of blogs to schedule… alas I hate blogging, so I didn’t.

Today, I just wanted to catch you up on what’s going on in the Urban household.

Tristan started kindergarten around the end of August. It’s been a little stressful for me trying to figure out our new routine, but he LOVES it! He was happy to find a friend in his class from his old daycare. He also is constantly telling me about several different girls, one set of twins and another girl in his class. I’m concerned about his love for the ladies… Andy and I are going to have to keep both eyes on him when he gets older.

Andy started a new job around the middle of the summer setting up networking for rigs. It’s an exciting job for him with some travel and a chance to get more cyber security experience. I would say he is getting an exciting opportunity to travel on the companies dime, however he sometimes is a little anxious about it. Shortly, he’ll be making a trip to Israel. I hope he gets to do some sight seeing, but I don’t think he will. The furthest he has ever traveled outside the US was to Antigua for our honeymoon.

As for myself, I’m easing into a life as a full time photographer. I’ve spent the last several weeks meeting with stunning wedding venues around the greater Houston and surrounding area. I’m working with a wedding coordinator at A Splendid Event to develop a styled wedding shoot that I’ve been thinking about for a long time now. Lori has been amazing. I am so blessed to have met her. Hopefully, we’ll be able to work on many other projects together.

This fall is going to be so exciting. I have a couple of amazing weddings I am ecstatic to be photographing, and several engagement portraits. Andy and I just met a fun couple last weekend who booked us for their 2020 wedding. They have a really interesting idea for their engagement portraits that I can’t wait for.

That’s all for now.

I’m going to use my baby soapbox to make this one point. 

There isn’t enough room in this world for all of the HATE that’s currently circulating. 

God says “love thy neighbor.” He doesn’t say love thy neighbor, but only if he’s white or straight or Christian or votes the same way you do. It’s a blanket of love he is asking for. 

Hating people because of the color of their skin, the way they love, the way they pray, or the way they vote is like hating natural redheads for the color of their hair. They don’t have anymore control over the color of their hair than a member of the LGBTQ community does the people they’re attracted to. Sure you can dye your hair, but eventually your roots will show and you’ll tire of hiding who you were born to be. The person God made you to be.

We have the right to disagree with a persons religious belief, political view or life style. We don’t have the right to judge, harm (both physically and mentally), or bully someone because they’re different from us. Not everyone is a square peg, some of of are round and some of us are triangles. We aren’t all going to fit into the same metaphorical square hole.

So let’s all make an effort to stop all of this hate & bulling and bigotry. Make an effort to be a part of the solution and not the problem. If you see someone being bullied online, stand up for them, even if that means standing up for a Democrat or a Republican. If you see someone being pushed around and harassed because they’re different, stand up for them. And for the love of God, stop calling people hateful names.

Stand up for the human race, regardless of our differences, because it’s our differences that make us so amazing and beautiful. It would be a very dull world if we lived in a monochromatic society. 

It’s Valentines Day, and while many will be celebrating with a shiny new engagement ring, or a romantic dinner, I will probably be watching NCIS with Andy and Tristan and neurosing over my computer.

On Sunday, my computer had some sort of major malfunction. I was in the process of working on my regular Tuesday blog when my computer froze. I shut it down and it hasn’t turned back on since (not for a lack of trying). Andy asked me what I wanted for Valentines Day and I told him I wanted him to take my computer into the Apple store. How romantic right? I would be unable to do it and frankly, the entire thing has pushed me to the edge of turning into a green 10-foot monster. “Hulk mad. Hulk want smash!”

I find myself sitting on my bed Wednesday evening typing this up on my iPad while Big Love plays in the background, and my cat (Rascal) beggs for attention and is a complete lovable pest. Luckily, I was able to Bluetooth my keyboard to it so at least I have something going for me. 

Andy says I will probably loose everything that was on the computer, but I’m hoping for a Valentines Day miricle. Lucky, most everything that is important to me is on external hard drives.

I digress

Have a happy Valentine’s Day, however you may spend it, I hope you have a great evening. If you were expecting an engagement ring, I hope you get it, if you were expecting your fiancé to take you to your favorite haunt, I hope they do. And if you are an old married couple (who hates crowds) I hope takeout is ordered and a good movie is qued up.

Welp… today is my birthday. Today I get another year older [cringe].

What have I accomplished in my 34 years? I have always let my heart lead me in the direction it wanted to go, even if that meant I would have to work harder than others. Even if it meant I might not have as big of a coin purse as others, or if it meant I would spend my days pulled in 12 different directions.

I have stood on more football fields than I can count, some of them quite famous. I have walked the same halls as professional football players, and even met a few (albeit retired or sill in college).

I have a degree in a field that, though I don’t work for a big advertising company (as I had imagined in college), I use in my every day life and has been a great help turning my true passion into a career.

I joined a writers guild, thinking I would write the next great Hunger Games novel. I did write something, but have never published it. Maybe another birthday you’ll see that here. I’ve been published in a small collection of ghost stories before. My passion to write creativity is what has helps me with my blog posts, especially the Real Wedding posts. I want each blog post about a wedding I photograph to sound like something out of a story book (with a happy ending of coarse).

I married the man I pined fore in high school, but never acted on it and slipped away after graduation. We have one beautiful child together who loves life as much as we do. He loves to sing and dance and make friends (with everyone… seriously).

Lastly, I followed my heart to photography. It has been a passion for me since I was a kid. It was my father’s passion, and he introduced me to it’s wonders. I learned it in high school and in college. I got a job as a photojournalist where I met more like minded photographers (who I am still friends with today). I had an instructor/boss (who shares my birthday… happy birthday Darrel!) who helped push me along the way. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without his critical eye or his constant pushing and teaching.

My passion for photography lead me to the world of wedding photography. I absolutely love being a wedding photographer in the Houston area. I get to meet such unique people and eat lots of cake!

I’ll leave you with the motto Darrel has instilled in me. You will never know everything. Always listen and learn, because there’s always more to learn.

I was reading a Facebook post from a fellow wedding photographer in one of my wedding photographer groups that posed a question, “When did you first consider your photography as a business and not just a hobby.”

After college, I fully expected to land a career in the Advertising world. I was mistaken. For fun, and to take my mind off of the monotonous grind of job hunting that was getting me nowhere, I started taking pictures of friends and family’s. I actually had an advertising/photography business in the beginning. I took “commercial pictures” for small businesses, pictures of babies, graduations, family portraits and a few weddings. I already had a lot of experience as a photojournalist in college and used that knowledge to grow my hobby.

Wedding photography from one of the first weddings I photographed.

The very first two weddings I ever photographed I did for free. I ran a Craig’s List advertisement where I gave away 2 free wedding photography packages–basically I spent most of the day and evening with the two couples. I was new to the wedding world. I hadn’t ever been a second-shooter, I didn’t even know that was a thing. All I knew was that I needed wedding photos for my portfolio if I wanted to book more weddings.

I put together a website (did the HTML myself) and got to work getting more clients. I got a tax ID and set up a separate banking account (which I supplemented from my own account). That was the day I considered myself a business owner.

That was more than 5-years ago. I’ve never looked back and thought anything else.

When the tables turn and you have to be in front of the camera…

99% of the time, Andy and I are behind the camera, not in front of it. This year, with all of the changes to the business, I thought it would be a good idea to hire someone to take family photos of us. Photos we could use on the website.

Up until this point, the only people who have taken photos of my family have been me or Andy (using the tripod and a remote), or my friends and family, nothing professional, though.

Taking your own family photos is HARD!

I watch others when I take their photos and I think, how nice it would be for someone to act a fool behind the camera to make us smile while someone else is making sure we still look good in the pictures.

For me, doing it myself I can’t see what the photos look like when I hit the trigger button. I know what I should look like, and what Andy and Tristan (hopefully) look like. But I get back to the camera and someone isn’t looking at the camera or someone isn’t cooperating. Tristan smiles, but doesn’t look at the camera. He looks off into the distance for some reason? Andy hates being in front of the camera and bucks me. He squints, doesn’t smile and gets distracted. There is a whole lot of ADH-OOH Shiny going on in this family.

Right before we launched the new brand and website, I hired Reed Gallagher. We meet up with Reed and his mother at the old grain silo in Houston, near Navigation rd. I hadn’t ever been to this location but google maps had a lot of photos of the location and I could see a lot of potential.

It was a bit warm (nothing like it is now) and Tristan probably only has about 30-40 minutes worth of cooperation in him. he did very well and we got about what we expected out of him. I was pleased that Reed’s assistant was able to get Tristan to look at the camera and smile. It always helps to tell the photographer before hand what your issues are in photos. Tristan is notorious for smiling at the camera but looking away.

After the shoot, we treated ourselves to a well deserved cold beer from 8th Wonder while Tristan ran around like a crazy person with the other kids at the brewery.

Any way, I’ll stop rambling and just show you the photos from the session.

After 7 years as Photography by Kelly, it was time for a change.

It’s o-fish-al, we’ve changed our name.

I wanted my very first post on my new website and re-branded business, to be about how I got here. To share with you who I am and why I did what I did.

I started this wedding photography business childless, unmarried and living with my parents (man that sounds depressing). My maiden name is long and slightly difficult to say and spell, though it’s phonetic. I decided, to make things easy, I would go by Photography by Kelly. Easy to remember, say and… well not so easy to spell in turned out. I had to shorten the URL because someone else owned the full spelling. It became cumbersome to spell out my website to people. “P.h.o.t.o.g-by-kelly.com”

A friend once told me my answering machine message was WAY too long. I was telling people to leave a message, text or email me. Then I would spell out my email on my message… Needless to say, very few people stuck around until the end of the message to actually leave me a message.

After I married Andy, I chose to keep the name. I had become accustomed to it and had gotten used to spelling the web address for people.  I had designed the logo and spent many sleepless nights tweaking my wedding photography website. It was my baby.

As the years progressed, I slowly dragged my husband into the business. Andy became my second shooter, my best asset at wedding client meetings and my “pack-mule” as he says. I realized the photography business had become more than just mine. It had become a family business. Something for us to share in and I wanted to represent that somehow.

For a brief moment, I considered Urban Photography. It was short and to the point. I could pass it down to Tristan if he wanted it. It also included one of my favorite styles of photography, urban photography. I’m a sucker for a woman in a wedding gown or an engaged couple dressed to the nines in front of  wall. But, I didn’t want to have to compete with urban photography, the style, on search-engines. I would have been exchanging one issue for the next.

I chose to rename my business Kelly Urban Photography. Simple and to the point. I love that Andy can now have a stake in the business. My name is his name. The cherry on top, I’m able to incorporate my love for urban photography, it was like kismet. I especially love that I don’t have to shorten the URL, and I hope to be doing a whole lot less spelling. Let me tell you, dyslexics HATE to spell.

So here I am standing –or actually sitting– in front of you, hoping you will love all of the changes as much as I do. So take a look around and drop us a line. Let me know what you think about the changes.