This past weekend, I went to Bennington Lake with my friend, Liza, and her boyfriend, Kurt. We wanted to take some cute photos of the two of them for their Instagram pages.
We went close to golden hour, and ended up with a lot of great shots. I want to share with you what I believe are some of the best from that shoot.
Be sure to comment below and let me know what your favorite photo is, and follow me on Instagram, @kirstenimages, for more content!
As a member of the online community, it is a wonderful thing to raise awareness of other creators. I have compiled a list of a few photographers and artists that I have either met or know personally that would be wonderful additions to who you follow on Instagram or other social media channels.
This creator, Nadia Diaz, is someone I’ve admired for years. I do know her personally, and I have had the privilege of seeing her grow as an artist. She does do commission work, and is currently studying to gain a degree in visual development.
As you can see, she is versed in a wide variety of styles. My favorite of Nadia’s recent work is the painted violin you can see in the image above, which she donated for an auction.
Nadia is a wonderful artist who is talented in all forms of visual art, from painting to stop motion to digital art. She has a YouTube account where she has shared some of her animated work.
If you want to see more work from Nadia at ArtHead Creations™ check out her Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook page to see more awesome content.
MJ Media is a rather new account on Instagram, however she has been taking photos for years. Mariah is someone that I have also known for years and have had the pleasure of working with on several occasions.
Some of you may recognize this account from my earlier post about Instagram organizational patterns. Check out that post for more information on how MJ Media accomplished this column pattern on her account.
My favorite out of her current posts is the image of Seattle on the bottom left.
This image is stunning, and I think the faded colors really add to the long exposure she captured here.
If you want to see more content from Mariah of MJ Media, check out her blog, Mariah’s College Life.
Sienna Pierre is another person I have worked with closely over the past couple of years. In fact, if you checked out my photography Instagram account, @kirstenimages, you would see many images of her featured on my page.
Over the last year or so, Sienna has started a YouTube channel. She posts music covers, collaborations, vlogs, and all-around fun content to watch.
While I love Sienna’s Instagram content, her main art form is reflected in her videos and editing. So, instead of sharing with you my favorite image from her account, I am going to feature one of my favorite videos she has uploaded to her youtube account.
This video is one my favorites that Sienna has posted other than her covers. I really like the detailed shots and the aesthetics of the video, and it was one of her first highly edited videos, and I think she did a great job with it.
Be sure to check out Sienna’s Instagram and subscribe to her on YouTube for more wonderful content.
***All accounts listed are not paid promotion. I simply wanted to share them because I believe they deserve more exposure. All accounts and images above were used with the permission of the owner.***
Last spring, while I was a freshman at Andrews University, I was in an Advanced Photography class. We had a final project we needed to do for class, and it had to be between 20-30 images.
I spent my spring break visiting a close friend in Boston, Massachusetts. He was attending school there, and another friend of ours was going to school close by. It was wonderful exploring this place they had both come to hold so dear.
While I was there, I became interested in the architecture and the architectural elements throughout the city and surrounding areas. I would stop every three minutes just to shoot more photos of the gorgeous buildings and little things I would notice along the way.
As I explored, I noticed that this city would be the perfect subject for my final project. I started to notice some repeating forms and the stunning contrast of the old stone and the new glass skyscrapers.
Fast forward a few months, and I had completed my final project. I decided to edit the images in both color and black in white just to see what looked best, and ultimately decided to finalize the black and white images. They were stronger compositionally in black and white since the colors were faded originally due to it being late winter at the time.
I edited them originally in Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, and then imported them into Silver Efex Pro 2, which allowed me to add some more details to the images. After that, I added them into Adobe Photoshop, where I did some touch ups, like removing some distracting poles or branches, and then added a border.
The final step was creating an artist’s statement. For those of you that may not be familiar, an artist’s statement is a piece that accompanies the title of the piece/series and explains it. Sometimes it provides some background information, other times it is simply a poetic statement of types, or leaves the reader to add their own interpretation.
Since I captured these images and the project was completed, a lot has changed in my heart and in my life. It has been over a year, after all. I will only slightly adjust the statement in order for it to be more clear, but I hope you will enjoy the artist’s statement as well as the images nonetheless.
Those words echo through my mind to this day.
When I was asked why I wanted to become a photographer, I would say I wanted to show people how I view the world and all of the little things I would notice in day-to-day life.
With the jobs I have been presented with in my field, I have been so focused on capturing events that I no longer saw photography as an art form and I lost sight of my original purpose in what I wanted to do as a photographer.
While shooting in Boston over spring break, I was amazed by the artistic side of me coming back to life. I would walk down the street and have to stop every few seconds just to capture something new that caught my eye.
As I stood there, I had someone I cared very deeply for standing patiently beside me. As I started to shoot, I heard him say, “I wish I could see the world through your eyes.”
Since then, that has been my goal every day.
If you would like to view more of my work, please follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @kirstenimages.
I frequently tell people that Instagram is my favorite social media platform. As a photographer, I find it is an easy way to increase exposure and allow people to see a nice representation of my work.
I have had an Instagram account since 2013, and since then, I have carefully curated my content and tried to create a consistent look.
I pride myself on the organization of my Instagram posts. While I may not have many Instagram followers, I do enjoy posting on the platform and sharing photos with my friends, family, and clients.
Friends of mine have trusted me with their account passwords and allowed me to archive posts in order to format their accounts in a more aesthetically-pleasing way. Unfortunately, I am unable to sign in to everybody’s Instagram accounts and format them.
I thought I would share with you one of my biggest tips on how to make your Instagram more consistent, clean, and organized. Hopefully these tips will help you stand out from the sea of influencers and really have a clean-cut look to your account.
One way to make your account look more organized is by creating a more organized look for your profile. On both my personal and business accounts, I have decided to post in rows. I personally like the way that this looks, and I think it divides up each row well.
While I like the look of rows, some people, like my friend and fellow photographer Mariah Johnson, @mj_media on Instagram, prefers to use columns.
Other organizational patterns include cubes, boxes, diagonal lines, or a checkerboard pattern. Since I have the most experience with posting in rows of three, I am going to focus on how you can accomplish that look on your Instagram account.
While rows are so satisfying to look at, they may be hard to accomplish if you aren’t willing to archive former posts or delete and start over with a blank account, but there are a few ways to get around it.
Before you do this, you would have to do is make sure your posts are divisible by three. Essentially, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of your account, you should not have one or two posts at the bottom, but you should have a full row of three. If you have one or two posts, you either have to remove one or two posts, (simply archive, don’t delete), or you can post either one or two photos to complete that row.
Once you have accomplished this, you can do one of two things. The first thing you could do is post a divider row. This can be very irritating to your followers, so be warned, just in case you lose a few.
A divider row will consist of three photos. Most people either do blank posts of just one color, or some posts with words on them. To make them more interesting to your followers, I would post three photos that relate to each other and aren’t too far out of what you would usually post. For example, three photos of beaches you have visited, three similar landscapes, or something of that nature. On my personal instagram account, I have a row that could serve as a divider row of three different telescope type things on top of major land marks.
After your divider row, you can post your first row. I recommend not posting all three photos from that row on the same day. Not only it irritating to your followers, but it also decreases the amount of likes you may receive on one photo. Of course, if you have thousands of followers, people probably won’t mind you posting several times a day, but for smaller accounts like my own, I advise spreading your three photos over the course of a few days.
The other way to go about this is to simply start posting in rows, and skip the divider row. After two or three complete rows, it will become clear on your profile that you are using a new organizational pattern, so the divider row is more of a clear division that some people prefer, but isn’t a necessity.
In a later post, I will share some more tips for posting on Instagram, including apps I use for editing and organization, post planning, and other tips.
Do you use Instagram? Feel free to follow me, @kirstenimages, and check out the content I post.
Andrews University has a special program where you can go four weeks before the start of the year, technically three weeks before orientation week, and take one class and get that whole semester-long class out of the way in three weeks. Due to my achievements in high school, I received a scholarship for this program, and was able to go for a discounted rate.
While this was wonderful, I was also devastated to be leaving so soon. My friends were all going to be attending Walla Walla University in the fall, and they were going to be on quarter system, so they didn’t start until September. I had to leave halfway through July to drive out to Michigan and start my jumpstart classes and actual college before all my friends were even thinking about their dorm room décor.
Saying goodbye was the hardest part. I had been told for the past year by my parents that these people I had been friends with for the past four years would no longer be my friends by the end of my freshman year of college, and that I would be making new friends, and saying goodbye to them, knowing I may never see them again, was absolutely heartbreaking.
I’ll skip over the sad details of all the goodbyes I said, and skip to the packing. As some of you may know, I drive a Volkswagen Beatle, which isn’t necessarily a huge vehicle. I had to fit all my stuff for school, as well as my mother and her bag, and myself, all in this tiny car and drive it across the majority of the United States. Surprisingly, this wasn’t as difficult as it sounds. To be fair, we did wait to buy quite a lot of stuff until I was in Michigan, but the car wasn’t super full, even with basically all my stuff in it.
The morning I left was hard on me. We woke up early to get on the road, and as the sun was coming up, I was hugging my dad and saying goodbye to my dog, who I was unsure would still be there when I came back, due to his old age.
Once my mom and I were on the road, my tears had dried a little bit and I started to try and focus on the road ahead. We had a fun road trip, and stopped to visit a few loved ones on the way over to Michigan.
We arrived in Michigan on a Friday evening, and my mom was flying out on Sunday afternoon, so we had some time to get me settled before everything ready for me to start my summer session class on Monday.
Those few days flew by, and I said a tearful goodbye to my mom before going up to the room and having my new roommate and her family come help move all of our furniture around so we could unpack and get settled.
I really lucked out on the roommate front, and I was able to bond with her fairly quickly. Since she was a graphic design major, and I was a photography major, we had a lot in common, and we spent a lot of time together. After summer session ended, and we started our classes in the fall semester, we fortunately had a lot of the same classes together, so we became pretty close fairly quickly.
As the year progressed, I had a hard time making more friends. I had two solid friends by the end of the year, one of them being my roommate, but she wasn’t going to be returning to Andrews the next fall. I was super sad about this, but I knew I would get to see her since she was going to come visit me over the summer.
While I wasn’t completely satisfied with my college experience at the end of my freshman year, I ultimately decided I was going to stay, even though I had explore the idea of transferring to another school for my sophomore year. I ended up leaving my car and all my stuff in a storage unit in Michigan so it would be ready for me to return to in the fall.
Finally, after what felt like years of being away from home, I was returning home for the summer.
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For the time being, I have decided that my posts on Monday’s are going to about sharing elements of myself and my life with you.
This week, I decided to have some people that are close to me describe me in three words. Not only is this a good way for you guys to learn a little bit about me, but also I get to introduce you to some of my favorite people, and learning about them will also let you in to another aspect of my life.
One of the first people I contacted was my mother. My mom and I are pretty close, so I figured she would have a lot of insight into who I am, and would be able to describe me in three words pretty easily.
Next to respond was my childhood best friend Maddie. Maddie is a year younger than me, and we have been friends since I was in fourth grade and she was in third grade. We used to spend every afternoon together, playing and making fun videos of us doing skits we would make up.
Sienna was one of my first friends when I moved from Alaska to the Seattle area. I’ve known her for over six years now, and even when I was attending a different school several states away, she and I were still in frequent communication and would hang out over school breaks. When I asked her this question, she responded almost immediately.
One of my first friends in college in Michigan, Kyra, was also among the first to respond. Kyra and I have had a few classes together, and we had a lot of fun. She was one of two friends I had at Andrews, and we have kept in pretty consistent contact since I transferred.
Paxton Shock was among the people I texted as well. Pax and I have been friends for years, and they are someone I have always felt I could talk to about anything and everything. We became close my sophomore year of high school, and our worlds have drifted apart, but we still talk every day in some capacity. When I asked them to describe me in three words, they immediately asked me if I meant my personality or aesthetics. I told them to go ahead and do both.
I asked my friend Mariah this question too. Mariah and I have known each other for about six years, however she and I didn’t become super close until our sophomore year of high school. We are now in the same department with similar majors, so we have quite a few classes together and see each other frequently.
McKenna is a person who has been a great friend to me for years. She has been there for me in my hardest times, and I know we will be friends for years to come. We became super close near the end of my junior year of high school, and since then, though distance and busy schedules have made it difficult, we have remained fairly close.
Finally, I asked Christopher to describe me. Christopher and I have been friends since our freshman year of high school. At the end of 2018, we started that we wanted to begin dating, and as of now we have been together for over four months.
It was interesting hearing what the people that I love think about me. They definitely described me with words I wouldn’t have even thought of. If I had to describe myself in three words, I guess I would have to say:
I’ve been interested in photography for years. I bought my first DSLR before my sophomore year of high school, and I still have it today.
I purchased a Nikon D5300. It has a lot of wonderful features, but one thing I really like about it is the WiFi capability.
After downloading Nikon’s WMU app, I simply go into the settings on my camera and enable the WiFi, then use my phone to connect. After I am connected, I am able to use the app to download photos from my camera straight to my phone in a matter of seconds.
This feature is so helpful, especially in the fast paced world we live in today. When you do a photoshoot, people want to have access to the photos so they can instantly post them on social media. Thanks to this feature, I can get the photos to them in a matter of minutes, which is something my clients tend to appreciate.
I’ve had this camera for almost five years and it still functions just as well as the day I purchased it. The ability to change the lenses quickly makes it so much easier to get that perfect shot in any type of setting.
I will be posting about my photography frequently on this blog. I hope you enjoy the posts and be sure to follow my photography account on Instagram: @kirstenimages.
I started seriously looking at colleges during spring break of my junior year. I was spending the break with my aunt in Los Angeles, and she suggested I start looking. After telling her I was interested in studying photography, she came up with a list of schools in the area that we take a look at, including University of Southern California, Otis College, and University of California, Los Angeles.
Each school made me realize more of what I wanted out of my college experience. Otis College was specifically an art school, and I realized that if I decided photography wasn’t for me, then I would have to transfer schools to pursue something else, since I am not necessarily interested in pursuing any other forms of art for a career.
After looking at USC, I really liked the campus. It was stunning, and everyone I met seemed very kind. Not to mention, it was sunny and gorgeous. Unfortunately, I would later discover they did not offer a specific photography degree, rather a general art degree with a photography specialization, which wasn’t what I wanted, and ultimately helped me decide against applying there.
Then came UCLA, which also had a stunning campus. They were on spring break, so there wasn’t much going on and it was hard to get a real feel of what the campus was like. My aunt has told me for years that in order to really know if you want to attend a college or not, you need to go while school is in session. I knew I would have other opportunities to visit UCLA, so I decided to apply there for a photography degree.
Fast forward to my senior year. It is fall, and it is time to start the application process. I dragged my feet so much. I didn’t want to think about my senior year coming to an end. I was having so much fun. My mom helped me get focused by helping me create a spreadsheet of schools I was considering attending, and that helped me narrow it down.
I ended up applying to UCLA, Andrews University, Pratt Institute, and Pacific Union College. All of these places offered photography degrees, and those were my top options. In the meantime, my high school had a college fair, in which a few colleges came, and if you applied to them right then and there, it was free. Due to this, I also ended up applying to Walla Walla University, Southern Adventist University, and a few others.
Due to the fact that I was applying for a bachelor’s in fine art degree at Pratt and UCLA, I had to submit a portfolio of my work. This process took weeks. I curated what I believed to be my best photographs and showed them to my family. My dad was not impressed with my choices, and helped me sort through all my images again and pick more photos that he believed were more artistic than the ones I had originally chosen. Over these few weeks of back and forth, I ended up going out and doing some more shooting, and the majority of photos that I ended up submitting were new images I took during those few weeks.
Fast forward a few months, and the acceptance and rejection letters started coming in. It has been a few years since I received these letters, so it is difficult to recall all of the ones I was accepted to, but I do know I was accepted to Southern, WWU, Pratt, Andrews, and PUC. That was when I had some tough decisions to make. I started to visit the schools I hadn’t seen, starting with Andrews University. My father and I went and toured the campus, and the people were so kind and I was so excited about all they had to offer.
After that, we flew to New York and toured Pratt Institute. When we toured, the campus was nice, but very urban due to it being located in the city. The guide we had was kind, but she didn’t seem to know anything about the photography program at all, which I found rather concerning, especially since she was a film major, and the two usually are closely related.
By the end of that trip, I had a strong feeling I would be attending Andrews University, but I was scared to say I was going for sure, especially since I hadn’t looked at all my options, specifically PUC.
A few months later, I traveled to northern California to tour Pacific Union College with my mother. This option intrigued me since they were a lot closer to home. I live in the greater Seattle area, so northern California is a lot closer to me than Michigan, which is wear Andrews University is located.
From the second I got on campus, it was like God was telling me that this wasn’t the place for me. It was pouring rain that day, and while we were provided with umbrellas, we still did a walking tour in the torrential rainfall. My mother and I struggled finding the cafeteria, but to be fair, we are both a little directionally challenged. Not only this, but they told us that food can’t be delivered there, and we had no cell service. On top of it all, the fire alarms went off that evening, which sent us out in the pouring rain again. Ultimately, while the people in the office were very kind, and the school was nice overall, I just didn’t feel like it was the best fit for me.
Upon returning home, I was pretty set on my decision to go to Andrews University, but I was terrified to actually say it, because that made it so real. Once I said it, there was no going back. I remember my mom talking me and telling me to just say it, because she knew that was what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t. So I left the room, put on my Andrews University sweatshirt and hat, walked back in, and said, “I’m going to Andrews.”
That is the moment that everything changed for me.
Capturing College 