Eliza's Bat Mitzvah Party

You can view the slideshow that we created from her Bat Mitzvah here: http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?bm=88278

Eliza's party was at Hula Hanks in New Haven -- it was a happening party!



Eliza's parents picked this photograph for a large wall portrait for their home. We created the final image from this photograph on the left, and edited it for them to remove the people out of the background.




You may recognize the young lady in the middle photograph as Leah, Eliza's longtime childhood friend. We had photographed Leah's Bat Mitzvah a few weeks before Eliza's.



Anyone that has seen our Blog and/or our photographs knows that we just love black and white and color -- here are a few B&W&C from Eliza's party, I love the impact that she has here -- literally making her the Diva of the day...



Noah is Eliza's younger brother, a very fun loving and spirited young man, he made his way right up to the DJ and had fun! He was also very comfortable out on the dance floor.

We had fun and played around with lots of camera settings when the dancing was going on. It is more fun capturing high energy events with some non-traditional photography skills, like panning and slow shutter speeds...

You can view the rest of Eliza's photos in four galleries on our website: http://tlc.smugmug.com/Portraits/Bar-and-Bat-Mitzvahs

Eliza's Bat Mitzvah

Here are some photographs from Eliza's Bat Mitzvah at the Temple Beth Sholom in Hamden. What a wondeful young lady and what a fantastic family! We do enjoyed photographing them!

You can view the rest of the photos from her Bat Mizvah and party afterwards in four galleries on our website...http://tlc.smugmug.com/Portraits/Bar-and-Bat-Mitzvahs

This next photo is the Rabbi's favorite, he loves the symbolism of the stained window of the Jordan River...

I found this great song, just perfect for this major turning point in Eliza's life, it is called "My Wish" by Rascal Flats. Here are the lyrics:

hope the days come easy and the moments pass slow,

And each road leads you where you wanna go,

And if you're faced with a choice,

and you have to choose,

I hope you choose the one that means the most to you.

And if one door opens to another door closed,

I hope you keep on walkin' till you find the window,

If it's cold outside, show the world the warmth of your smile.

But more than anything, more than anything...

My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,

Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,

You never need to carry more than you can hold,

And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,

I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,

Yeah, this, is my wish.

I hope you never look back, but you never forget,

All the ones who love you, in the place you left,

I hope you always forgive, and you never regret,

And you help somebody every chance you get,

Oh, you find God's grace, in every mistake,

And always give more than you take.

But More than anything, yeah, more than anything...

My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,

Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,

You never need to carry more than you can hold,

And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,

I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,

Yeah, this, is my wish. Yeah.

My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,

Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,

You never need to carry more than you can hold,

And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,

I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,

Yeah, this, is my wish.

Eliza iPod session

Meet Eliza, a wonderful and energetic young lady. We photographed her for this iPod session and ended up taking a large variety of images. She was a pleasure to work with! we will be photographing her Bat Mitzvah in June.

I created the first iPod Eliza and then I found an image that I thought would work even better, then I could not choose so I found a third image and this is the collage that we created for Eliza's signature photograph for her party after her Bat Mitzvah (Hulahanks)

We loved her hair so we also tried one with her lying down and her hair splayed out. I do like the way that it turned out, except that she looks like she is college age not 13!

Here is the same image without the iPod silhouette effect applied...

OK, these next few were really fun. We had poor Eliza doing all kinds of jumps, splits, etc. etc. So for these next few she got to sit indian style on our posing stool, which I later removed in post-processing...so here she is on cloud nine...

Adding in the iPod and now she is on cloud nine listening to her favorite tunes...

Can you tell the different between these next two???

Hint click on them to make them larger.

OK no hocus pocus for this one, just a wonderful portrait of this beautiful young lady.

Like I said we had a great session, creating many more images than anticipated. Here is a collage of a few..

I had to include the last one, in black and white, because I loved the cheerleading move whjere she jumped up and was almost completely horizontal in the air. Can you tell that she is a flyer in cheerleading?

We are looking forward to photographing Eliza's Bat Mitzvah and her party at Hulahanks afterwards. To see more of here photographs from this session take a look at her gallery on our website: http://upload.smugmug.com/photos/add.mg?AlbumID=8701375