Salt River Portraits

My sister and I photographed Nancy and Kevin and their daughter at the Salt River before they welcome their brand new baby. Nancy and her family live in our neighborhood, just a 5-10 minute walk away. I’m so glad we are neighbors!

The Salt River has always been one of my favorite places to go for all sorts of recreation - I love going stand up paddle boarding, getting to see the wild Salt River horses, going out there for picnics and just to sit by the water, I love tubing down the Salt River and I’ve been biking out there. My absolute favorite thing to do is to go out there and watch meteor showers. Darker skies = seeing more falling stars!

But something I’d never done, and been wanting to do for quite a while, was do a photo shoot at the Salt River. I’d love to do another one. Something we learned is that it’s pretty busy at the river, week days might be less crowded than a Sunday afternoon. I photoshopped a lot of people out of their images. I’d rather make it so that clients have a more peaceful experience and find a quieter time to go.

We met up at Phon D Sutton and then just before the sun set, we headed to Granite Reef. Phon D Sutton was beautiful, but I’d really like to go back to Granite Reef. I feel like it has a lot of potential.

Are you looking for a Salt River photographer? Let’s chat! Here’s where to find more info and message me!

Big sister to be!

To a little brother!

Justine's Family

Here are some of the family portraits I took for Justine and her family at Veterans Oasis Park in Chandler, Arizona. Veterans Oasis Park is a gorgeous location and a pretty perfect place for family photos - there’s a little of everything: meadow areas, cottonwood trees, lakes, picnic pavilions, a flowing spring with gorgeous desert trees, citrus and fruit trees, lots of paths to meander down, little cottontail rabbits all over the place. I highly recommend visiting this absolute gem of a park!

Justine is part of the group Desert Bloom Multiples - which describes itself as “an inclusive support group for parents and caregivers of multiples (twins, triplets, and higher order multiples). We accept and embrace members of every age, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and nationality.” The group is in the East Valley and welcomes anyone in the Valley/Phoenix metro area. They seem like an extremely fun group; they get together and do lots of activities! If I had twins, I would definitely join them so I could be a part of all their social activities!

I created mini sessions portraits for ten Desert Bloom Multiples families in one weekend in March. Justine and her family were my last family to photograph, so I had a little extra time with them at sunset and we were able to get a variety of photos in different locations.

I loved how these family portraits turned out!

Are you looking for a family photographer? Click here: Brenda Eden Photography for more info!

Or send me a message here:

Now I am going to add a carousel gallery of the photos, some from above, and some extra, just so that if you are reading this, you can see more of my work!

Carly at the Valley of the Sunflowers

This is Carly and her daughter at the Valley of the Sunflowers in downtown Phoenix. I organized a picnic at the VOS and told folks that they could stop by and get sunflower photos before the picnic, if they wanted.

This was back in the spring of 2012 and I was taking a break from wedding and portrait photography, but I was still doing personal photography projects and charity event photography.

I had recently downloaded the program Exposure Software. Exposure describes itself as “the image editor designed for the art of photography.” It gives you the ability to make your digital images look like film. At the time, I was really enchanted with the creamy pink way some film looks. I played around with the Portra filter and some other filters to give my images a creamy pink look. I was very influenced by the work of Elizabeth Messina Photography, who uses film and medium format cameras.

So you will see that in the way I edited these images (especially that last image.)

I gave these images to Carly and she gave me a gift certificate to her restaurant, Carly’s Bistro in Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix. I took a friend there and ordered tasty food and absinthe for my drink and found out that absinthe makes me feel sick, but it was fun to see what the folks in Paris liked to drink in cafes in the 1860s. I had been to Carly’s a few times before and I knew that I loved the place, so to be able to take a friend and get whatever I wanted to eat and drink was super fun.

I’m doing portrait sessions amongst sunflowers at the Rocker 7 Farm Patch in Buckeye this month. I will be editing them with my bright and vibrant style - not with this film style. If you would like photos of yourself amongst sunflowers, click on this link for more information.

Sparkler photos for the 4th of July

My dear friend Catherine came over to my house in Tempe and we took these photos of her a few days before the 4th of July. I love sparklers and every year I make a point to get photos of friends with sparklers. The whole week before the 4th of July, I had different friends come over and I took pictures each night right before it got dark. It was so much fun and I plan to do it again in 2022, so if we are friends and you would like photos with sparklers, let me know! You’ll not just get sparklers photos when you come to my house, you’ll get ice cream too!

I hung up seamless background paper that I bought from Savage Universal online and then hung up banner fringe that I got from Party City. I wish I had thought to iron out the wrinkles somehow. I will do that next time, though I am not sure how! I used the banner fringe in front of my lens to get the effect that you will see when you scroll through the photos. I love this effect soooo much and see photographers doing it a lot with trees and flowers. I even see photo journalists doing it to make images more interesting. I don’t know if there is a name for it! I need to find out. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is the bokeh effect, but it’s not only that…so is there a particular name for it?

There is such a learning curve to taking photos with sparklers, and I feel like I learn a little more every time I take photos with sparklers. Here are some of my tips:

1. Make sure you have a bucket of water nearby for people to put sparklers in when they no longer want to hold them. If you have a garden hose, keep that nearby and ready to use if any sparks go astray. I’ve never needed to use my garden hose, but it was good to have it close by, just in case.

2. Use a lens with the widest aperture that you can. F2.8 or less is great to use, if you have that kind of lens. I love my Canon L 1.2 mm and I used that for this photo shoot. You could rent a lens, if you need one with a wider aperture.

3. A lot of times when you do a photo shoot, you want the hour or two before sunset for the perfect golden light. For sparkler photos, you will get a few minutes, maybe 10-15 minutes where the light will be perfect for sparklers. Goldilocks light - when it’s not too light and not too dark. Start paying attention in the week before you shoot to find out when those minutes will be. For me, in July, in Arizona, that time arrived at about 7:20/7:30 PM and was gone about 10-20 minutes later.

4. If you need more than ~20 minutes of perfect light, consider using continuous lighting. I didn’t for this shoot, but in the future I might rent lighting from LensProToGo. They don’t just rent lenses, they rent pretty much anything a photographer could need, at prices that are easier than other places I have rented from.

5. As with a lot of portrait photography, getting a little higher than your subjects can be helpful, but I feel it’s especially helpful with sparkler photos. I had a step ladder that I stood on to make taking photos a little easier.

6. Lighting sparklers is kind of tedious, so by the third night of shooting photos, I put some candles in mason jars and used them to light the sparklers instead of lighters or matches. That made it a little bit easier.