I always enjoy the speakers. Here are two of my favorites, Lindsay Adler, and Peter Hurley.

In February, the learning continued. I attended, Evolve, the convention for Professional Photographers of Massachusetts. It was held in Plymouth.  Another great photography educator, Joe Edelman, presented here. I was very inspired to try some new things after hearing his talk.

My friend and fellow photographer, Diane Brophy, an I, got together and did some experimenting with using color gels inspired by  the presentation by Joe and another presentation we attended later on in the year by Lindsay Adler, also sponsored by PPMA. This was one of the resulting images of beautiful Emily Pemberton, a client I met my first year in business.

Photographer, Ben Shirk was also at Evolve. I never even thought about trying compositing, which he is a master at, until I heard his talk. I was only going to stay for a little bit of his presentation, but I was mesmerized. I experimented with the technique. Here are a few of my attempts.

I still need a lot of practice, but I enjoy trying.

The variety of work I had this year was wonderful.  I did some theater photography,

quite a few weddings and

lots of headshots.

This one I particularly liked because the client needed it to try out for a role as an extra on a movie. He had to look like a tough guy. I loved the challenge. He got a call back based on the image.

Real estate photography is another type of photography I love. Above are examples of two different homes I did this year.

Senior portraits are always so much fun. It was great spending time with many seniors this year.

Families and children were a big part of my sessions this year.

I photographed Veronika and Greg's wedding, their first child's infant images and now the addition of their new daughter. I love their family.

This is another image from a different family that I have been photographing for several years now. I love this image. It is so him. He hates having his picture taken , so I just run around with him and get what I get. No posing.

Here is his sister. She is the complete opposite. She loved the camera and the camera loved her.

Event photography is my chance to go into Boston and meet lots people. I have regularly photographed the Harvard School of Dentistry events. This year I photographed an event for both the Harvard Dental School and The Medical School. 

At another event, I ended up meeting speaker and author David Horsager.

Which lead to me taking his new headshot.

........and then a conversation I had with him lead to him to inviting my husband and I out to his conference in Minnesota. I photographed the event and my husband attended. We both loved it. That was in November.

The year ended with another exciting opportunity. I spent a morning in December photographing Patriots wide receiver, Chris Hogan and his family. I also wrote another blog about this.

I remember sitting at my computer in January being discouraged about my lack of bookings. I never thought that the year would go as well as it did. God had other plans for me.  Sitting around being discouraged was not one of them. I thank him for all the opportunities he brings me. I can't wait to see what else this year will bring.

My personal life was filled with blessings, too. My mom and dad moved back to Maine from Florida. We now see each other more often. 

Our oldest daughter, Emily, got engaged to her wonderful boyfriend, Corey.

Our youngest daughter, Sarah, is still crushing it as youth pastor in Hawaii. We are very proud of how she has embraced the culture there. 

My awesome husband was Promoted to Chief of Police in Sharon. I am so proud of his accomplishments.

In December, my son-in-law graduated from The Randolph Police Academy and is a member of the Sharon Police Force.

If any of you know my family, you know we truly "Run on Dunkin." I'm sure we aren't the only ones, but we are pretty obsessed. We frequent or favorite location in  Walpole, MA  so much that we have become friends with several of the employees. We even exchange Christmas gifts .

This is Andrea, she is so nice, we just love her.

 My Brother and sister in-law's dog is named Dunkin. He gets to go to Dunkin every day to get his Munchkin.

We have a favorite "Dunks" in Manteo, NC. , where we like to Vacation.

I created this image for an assignment at New England School of Photography. The assignment was to select an iconic image and put your own twist on it. I did  Breakfast at Tiffany's Iconic Audrey Hepburn image, giving it a Dunkin twist. 

Here is another image I created for my NESOP class. I love when my family gets in on my silly ideas.
There are so many more Dunkin images I could share that would illustrate my obsession with Dunkin Donuts, or Dunkin as it is now called, but let's get to the real reason for the Blog. I want to share the unbelievable opportunity that I had  this last summer.

It all started when I met Tony Weisman, the CMO for Dunkin when I was photographing a conference he was speaking at in Boston. We got talking about my obsession with Dunkin and my love for the company. We chatted for a bit, great guy, by the way. He told me about an idea he had to recreate an old photo of the original Dunkin Donuts in Quincy, but he needed a photographer. He asked if would I be interested in working on the project?  WHAT?????   Would I be interested? I had to remain professional. Was I really hearing this? It has been a dream of mine to work for Dunkin Donuts since I started my photography Business. 

He didn't have to show me the picture, I knew it well.

The project was underway. I contacted my neighbor, Jimmy Keating, who owns several old cars and has lots of friends who also have cool old cars. I knew he would be able to help me identify the cars in the original picture and who might own similar ones that we could use for the shoot. I was right, he was a huge help. He put me in touch with Billy, who brought this car to my house to let me look at it. He also gave me leads to where I might find the other cars. For the next few months I visited car shows and scanned the internet for possible cars.  The cars we settled on  were not exact matches, but were in the same era.

After several postponements due to bad weather, the day of the shoot finally arrived. It was over 90 degrees, but the sky was clear. I thought I was early, but when I arrived at the first location we were shooting, but the guys with the cars were already there. I think they were as excited as I was.

I was warmly greeted by bothers, Victor and Octavio Carvalho, the franchise owners of the two stores we were photographing.  They own both the  the Next Generation Dunkin in Quincy, and the original Dunkin Donuts, also in Quincy. Their father owned the original shop before them. They also own many other Dunkin Donuts franchises in the area.

These guys were awesome!

So this is one of the original images.

Here is the edited version.

We moved about a mile away to the original Dunkin location. This store was more challenging. As you can see, the pavement was uneven, the mid-day  light was harsh,  there wasn't much room to get the right perspective, unless I was to stand in the middle of the busy Southern Artery. There were wires, cars, and other building to contend with. The old cars in front of the old Dunkin Donuts, caused people to gather. Cars on the road started slowing down and people were taking pictures. At one point, I had to politely ask people to step back and wait until I had captured my images. It was all very exciting to see the commotion we caused.

Here are some more images from the shoot.

I will leave you with the final image of the original location. Thanks you everyone from Dunkin Brands. You were all a pleasure to work with! Thanks to all of you who stopped by to read my blog.

In my job I get to meet and spend time with so many wonderful people. This past Saturday morning I had the pleasure of photographing Patriots wide receiver, Chris Hogan , his wife Ashley and their twins. They are just a beautiful family.

This is Chase, a handsome little guy.

And this is Parker a beautiful, independent little girl.

The weather was perfect to meander around at Wards Barry Farm in Sharon.

The twins really LOVED the animals! It was fun to see the joy they experienced by being so close to them.

Thanks Ashley and Chris for letting me record your  family outing at the farm. I hope some special memories were made for this holiday season. Enjoy a few more images from the day.