So excited to be featured on Grey Likes Baby!
xo-Amanda
http://www.greylikesbaby.com/photography-2/abigail/#comments
Author Archives: heartsandhorseshoesphotography
(A + M) = <3
One of the things I truly love about my career path is reconnecting. Friends that I haven’t seen for awhile ask me to be apart of their lives by taking their pictures. It’s not only flattering, because I’m flattered yes, but getting to reconnect is so amazing… it’s the frosting on the carrot cake (the best part-duh). For instance, I’ve know Ashleigh since we were in Elementary school. It’s been along time since we’ve hung out and yet hanging out with her and her fiance Mark, I couldn’t tell. It felt just like always, friends. I love that about friends. And I loved loved loved this shoot. It was adventure and art and fun all mixed in together. It’s going to be hard to only share a few!
xo-Amanda
Like this:
Corinne & Jim
Corinne was the maid of honor in a wedding that I shot last April, and I was beyond excited when she contacted me about shooting her wedding! These two are both so incredibly sweet and I absolutely loved spending the evening with them!!! Listening to their wedding plans got me giddy! I CANNOT wait to share!!!
xo-Amanda
Amy & Adam
My face hurt so badly after spending a few hours with these two. Literally it hurt to un-smile. They would be snuggling and whispering what I ASSUMED were sweet nothings but they were more like dirty jokes. Adam’s sister had told me how perfect they were together but I really had no idea… they were made for each other. I can’t wait to be there on their big day… I’m sure my smile wrinkles will be permanent after that 
xo-Amanda
These first few were our fun for the day. Cheerleaders and Jocks 
Like this:
evesdropping in a restaurant…accidentally of course!
one thing i don’t love about sitting in a restaurant is when your back nearly touches the person behind you, and try as you might you can’t stop yourself from hearing their conversation. the other day at lunch i got to hear about how your freshman year of college is for finding yourself… this statement made me think of a whooooole bunch of things but those thoughts aren’t really what this post is about.
that statement got me thinking about how much we learn in life when we aren’t trying to. three and a half years ago i thought it was a brilliant idea to start a photography business. i didn’t know what i was doing, and yet i still never considered the possibility of failure. looking back it seems foolish but after talking to my friend Rachel, my marketing consultant, she told me after attending so many entrepreneur seminars she would never dream of starting her own business because she knows too much about small business failure. so my thoughts to this were … maybe sometimes throwing yourself into something without considering failure is beneficial… keyword: SOMETIMES! and perhaps i just got very lucky. to which rachel assured me luck can take you only so far. so then it got me thinking at what point did i realize that it’s impossible to be perfect. no one ever gets good without making a ton of mistakes. A TON. i used to always be afraid of these mistakes so i’m very careful still not to make the silly ones, or the ones i’ve already made and i don’t want to repeat. but what about the ones we never see coming. those are the ones that keep us up at night. like missing a shot. or something you can’t control like a memory card malfunctioning. i think about the stories of mistakes i haven’t made, or haven’t made yet, and wonder what would i do, will i do? i guess what you do is what makes you who you are, who your business is, and what defines you. i think that is when you find yourself. yes you learn a lot about yourself in college, compared to high school. but somewhere around 25 when there aren’t any special birthdays to look forward to, when you’re “allowed” to do everything, even rent a car, that is the part of life when it seems you settle in to yourself. when you have a better idea of what you want to do, who you want to be, and where you want to go. and i’m older than 25 and i really want to get good at this thing i love. so for now i believe getting good is about getting out there and doing what you love to do. making mistakes. putting in time and energy. learning as much as you can so you can know that you still have a lot more to learn. i hope to write this same post in 3.5 more years from a different perspective. i hope i will be better at my craft and have come along way by then. what about you? are you out there???
Like this:
Babies
I’m not sure if I didn’t have kids of my own if I could truly appreciate the size of a newborn. I can remember thinking the clothes looked ridiculously small. I remember feeling like I was going to snap their little arms trying to squeeze them into those long sleeved onesies. Most of all I remember thinking that they would be small for awhile, but two weeks later they were filling out. By a month those newborn clothes were far outgrown, by three months those little tiny babies looked so big. And by a year I couldn’t even remember how small they were back then. How small their tiny hands were. And tiny feets. My kids are only 3 and 5 and it already seems like their newborn stage was another life ago. For these reasons I love to take newborn pictures. I love to take pictures of all the things that will be hard to remember in a year. Like their tiny eyelashes. Tiny facial expressions. A yawn. I want to see those little kids grow up and at the same time as a parent you always want to look back at them from the beginning, just to see how far they’ve come, how far a family comes with a growing baby. Where we all started. Little tiny babies.
Like this:
Valentines Day Preview :D
I laughed aloud when I quickly skimmed through my two engagement sessions this weekend and picked two pics that caught my eye and next to each other they look pretty similar. I guess on certain days you are attracted to similar things I hope everyone has a super fabulous Valentines Day!!! Love your loved ones because it’s nice to love! I talked to my besties, brought my mom a pretty tulip plant, got tulips from my hubby and got to spend the morning at a Valentine’s Day Tea Party at school with my two favorite heart-adorned children… plus all their super cute classmates, and saint-like teachers Such a great day so far!!! What have you done today?! Do you have any traditions for Valentines Day?
xo-Amanda www.heartsandhorseshoes.com facebook
W Family
Oh happpppy Sunday! It sort of feels like Saturday with this three day weekend ahead of us. Well not me, but for the kiddos, so only partially a three day weekend Enjoy this adorable family on this fabulous cloudy Sunday!
When I found out Spanish Oaks Ranch was the chosen place for this family shoot I was thrilled! I love the doors, the white fences and the beautiful oaks everywhere! It’s fabulous! This family has three of the most beautiful little girls! And their dresses were the cutest things with their belts & boots! I could’ve spent the day with this adorable family!!! Love you guys!
xo-Amanda www.heartsandhorseshoes.com facebook
It was hard to get EVERYONE to be serious 
some people don’t know it’s silly
recently i received an email from a fellow photog stating their frustration with peoples perceptions of nice cameras making the picture. it’s hard when anyone can spend a pretty penny on a camera, stick it on automatic and shoot away thinking they are a photographer. and in a sense i guess they are. but a real photographer knows how to use their camera, and doesn’t shoot in automatic or p modes, they know what setting to use to achieve the look they are going for. i go to weddings and see people with bigger, maybe nicer cameras than mine, and i used to feel bad about it, but now i just think, well i know how to use my camera as a workhorse to get the pretty pictures i want. what more could a girl ask for?!
of course this doesn’t mean i wouldn’t gladly except, love, cherish and revere the new D4, but i won’t let it take credit for my shots the camera doesn’t really matter, it’s what’s behind the camera that counts.
have you ever been a victim of camera stereotyping?
I found this little clip that kinda makes the statement 
xo.amanda www.heartsandhorseshoes.com facebook
