Almost As Good

as JCPenny? You be the judge.
For Christmas my big gift was a photography studio in a bag. Mark gave me lights, tripods, backdrops and a couple of things I haven't figured out and it all fits in one huge duffel bag.

We had become frustrated with the quality of our JCPenny portraits, especially after the Boss decided that her max time limit between arriving at the studio and major melt down was about 10 minutes. Having my own studio will let me take portraits on the Boss' schedule, which so far, she would rather pretend to take the picture than to be in the picture, but we're working on it. Poor Aria has been my test subject. She really has no choice. I plop her down and snap/adjust and snap/adjust and snap/adjust times infinity and she just keeps smiling for the camera. And since I started with really no working knowledge of shutter speed and apprature, it's taken a lot of trial and error and a lot of web searching but I think we might be getting somewhere.
My original intent was to be able to put up the equipment take some fabulous photos and take it all down within minutes. Reality never quite works out the way I intended it too. I put up all the equipment the day after Christmas and it's been up ever since. So, while I experiment my living room is a portrait studio indefinitely. And I think it will all be worth it in the end.