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I tried to pick only one image this week … the top one is my artsy image, the second one is a behind the scenes look at other things/hobbies/activities I spend time on besides photography. First time in … *counting in my head* nearly 19 years I’ve attempted to use that sewing machine. Last time I used it it rebelled and I conceded defeat at attempting to sew with anything other than just a needle and thread by hand!

In addition to the mini site launch on Saturday, the ‘howdy’ section that’s on the homepage of this blog site was updated over the last few days to reflect some of the changes in progress at CMP. Since I own both christinamccall.com and christinamccallphotography.com, my portrait portfolios are migrating to the latter domain name, so I will be using the former (aka this domain) primarily for my personal and travel photographic work in the future. I will continue to feature portrait sessions periodically here on the blog and all the information pages linked on the menu above will still be accessible here as well as business announcements. Too much time and energy putting all of it together (as well as the fact I don’t want to update marketing materials until my stockpile is depleted!) to spend hours or days copying and pasting text over to a new site doesn’t appeal to me ;-)  Just thought I’d explain so new visitors looking for client sneak peek debuts or recent work won’t wonder why I’m not sharing them as often as in the past! 

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sticking with the heart theme (see Saturday’s post) … since plan A didn’t pan out image-wise over the weekend due to the wind!

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For lack of a better theme on my part this past week, I decided to borrow Marta Locklear’s Hue & Texture theme for the week! Thus … hue: yellow, texture: unlimited

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Decided (due to lack of daylight and illness) to do this week’s image in late evening and embrace the grain that comes with shooting at 3200 ISO. I finally got around to purchasing the 100 mm f/2.8 macro lens (original, not the newer L series version) about two months ago but really haven’t put it to good use yet … thus a detail shot of one of my newest vintage cameras. One of these days I’ll get around to photographing the entire collection … which is numbering in the neighborhood of 22 as of now. That number could change if I venture onto Ebay or to First Monday in the next couple weeks

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Feeling significantly better than I was earlier this week … just not quite as chipper as this little guy! Slowly catching up on all things business and personal … and hoping to make a huge dent this weekend on the to-do list I’m now behind on.

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I was more than thrilled to escape the chill on Friday (I’ve been in San Antonio this weekend for the Imaging USA conference held by Professional Photographers of America). I’ll try to share more about the pre-con class I attended on Saturday as well as the Expo here on the blog on Wednesday … for now though, just a photo of the two icicles (taken last Thursday morning) that hung around most of the week on the back porch eaves …

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After the dreary, cold, snowy (in some areas in north and east Texas) start to the week, I dug through the external drives to find a bit of sunshine in the form of billy balls (or so that’s what I’ve heard those little yellow blooms are called) … these were the last survivors of a bouquet of flowers I received last summer from Aly & Daniel.

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Why a shovel, you ask? Well … I was gardening on Saturday. Here’s hoping that my lack of ability to keep plants alive has changed …

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Last Monday I posted the top 12 images from CMP’s 2010 sessions (geez, was that hard … picking out only 12 images!) … and as a result of several of the nominees rallying their friends and family, triple the number of people voted in the poll than last year!

So with that said … here’s the the top 3 images chosen by the voters  …

Third Place … with 16% of the vote

Second Place … with 24% of the vote

… and the winner of the visitor’s vote at 27% of the total votes (& soon to be recipient of a gorgeous 11×14 Signature Line Wall Art Print) …

Congrats Aly & Dan!

Thanks as well to the other nine nominees that rallied their family and friends but came up a bit short at the end!

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… and one feline that chose to snooze away to welcome in the new year rather than party … she’s not too thrilled with me for putting that hat on her head while she was sleeping

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