www.juliarayphotography.com

Hi lovlies!

I haven't posted on here since December 24th. I hope you got the memo that I would be moving to my new website www.juliarayphotography.com. If you have not, please check it out now! I am really really proud of my new website and hope you all love it too!

Many of my readers miss the subscription feature that blogspot offers, well I am happy to say that I now have a subscription feature on my website!!!! It is in the sidebar of each post.

Check out my journal page to find all of my posts (I am still posting M-F so don't miss an update).

Subscribe now!

XO Julia

it's the holidays

Man oh man is Christmas here. Last minute shopping, present wrapping and cookie baking - the holiday is in full swing. Hope everyone has the holiday bug. Our family does! Merry Christmas and I am so excited to launch something on christmas day :) Check back in tomorrow for a video with all of the details!

blue wave

Came home for the holidays and ended up working all week at Blue Wave Afterschool. Which is awesome because I love working with the kids. I am also in the middle of making a website for Blue Wave Afterschool/Camp Blue Wave. These are the photos I took for the meet the staff page. Once it is complete, I will share the domain name. Hope everyone is happy that winter break has finally arrived. Now, all that is left is the last minute shopping. Check back in on Monday! Next week I have huge plans :)

Bells

I received the most beautiful ornament and book from the lovely Mrs. Belinda. At the Christmas Book Club, we exchange ornaments and a book - I was very pleased with my gifts. Hope everyone is getting into the season! Happy holidays :)

erika ann

While I was home for thanksgiving break I got to see my bff Erika! No matter how far apart we are or how little we talk - we still have that connection and tell each other everything from the last time we saw one another. Anywho, she is flawless and I love every photo I took of her. This is my absolute favorite!

Alien Astronauts

These are some of my favorite photos from the gala last Friday night. If anyone was able to make it out, I hope you had fun and enjoyed one of the delicious waffles and all the amazing artwork. I was in love with the wood burning pieces, as was everyone else. The artist (unfortunately I do not know his name) answered so many questions and people were ultimately fascinated. They were really cool!

The Thompson Family

As promised the full set of photos from the Thompson family. They were such a beautiful family and a joy to work with! The girls, of course, loved having their photos taken and listened to direction perfectly. I am so proud of how the photos turned out.

Waffles & Brews

 Tonight I am photographing this awesome event. There will be 11 artists at this three hour event. Everyone is welcome to join. Check out the Facebook event of Waffles and Brews for more details. I'd love to see you guys there :)

#ArtOverIndustry

christmas came early this year

John and I are celebrating our christmas today before we ship off to our respective cities for the holidays. I am pretty excited! Tomorrow is the last day of finals week and I have my last final at three. At this point, I am so ready for it to be over. My brain cannot take any more studying! Hope everyone is having a great week. XO

sneak preview

Mar and I did a photoshoot a couple weeks ago of a beautiful family! Emily on the left and Abigail on the right. This is one of my favorite photos from this session. Check back next week for the rest of photos :)

christmas trees

When I was home for Thanksgiving I was lucky enough to get to help pick out the tree this year! Christmas tree shopping is my favorite. You get to pick the perfect tree - tall & skinny or short & fat. I cannot wait to go home for the holidays and see it all decorated :)

Origami

I photographed these at The Pod about a month ago. Marco created the origami pieces and of course was the creative genius behind this advertisement. The Pod developed this for Sustainable Tallahassee. These were for an event they hosted to encourage sustainability. I helped arrange the models and took these photos. Marco and Mar edited mostly. Super proud of how they turned out!

The Sunday Post

In honor of the Seminoles making it to the National Championship, I am reposting this picture of Osceola and Renegade!

So I have been a terrible blogger this week and I apologize! Classes ended this week, I had one final on Thursday, and I finished my internship at The Pod on Friday. Busy busy week. This week should be less busy with no classes and no work, but it is finals week. Ya know, the best part of the semester.....not.

Going to try to be consistent this week. But if not, I will be back to normal the following week. That is a promise!

PS: I am currently booking sessions for Winter Break. Contact me if interested.

PeasMotion

I created another blog post for the company I am interning for. At The Pod Advertising, we are called The Peas and we even have cute little Peas in a Pod hanging (see what I did there) around the office. Kris came up with the idea to test out the new Google+ features (see the blog post below for more information) and we tested out the Motion aspect. Of course, we also created our own that is way cooler. But, ya know, Google tried. Check it out below. Also, check out my PeasMotion blog post on The Pod's website.

Google+ has announced several new features including one called Auto-Awesome for photos, which presents users with options for animation, enhancement, creating a panorama, smile, and HDR. They seem to have a lot of potential, and we were intrigued.

We wanted to try this new social feature, particularly the auto-animate aspect that creates an animated .gif from a series of five photos or more. Because the interwebs is so inundated with content, .gifs are resurfacing as a quick way to get an idea across. Users have gone from sharing comments and photos to animated .gifs that are often funny, clever, and to the point.

We took twenty-one photos and uploaded them into an album on our Google+ page. Google+ capitalizes on the fact that it auto-recognizes pictures from a series of photos as long as the background doesn’t change. After uploading the photo, Google analyzes and determines if it can use any of the Auto-Awesome elements. Google did auto-recognize our series of photos and created an animated .gif. However, the .gif produced from our album only used ten of the photos. Testing it even further, we created a new album with only ten photos, that still managed to tell a complete story, from the original set of twenty-one and Google+ only used six  of those photos for the animated .gif. 

  

As amazing (or awesome) as it sounds, unfortunately, it doesn’t give you complete control. For the average hobbyist it might be a fun way to share images and ideas, but for a company, it isn’t guaranteed to work accurately. Knowing Google, I am sure there will be plenty of updates in the near future and it will be a more friendly and accessible feature. In the meantime, we created our own awesome .gif shown below! We wanted to compare our animated .gif with that of the product from Google+. Taking it a step further, we added sound effects and titles! Producing our own allowed us total creative control over the product, and this showcases our company’s talents, which is a win-win situation for our advertising business.

Depending on the social media you use for your company, these new Auto-Awesome features might take your brand to a whole new level. If you’ve tried any of these features we would love to hear how they worked out for you.