Shannon Montez Photography Blog » San Jose's Family and Child Photographer, Shannon Montez, captures all aspects of family life: Families, newborns, children, babies, high school seniors, and weddings.

So, our first full day of the workshop, we began by breaking up into small groups and Millie, Lauren, Kelly and Davina rotated around our groups, talking about ways that they try to achieve work/life balance and what in their lives made them realize a need for balance and change. It’s so easy to let this take over, because it’s fun! But you can’t let your family suffer, and this can’t be the only interest you have. Lots of good tips, lots of reminders. Each class time was followed by free time for some, mentoring sessions for others. By the end of the week, each person had a website review and 30 minute mentoring session with one of the leaders. Mine was with Kelly on the last day, and my new website brought her to tears. In a good way. I know it was probably partly due to all of the estrogen flowing around there, but still… tears are great in my business! I can’t wait to finish up the website and show everyone… I hope all you alls cry!

That afternoon, after lunch, we had a discussion on lighting… the various types of light and how to achieve it. And then, we had a shooting session. They had some really great models to work with… it was so much fun! Here are some of my favorites from the session.

Instead of taking the red-eye that the other girls from California took, I left earlier and spent the first night in a hotel near the airport. That was a great decision, because not only was I awake and aware for the first day at the workshop, I had several uninterrupted hours to spend on getting images ready for my new website! That’s a project that I’ve been trying to work on for months now, and it feels great to be so much closer to finished.

So, the next morning, I went back to the airport to catch the shuttle to the island. There, I met Carmen, Sally, and Angie. We chatted for a couple hours and got to know each other. Carmen has four kids (including a pair of twins!) so we had a lot in common. (This picture is from the dock as we were on the shuttle getting ready to go.

  Once we got to the island, we were assigned to our houses. I had the CUTEST house! Most of the houses were million-dollar mansions with a bunch of bedrooms and meeting areas, mine was a remodeled older house with just two bedrooms, a kitchen and living room and it was so rustic and cute! I want to go back with my family some day. I took some pics of the adorable little house.

Doesn’t it just look like heaven? The whole time I was on the island, I felt disconnected from the real world (I guess I technically was, being that I was on an island!), so it was weird when we got back to the continent and back to real life.

After exploring the island for a bit, we had a welcome dinner at one of the houses. Millie’s mom was the camp chef… I can’t imagine how much work that was, cooking food for 40 women, three meals a day. The shopping alone would’ve killed me! She did an awesome job, and we felt so pampered. They had the tables decorated so cute, with raw sugar and sea shells and floating candles in bowls with seashells at the bottom. I wish I’d taken a picture, but again, I didn’t lug my camera everywhere and lived in the moment most of the time!

The workshop was set up around three main houses that were close to each other… one was the “teaching house” where we met for lessons, the other was the “party house” that was stocked up with snacks and was the only house with internet access, and the other one was the “food house” where we met for meals, but had to stay out of the way of the people preparing meals for the rest of the time. I spent most of my free time at the party house, either editing pictures or chatting with other ladies.

There are no cars allowed on the island, so we had to drive golf carts everywhere. That alone was hilarious… on the first day, I had to ask someone from the grocery store to come out and show me how to put the thing in reverse! Driving in the rain, where puddles can become huge obstacles, and the protective plastic flaps offer little protection… good times, good times.

That’s enough for now… more tomorrow.

Oh my goodness. I had the BEST time. I feel like I have changed as a person, as a photographer, as a woman. I have so many plans… so much to work on in the coming month! I was in the process of redesigning things already, but I feel much more focused and confident about all my plans.

Several times during the week I was brought to tears at the thought of how lucky I was to be there. All of the women there had wanted to go so badly that the workshop sold out in three minutes. And I wasn’t one of those people. I didn’t find out about it for a couple of months. But apparently God wanted me to be there. The scholarship felt like it was meant just for me, just so I could have that amazing experience, and that it must be vital for me, so God created a loophole to get me in there! God and the generous and awesome ladies of Love Affair. So I was careful to make sure I learned everything I possibly could and I’m going to make sure I take what I’ve learned and apply it. I have to. It’s the only way to show the gratitude I feel for that experience.

I want to give a pretty good recap, not only for my faithful readers, but also because my memory tends to fade. The whole experience feels like a dream already, like I imagined the whole thing, so I really want to get it down here. Ironically, I don’t feel like I took enough pictures. Oftentimes I made a decision to live for the moment rather than walk around with a camera around my neck, but I did manage to get a few! Unfortunately,  it seems Typepad won’t let me upload them right now… I’ll try again later.

If you want to see pictures, try going to Lauren Clark’s blog… She has some fun group shots on there.

I’ll give a more detailed recap starting tomorrow (hopefully I’ll be able to load pictures!) For now, I’m off to snuggle my family. I’ve missed them!

That’s the closest thing I can say to how I’m feeling right now. In the morning, I’m headed to the Love Affair Workshop!

After a couple months wishing and hoping then celebrating and being excited and planning and trying to get my act together and hoping I don’t get sick or die before came around, it’s here!

Wish me luck!!

Last week I had big plans of making photo valentines for the kids to give out in their classes.

Last night, I ended up buying valentines at Target.

This afternoon, sad that some fun pics were going to waste, I decided to wish the world a happy valentines day!

So, world… Happy Valentines Day!
The pink umbrella was supposed to be cupid-ish.

I have a yummy dinner planned and a great dessert, to be followed by the ultra-romantic…
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CUB SCOUT MEETING!

So I spent some time while I was in Philly taking some pictures of a really amazing family. Here are some of my favorites…

Bennett had the coolest bike… No petals, he would push and balance himself… at two years old, he was amazingly coordinated!

Leah hardly slept during the day. It made sleepy baby pictures impossible. She didn’t even want me to try. Philly kids are really tough and mean, straight out of the womb.

(you can click to view larger, looks like it’s partly cut off)

If you want to see the rest, here’s the slideshow.

With my sister and me, it’s always been about eating. When we were younger, we’d get our allowance and decide it was time for a PARTY! The approach to a PARTY! was always the same: go to Kaysville drug, spend our allowance on various grab bags and candy bars and assorted types of licorice, then come home and PARTY! The PARTY! itself was really exciting… we’d sit on my bed, turn on the clock/radio to KISN 97, then proceed to eat all of the candy we had just bought. By the end, we were giggling at really dumb stuff and our brothers were running from the house to get away from the noise. Good times. The mode never changed and I guess we grew out of it when Andrea decided to start saving her money for stuff besides candy. Me? I never found anything I wanted more than candy, so I while I don’t sit on my bed and listen to the radio, I’ll somtimes have a PARTY! by myself.

Anyway… this trip was somewhat reminicient of our PARTY! days what with all the eatin’ and stuff. Our other big trip was to Reading Terminal. If you read that “Reading” like it looks, you read it wrong. It’s pronounced “Redding.” I tell you that so you don’t look like a total tourist when you go. It’s a public service… I’m here to help. Anyway… I had lots of fun taking pictures at Reading Terminal, at least for the first half hour. Then my camera became exceedingly heavy and my back got sore and with all this food, I became exhausted and we had to eat. Sorry for the plethora of pictures, but here goes:

This was actually taken after we were done, but it seemed like a good pic to start with. I had to crop my chin out because there was all sorts of wrong going on there…

cool lines on a lunch counter…

Ducks hanging around, waiting to be someone’s lunch…

Pretty, pretty chocolate.

and cupcakes…

Oh yeah… PARTY! time…

Tons of cool cookbooks…

And barrels of pickles! We bought one and it was delish. And the cutest little Amish boy was working there. I wanted to put him in my pocket and bring him home. I would’ve taken a picture of him, but I was being respectful of the fact that they think it’s creating a graven image and therefore against their rules…

I thought these were pretty funny…

That’s all from Reading. I wish I’d taken a picture of the Apple Dumpling we devoured, but I’d hit the wall and the camera was staying in the bag at that point.

I also wish I’d taken a picture of the parking gate that wouldn’t let us out of the garage or the awesome attendant that was all “what do you want ME to do about it?” Leah wasn’t going to make it home, so we stopped at Love Park so Andrea could fill up Miss Leah’s tank. I took a few more pictures. (sorry for the too many pictures, but since I’m scrapping less, this is possibly the only time these pictures will be seen!)

Really weird sculpture…

Andrea wearing a “hooter hider” (isn’t that name hilarious?!) and Leah’s adorable feet. Andrea’s going to love me for this one.

The famous Love sign, which I must say was a disappointment… it was small and up on an ugly stand… I’d imagined it was huge and something you could climb on…

A  self-portrait…

One more pic of the city…

And another sneak-peek for Andrea.