anna joy photo workshop

There's this photog girl, named Anna Joy. And she's pretty much awesome. I think she's been shooting weddings since she was 16 or 17.  She held a photo workshop this weekend in Carpinteria and so I jumped at the chance to attend.

And my boys jumped at the chance to tag along and go to the beach while I got all studious. Anna arranged for us to meet up at the Lucky Llama coffee shop. My car full of boys rolled up in style. Right away, Tweeds had to whiz, so there was no way to even pretend I was glamourous.

At the coffee shop we chatted. I was afraid I would pull a Monica Geller. Did you see the Friend's episode where Phoebe took a literature class and Monica wouldn't stop raising her hand? Yah...sometimes I talk too much. Thankfully there was another girl equally inquisitive and hopefully we balanced each other out:)

Then Anna gave the best advice of the day: Her goal is not to compete to have the biggest and best website of awesome photos. Her goal is to bless people. I LOVE that, and share her thoughts exactly. It's not about us. It's about Jesus. And she prays before her shoots.
Anna with boyfriend Michael. He came along to video record us making fools of ourselves...errr...being completely profesh. Well, at least Anna was completely amazing.

It was bright out. Normally best lighting is around an hour or so before the sun sets. We started shooting around 3:30 pm, which was early, since the sun set around 6:45 that day. I was excited to see Anna work during these less than optimal lighting conditions.

When we got to the site, Anna went over camera settings. She shoots way differently than I do...which is why I signed up. She shoots at a much lower aperture than I'm used to for family shots. So I was challenged to try something totally different.

I would have been completely awk with all these cameras in my face.

(above photo by Anna's sidekick, Marina Godinez)

But not this laid back, super natural family. Meet Jared, Stacie and baby Levi. Anna had us all taking turns directing the shoot. Because of how much light we had that day, we all got to take a ton of pics. Here is a little sampling!


For reals, baby Levi barely made a peep the entire time. It was unreal. My babies were ALWAYS squawking and running away. I mean, they still run away.














Around half way through the shoot, we had a very unexpected visitor. Look close.

What would you have done if a SNAKE invaded your site? Lost your head? Wet your pants? This type of snake intrusion has NEVER happened to me before.

Michael came to the rescue and relocated our unwanted guest. But first, he played with it...all the while Anna kept pleading "I need you alive Micheal", lol. Boys.

But I'm not gonna lie. This snake was my big excitement of the day. With my camera in hand, I somehow think I'm invincible.  A train could be coming at me and I won't move til I get what I want. (Don't worry mom, I'm completely safe).

Still a little bright out for me but I love this little face.












Anna likes to shoot top views like this.

Back at her house, Anna showed us her workflow and editing techniques in lightroom.


She does very minimal editing and keeps things as natural as possible, which I appreciated. So in honor of that, all these photos posted here today had fairly limited lightroom editing.


I had the most fun that day, and if you ever get the chance of going to a workshop, I'd highly recommend it. Makes you get out of your box and think about things differently. I heart you Anna Joy!