On (a much needed) vacation!

To all my clients, friends and blog readers,

I will out of the office for a week. In an effort to keep balance in my life and not overwork, I will be detoxing from email and will not be reading or responding to email while I am out of town.

I hope everyone has an awesome New Year's celebrating all the amazing blessings God has sent your way in the past year. This time last year, I was shooting a cool wedding in the heart of NYC, but I am glad to have this year off! To celebrate, I will be spending the holiday in Nashville... with some special, I might add. ;-)

Who could it be?

I know, believe it or not, after all my "single and fabulous" ramblings, and two-and-a-half years of kissing dating goodbye, I've actually met a really remarkable guy. Stay tuned to the blog for more details later.... Unless you want to have fun trying to guess, leave a comment in my box. And for those that know already, no spoiling it for the others! If anyone actually guesses the right answer, I'll think of a fun prize to give you! But no clues, you have to do your own detective work. he he

I will return all email when I get back in town on January 4th, 2008! Wow, it's weird to write 2008 already!

Then the next weekend, I'm off to the Dominican Republic to shoot a fabulous wedding with my good friend, Katie Thurmes, of Jenna Walker Photography! So many exciting things ahead!

Have fun this holiday and stay safe!!!

God bless,

Scarlett Lillian

One of Top 10 Christmas Cards!

Most of you should have got my Christmas card by now, and thanks so much to everyone who has been sending me emails about how much you loved it! As I promised, my cards were late, but worth the wait.

Additionally, I found out today that out of over 200 Christmas cards sent to the fabulous Nudd photographers, mine was selected as one of their Top 10 cards they received. Garrett and Joy Nudd are two of the sweetest photographers I've met along my journey in meeting other photographers here and wide. They have a beautiful studio in Chattanooga, Tennessee and have graciously spoken at some of the Pictage User Group meetings I've attended in the past. But I have to admit, my heart was stolen by their cutie patootie daughter, Graycen. At the last PUG meeting, she stepped into my pink high heels and walked around in them. I surprisingly didn't have my camera on me, but she was the most precious thing ever. I love the Nudd's Christmas cards though, every year they document how Graycen has grown in the same pose and position holding her mommy's hand and Garrett's feet near by.

Click here to see their card and the other Top 10 cards!

And thanks again to the fabulous portrait photographer, Amy Wenzel, for taking these fun photos of Rhett and I!

The Frase Family

Joshua Frase is a beautiful soul with a fragile disease. He was born with congenital myopathies which prevents the growth of muscular development. For babies, the simple task of crawling is impossible for most, and now at the age of 12, Joshua has to be carried by his dad everywhere he goes. But I have always believed that God doesn't give us more than we can carry, and Joshua is now serving as a great instrument through a personal foundation his parents started in his honor to help raise awareness and fund research for other children and families going through the same thing. They have a touching video on their website, and ways you can help as well! I invite you to check it out at www.joshuafrase.org.

I took some recent family photos for them and for the use in their foundation promotional material. Enjoy!

Joshua resting in between shots.


Joshua and his father.


The whole family.


Joshua's mom and sister, Isabella.


More of cutie Isabella!




Isabella and her daddy!


Joshua's heroic parents.




In order to get around, Joshua has to be transported in this red wagon everywhere.


Brother and sister.


A selfless act of love.

Christmas at the Williams house!

One thing I love about Christmas is going home to my parents. Ok, so yeah, they only live 15 minutes from me, and though I stop by their house from time to time, it's rare that I ever go back to spend the night in my old room like when I was a little girl. But Christmas Eve, I spent the night and we woke up early to unwrap all the presents under the tree. Then my grandparents came up from Orlando to celebrate with us in the afternoon, so it was great to have other family there too. Overall, we had a nice relaxing laid back Christmas day full of too much food, but more importantly, full of a lot of love. Here's some crazy random pics of the day!


Rhett insisted being in everyone's business with each present we unwrapped!






Dad trying on his new FSU hat. (He's their biggest fan!)




I'm a true chocoholic, so I got a big kick out of this birthday card!! I'm sure this is what I looked like as a little girl!


And the inside...


Rhett got a little mad I stuck a bow on him and he refused to look at the camera for a pic!


This was the big present I got my parents for Christmas. A trio of canvas photos blown up of my parents in love... and one with me too!


My FAVORITE present I got this year! The Juicy Couture purse I had on my wishlist, with a shiny gold wallet to match! Was this purse made for me or WHAT?


I love the tag on the purse! So true!


Me and my grandparents! (And I can't believe I'm putting these pictures on here of me with no make up on!)


Funny faces with my grandparents!


The two sweethearts of 56 years!


A big thanks to everyone who sent me such sweet emails, text messages, comments on here, MySpace and Facebook all day long wishing me happy birthday! I hope everyone had a wonderfully blessed Christmas day!

There is one more very yummy Christmas/Birthday gift Santa brought me this year, but I'm going to wait and reveal it after the New Year. I will say though that it's something that makes me smile very very much. ;-)

Oh, lastly.... for all the people who requested a Christmas card from me, I'm sad to admit I JUST NOW got them out in the mail today. But it's not my fault! For once in my life, I was trying to do it early and had ordered them in early November, but I ended up having so many printing errors with the printer I used, so I had to get them reprinted and reshipped, and with all the crazy holiday shipping, I didn't get them until Christmas Eve. Lovely, so much for getting them to you before Christmas! So just like everything else in my life, the cards will be arriving late in your mailbox. But they are on the way, I promise! And thanks to everyone who requested one! I hope you will find that they are worth the wait!

Merry Christmas!!!

Even though it is my birthday today, I have to remember, today is not all about me. 1,980 years before I was born, the most important person was born into this world. The human form of a living God. The king of kings. The priest of priests. The son of a Father who adores us and designed us for His glory to live eternity with Him by only simply believing that the person born today was our true savior.

So today, I not only wish you Merry Christmas, but I lift up the grandest of Happy Birthdays to the lover of my soul, my best friend and my everything I live for:

Jesus Christ.

Last night I sat by the fire and watched The Nativity Story with my parents. It's a powerful movie and even more important, a great reminder of the reason for the season! In the midst of all the unwrapping gifts and turkey and fruitcake, I hope you'll find time to cherish one of the greatest miracles that ever existed on this day.

Many Christmas blessings to all of you reading this!

Here's the trailer to the Navity Story.

Happy Birthday to me! Almost...

Moi, Rachel, Elaine, Jessi

What an honor it is to share a birthday with Jesus... truly.... but some years, it can be tough sharing that day with Him because my birthday always seems to get overshadowed with everyone being caught up in their own holiday things. Regardless, my friend Rachel, the ultimate party planner, is always so good at making a point to throw me some kind of fabulous birthday party. This year, the theme was bringing out our inner divas, and everyone dressed up in cute cocktail dresses and high heels. The inner princess in me couldn't help but sport a tiara too. It was fun to have one of my brides, Jessi, join the celebration also! My friend, Elaine, also helped plan and the girls surprised me by later in the night taking me to the coolest dive to sing karaoke!! As much as I love to sing, I totally loved it! It had been so long since I was brave enough to get up in front of an audience and belt my heart out.

Rachel and I wanted to sing one of our favorite party songs, Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", but they didn't have it in the list of songs to sing. So instead, we went with another 80s classic, Madonna's "Material Girl". Elaine tried to take some video of us on Rachel's point and shoot camera, but:

a) It was pitch black in there
b) You couldn't hear us for all the bar buzz
c) I don't know if I would even want to hear how I sounded after one too many cosmos!

It was a fun night celebrating turning the big 2-7 and thank you girls for your friendship and all you did to help me feel special and not forgotten about in the midst of the holiday season!

Even though we couldn't sing to it, here's a slideshow of pics from the night to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody!" Rachel was so cute the way she decorated our dinner table below with pictures of... me. ha!

EDIT:
Elaine just sent me a bunch more from her camera! So here's a few more fun ones!












Elaine got a better video of Rachel and I doing karaoke, so if you are interested in hearing how bad we sound, check out the video here! (Sorry I couldn't figure out how to embed it!)

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Yesterday was my dad's birthday and last night we celebrated by taking him to this new fancy restaurant called the Capital Grille. They totally treated him a like a king with a table waiting decorated in birthday confetti, a card signed by all the waiters in the restaurant, and at the end they gave him complimentary champagne and chocolate cake. They even came up and took a picture of all of us to remember the night, so I just had to share the cute picture and card. I love the quote at the top of the card! Everything was first class all the way and I love that he had a great time ringing in the big 6-1!



Now tonight is my birthday party! Should be a fun girl's night out, and from what I hear, there will be numerous cameras, so I can't wait to share it with all of you!

A's to your Q's!

Here is a video blog answering all your awesome questions you left to this entry recently. It took me about an hour to go through all the questions and answer them, so grab some popcorn and M&Ms and enjoy the video! (And sorry, it might take a few minutes to load since it's so long!) I made this in 2007 when I was first starting out, but I hope my answers somehow help bless your photography and business, and a big thanks to everyone who participated!



Here are a few resources that I mentioned in my answers that you should definitely check out:

My slideshow software- http://www.showitfast.com
All about eating raw- http://www.living-foods.com/articles/tenadvantages.html
The workshop I'll be attending- http://loveaffairworkshop.com
My printing service- http://pictage.com

My favorite gear I talk about:





To create my blog photos and collages, I used these awesome actions by MCP Actions!



And I definitely can't shoot without my ShootSac!

For future reference....

With the end of the new year, I've been thinking a lot about the coming year and new ways to grow my business and how to use the gifts God has given to not only shoot weddings but also help further the photographic community. I know a lot of fellow photographers read my blog so if you don't mind taking a quick survey, I would appreciate your feedback on some thoughts floating around in my head in regards to visions for the future. Thanks!

>>Click Here to take survey<<

The big 2-7

A goofy picture of me unwrapping presents at my surprise birthday party last year!

My friend Rachel is the ultimate party planner, and she's always so good at trying to make my Christmas birthday special, despite it getting lost in the holidays sometimes. For this Saturday night, she has planned an all girl's diva night out to celebrate me turning 27. We'll be dressing up in fancy dresses and high heels and tiara's, eating dinner at a fun Hawaiian restaurant and later dancing the night away. Apparently she has a few more surprises up her sleeve too that she won't tell me about. :-)

Anyways, I just wanted to give a shout out that if you are around the Jacksonville area and wanted to join the celebration, send me an email at scarlett@scarlettlillian.com and I'll spill all the details! It would be fun to have you there!

Sorry, it's only for girls, no boys allowed! ;-)

Here's the link to the slideshow from my awesome surprise party Rachel threw for me last year!!!

Got Questions?

I'm excited to announce that I have been asked to be part of photography mentoring program with a really cool website that will encourage aspiring photographers! I will be working one-on-one with photographers, reviewing their portfolios and giving advice on how to take their work to the next level. I'm so excited to help out and honored to even be asked to join the ranks of people like the amazing So Cal rockstar Dane Sanders, who is also serving as a mentor! I can't reveal the full details yet, but stay tuned for more details on how you can participate!

It's hard to believe just a little over a year ago is when I got my first camera. (Well, other than a small point and shoot I always played around with.) At the time I was doing videography and only got my Canon 30D for hobby reasons in wanting to learn more about the art of photography. However, within a week, I fell in love with my new camera and decided to make the switch from video to photography.

Now in just a year, it has been a crazy ride of ups and downs, but there is no greater joy than waking up each morning totally loving the job I have. My camera, now a Canon 5D, has taken me all over the place shooting destination weddings and I have traveled more this past year than I have in my lifetime. But I wouldn't be receiving these amazing blessings if it weren't for the incredible mentors along the way that shared their knowledge with me and allowed me to second shoot with them and simply give their time and wisdom to help this aspiring photographer.

I feel like to this day I continue to be a sponge learning all I can, so it's fascinating to me to now be the one who people turn to for answers to their questions and for inspiration as they kick start their photography business too. I get tons of email daily and wish I had time to answer each one personally because I love to help others! But in effort to pay it forward and help to share the answers publicly for others to benefit from too, I'm going to host a Q&A session here on my blog.

So before the mentorship program starts, as a Christmas gift to all of you, I am opening up the opportunity for you to pick my brain here on my blog and ask me anything you want. Leave your name and question(s) here in my comment box, and next week I'm going to create a video blog that answers each of your questions one by one. It doesn't have to be all photography related, if you are dying to know my favorite flavor of ice cream or other random questions, I love the crazy fun ones too!

Thanks for your participation and I look forward to getting to know each of you better through this Q&A session!

Introducing Lucy Violet Jo

Cassie has always been like a little sister to me. We met through our dads, who are best friends, and I've watched Cassie grow up from a little girl into a young woman who is now a wife and mom of two! Eight weeks ago, she gave birth to Lucy and I had so much fun taking the first modeling pictures of her. I almost packed Lucy in my camera bag because she was the most precious thing ever and I so much wanted to take her home with me, but instead I'll have to look for an excuse to babysit her in the future.

Here are some of my favorite shots of Lucy and her brother Logan, and a sweet slideshow at the end!






Momma and Lucy.


Grandma and Lucy.


Lucy's brother, Logan.












I have a crush on little toes.


I love the bubbles in her mouth.


Is this not the most precious thing ever? It was actually Cassie's idea, and I love how it turned out!


This actually use to be Lucy's brother's old jumpy, so Cassie wanted to get a shot of her new "sweet child of mine."