Jennifer Bowen Photography » Engagement, Wedding, Portrait & Family Photographer // Scottsdale, Phoenix Arizona

I photographed adorable little Baby Alexandra a couple weeks ago…she is the daughter of Elizabeth and Dan, whose wedding I photographed last year, and little sister to sweet Charlie. So smushy!

Hello blog readers! I wanted to take a quick poll to see who is out there reading my blog. Will you vote below just to let me know a little more about you? I can’t see any other info about you than how you vote. Thank you!

I’ve lost the past several days to that nasty flu bug going around — boy is it a tough one! It has really wiped me out. I think I’m finally starting to get better though. Good thing it hit me now; just two weeks before my busy spring wedding season kicks in.

But on to much more fun news: It has been about 10 months since I updated my portraits website, so if you click here, you’ll see lots of new images and perhaps some familiar faces from the past year or so. :)

I just checked Open Source Contest and saw that one of my family shots from a few years ago placed 5th! Yippee!

The cool thing about the highly addictive website is that is a photo contest for photographers and voted on by photographers — not a panel of judges. Photographers can often be a hard group to please photographically speaking, so this is very flattering! Be sure to check out this site and see how addictive the voting is. :)

Incidentally, this candid shot of Mark and Andrea Hiland (and their daughter Ava) was used by a local developer on their website last year because they are such a beautiful family!

Here is another contest that just came to me…. and it’s open to any bride, groom or portrait client of mine.

Send me a quick note and tell me which image from your wedding day or portrait session (that I took) is your absolute #1 favorite and why? If you had to rescue just one single image from your wedding day or a particular shoot because it just represents YOU or something important to you, which one is it and why did it mean so much? The one who moves me the most with their short story will WIN a FREE PHOTO SESSION in 2008. (I’m in a pay-it-forward mood this year.)

The Jist: Describe or email a copy of the photo (or send image number from your proofs) and tell me why it meant so much to you. Did it make you cry? Did it capture the pure essence of a particular relationship? Did it make you see yourself (or someone else) in a whole new positive light? It doesn’t have to be a long story and can even be one sentence… I’m just curious about which one moved you so much and why it moved you.

If it’s from a wedding and both the bride and groom have different favorites for different reasons, both can enter. Same with families if mom and dad had different favs.

The photo shoot will need to happen in Phoenix metro area, however, you can still enter if you are out of state because we can always schedule something if I am in your area or if you travel to and from Phoenix from time to time. Winner will have one year to schedule their session.

What can the 1 hour session be used for? Anything: new baby, family, engagement, pets, you name it. You can even give the session away to someone in Phoenix metro area who possibly can’t afford a professional photographer if you want to keep paying it forward.

Deadline: Please send me your entry by Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at midnight PST.
I’ll select the person who moves me so much with their email and announce the winner by Friday, March 15th on my blog.

Good luck!

Here is a random image just cause I felt like adding in some BW to this post :-) One of my favs from 2007.

I’m not one to like drawing attention to myself (perhaps that’s why I like being BEHIND the camera), but you may have noticed a new link above called About Jennifer. It only took me about 5 months to work on getting this info to Ryan Brannen, who designed the layout (and this blog), but it’s finally complete and up! A special thanks to Kimberly Jarman who took the pictures of me and to Ryan who pushed me to share more than I might have previously and came out with such a great look for this page. It’s HARD to come up with a long bio about yourself! What do you think?