Cinco de Mayo

Doesn’t this outfit just scream ‘Cinco de Mayo’ to you? The mix of super bright bold colors, the print of this perfect little bag that I found at a boutique on the Texas coast, the simple but perfect blue embroidery on this white tank. As some of you who follow me on instagram know, it was several days past Cinco de Mayo when I finally got an outfit picture posted. Let’s just say we came across a few hiccups during this shoot.

As a little back-story: Blake has owned a DSLR camera for years, and while we’ve both dabbled with learning the different settings and amazing possibilities with these cameras, neither of us has truly tried to learn and shoot in full manual mode until recently. We’ve been self-learning it all via photography blogs, YouTube videos, the camera’s manual, and lots of trial-and-error.

When we headed out to shoot this outfit after work one day, it was already getting into the early evening and there was a very ominous impending thunderstorm (it’s been the same story for like 2 weeks, amirite Austin?) We didn’t have a location scouted out yet but I knew I had to have something LOUD and bright to match my outfit. When we finally came upon this neon green building and got the security guard’s permission to use their wall (apparently they sold used tires and guns…), we were racing against the approaching black clouds.

Per our usual routine, Blake snapped a few shots, took a look, and determined that some settings needed to be adjusted. After some button-clicking and zooming/re-focusing, we quickly finished taking pictures and were getting sprinkled on as we ran back to the car. We were in such a rush to get some pictures in before the rain hit that neither one of us glanced at the previews until we got home. I’ll just end the suspense here — they were black. Every. Single. Picture.

We later found out that the lens sensors needed a good cleaning from years of use and had become disconnected while re-focusing. I tried to salvage the pictures with Photoshop but it was not happening. So as you’ve probably guessed, these snaps are total re-do’s. We took it as a lesson learned to always keep the camera tuned up and happy. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the pics as we put double the effort in for this one! ;)

P.S. I have a great DSLR Photography pinterest board where I’ve collected all the articles, blogs, tutorials, cheat sheets, etc. that we’ve used for beginner learning to photography. Check it out if you’re new to digital photography like us!

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Shop the post:

EMBROIDERED TANK (SOLD OUT, SIMILAR HERE AND HERE) || MAGENTA SKIRT (OLD, SIMILAR HERE AND HERE) || FRINGE BOOTIES (SIMILAR HERE AND HERE) || BOUTIQUE BAG (SIMILAR HERE)