The Gift of Learning

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 30!
Gift yourself or your favorite photog with the gift of education through Texas Photo classes! Check out our new calendar of classes for Spring 2013. We have more to offer this year than ever, with new class topics and some terrific partnerships with The Dallas Arboretum, Fort Worth Botanical Gardens and The Creative Arts Center of Dallas. Check out our expanded online courses that allow you to learn on your time. Gift cards are available via mail and email in amounts of $25 and up – so fill up your stocking or someone else's with the best photo deal yet.

Holiday Photo Shoot

Shot images at Spa Esoteric in McKinney for the holidays. The Spa is a converted historic home with huge floor-to-ceiling windows and amazing natural light! Every time I shoot there, it's a joy– not only because of the light, but also the creative freedom that the owner, Monika, gives me. Here's a sneak peek...

Santa's on his way...

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 28
Play Santa with this deal from BradsDeals and Discount Mags! Get a year-long subscription to Digital Photo Magazine for $4.99 – today only! This slick, glossy mag covers new digital darkroom technologies, trends and methods in modern photography. Edited for a broad spectrum of readers, from the beginner to the advanced, this is the perfect gift for photogs who want to learn more about how to creatively control and produce exciting images. Use the code BRADSDEALS at checkout to get the deal!

Photo-tastic Gifts!

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 27
Skip the season's shopping stress and take advantage of Adorama's Photo-tastic Gift List filled with great ideas – all under $100! These gadgets and tools can boost images from good to great and take shooting skills to the next level. We like Adorama's exclusive Digital Media Storage Wallet for memory cards and their Flashpoint 42-inch Collapsible Disc Reflector kit. The Digital Media Storage Wallet is a perfect size at 4 1/4 x 3 1/4-inches, holds up to 4 memory cards and 2 AA batteries, and can be carried on its own or placed inside a camera bag. The foldable Flashpoint Reflector is perfect for reducing contrast, providing soft fill light, warming skin tones, or softening light and comes with translucent, white, black, silver and gold (5-in-1) reflectors. Just twist, fold and pack away for easy travel and storage. Both of these make great gifts in combination or alone - and add up to under $50!

Making Spirits Bright – Instantly

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 26
Get your holiday party pics on the spot with the Polaroid GL10 instant printer! This little 15 oz. printer marries the convenience of today's digital images and the original Polaroid instant experience– works from most mobile phones wirelessly via Bluetooth and from most digital cameras. Using ZINK Technology, the GL10 produces color, full bleed and contemporary 3 x 4" photos in the Polaroid Classic Border logo in about 45 seconds - making it a portable photo booth that allows you to bring Polaroid magic wherever you go this holiday season. Buy.com features it today at only $105.99 – that's $75 off the regular price!

Sprocket Rocket around the Christmas Tree

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 25
Lomography is offering an Advent Calendar of Deals each day– good for their online shop and gallery stores! We featured facts about lomography on our blog back in August, but in case you missed it... it's a magazine, a shop and a community dedicated to analogue photography. That's right – Old-School-style-film-in-the-camera style artistic shooting. Tomorrow's deal is a savings of 21% on any Sprocket Rocket camera. Just use the voucher code ROCKET21 at the Checkout!

Dreaming of a Soft White Christmas

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 24
Give the best photo gift this season - a Gary Fong puffer flash diffuser. Built to fit a wide variety of DSLRs and point and shoot cameras, these affordable accessories are a must to eliminate raw light from a pop-up flash. Transform those dreaded holiday red-eye snap shots into softly lit professional looking portraits.

Happy Holga Holidays

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY 22
To make our holidays brighter, we are back at Photojojo's store for their Holga iPhone Lens. This little gem offers a rotating disk equipped with 9 different lenses! Just fit the case that it comes on over the back of your phone, and you're set. It's like having 9 toy cameras all in one: lenses for dreamy vignettes, vibrant red and green color lenses, multi-image lenses for Spidey-vision (double, triple, and quadruple images), a macro lens for beautiful close-up detail and red, yellow, and blue filters with clear centers for framing your subjects! Just spin the disk, preview the effect on your screen, and then fire away! A fantastic gift for only $30.

The Elves have Been Busy!

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY NINETEEN
The elves at Amazon and Brads Deals are offering red hot Cyber Monday savings with great lists of deals and easy ways to search by category. Amazon previews upcoming deals by the minute in a rolling banner, so you can get the jump on upcoming offers. Brads Deals site is searchable - simply type in "camera" or related topics and a full list of deals appears. Today's hot deals include Brad's Canon T41 Canon Rebel bundle with printer for $738, and Amazon's Nikon D7000 16.2 MP body for $896.95 – with a free backpack and memory card. Time to check off everyone on your list!

Cyber Santas Unite!

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY EIGHTEEN
For all of you secret Santas planning to partake in Cyber Monday, here are a few  links to some great deals! Awesome point and shoot camera deals can be found at Target and Walmart [Fujifilm Finepix 14 MP + SD Card + Case]. For the professionals in the house, check out B+H Photo's Photo Specials featuring a wide range of cameras, lenses, and accessories for all levels of photogs. For some great t-shirts that feature cool photo-related art, check out Dodge and Burn and Zazzle. And use the code 60ZCYBERSALE on Zazzle for 60% off. Good luck filling those shopping carts!

Hand-crafted Photo Holiday with Etsy

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY SEVENTEEN
The rush of Black Friday is fading (whew!) So sit back, relax and feast your eyes on some amazing hand-crafted coolness from Etsy, as we feature several artists in our upcoming Deals. Sarcastically named, but wonderfully talented, Buy My Crap offers made-to-order transparent and opaque resin bangles, bracelets, cuffs, and other amazing handmade products– from photos. BMC's creations use digital images (including Instagram images), hand-made molds, and hand polishing to create pieces that "combine the durability and fun feel of transparent resin with beautiful personal images to create a sweet little bangle that is fun, fresh and funky, and a timeless keepsake to enjoy." A super-hip holiday fashion statement for photogs and non-photogs alike!

Merry, merry Mpix!

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY THIRTEEN
This season take advantage of these super-fun accordion mini-books! Available in 10 styles for the holidays, and using easy drag and drop photo design, Mpix minis offer 12 pages, front and back to showcase your favorite photos. Measuring a compact, purse-sized 2.5 x 3.5" and featuring a hidden magnet for closure, these minis make the perfect take-along brag book for holiday parties. Try coupon code BQPHOTO07 for 20% off your entire order.

Twelve Months of Photography

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY TWELVE
Forget the 12 days of Christmas - celebrate photography all year long with the 4th AlternativePhotography.com calendar! Created annually from a national competition, twelve winning photographs, one per month, are featured. All were made with an alternative photographic process, like cyanotype, pinhole, kallitype, wet plate collodion and more. 

Ready, set, shop– with Shutterfly

30 DAYS OF DEALS // DAY EIGHT
Shutterfly is spreading holiday cheer with some new photo gifts this holiday – like custom iPhone covers and acrylic photo blocks– all with savings offers! Personalize your iPhone cover with a photo and custom monogram or show off your favorite photos in a stylish, contemporary acrylic photo cube. Check out the photo magnets also - these are five star rated. Best of all, Shutterfly gives you all the special offers on one page, offering 20 - 40% on a variety of products– including those mentioned here. 

Angilee's Rockport, ME

DAY 1 & 2 // Driving from Portland to Rockport, I pulled over to buy blueberries and local wild honey from a stand next to the road. I was surprised by how the fragrant floral aroma of the honey was inseparable from it's sweet flavor. Seemed I timed my arrival just right as blueberries and lobster are both in season. This place is a photographer's paradise of green lush vegetation and colorful flowers scattered along the landscape and climbing out of brightly painted window boxes. On my first day here, the harbor was heavy with fog and summer rain. The light, heavily diffused in slate gray, reminded me of my days in Scotland as a kid. Today on the other hand, the sun was warm and cheerful and the previous days rain had left the dewy landscape saturated in color. I attended two lectures tonight in Rockport's old Opera house– by internationally acclaimed photo artists Connie Imboden and Sylvia Plachy. Connie said that art is a way to express complex emotions and both artists said they work from a place of intuition rather than concept. I can relate to this method of work. For me, the concept often reveals itself only after the creative work has taken place. 

Welcome to our blog!

Exciting changes!

Texas Photo is making some big changes - not only to our website, but to our class schedule, offerings and more. Stay tuned for some terrific posts and images!