Spink Studio · The Blog

Oh my gosh! I was looking through all my previous posts yesterday and realized it’s been forever since I posted anything about me and Clint! I know! You guys have to keep me in check and make sure I actually post some personal stuff. This is kaylabarker.com!

Since we bought our 7D camera earlier this year, we have recorded lots of little video clips and I don’t think I have shared any of them! One of the funniest is this clip from our trip in May up to Ohio.

After several nights in a row working super late, Clint and I loaded up our car and headed up to Ohio. We decided that we would go ahead and make the trip from Midland, Texas to Dayton, Ohio in one day. We woke up 3:30am and started making the long drive up.

Clint drives and I navigate. Which means I use my iPhone to locate where we are going, determine the best route, then attempt to tell Clint where to go all while trying to get my iPhone to refresh fast enough. For quite awhile, this method had been working. Well, at least for me anyway! Of course, we would be in the middle of some crazy traffic in a big city and then my iPhone wouldn’t update and we would miss our exit. Or Clint would ask me how much longer, I would estimate some many centimeters there were and give Clint a vague time estimate. Let’s just say it was good marriage building. Hehe.

On this trip, we were almost out of crazy Oklahoma. Only about an hour left to the border. I told Clint that he needed to change highways, but somehow we both never saw an exit and we ended up on some crazy backroad that twisted around rivers and towns. We should have just turned around, but being the good navigator that I am, we pressed on. After 30 minutes+ of driving this crazy, curvy road and going through the most hillbilly towns, we finally made it to the right highway and the following video was recorded.

A few days laters…a trip to Best Buy was made, a GPS was purchased and Kayla the Navigator is no more.

A couple weeks ago, my family came down from Colorado to visit us! We had a wonderful time seeing them and while they were here, I took my brother, Joshua out to take some updated photos of him! It’s hard to believe that he will be 21 in about two weeks! Crazy! I am so proud of him! He is a genius when it comes to the Bible and anything theology related and he is currently working on his bachelors and masters degree at the same time! Amazing!

I love you, Josh!! xoxox

Okay, I have been SO bad about posting personal photos on my blog! I’ve been so busy with all of my awesome clients that I haven’t had time to post any of our photos! So, I want to finally share some photos from our short visit to Chicago in May. Instead of typing a long winded paragraph about what we did, how about some bullet points?

• Aloft Hotel is awesome and super awesome for being less than $100 per night.
• Chicago really is windy and COLD! Even in May! Wow! We didn’t bring warm enough clothing.
• Wrigley Field is so awesome and very old-school baseball with no tacky ads, ivy in the outfield, bleachers on other near by buildings and all the old baseball songs. BUT it was freezing!
• The hot dogs at the game are great, but Clint and I are still big fans of Dogmatic here in town!
• Went to the new CB2 store and it was great! Lots of inspiration and stuff we wanted to buy, but we could only fit some pillows and bathroom rugs in the car.
• Parking near Michigan Avenue and the Apple store is expensive! $36 to park! Woah!
• Navy Pier is so cute, but not many vendors were out due to the cold weather.
• The ferris wheel was huge and we had to ride it. I don’t like heights, so it freaked me out which gave Clint and good laugh, but the view was awesome! The water was really blue too!
• Iron Man 2 in the Imax was amazing! Totally worth it!
• We woke up super early and made the drive from Chicago to Midland in a day! It’s about 21 hours and we had a great time!

I may be biased but these two are the cutest subjects to photograph ever! My mom asked me to take some new photos of my sisters while I was up visiting them them, so I got them dressed up and we headed out to Denver City Park on a gorgeous April day to take some cute photos! Here are some of my favorites!

Of course Clint wanted to get in on the action too! He’s so goofy!

Part two of our New York trip! When Clint and I travel, we are pretty picky about what hotel we stay at! I love staying at unique, modern boutique hotels. After some searching, we found the Paramount Hotel just by Times Square. We loved it and it was in the most perfect location for our first trip to NYC!

The lobby was super chic and had this huge staircase that changed colors and had all kinds of cool chairs.

This huge mirror outside the elevator would light up the weather to let us know before we headed outside.

We loved our hotel room and bathroom, but we were shocked at how small it was! Teeny, but totally New York! We loved it! We loved the decor with the pops of red.

Unfortunately, we were in New York the two days that they were having a “winter storm,” aka BLIZZARD! But we didn’t let it stop us from heading out. On day two, we took the subway downtown to see the 9/11 ground zero. We were a little disappointed that there wasn’t anything more to see, but we went!

We tromped around in the super wet snow and I shopped at a couple discount design stores and we went to our favorite home interior store, CB2! So fun. We grabbed lunch at Chipotle and while we were sitting there, I saw a Pinkberry across the street! I was so excited because I had heard great things about Pinkberry and couldn’t wait to try it! And it didn’t disappoint! I really liked Clint’s chocolate one!

After our shoes were totally drenched, we headed back to the hotel for some room service to warm up. On day three, we headed uptown towards Central Park and we had lunch at the famous Serendipity! It was so cute and quaint and the frozen hot chocolate was SO yummy!

We walked around Madison Avenue and did some shopping which was SO fun! I loved that area. We visited the all glass Apple store and then walked around Central Park in the snow. It was SO pretty and romantic. I was so glad we got to see Central Park covered in snow.

So, on the last day, we woke up super early for our flight, only to see that it had been canceled! Clint spend over an hour on the phone and because all the flights for the last two days had been canceled, we weren’t going to be able to get out until the next day! Crazy! So we got to spend an extra day in New York. We went to Rockefeller Center and shopped, hung out and went to see a movie. It was so fun.

It was so much fun! We loved getting to see New York in the winter and we can’t wait to go back this summer!

Okay, I know ya’ll have been waiting to see photos from Clint and I’s New York trip! It was SO much fun. The best thing was that this trip was totally work free! Usually we have somewhere we need to be or someone to photograph, but not this trip! I had been wanting to go to New York for forever and when we earned a free plane ticket on Southwest, we knew we wanted to go as far away as possible! Now, I would not recommend flying Southwest to New York…took forever! Five cities, four states, three planes and twelve hours later, we finally arrived in New York! We left Midland covered in snow and landed in New York in the rain, but no snow yet!

The first night we walked around Times Square and found a local Italian pizzeria to eat at that was so yummy! And of course, I averaged about two Starbucks per day!

In the morning, we woke up early and walked around Times Square and saw all the famous sites. It was SO very cool and crowded with people from everywhere.

We ate breakfast at this crowded cafe and enjoyed our first New York bagels!

We were so glad to have our iPhones! We were able to easily map out everywhere we wanted to go and find our way, although we went in the wrong direction more than a new times!

I am a big Project Runway fan, so seeing Parsons and hanging out in the garment district was really cool!

We went to see Wicked on Broadway and it was so well done! The whole performance was spectacular and the sets and costumes were amazing. We were in the second row, so we had a great view!

We had lunch at Bond 45 in Times Square and they have the biggest and most amazing tiramisu!

My first subway ride! We took the subways around the city and it was so quick! We quickly learned which trains were better and which express trains to get on. We took our first ride down to 34th Street to see the Empire State Building.

The Empire State Building was probably one of my favorite places! It was so cool to go to the top and look around! It felt like being in a movie.

Lots more photos coming from our trip!

Hello, to all my loyal blog readers! Just wanted to give a shout out to you and say thank you for dropping by frequently and checking out what is going on with me. I know that some of you have been following my blog and my life journey since I started blogging back in 2005. I have blogged about everything from scrapbooking to design school to my wedding planning! Thank you for following!

I would love to hear from you! You are the reason I keep on posting and I would love to hear about what you would like to see on my blog. More photos? More how-to? More about me? What are some topics you would love to see me post about?

Please leave a comment below and let me know or just say hi! I would love to hear from you!

So, the other day, I went back and looked through ALL my blog posts from 2009! WOW! What a great year!

Some of you may not know that 2009 was my first full year as a photographer! I’ve been shooting photos of people since I was in high school, and it has been my passion for a long, long time. Last February, I launched my first photography website and started promoting myself as a wedding and lifestyle photographer. A year ago, I had only shot two weddings for friends and only a handful of sessions. I was so blessed to have a VERY successful year and shot SO many fabulous weddings and we got to travel to Las Vegas (twice), San Antonio (twice), Lubbock (twice), Breckenridge and the Caribbean! WOW! Talk about dream come true!

It was such an awesome year and we got to meet some amazing people and get to know so many wonderful couples!

This year I know is going to be even more amazing and I am looking forward to what God has in store! I am going to try to blog more about Clint and I and our life adventures. Anything you want me to blog about? Leave a comment below!

Enjoy these photos of Clint and I in action in 2009!

At the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas using the Love ad for a ring shot.Can you count how many items I am holding? I think I have the brides flip-flops and water, my coat and about a million pounds of camera equipment strapped to me.Reviewing my image.Um, notice how much shorter I am than every one else! I am seriously short.Seriously! I am so short. Note to self: get some shorter black pants!This is what Clint calls the “pop-a-squat.” It’s a Kayla signature move. THIS is why my quads and shins are killing me after a wedding.Oh yes, I am so funny! Yeah, right!There it is again! The “pop-a-squat.”I am also and expert dress fluffer.Those girls were workin’ it!Come on boys, get in a straight line.Hello, HOT husband! He’s looking good while shooting!Giving instructions during a rehearsal. Me = part photographer + part wedding coordinatorCheck out that view! Remind me again why I moved to West Texas….That’s right! I am a hair stylist too!Doing Adrienne’s hair and make-up and Clint shooting the getting ready shots.Shooting barefoot in the sand…for the win!Work it, Clint!Love this blurry one of me! Having SO much fun and loving my life!

We were so blessed to get to shoot so much in 2009! Thank you to all our couples and clients! Love you!