One more session and I'll be FULLY caught up on my blog! Yay me! :) This was a super fun session....they contacted me about doing an "extended family" session, which I'd only done one of before a looong time ago, so I was a wee bit nervous...but it turned out so great! Everyone in the family was sooo nice and cooperative and really a lot of fun to shoot! :) These little girls were soooo adorable though!!! And, as you can see, the Jones family is expecting baby #5 this year and after 4 girls are getting a boy! What a crazy/fun household that will be! I'm so excited for them and maybe will get to do my first boy infant session this year when he comes! ;) ;) ;)
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and her 4 month pics!!! She's so much more mobile now and rolling everywhere!
This sweet little girl recently turned 1! I remember doing her 2 week old pictures, doesn't seem that long ago! And here she is smashing some cake! :) Her momma is my neighbor and wanted some tips on how to use her new camera so we set up the cake smash and took some pics! It was fun for me, especially since I've had a bit of a break taking pics! And Cake Smashes are one of my favorite types of sessions! SO much fun!
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My little sister came to visit while I was visiting home so I took a little time to take some pictures of her and her cute little kiddos!
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This Homecoming was from a few months ago (I'm behind on my blogging :) ). This little guy was an adventurous little thing and kept us busy til his daddy got there! I love seeing dad's come home to their little ones! SO sweet!
After my visit home, my dear niece Carmen came with to help me out for a bit and I took pics of her at the beach! She's much pickier than the littler girls but I think she's gorgeous :)
I have had a LOT of fun doing homecomings for her and am so grateful for the experience they've brought me and for the opportunity to capture such a wonderful moment for these families! As a military wife myself it really touches home and it's hard not to get emotional doing these sessions. It meant a lot of late nights/unpredictable times but so worth it! Especially capturing a dad's first time holding his child...those ones get me the most!!!! I think I did around 15 homecomings last year for Kelly and it was really so great! Here are a couple of links to a few of them that I did.
Towards the end of the year Kelly's other associate photographer in the area was out of town for awhile so I got to take over some other sessions for her, including some family sessions, a maternity session, a Mom and me session, and a 9 month old session. I was excited to add some more sessions to my experience with her!
Mom & Me Session (This has to be one of my favorite non-homecoming sessions I've done for Kelly...I LOVED how it turned out and being able to focus on doing a larger variety of mom/daughter pictures since that was all that the session was for! Normally in a family session I only do a few of mom/daughter since there's a lot of other poses with other family members that need to get done. It was fun to just focus on mom/daughter for this one!
Anyway, it's been a wonderful opportunity/experience working with Kelly and learning from her. I've been able to go to her for advice, critiques, even shadowed her at a wedding before I did Tim and Maurissa's, and it's been awesome to have someone to talk photography with! I'm super grateful for all her help and look forward to learning more! I am sad this year will be a lot slower for me session wise but am glad I was able to do so much last year and know I wouldn't have been able to do half as many sessions as I did without her! Yay for stalking Facebook right? :) So thank you ever so much Kelly! You're simply amazing :)
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]]>These two little boys came to visit me last October....crazy long time ago I know! They were super adorable then and are even cuter now! You should see them...seriously, seriously CUTE! Anyway...these pics were taken when they were 3 1/2 weeks old since they were born a little early and came home later than most babies. I've been wanting more experience with newborns and still want more because they really, truly are a hard, time consuming session! But I LOVE doing them and love new little babies so it's worth it! I was excited to do a twin session for the very first time and expected it to be more of a challenge and it definitely was! I was able to get some really good shots of each boy individually but it was really challenging to get good pictures together! They kept trading off on wanting to eat and having dirty diapers so it was hard to get them calm/together and then positioning them together was challenging too. I'm happy with what we accomplished though and at the very least we got great shots of each of them even if it was by themselves!
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| Love this adoring look she's giving him! :)Â |
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| These kids were so great and patient! |
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| Gorgeous family! |
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| Such a cutie! |
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| and a lovely young lady! |
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| and of course the littlest are always adorable! |
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| little stud too! :) |
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| trying to get some fun ones in :) |
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| This is one of my favorite sibling shots! |
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| The girls! |
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| And the boys! and then it died :) But yeah for it working enough! |
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| These two little girls are so adorable! |
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| Love the look on her face! |
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| They were definitely energetic as well but she really could turn on a smile! |
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| a little bit of "following the kid" shot :) love the light here through her hair |
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| can't forget the wee one! |
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| I'm a big fan of profile/side/more serious shots, as my daughter is notorious for only giving me good ones like that, but I love how they turn out! |
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| sweet sisters! |
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| and the happy parents! |
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| such a beautiful family! |
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| I love their little personalities shining through here ;) |
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| loved the lighting! and such a happy face! |
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| These ones are my absolute favorites! |
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| love her hair here :) |
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| Cute family! |
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| little stud, he was so cute! |
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| She was a toughy to get to look at the camera but I caught her! :) |
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| She was too but still cute! |
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| I got a lot of her "playing"Â |
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| Her as well...she loved to run! |
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| can't forget the boy! |
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| Absolutely love this one! |
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| She's so adorable! |
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| I met this cutie 3 years ago and he is growing up to be such a handsome, sweet little guy! |
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| This little gal and my little gal are besties and are so cute together! |
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| This little guy is such a doll but also a little stinker! He was pretty hard to get to pay attention during the session...we had to bribe him with fruit snacks in between shots :) Worked though! |
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| Love this adorable shot of her looking up at her Momma! |
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| Such a beautiful family! |
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| I really love this location and love the sunsets here! Â Love this shot especially. |
And there is the Korpi family! Love you guys!!!]]>
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| He was a hard one to catch/keep attention, especially with all these ducks in the pond! Total distraction for a toddler... |
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| I absolutely love these ones with the trees..the coloring is so pretty! |
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| Finally got some of the little guy at the end, we did a lot of running around and peek a boo behind the trees :) |
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| love this shot of mom and baby :) |
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| and love this of dad and baby! |
We didn't really have much of just baby from the session so I had him come over for a little session of his own to get a few shots. He's such a cutie!
I promise I tried different angles but angles is one of the things I need to work on with babies and this turned out to be his best one :) still cute though :)
So there is the Tijerina family! Thanks again guys, I loved taking your family photos!]]>
Or a big part of the reason anyway :) This little guy was born on August 17 and has been such a joyful addition to our family! He's sweet and cuddly and cute and so funny. We love him to bits! He definitely makes our family feel more complete.Â
One great thing about having an infant constantly around is I've been able to try out some infant pictures finally! I've only done my little nephew and one friend's baby girl but infants are definitely hard to work with and need lots of practice! So this post is some of the things I've done with our new little guy and his sister and daddy :)Â
My mom came to visit for the birth so before she left she wanted to go and see the ocean so we took my 1 week old little guy and his sister in their matching little anchor outfits and went to the beach!Â
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| Proud big sister |
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| We love Grammy! |
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| and my little guy! |
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| so sweet |
And these pictures are from when he was 2 weeks old. I was working on using some props (harder than it looks!) and positioning him while keeping him asleep/comfortable. I did pretty good, but luckily he's a pretty easy going baby to work with.Â
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| This one is my favorite! |
These pictures were from 1 month. I had been wanting to get some cute ones with his sister and I really wanted to get some with his daddy in uniform. I wanted him to wear his dress blues but the "ribbons" or something weren't up to date so he wore his khaki one, which is my personal favorite anyway :) I did take more than this but haven't gotten around to editing anymore.... :) that always happens with your own photos right? :)
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| Can you tell we're Bama fans? :) |
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| I really love these with his dad |
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| this is my all time favorite!!! |
These next ones are from his 3 month mark (I didn't do anything special for 2 mths) and luckily it was close to the holidays so I could try out the lights background! I've been wanting to do this for ever and really love the look of it. I think I might try it again doing a few things different this next week but we'll see ;)
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| my strong boy! |
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| and his big sister :) She didn't really want to take pictures but was a good little model for me :) (She just turned 3 two months ago and is such a big girl and a big help to me with the new guy :) |
So that's what's been keeping me busy these last few months! My little guy turns 4 months next week so I think I'll try something for that. Anyway...I have 6 family sessions from the past couple months waiting in line to be posted so on to that! :)]]>
We started out inside but they weren't too thrilled with that...
So we soon headed out to the swings instead! Much better :)
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I was nervous too though about making sure to make it different, which sometimes it is, but it was a much different location and they went more casual dress so I think I did pretty good on changing things up a little. Still need to work on that though and in directing people but I'm slowly getting better! It was a bit difficult to get a good group one because the kids were all focused in different directions but luckily we got some right in the beginning that turned out great, didn't even have to swap heads to get one where everyone was looking! :) Anywho...enough of my babbling, here's the pictures!
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| This is one of my favorite pictures of all I've done so far! He's such a little stud :) |
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| We tried to get some pics with the horses but they kept coming up close to me or moving away so we didn't get too many |
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| such a pretty horse though! |
Thanks again Hillary for asking me to take your family pics! Hopefully I can put up more soon with your cute, chubby little boy!]]>
And there you have it! Thanks again Jeanie for asking me to take your pics! Congrats again and sorry I can't be there :(]]>
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| The Birthday Girl! |
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| Some girly pics...with a silly face :) |
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| see? adorrable! :) |
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| I love this one! |
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| Time for cake! She sat there like this and yelled at it for a bit before she ate it...so silly! |
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| and then went all delicate..one finger at a time...testing it out ya know? :) |
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| Then she decided it tasted good and went for it! |
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| didn't even care when the tulle got caught |
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| absolutely loooove this one! |
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| and done! |
But anyway.....this past week I had the opportunity to take pics for my good friend Chelsea and Jaime who both had their husbands come back from their deployment this week! I was so super excited for them and so excited to take pics. It's such an exciting day anyway but BOTH of these women had babies while their husbands were deployed so that made it just even more exciting/special/amazing. I still tear up just thinking about it! It was just so sweet and wonderful to capture those moments of the daddies meeting their babies for the first time and it just melts my heart! I loved being a part of it! So here's my friend Chelsea first. Her hubby came off first :)
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| waiting for the buses to arrive! |
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| Love this cutey! She's so pudgy baby cute! :)Â |
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| And the buses are here! |
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| Yay! almost time! |
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| Daddy is found! |
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| So happy! |
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| Meeting his little girl! |
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| I ADORE this shot! |
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| Trying to hold Avery but it didn't work out so well :)Â |
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| The happy happy family! Yay! |
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| Looking for daddy! |
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| Found! |
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| Mom made it over... he was waay done the line. |
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| Meeting the new baby!!! SO sweet! |
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| And the other kids finally made it over! SO happy! |
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| Spending a few more seconds with the new baby, see? isn't that one of the most touching things ever? |
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| heart melting right here! Love it so much |
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| And the family is complete! Congrats again you guys! |
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So this family I've known for a LONG time! The momma was my high school English teacher, and has always been a fav of mine ;), and I actually babysat for the two little ones when Matti was a wee lil' baby! So I was really excited to do this session and LOVED how it turned out! Gorgeous family, gorgeous location, gorgeous day! :)
A before and after shot of the parents! :)
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]]>This past Saturday I did two family sessions, and once again they were siblings of my best friend Sarah! Thanks for having so many siblings Sarah! :) Anywho...this is her sister Tacy's family (their farm is the one I've been using to take pics at, thanks again Tacy! You're so great!). I've been learning some new things that I put to use this session and I'm pretty happy with the results! I did have a couple eek moments while I was going through them but LUCKILY I was also shooting JPEG+RAW and was able to fix the RAW version with no problems! Thank goodness for that!!!! I was also really happy that I've continued to change things up even though I'm at the location. I did, of course, use some of the same spots but luckily since they live there, we were able to do some different things. :) So here we go!
And here's two of my fav "before and after" that I did, yay RAW image editing! :)
]]>This is the second family I did a couple Saturday's ago, yet another one of Sarah's siblings, but this time she did family pics with her hubby and kids and his family. They were such a fun group, had lots of ideas and a GORGEOUS area to take it in! They live just down the road from the farm I've been taking pics at and love, but they own a hatchery (I think? I'm totally blanking right now...) but anyway, I know they have a lot of land and there are a LOT of ponds on it and lots of wooded areas and countryness and yeah... :) Love it!
This is the biggest group I've had so it was definitely a learning experience and a bit hard for me! There's just so much you have to think of at the same time and with not having things automatic yet it was a good experience :) The thing I had the most trouble with was dealing with the lighting....which first off it was early afternoon so the sun is a smidge more difficult to deal with and then half the time we were in treed areas so with the light coming in through the branches/leaves/etc. I didn't always catch when one person had a bright or shaded spot when everyone else didn't...shoulda been easy to catch right, but I was also focused on getting the right settings/posing/getting everyone to look/smile/keep their eyes open/etc. that I kinda got distracted sometimes, still learning and slowly getting better! :) But I still loved this session and had lots of fun. Thanks again for letting me take your family pics! Anywho! Here are the pics! {These are backwards, just fyi, I always forget blogger uploads them backwards from what you put them in...weird...)
This was taken kinda in between/moving spots but I just adore it!
]]>Hopefully I get it worked out soon because I am editing another family session from last weekend and am shooting one more this Saturday and then ANOTHER next week! Yay! So I'll be super busy with all that, thank goodness! My weeks have been dragging lately :) Anyway, have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by!]]>
]]>P.S.- I've got a few sessions I'm working on so sorry for the lull but there's some great ones coming! Thanks for stopping by! :)]]>
The set up I had in my head! :) So cute!
Didn't last long though cuz when I went to change it Evelyn let the balloons go! whoops!
So sad!
Even sadder!
She wouldn't let the balloon thing go though..
This is probably my favorite shot...so gorgeous!
One of my favs!
Another fav!!!
So there you have it! My beautiful baby girl, who is definitely no longer a baby! Next week I'm doing a one year old shoot so stay tuned!
I will say here that I'm sorry for the slight inconsistency of my watermark/logo throughout the pics...I've been reading up a lot on watermarks/publishing pics online and the reality of people stealing your images and using them for themselves/copying/cropping/editing/etc....there's so much stuff out there on all this! It's crazy and overwhelming and scary sometimes ;) So while I was editing/watermarking this session I kinda did a couple different things to try out and see how I liked it (more so for the pics I posted on facebook than here) and I'm still deciding exactly how I want to do things...I just want to be able to protect my photos and not have to worry about anything else! I love photography and taking the pics and even love editing, I just don't look forward to learning/having to deal with all the business stuff attached...ugh...not my forte! But I'm slowly learning what I need to do and know that it will be a long process to learn everything I need to be successful so patience is what I need! :)
So yeah...here's some of my favs from the session...more are posted on facebook on my new ForEvers After Photography page! I got tired of putting everything up on my personal page so I made this one so please stop on by and "like" me! :)
Oh, and here's a couple of fyi's before I start...these are backwards...blogger does that when you upload but whatev! :) Next..don't you just LOVE the colorings of most of these? I, of course, did a lot of different edits, but the ones shown mostly here are a particular one that I LOVE...it's called brown haze and it's from the Pure Haze Collection from Pure Photoshop Actions. Absolute LOOVE it, especially outside and with the barn wood here! It's GORGEOUS! I'll have to do a before and after and post it later so you can see the magicalness of it... it's just so rich and warm and yummy! ;) If any of you use photoshop and want some awesome actions I HIGHLY recommend these awesome ladies! Ok..now for real, the pics!
Don't you love the texture/writing on the background? I recently got some textures from Ginny Haupert Textures and I just love the look of this! Textures are a bit tricky and one of the things I'm working on learning/getting just right....they can be so fun though!
And the perfect pic to end with! This little guy is such a little stud and such a poser and so cute!
This one is my absolute favorite! Love the little half smile!
I saw someone do something similar to this on pinterest (LOVE the military ones, so cute!) and I definitely had to try it out! Her daddy is deployed to Afghanistan right now so very, very fitting! She didn't quite like it so I grabbed a quick shot and we got her off :)
]]>I've always loved this stretch of road before you get to the farm! I was so excited to take pics on it finally! And we got it at the perfect time, the sunlight streaming through the trees was just AMAZING!
These are my second FAVS, after the gorgeous tree lighting :) I love the whole scene with the trees and barn and the gate...so picturesque!
Thanks again for letting me take your pics Robin! I absolutely love them and almost wish they were mine :) SO don't be surprise if I have these hanging in my house someday! :) haha...
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This was actually one of the last pics we did...she was ready to be done! Pretty funny/cute though!
This is probably the best full frontal of all of us.
After awhile my hubby had to distract Miss E so he showed her how to skip rocks, she LOVED it and it was SO cute!
Love this one!
Not much of a facial shot but I just love it!
Kady got a snow cone after we took the family pics so I snatched these real quick...so funny!
This is super cute though
She didn't really want to take pics though so this was the closest I got with her Momma!
Adorable!!!
Love this one!!!
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Later in the week after doing Maci's session, I did a session with the whole fam! We went up to the Bothwell Lodge (SO pretty!) and took some great pics. It was definitely a learning experience for me though; I was trying to do more with my manual settings but still have to learn what settings to use when/where and then it also gave me some experience with posing people, which is very different with a whole fam compared to one or two people! :) But they were all great and I had a lot of fun doing this session!
I did have a bit of a hard time with editing the pics this time, mainly because I didn't always use the right setting but after a lot of time in Photoshop and then discovering this AMAZING website, Pure Photoshop Actions (they have lots of little actions and effects...(some for free!)...and they are SO helpful! really improved my editing skills, Photoshop is hard to learn and there is SO much you can do so my basic skills don't always get the best result). Anyway, I'm in love with their actions and want them all but am only allowing myself to get two sets for now (they were on sale this week! Perfect timing).
Anyway, enough of my rambling, here's the pics!
SO there you have it! Thanks Nilson's for letting me take your pics!]]>
He's such a ham!
but so super cute!Happy Birthday Jeremiah! :)
Well now she's 5 months older and SO cute and chubby! This girl is CUTE. And she's so happy and smiley and just...cute!!! I wanted to try out some of my new props and she was the perfect gal for the job! :) You'll be seeing her more later on in the week after I do family pics for her fam! But here's the ones from today...
And here's my favorite!!!
Can't wait to do the whole fam later this week! til then!]]>
I think this is one of my all time favorite shots, ever! I love every single coloring I did too...it's just a great shot! At least I think so... :)
So there you go guys! Good luck in Alaska! I'm gonna miss you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOVE YOU!]]>
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These last two shots are two of my all time favorites!
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And for my two absolute favorites!
Aren't they a gorgeous couple?? It's not hard to take good pics with a good lookin' couple like them. :) Anywho....this was a pretty simple wedding shoot compared to most, which was great for me because I don't think I could handle a full blown wedding right now! I need some more experience first....]]>
I've been trying to do a little more fun edits on my more recent shoots but this is the only "fun" one for this shoot.]]>