a little puppy named kayden.

If you want to get technical about it, technically Kayden cried on and off (mostly on) through his entire session. And only fell asleep at the very end. Can you tell?? Exactly.

mother's day minis practice round.

I am so excited to host my very first set of mini sessions. I had my practice run with a pair of gorgeous sisters who are looking forward to surprising their mom with the photos for Mother's Day. They modeled my props beautifully. Am I right?

 

I had some more ideas for the balloons, but my AHEM assistant AHEM (my mom) accidently let them go...but I couldn't fire her because she quit. Too much pressure.

 

 

Ah, don't you just love her? She is a former student of mine and sometimes I pretend she's my daughter.

 

 

 

I edited these photos with a vintage overlay because I felt the session had a very vintage feel about it. The lace, the flower crowns, the old fashioned bike. I did give the girls a basic edit as well just in case they don't care for the vintage look, since they are teenagers and everything.

editing tips.

If you have any type of Photoshop (I have Elements 12) you should be able to make some unwanted thing in a picture disappear using the clone stamp tool. All I have to do is press "s" and it automatically makes this tool accessible to me. I am going to show a before and after photo where I used to clone stamp tool and a few actions to kind of blend away a feeding tube.

Before

After

 

Okay, to use the clone stamp tool you have to drag your mouse over an area and press the alt button at the same time. For example, I wanted the tube to disappear but leave behind skin so I held my alt button and dragged the mouse over an area of skin I wanted to "clone", let go of the alt and dragged my mouse over the tube, blending it away. It took some time to match that skin tone, and my perfectionist self still doesn't think it looks perfect, but this little girl's mom is just excited that she can have 7 month photos without a tube in her daughter's nose. To finish up I used the creamy skin smoother action I purchased in the Greater Than Gatsby Newborn Essentials Collection (which I absolutely recommend) all over her face, brightened her eyes like I would any other photo and then added another action that I thought brought out the colors nicely. Here are a few more from this shoot.

 

 

debut maternity photo shoot.

Today I had my very first maternity photo session with my lovely friend Alicia, her hubby, and her adorable bump. It was super last minute, but between the two of us we came up with some cute poses, and even added some maternity boudoir. Here are the highlights of Alicia with her clothes on.

Okay, the rest she has her clothes on.

 

 

 Puppy paws on the belly! So sweet.

little miss claire.

Newborn sessions are probably my favorite thing to do in all the land. There is nothing like a sweet little baby peeing all over your props to make you feel alive. But really, I just love little bitty babies, and I have to wash my blankets after every shoot anyway. The little girl I met today was so adorable and tiny, she couldn't even fit into my newborn headbands so we had to do some finagling, but we made it work. Here are the highlights.

 

Miss Claire made her entrance a bit early, and not exactly gracefully so these first time parents wanted to get some photos of her coming home outfit as the whole giving birth to a baby aftermath is kind of stressful.

 

 

I am all for baby posing, I think it's super cute. But I enjoy when the mom doesn't really have a preference and we can just let the baby do what they want. It's so much more natural and sometimes even more precious than one of the popular poses right now.

 

 

 

It took us pretty much the entire session to get her to fall asleep, but when she finally gave in, her face was just the sweetest thing.

january wedding continued...

I just can't get enough of the photos from yesterday's wedding. It amazes me what can be accomplished with some organization and subjects who behave. I used my 50mm lens for all of the photos taken because no one has time to switch lenses when capturing a wedding. Since I only work with prime lenses at the moment, I would never consider myself a wedding photographer. But I loved pretending for the day. Here are a few more shots of the pretty bride getting ready...

 

 

This bride is extremely crafty. Above are her vows and she made her own headpiece.

I only had roughly 20 minutes to take pictures of the couple outside before our Cali girl froze to death. We literally went out to the front of the church and then walked to the back of the parking lot.

 

 

These photos were taken in a PARKING LOT.