I had the extreme honor of photographing my little sister and her husband-to-be a few weeks ago on a beautiful evening in downtown Austin. It was such a special time and my gosh, we had a blast! It was such an easy thing for me to do...their relationship is so natural and their love and respect for one another shines through. He's so perfect for her and I've never, ever, ever seen her this happy. Ever. He fits into our family so seamlessly. Words cannot express how it makes my heart feel to see both my mom and my sister have found such wonderful partners in life. So very excited for their upcoming weddings!!!!

I think we all know I'm a big fan of color in photographs, but I always provide a black and white version of each image to my clients on their image CD just in case. When I processed the black and whites from this wonderful newborn session, I really loved the feel of them. The candid, real-life moments captured seemed to shine through even more when the color was removed. So, I thought I do something I've never done before in all my six years as a photographer: blog a session in black and white only.

Ooops. Wait. Scratch that. Just found a set of images that *has* to be color:

Oh well. Maybe someday I'll try that again.

I love it when we get opportunities like this to do a session in home...to really experience the environment where they brought their first baby home from the hospital after she was born. We also got to go to the nearby park where mom said they used to go before she was even pregnant...and when she was pregnant, they would take long walks and dream about the day they would hold her in their arms. What a gem to have this place frozen in time with these images!

Today....

When I realized a few days ago that I wanted to recreate this image for this wonderful mommy, I never believed that it might actually happen. The chances of getting a newborn perfectly posed + his toddler brother to even want to be in the same room + mom actually still having that beautiful skirt were pretty slim. But it worked. First try. It was a gooooooood day. I'm still in shock ;-).

In true Austin fashion, there was some event going on at the park when we met for our photo session that day. Parking...oh lovely parking. Well, let's just say it wasn't easy to snag a spot. But we pushed forward--all the way forward to the really, REALLY LOUD live music that happened to be there. We were shouting at each other to try and communicate. It was rather comical. But again, they pushed on through and managed to keep a great sense of humor. The pics of mom and her cubs...oh my...