The quest to find the 2011 Pinkle's Pic of the Year has begun! This year, my clients got to select their own entries and wow...this is what they produced! 

Round 1 - Jan 16 through midnight central on January 22nd, 2012

Use THIS poll below (for Round 1, you can select more than 1 image!):

Review the entire gallery HERE (you can also click on each image to make it bigger). Poll not displaying properly? Click THIS LINK to vote instead. Again, you can vote for more than one image, but you can only vote one time.

Round 2 - January 23rd-31st, 2011

- 4 finalists will be chosen based on this poll.

- 4 additional finalists will be selected by a panel of professional photographers.

- 4 more finalists will be added by me.

- Another poll will be put up so you can make your final decision from among those 12.

I sat down to post the annual Year in Review slideshow, but instead, I'm finding my mind is still swirling from what happened yesterday. I need to explain to you just how grateful my heart is on this first day of 2012. As some of you may have seen on my Facebook page, I spent the very last day of 2011 worried sick over my baby sister in the hospital. She had been complaining of a pain in her leg since her trip to New York earlier in Dec. and she called me early yesterday morning saying she had just blacked out in her hallway. My first thought was a blood clot...and then immediately, the fear of a pulmonary embolism. [I want to pause right here and thank someone very special--she will know who she is--for unknowingly giving me a key bit of knowledge about this very dangerous condition and possibly helping to save my sister's life. Thank you and my heart was very much with you during this holiday season.] 

My first words were, "We're going to the hospital..NOW!"

As she was going through the barrage of tests with so many unanswered questions and the very real fear that my sister could die, all I could think was how desperately I wanted the gift of another year with my sister. Just the day before, she and I watched this and marveled over his courage and peaceful outlook on life and death. While we were waiting in the hospital, we read this and this, pleased with how many of those we had done and vowing to check off the rest this year. 

Turns out, she did indeed have a blood clot in her leg, but thank goodness her lungs were clear!!! She has started treatment, but now we have to figure out why the clot formed so we can keep it from happening again. She is so young and a very healthy, non-smoking young woman...this kind of thing just doesn't make sense for her. As I'm writing this, I am actually glad to share this story with you in the hopes that should you or someone you know experience symptoms of DVT or a pulmonary embolism, you'll know to get immediate medical attention.

2011 was one of the busiest years I can recall in a long time and I know that busy=blessed. I had the privilege of meeting and/or working with hundreds families and photographers from all over the world. (It's funny how small my world has become thanks to Facebook ;-). However, to be honest right now, when I think back over the year as a whole, it's pretty much a blur to me--the only thing I can really remember is yesterday.

But I feel it's important to always acknowledge and thank the people who allow me into their lives and trust me photograph their most important family moments. I want to remind them how beautiful they are...how special their connections are...what a gift their families are. So, like I've done every year since 2007, I pulled just one image from each session to create the 2011 Year in Review... 

(Google Reader users: you'll need to click THIS LINK to see). 

My sister, my mom, and I all had separate plans for New Year's Eve yesterday, but all of our families ended up at my house last night. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful evening...cooking up an impromptu batch of homemade chili, all of us watching the 360º of fireworks in the horizon at midnight, listening to "Auld Lang Syne" on the iPod, toasting in paper cups, ringing in 2012 together. Grateful.

[p.s. Clients: I sent out the details on the 2011 Pinkle's Pic of the Year contest to you all. If you had a session with me in 2011 of any kind and did not get this info, let me know ASAP so I can get you up to speed.]

I've known Carrie online for quite sometime now (actually, she snuck in a session with me a couple of years ago and managed NOT to tell me that we knew each other online ;-) until after the fact. I had the privilege of getting to know her even more when she attended a workshop last year and we've been planning this family session almost since then. I mean, a LOT of planning. She did an amazing job of pulling together some beautiful clothes for everyone and we had scored a DREAM location that was halfway between her house and mine. The day of, I drove out with my mom (aka - photo assistant). The sunrise was beautiful and the weather wasn't nearly as hot as it had been. Everything was perfect. Except...

Oh, bless her little heart. I swear no matter what we did, nothing seemed to make her happy. Maybe she was tired, maybe she was teething, maybe it was just Murphy's Law. We had all driven all this way to make this session happen and I gotta say, I was truly worried we weren't going to be able to pull it off.

Somehow we managed. I think it mostly had to do with Carrie's wonderful sense of humor and how she embraces motherhood and all that comes with it so gracefully. Those girls of hers are truly beautiful and when we finally discovered the secret to happiness (banging pots and pans in the kitchen), all was right with the world.

Carrie...I totally enjoyed our adventure that day and I'm so glad to know you!

As if it was the "yang" to this "yin," we celebrated his 1 year birthday by seeing just how much color we could find in downtown Austin. We truly did not have to go far--that's just one of the many, many things I love about this city...it is so rich with vibrant color and texture! He was so expressive and that boy TORE into his cupcake. Lucky for us, there was a hose nearby where we could clean up our mess. Probably one of my favorite parts of the session was watching mom and dad work together on that task as a team.

Even though I'd spent hours going through the images and designing the album, my heart fluttered with both sadness and joy as I flipped through the pages when it arrived on my doorstep. The album features the maternity pictures, his beautiful birth day photos, and his perfect little newborn session (below). While it was incredibly rewarding to see it all tied together like that, it also meant that that particular "trilogy" was over.  I've mentioned before that this beautiful family is leaving Austin soon and I don't know why, but it really hits me hard when I think about it. I've been working with them since before the birth of their first baby a few years ago. Feels like I'm going to be saying goodbye to good friends. *Fortunately,* I get one last fix this fall before they're off to make a new life up north. And equally fortunate, we can stay in touch via Facebook.

Okay. I'm done moping now. Here are a few photos from his newborn session...