..finished up a gallery for one of my long-time and most favoritest clients today and realized that I can’t actually blog any of them yet lest we spoil the AWESOME Halloween cards she is getting ready to send out. As you may remember, she does Halloween cards every year and every year, I get to live vicariously through her creative Halloween genius. Well, okay, you twisted my arm: one small, ghoulish taste HERE.

However, that being said, while digging up all of our old blog posts (2009 and 2010a and 2010b), I noticed that hadn’t yet blogged 2011! Thought this was a pretty good excuse to do so now:

Last year was amazing, I’ll give you that, but I promise, I absolutely cannot wait to show you Halloween 2012 😉

So you know he’s gotta be all things hip and cool. And he is. Just like his parents and his big sis.

Two more favs HERE and HERE.

I am almost 100% certain you all remember “Miss Jolie-Pitt”. Well, she and her hubby had their baby boy and I think he’s pretty darned adorable!!! I have to say that it’s not right for a new mommy to look that beautiful so soon and the sock monkey hat is TDF! And it’s tough to resist the temptation to curl right up next to them when they’re all snuggled up like that in that deep, peaceful baby slumber.

Oh, yes, must share this quick snapshot of Mr. Domestic while we were setting up for the shoot:

Yup. I’d say that’s pretty close to perfect in my book, LOL!

I was beginning to wonder if this session was ever going to happen for us. You see, we already rescheduled twice because of rain and then wouldn’t you know it, in the wee hours of the morning of our third try, I got a call from this family 😉 and I ended up camping out at the hospital. My goal was to still hold their session that day, but we’d just move it to the afternoon. But as we all know, babies like to be born on their own schedule and I seriously didn’t think I would make it downtown that day. Somehow, it worked out, and as soon as I finished up the birth photos, I hoofed it down to them. I’m so thankful they were so patient and understanding that day! And I have to tell you, that baby girl sure made it super easy to have a wonderful session. They truly don’t come sweeter than her. Just look at those squishy cheeks and that hilarious duck face she makes. Sigh…

One thing that I try to stress over and over again in my professional photography workshops is to have a plan, but be willing to accept it when that plan has to totally go out the window. For this session, we had an amazing plan and Linsey, oh, Linsey worked so hard coming up with most ADORABLE campfire and s’more set up. The weather was perfection, the light was stunning, the outfits she put together were bright and happy, but when we first got together that night, I didn’t think anything would end up bright and happy. You can read all of the details in Linsey’s perfectly written blog post, but I’ll sum it up for you in four words: kids will be kids.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: in my heart of hearts, I honestly did not think we were going to pull this session off. Bless them, they drove all the way in from the Houston area and Linsey was trying so hard to keep everyone happy and cheerful. We were getting desperate. Some lovely stranger at the park even ran to her car to get us a band-aid for the little guy when he fell. I think everyone at the park took pity on us that evening. When it was clear that it was hopeless, I finally took Linsey aside so we could re-evaluate our situation. I said, “We have to come up with a Plan B in case we can’t pull it together before the sun goes down. What are the three most important things to you that you want me to capture in this session?” She looked at me with her big beautiful eyes and said with complete and heartfelt conviction, “I need to look pretty. I need the kids to smile. I need our family interacting together.” Not too much to ask at all. We can do this. I know we can do this!

And wouldn’t you know it that as soon as we had decided to call it a night, miraculously, the kids rallied and we accomplished our goals for the evening: 1) Linsey looked BEAUTIFUL, even when she was surrounded by tears and chaos, 2) the kids DID smile, and 3) everyone came together and looked like they were having the time of their lives. Whew!!!! Thank you so much, Linsey, for hanging in there that evening and for not giving up on me ;-). I hope you can look back on these images and maybe have a little giggle to remember what we went through to get this. And in case you can’t remember:

P.S. You can check out Linsey’s beautiful photography HERE!

This had to have been one of the most natural, relaxed, easy-going families ever. And that always results in natural, relaxed, easy-going family portraits. I especially loved the last series with just the two of them. Their connection was tangible! And could those children be any more adorable?! I think we could have played all night in the creek! (Another fav HERE).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, photo sessions with older newborns (4-6 weeks old) are quite fun! It’s really neat when you get to see some personality peeking through and all of those adorable looks babies give when they’re being so expressive. Such a lovely morning spent with this family, basking in the glow of parenthood. (My favorite image from this session is HERE.)

Side note for photographers: it came up in an online conversation recently how lucky I must be to work in all of these homes with tons of great light and beautiful decorations and I wanted to say that in spite of how things may look on my blog, that’s not always the case. This home did have several sources of beautiful light and there were some lovely decorations, but if worse came to worse, I could have potentially shot the entire newborn session in just one of these rooms. Additionally, while the room shown in the last two images was really pretty, but the light was actually not that great. I had to shoot at a pretty high ISO to get this look, but I’m a big fan of backlighting (duh!), so it worked in my favor for these shots. Truly, if you can find (or create) just one small area with beautiful, soft light, you can find a way to make it work for  you. In my upcoming 2013 workshops, I will be taking you INTO a client’s home for a newborn photo session demonstration and you can see for yourself just how to make it work for you. Hmmmm…maybe I should go ahead and challenge myself and say I’ll show you how to shoot a session in just one small spot? If we have to, we will! The discount deadlines for early payment for the workshop fees are quickly approaching, so don’t miss out.

Last month, when we went to Houston for a little family time + a few photo sessions, the days leading up to our departure were dry as a bone. And then all of a sudden, much to my dismay, the storm clouds started rolling in over the Houston area :-(. Amanda and I were in touch the night before, trying to decide what our plan of action would be. I mean, if worse came to worse, I could do a family photo shoot in the rain, but really, who wants to deal with that???? I think the thing that was making me nervous is that I was going to be driving (before sunrise) about an hour from our hotel to a place I’d never been before with unpredictable weather and I was going to have to pull off a photo shoot, site unseen. There…the truth is out. I actually like to plan my sessions well in advance and try to eliminate as many variables as possible. I like to control the things I have control over so that I can handle the things I can’t control (like fussy kiddos or bad weather).

But this post is called the “good luck” session for a reason: we had really, really good luck!!! Watching the radar, there was literally rain and storms all around us. Sure it was a little dark when we got started, but here and there, the sun actually peeked out! But here’s what made this session most enjoyable: Amanda’s children!!! Typically, children of photographers have what we like to refer to as “Photographer Child Syndrome.” If you haven’t heard of it before, basically children w/ PCS turn into little ornery buggers whenever a camera comes near them (I give you exhibits A and B). Amanda’s kiddos, on the other hand, were perfect angels. I don’t know what they’re doing, but they have raised some loving, polite, respectful and joyful children and they should be very, very proud.

My personal fav is HERE!

Let me preface this that while the title of this post is a “walk in the park,” with little miss in full speed, it was more like a dash in the park. We couldn’t have had more perfect weather on this day and it was really fun to watch this little one explore her surroundings with 100% curiosity, 100% confidence, and 50% balance, LOL. Um, I know why her mommy is so tiny 😉

So I looked up “cool” in the dictionary the other day and I happened to see THIS family ;-). Seriously, who else elects to have their family portraits taken inside the awesome office space of Google in Austin. These guys, that’s who. I could have stayed there all day and played with all of the fun stuff and the kids just LOVED being there. Lucky ducks. Oh, and did you see my absolute fav image I sneaked from this session? Oh, yes. Cool, indeed.