Tonight, we will be gearing up to send our boys to school in the morning for the first time. After homeschooling for 3 years, we’ve decided that they need a new experience. My husband desperately needs a break. The boys desperately need a break from each other. It’s going to be a tough transition, but I’m certain it will also be a good one for our family at this point in time. I am sad to lose our amazing schedule and flexibility and all of this time with them, but I’m excited to have a more structured work day, which will hopefully lead to a more play time with the kiddos when they’re home from school.

To wrap up an AMAZING summer, we decided that the family should tag along to some family photo sessions I had scheduled in the Houston area this past weekend. When I travel to shoot, I like to stay focused on what I’m there to do, so I was a little nervous about balancing family + work, but this turned out to be an amazing working vacation!!! In between shoots, we got to visit some incredible places, including the Space Center Houston, the Downtown Aquarium, the Houston Zoo, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Houston Children’s Museum. The Houston City Pass turned out to be a GREAT value for our visits to all of these places…so glad we did that! Be prepared you will have to pay some extras like parking or to see certain exhibits or ride certain rides, but overall, totally worth it.

The images above were all created and edited with my iPhone…funny how I rarely pull out my real camera any more when it comes to my personal work. Yeah. All of my personal images seem to be Instagram only these days ;-). This week, I also will be posting some sneak peeks of the sessions I did in Houston (with my big girl camera).

Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to the laundry and then perhaps one more final family swim before our summer is…sniff…over. Good luck to everyone here in Austin who is sending their kiddos to school tomorrow. Good luck to those who may be continuing or even starting their own homeschool journey. It is definitely not something we regret and would go back to it in a heartbeat if we decided we needed to do so.

P.S. Thank you to those of you who encouraged me to submit some of my iPhone images to National Geographic. After much convincing from friends and family, I finally decided to send in this one. We shall see…

I probably get more nervous when I photograph a repeat family…repeatedly (I can’t find the links to all of the sessions right now, but I think this makes 5). I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with something new and innovative and exciting and different. What I tend to forget is that families are constantly changing and therefore, any session with them is going to be new and exciting and different by the very nature of it. This is one of those sessions that will go down in my memory as perfect.

The children were perfect, mom and dad were perfectly happy, the weather was amazing, and everyone seemed to fall into the good light without even trying. My favorite part of this session, though, was not captured “on film.” It was the 30 min. or so I stayed after we had finished taking pictures to listen to the oh-so-amusing story of how these two met and fell in love. I think I could have stayed all morning just listening to the two of them reminisce and watching their eyes sparkle as they told their stories. Thank you for that moment, guys. It was a wonderful memory for me.

P.S. Those little toes you see peeking out from behind mom/dad’s arms w/ the peach stripe shirt on my home page slideshow? Those are his.

P.P.S. My personal fav HERE.

When it comes to a cake smash to celebrate a baby’s very first birthday, it’s always fifty/fifty. Some babies dig into the cake, some babies won’t have anything to do with it. This baby, however, loved.every.second.of.it.

And it just so happened to work out perfectly that we were able to do a little “pool” session outside to help clean her up after all of the cake hoopla! {Be sure to check out my FAV image…loved the look on her face when she tasted the cake for the first time.}

So when his mommy told me that he was on the move and full of energy, I thought, “That’s cool. I can handle that.” But see that little sweaty-boy-head? Trust me, Nina and I probably had it 10x worse trying to keep up with him, LOL! I like a challenge, though, and I like having to think on my feet and move quickly to capture what I’m seeing and anticipate what I’m about to see, so thanks, little man, for making sure we were on our toes!

This was session #2 of my one-on-one photography coaching session w/ Nina from Singapore. So funny how Austin was in this long, horrible dry spell until all of a sudden, I need to be shooting outdoors and then it decides to POUR! Lucky us, we had a small break in the storms this evening. Lucky us, the rain cooled things off a bit and provided a bit of a reward for us all at the end of our session.

Behind-the-scenes:

And one more here.

After our busy day of shooting and talking and all things photography, Nina and I treated ourselves to a fab dinner at Chuy’s (she had never had Tex-Mex before!). As we were pulling into the restaurant, the sun came out and we had the most wonderful light. Couldn’t resist:

Isn’t she purdy?

I mean, seriously? How did he get to be so lucky as to be born with those amazing locks? He was an absolute perfect little newborn baby for what I believe was his 2nd or 3rd newborn photo session, LOL. Loved his expressive eyes and little chunky thighs! For the last shots, mom had pulled out part of her wedding dress. I was trying to figure out how to use it (it was a bit scratchy to wrap him it it) when we decided to shoot through it. I loved how those turned out!!

This session was actually part of a one-on-one photography mentoring session I had put together for Nina all the way from Singapore! Did you see the shot she took from this session HERE? WOW!!! I was a little nervous about doing this kind of thing because I had never done any one-on-one mentoring before, but Nina convinced me to give it a go. Our time together was too short and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Nina and her work and finding ways to help her grow her own business. Here’s Nina in action at this shoot:

More images from our other adventures together will be coming soon and Nina, I mean it…it was a pleasure hanging out with you and I very much look forward to visiting you again someday! Photogs: if you would like to be notified of possible future photography workshops and coaching, drop a line.

Well this one will definitely go down in Pinkle Toes session history as the coolest spot EVER. I will admit when I first heard the idea, I was a bit skeptical. I just couldn’t envision two small kiddos in a giant stadium. But then I thought, “Two small kiddos in a giant stadium? That’s AWESOME!” When we first got there, we had to kill a bit of time to wait for the players to finish up with their practice. We had a nice time hanging out on the grounds, but the kids–wait, who am I kidding?–we ALL were dying to get out on the field. It was everything we could have possibly imagined and then some. Wow! What an experience for these little ones! (Did you see my personal fav?) And before anyone asks if we can do their session here, let’s just say we had some special hook ups for this one, okie dokie?

Unbeknownst to me, their auntie was doing a little behind-the-scenes work while I was rolling around on the field:

 Oh, yes. BEHIND the scenes, indeed ;-).

The way the water was sparkling in the creek that day was incredible and while it was a wee bit humid that day, we were lucky enough to get a little breeze. This mommy said she used to do yoga classes at sunrise out here by this creek. Wow…what a great place to do yoga. If I lived closer to it, this would become one of my favorite hangouts for my own children. About the ducky…we had given it to little man to play with while we were taking pictures, but just like any normal toddler, the second he got hold of it, he chucked it right into the creek! Fortunately, a family friend was with us and spotted in the creek…this pic was her idea. Glad we got it! And oh yes…my personal fav from this session can be found HERE.

Note: Just 4 more openings left for the Back-t0-School mini sessions (Friday Aug 17th in the p.m. at my studio)!

I was more than just a little thrilled when I happened to drive by this super cool spot on my way home one day. I’d been trying to think of the PERFECT location for this family with two active little boys and wouldn’t you know it, this place had it all! Trucks, a school bus,…a dinosaur. Yeah. We were all a bit giddy…

…your idea is bad ass.  Love it.  Let’s light this candle.

That note from dad had me laughing until I cried. I knew this was going to be a killer session!

But wouldn’t you know it, the kids weren’t nearly as excited about the dinosaur as we were. In fact, they were pretty much terrified and we could barely get them to go near it. We tried and tried and tried, but we only managed a couple of shots. After all my years of doing this AND as a mom, you would think I would understand Murphy’s Law is king when it comes to the wee ones ;-). So, I let my dino dreams sour and we opted instead for drawing, playing on the playground, making music, trucks, bike riding, and just exploring the area. I happen to LOVE those images so much more than anything I was imagining with the dino. He was silly looking anyway

[Wanna see my personal FAV from this session and some amazing eyes? Click HERE.]

These two weren’t thrilled to be up so early in the morning, but once they got to exploring, they didn’t mind so much. Are you kidding me with those lace outfits at the beginning? Dear me. Too cute! At their newborn session, it wasn’t tough to tell who was who. Still holds true at one year! [Don’t miss the ultimate portrayal of motherhood outtake HERE.]

The first time I hung out with this family was last Christmas and that baby girl was just a wee baby. How cool to see her again all sitting up pretty on her own and constantly cracking up at her big sister! I adored getting to photograph them in their home…their environment…where they were comfortable and relaxed. Those are the best times!