How's this for "not your typical senior portrait?" I was so thrilled when her and her mommy drove in to Austin for a "girls' date" --- a night on the town and then photo session with me in the morning, followed by a shopping trip to Anthropologie (bummer I couldn't go on that one!). Anthro is SO her style and all throughout the shoot, images from my favorite catalogs were running through my head.

I've used this location before, but on this day, we just kept finding gem after gem after gem. Little miss wasn't too keen on being there at first, but after she warmed up...just look at those grins. Little man, however, may very well be destined to be a model. He's so young, but he can totally turn on the charm for the camera. I so enjoy photographing this family.



I first met them when baby girl was still in mommy's tummy. I was so excited for them because they were having a girl. At the time, I was just a few months pregnant behind her and didn't know what I was having. (I think she did an excellent job of sending those pink vibes my way.) And then, I got to watch her grow up: newborn, 4 months,  7 months, and one year...and see my future a few months before my own little girl reached those milestones. I just love looking back on all of these images and I try to imagine what kinds of memories we preserved for this family.

["Sweet" tidbit of info: a few months ago I was contacted by the owner of Hey Cupcake! looking for a family to serve as the models for a new print ad campaign and THIS family was the one they chose! I can't wait to see how the ads turned out!!!]

This family, near and dear to my heart, is no stranger to this blog. I have had the honor of photographing babies #2 and #3 as newborns with several wonderful family sessions woven throughout. This time, we wanted to do something different. Something more lifestyle. How are they when they're just hanging out together? What do they do as a family? It was such a fun afternoon, although I will admit that bouncing around on the trampoline made me the teensiest bit woosey ;-). This kind of love and connection cannot be forced. These kids could not be happier. Their mama could not be a better example of what a mommy/wife should be. Their dad could not be funnier.

Their holiday card proved to be quite a challenge for me, though. There were so many images we wanted to feature, but short of sending out a poster-sized card, we had to come up with some way to tell the story of their session. So, we ended up with this tri-fold:

I LOVED how it turned out. In fact, I decided to turn the JOY, HOPE, LOVE lines into a 12x12 storyboard AND it was used as the title page of their album:

Okay, I'm going to go a bit out of order here because I've been *dying* the share the images from my first newborn studio session! This was from the demonstration I did for the FIRST Pinkle Toes 4 Photographers workshop earlier this month. So much was going wrong for me that day (my mom/assistant was sick, my camera broke, the weather was yuck), but this little baby girl and her family were oh so right! After a bottle and a few minutes of rocking and shhhhhhing, she was putty in my hands.



Just look at that smile while looking up at her daddy! She seriously has me thinking I could start offering newborn sessions in studio....just maybe...

You might recognize this cutie pie and her AMAZING nursery from L's blog, but I had the honor of filling in a little bit this summer while Lynds was focusing on her sweet little boy. The very first thing that struck me that day when mom opened the door were her EYES (you'll see what I mean towards the middle of the slides)! My word! I had never seen such brilliant green eyes before! And then I got to meet her precious baby girl who had eyes that were just as bright and sparkly...