I met Brittaney and Jesse just after they had gotten engaged and was honored when they hired me to take their wedding photos.  We did a chilly engagement session at the beginning of last year (2011) and got to know each other a little more before their wedding in June.  They had a really fun wedding day and then found out shortly after they got hitched that they were expecting their first child!  Mea arrived on June 21st and has been a huge blessing to both of her parents!  I was honored yet again to take some photos for this family and capture Mea at 3-months-old.  I love keeping in touch with families and capturing images of their lives together at all different stages.  I love my job!

It is a fun challenge for me when I arrive to a newborn session and the parents have special requests for me.  In the instance with Rainey, her mommy asked me to pose her on one of her old antique chairs that she had in her room growing up as a child.  We covered it with one of my prop blankets (she didn’t like the original chair fabric) and posed little Rainey in it for a few shots.  What a fun memory they will always have with this chair!

Meet Jadon, the cutest little 3-year-old cowboy you ever did see!  He told me he liked dressing up as a cowboy and wanted to look just like Matt Dillon.  He gave me a pretty good stare down with his big bad rifle, too.  We jumped around in the grass and playing big and mean cowboys together.  I absolutely loved this part of his family session because it reminded me of something I’d do with my little boys!

We did an urban shoot for Jack’s senior photos and ran across this brightly colored wall that wasn’t too “manly” for senior pictures, but a fun background for some quick shots with him and his mom, Janet.  It started me thinking that someday I will be taking my boys’ senior photos.  Sniff. Sniff!  Got me feeling all sentimental!  I loved these outtakes of Janet and Jack to show their playful side and the fun relationship these two have with each other.  I don’t think you can look at the last photo of them and not crack up a little.  Funny stuff!  Not sure what they were laughing about, but you can tell they have genuine affection for each other.  Here’s to hoping that someday my boys look at me the same way Jack looks at his mom!

I met Hayley about four years ago just before her Freshman year in high school when she was only 14.  She has been the best babysitter for our kids and we have loved getting to know her over the years! She is super energetic, respectful and a talented soccer player.  She is just one of the most easy-going and nicest people you will ever meet!  I was honored to shoot her senior photos and cannot wait to see where life will take her over the next few years!  Congrats, Hayley, hope your Senior year is special and fun!  I picked these photos of her because they show of her really cute personality.

On my last trip home to Oregon, I got to take photos of my niece, Kate, in honor of her second birthday.  She is just the sweetest little girl so full of smiles and spunk!  My mom, sister, Kate and I walked around downtown Salem for an  hour snapping photos and hanging out for this particular shoot.  I was scouting out locations for an upcoming session so it worked out great to have Kate come along and help me test the locations and lighting.  She was so natural and did exactly what I asked her to do the entire time.  I’m glad we’ll have these images to keep for years to come and feel blessed that I was the one that got to capture them!

Kristin and I have a big thing in common.  We LOVE our Starbucks!  One of her favorite things to do with her daughter is to go to Starbucks and get a treat and hang out in the mornings.  They have been doing this together since Siena was a toddler and I think it’s a really special tradition they’ll always share together.  As part of our photo session together in Salem, Oregon, we stopped at, you guessed it, Starbucks, and got some drinks and treats before moving on to take more photos.  I love that these photos will always remind them of these special times together!

This past year I’ve been really been trying focusing on newborns and grow as much as I can in this area of photography.  Traditionally, portrait photographers really don’t need macro lenses very often unless they are photographing newborns or weddings (ring photos!), but I love doing both, so I took the plunge and bought one a few weeks ago.  I have shot five newborn sessions with it and I really love the details it can capture!  Here are a few of the photos I have taken with it recently.  Beautiful lips, fingers, ears and toes!

It was 20 degrees outside and the little guys were cold, cold, cold!  What to do to get those smiles back?  How about look for buried treasure?  Thankfully, I live close to the location we did our photo shoot for the Odom family and know all the hiding spots of the geo caches.  We snooped around and found one in an old old tree that had been uncovered thanks to the recent warmer weather.  Rhys and Kennah opened it up and decided to keep the little frog they found inside.  Smiling problem solved!

On a cold, wintry day in February, the Stromquist family and I took a venture out into the snow for a family photo shoot.  I asked them to wear boots and gloves to stay warm and to also bring a sled so we could have some fun with the kids during the session.  At one point while mommy and daddy were pulling their little cutie pies, the little ones toppled over into the cold snow.  Pretty funny!  Okay, funny for the adults, maybe not so comical for the kids, but they shook it off and we got some great smiles from them even after their little “oops!”