Rain and shine

Last year I hippoty-hopped down south for holiday photo sessions and it rained almost the whole time. Not my first choice, but we totally made it work. This year when I checked the forecast I was happy to see sunny skies and mild temperatures, except for an ever-so-slight chance of a rainstorm the first day.

When Nakeeah e-mailed me the day before her family session a little nervous about the forecast, I quickly reassured her that the weather would be no issue. Sure enough, I rolled up at Riverfront Park in Columbia, South Carolina a few minutes early under gorgeous blue skies and a light breeze. As I wandered around scoping out spots and planning a few shots, I congratulated myself on my excellent weather conditions. And then I sat down on a bench. And then, I kid you not, a black cloud the size of the southeastern United States rolled over me. And then I got a tiny bit nervous. And then Nakeeah, William, and little Ava arrived.



We got about five minutes of portraits before the sky opened up and we ducked under cover, where we remained trapped for the next thirty minutes as buckets of rain and wind whipped around us. (A few miles away there was golf-ball sized hail. This storm was not a joke.) I pretended that my entire plan had been to shoot half their session on a covered astroturf stage in the park and they pretended that was their dream as well. And they are awesome, so it worked!

Shooting in the low-light under under cover during the storm turned out kinda neat. I just love these images of Ava with her daddy with the background totally blown out.





The storm rolled out as suddenly as it had arrived, and we were left with a beautiful sky, soft fading sunlight, and wet pavement. These next three are my FAVES:







Miss Ava was the giggliest little thing- I LOVE her!







We got a few of Nakeeah and William individually, too. Once you're married and have kids, you never really think to photograph yourself!





I can't believe how easy and fun this session was. An 18-month old and a rainstorm and a park and a camera don't always mix, but I don't think it could have gone any better. I guess it helps when your family is totally beautiful.

Lil' punkin

We took Brody to the neighborhood fall festival this past weekend.



We thought about bringing home a pumpkin.



We picked him instead.

Sneak peeks

I am not a sneak-peek kind of girl. I like to see final products. When it's time to rearrange the living room, it takes me hours, because I fully rearrange it eleventy-million times. Some people can start to move the couch to a new spot, and in the middle of pushing and dragging realize it looks better somewhere else. Not me- I have to see the whole room rearranged to decide how I feel about it. (My husband loves this. Not.)

Generally, I don't blog a session till I'm pretty much done editing. It's not that I am terribly indecisive when choosing images to post; I just like to have all my ducks in a row. It makes me feel unorganized to blog before I am finished editing and I begin to have heart palpitations. But because I have so many sessions on my plate right now and hours of editing still to go, I'm making an exception. If only you could understand how hard it is for me to do this! I want to have all the images ready to share RIGHT NOW. But since I don't, here is a sneak peek of what I am working on:













Deciding to share sneak peeks was almost harder than resisting the double fudge brownie at Starbucks today. Hopefully I will be a better person because of it. (Although now I think choosing the brownie would have made me a better person, so that was a mistake.)

Full posts will be up in the near future! Oh but if you are an impatient client, a brownie on my desk may speed things along. Just saying.

Oh, nothing

What, this little old thing? Oh, it's nothing, just the park that I walk through every day two blocks from my house. Just the perfect refreshing fall weather after a warm (albeit lovely) visit to South Carolina. Just the perfect combination of green grass, blue skies, and changing leaves. Just something I shot with my iPhone the other day. No big deal.



That's right, my iPhone. It's ok to be impressed.

I started thinking, maybe a weekly iPhone photo would be a fun blog installment. Maybe even I'll give it a fun weekly installment name. [Now accepting submissions.] If nothing else it will be a nice break for you from the over-sharing of my baby's face while I'm editing sessions and don't have them ready to post. Shall we make it official? Done and done. I promise to try very hard (well probably not very hard, probably more just the average amount) to share an image off of my iPhone each week. I promise to try at the same level to make it interesting and not always of my baby. But since this week it's the park, next week I can use my baby. Ha.

Ok, back to work editing all the pictures you ACTUALLY want to see. But seriously, give me name suggestions for my iPhone sharing.

Sweetbabyluke

I am really not sure why, but every time I talk about this child I want to call him sweet baby Luke, but more like it's all one word: Sweetbabyluke. I will try to stop. Anyway, a few weeks ago I drove up to Delaware to see my cousin Laura and her husband David and meet Luke, their newest addition.



When you already have two daughters this beautiful and sweet, it's hard to imagine that your family could be any more perfect.







And then this little guy comes along, and you realize he is just what your family was missing.







Proud momma









It was extra special because my grandfather drove in from Pennsylvania and got to meet Luke and my Brody at the same time! He was really excited when they were born because they evened the score- he has five boys and five girls. Here is Gramps with his 9th and 10th great-grandchildren.



I'm listening to my kid babble in the other room and thinking about what every mom has always told me- they grow SO fast. I shot these when Luke was two weeks old (which was about five weeks ago- yep, I'm behind.) He is growing like a champ, which I think makes newborn photo sessions all the more special. It's such a fleeting time, and it's so easy to lose in the chaos of sleepless nights and constant feeding. Laura, thanks for being patient! Can't wait to see you and David and the kids again!

...said Little Monster

"I am so happy!" said Little Monster. "My mom is going to start blogging again!"



"I was really sad," said Little Monster. "She was really busy the past few weeks getting ready for fall photo sessions and she neglected her poor blog."



"But all is well now," said Little Monster. "She's back at it and having the busiest holiday portrait season ever! We are in South Carolina for photo sessions and I love being spoiled by my grandparents while my mom works."



"I am cute," said Little Monster. "And my mom shamelessly uses photos of me to break her blog silence. Can you blame her?"