Sometimes being married is about sharing.. including holidays. While you might think of sharing holidays more along the lines of “whose parents will we spend Thanksgiving with?”, I had a very different experience last month. A good friend of mine decided to hire me to take portraits of her mother-in-law’s oh-so-sweet pups as a gift for Mother’s Day. As circumstance would have it, we ended up making good on that photo session on Father’s Day! It was so much fun to run around with them, and I felt better-equipped to handle their lightning-fastness after my frisbee dog “training”!

I will just post a couple of pictures here, but check out the facebook gallery for more!

This is Randy. I like to think he would want to be called Randall. He’s ridiculously sweet, and I could see him reading Shakespeare by the fire.

This is Shelby. Shelby wasn’t too sure about me or my giant camera at first, but we were buddies before too long. She is super friendly and seriously energetic! She put me to work! But it was a good time, and I was happy to have met her and her brother, and their wonderful mom — on Father’s Day!

In addition to the newborn baby with whom I got to spend some time last month, I also spent some time with four-legged babies. Okay, some of these sweet pooches probably border geriatric, but to me, dogs are babies for the entire time they spend on this earth.

I’ve been experimenting some with pet photography lately, and I decided to have a go at pet portrait mini-sessions! The idea of a mini-session is extremely popular in the photography world these days. By picking one location and having several short sessions lined up back-to-back, I am able to cut some of the unseen costs of shooting (in this case, mostly gas and travel time). This savings of course gets passed on to my lovely clients. A win-win, and a lot of exhausting fun!

For these shoots, I met the puppy parents at a park that was as convenient as possible for them. We spent 15-20mins playing/shooting, and then the next client would be waiting in the wings! After the shoot, each client got 5-10 images (the more cooperative the pooch, the more images. ) sized to 5×7 via email, and the option to receive either 1 8×10 print or 3 4x6s. I think they went very well for my first foray into the minis, and I am sure I will do them again in the future, so stay tuned!

This year is going to be a year of growth for me and my business (but hopefully not my waistline). I’m striving to find the areas that need improvement the most and to take concrete action toward that improvement. While I have considered myself a “professional photographer” for some time, I also have a full-time job in cancer research, a husband, friends, family, and hobbies that fill my life. While I am just as passionate about photography as all of these other facets of my life, I haven’t necessarily given it equal time. That’s no way to learn and grow! So this is the year to change that!

With that in mind, last weekend I attended a photographer’s workshop all about newborns! It’s an area of photography I love more and more, but I wanted to be more familiar with how other photographers set up their session and pose the baby etc. This workshop gave me just what I was looking for, and I’m really excited to use what I’ve learned on future clients!

First up was Gwyneth. She was eleven days old in these pictures, and just as precious and gorgeous as they come!

Our next beauty was Jayden. She was so much fun and had the best facial expressions and movements, not to mention that gorgeous head of hair!! Her mom did Zumba all the way up to being 33 weeks pregnant, so she already knows how to shimmy.

Then came Imberly (sorry if I’m butchering the spelling!), who was oh-so-sweet, and very willing to let us pose her and then play papparazzi. She had definite grace through it all. I’m thinking she just might be a movie star one day.

The first image, I just love in black and white, but the peaches and creams in the color are swoon-worthy, too!

Our last gem of the day was Tristan. I loved meeting Tristan’s mom, for whom this is her first child. You could tell from a mile away how smitten she is with this peanut, and it’s not hard to see why! Tristan was three weeks old for these pictures, and served as a perfect example of the fact that babies of this age may not be so easy to move and pose as the younger guys, but it is still possible to capture their beauty!

I hope you enjoyed these! Even more… I hope you are pregnant (or know someone who is) and are mere milliseconds from contacting me to take your newborn pictures!  I’ll leave you in peace so you can do that…

Go ahead… Click that beautiful “Contact” button at the top of your screen.