Eight years, in the blink of an eye.

Oh how fast time goes for me. This is the reason I'm a photographer, 100%. I think this little girl was just a baby yesterday.

My very first blog post (look at those tiny pictures!) from 6 1/2 year ago.

Six years ago.

Five years ago.

Four years ago.

Three years ago.

One year ago.

Now she is turning eight years old. This is a special occasion for her because at this age she has decided she wants to be baptized a member of our church. That will be next month. She and I have more photography plans to celebrate her birthday, but I love these beautiful portraits of her in her baptism dress.


She is a happy, wiggly, giggly, ray of sunshine in our home.




We are very happy and proud of her thoughtful decision to be baptized!


I love the serious photo of her at the top of this post. She is very rarely serious. Sometimes grouchy and angry, sometimes shouting, sometimes singing and dancing around and shrieking with laughter. Even her thoughtful face has a smile. But serious? Not very often. And this series shows why.


If you have a special occasion to celebrate and you'd like to remember it with photography, please give me a call and we can talk about a session for you or someone you love. Give me a call or you can email and I'll get back with you as soon as I can.

If you like the photography you see, you may also be interested in signing up for my newsletter! I send it out something like quarterly, and I use it to announce things like Valentine's day mini-sessions (coming up very soon...).

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Beautiful fall senior portraits

Looking back at this last fall makes me long for the beautiful weather and color! This senior session was a highlight for me. I've known this gorgeous girl's family for a long time (her brother's senior portraits from a few years back are blogged here) and I'm so impressed with her now. She's finishing up her high school adventure and great things are coming next! I loved getting to spend some time with her (and some of her family too) on a lovely fall evening.

We did some portraits in the bosque, gorgeous.












And we went downtown for awhile too. I love it and I love the pictures we got there there. Such a pleasure to work with this girl.














If you are interested in senior portraits, I'd love to chat with you and discuss it! We can meet in person or talk on the phone, or you can email me. I have more information about my senior graduation photography here, or if you like the locations we used for her senior portraits, you can see these and many more ideas here.

Family fun in the kitchen

This year my family wanted to give a personal Christmas gift to the rest of our family. Cooking is one of our hobbies, and we have some recipes we really like, so we decided to make a family cookbook. We worked on it for most of the year. By the end of November we were typing and editing and realized that we needed a cover image. My husband (uncharacteristically) requested a photo shoot - he had a lot of great ideas to make a really fun kitchen photo. We used a lot of garage equipment - including a smoke maker, chain saw, hatchet, and a sort of Geiger counter. Using inspiration from the muppets (the Swedish Chef), we came up with this:



I think my husband's happy face is the best part. One of the highlights of my photography this fall!

I also took the food photos as we cooked the meals - I've always enjoyed food photography. I thought I'd share a few recipe pages. You can click on these for a larger jpg file.







If for some reason you're interested in a copy of the cookbook I can send you a link to a pdf - just email me.

 If you like creative family photography, I'd love to chat with you about doing something really fun with your family! Give me a call or you can email and I'll get back with you as soon as I can. You can see some other examples of creative family photography here.

Or, if you like the photography you see, you may also be interested in signing up for my newsletter! I send it out something like quarterly, and I use it to announce things like Valentine's day mini-sessions (coming up soon...).

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A lovely afternoon in the bosque (back when it was still beautiful)

Every time I drive by the bosque right now and see those brown dry trees and plants, it just really drives home the reality of cold winter. :) I had a fabulous time with my fall bosque photography and today I am going to relive that a little. We had an extra-long season of color last year, more weekends than we usually get. Also it was a little weird because we had really warm weather for an extra long time, and then we got hit with some serious cold, so some trees never really changed color - their leaves froze and fell off while still green. (I wish I'd had my camera the morning that happened when I drove the kids to school!)

I am kind of restless with my photography locations, especially in the fall. This is a little spot in the bosque that I hadn't used for awhile, and I really enjoyed it. One beautiful, warm afternoon/evening I did a few sessions there - these are some of my favorites.

Notice the bare feet - not even cold out. This family was so darling. I first met them back when I used to do school photography at some local charter schools - back before their littlest guy was even born. Time flies! How sweet is this family hug?






All of the children I met with that afternoon were so. awesome. I generally really like the kids I work with, but a whole afternoon full of happy smiles and giggles was a huge pleasure. I have some fun history with this family also and loved seeing them again!


I never got this picture of MY kids... and now I never will... (sniff) - have to do it when they're this age!




Our favorite swim coach's family met me there too.


They have a high school senior and we spent a little time with him and his viola. I love senior portraits with instruments. They always tell me "I don't know what to play!" and then play me something amazing.






If you also love the bosque, I'd love to chat with you about a session for your family! Give me a call or you can email and I'll get back with you as soon as I can. If you like the photography you see, you may also be interested in signing up for my newsletter! I send it out something like quarterly, and I use it to announce things like Valentine's day mini-sessions (coming up soon...).

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My favorite school photography ever (no green background!)

As I look back over my work this last fall, one of my favorite moments was taking these pictures with my daughter's school class. Her teacher had the great idea of doing shadow portraits. I blew two of these up to 10x20" size, matted them, and she sold them at the school's silent auction at their annual Art Night.

For these shots I was teetering on top of the highest a-frame ladder I've ever seen. I had to be as high as possible, and used my widest lens, to get all of them in the picture at the same time. It worked! We tried a few things and these were my favorites:

"hands up",


"stand on one foot",


"make a heart with your hands",


and "everybody jump". This was the trickiest - it's hard to just get a family of six to all jump at the same time, let alone a class of school-age kids. (To me that is what makes it especially darling.)


The kids were absolutely delightful - happy and playful and cooperative (which really helps when I have to kind of shout directions from the top of a ladder).

I didn't see the prints' final sale amount, but I hope it was a lot! We love love love our kids' school.

If you like creative children's photography, I'd love to chat with you about a session for your children! Give me a call or you can email and I'll get back with you as soon as I can. You can see some other examples of creative children's photography here.

 If you like the photography you see, you may also be interested in signing up for my newsletter! I send it out something like quarterly, and I use it to announce things like Valentine's day mini-sessions (coming up soon...).

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Beautiful senior portraits (be prepared for a little hair envy)

This fall I did a whole lot of family photography, but I also really enjoyed a few senior portrait sessions. This gorgeous senior lives in Gallup but came to Albuquerque for senior portraits. I met her sister a few years ago for her senior portraits and she now attends UNM. I was so happy to get to see her again - still just as beautiful :) - and it's always a great idea to have a friend or sister or mom (or any combination!) who can make you smile or laugh when you get senior portraits taken.

 

We mostly stayed in the bosque, but on our way we fell in love with this fence covered in red leaves. We must have picked the perfect day for this one.




She wanted a picture lying in colorful leaves, but unfortunately all the leaves on the ground were brown, brown, brown. We tried! I love this one almost as much as I would have loved the leaves.






They also wanted some studio portraits, so lots of variety in their final gallery.


She played soccer too, like her sister did, and we had some fun with a ball. They had just finished up their season.








Some great outfits, amazing hair (so jealous), and a really fun girl to work with!


Thank you so much for making the trip to meet with me!


If you are interested in senior portraits, I'd love to chat with you and discuss it! We can meet in person or talk on the phone, or you can email me. I have more information about my senior graduation photography here, or if you like the locations we used for his senior portraits, you can see these and many more ideas here.

One of my funniest fall photography moments

I'm having a lot of fun looking through my sessions from this last fall! This family's session is one of my favorites from the season, you will see why. I first met them a long time ago... I think this was the first time I got to photograph them, back in 2009, wow.

We have gone to many great places for pictures over the last 5 years but we had never gone to Old Town, one of my favorite locations for photography. We moved pretty fast and they did a great job.
 







Their mom had some really cute props, which she told me about so we were sure to use one of them (do you sense a little foreshadowing?) towards the beginning of the pictures. So fun!


We kept going, sometimes Old Town is like that because there are lots of fun places for photography.



I don't go for too many serious pictures, but I love this. Darling.




And we kept going, and going...


And THEN, when these great kids were really all done with pictures, I was reminded of their mom's other cute props. Oh no! It is not easy to get a happy group shot of three tired kids. My favorite part of the photo session was this picture below - the younger daughter was NOT happy to hold the "Y" (she wanted to hold the "J" and for some reason that was not working). I just love seeing her disgusted face while they are holding up "JOY".


And it would not be my favorite moment if we didn't also get this shot. So cute, great job guys!


If you also love Old Town, I'd love to meet you there for a family or child photography session! Give me a call or email and we can chat about a session for you or your family. Or if you'd like to see other options, I have lots of other location ideas for portrait sessions here.