mini-session sunday

mini-sessions :: wilcox park

in

my fall mini-sessions happened before the colors started changing, while things were still rather green, which i like. 

i did a few sessions in the morning hours this time around, at Wilcox park, which has the best trees ever, and this is just the tiniest peek at what came out of those sessions.

each of these families are repeat client-friends. and as you know if you follow my blog, i LOVE repeat clients. it's so so so fun to see them grow over the years, and my fondness for them is huge. 

in a few days i'll post some images from the six mini-sessions that happened later the same day at another park. :) 

mini-sessions :: fall 2014 (Part 2)

in

We had the prettiest evening for the October mini-sessions, and some beautiful people to work with. Though this is definitely not the point of having a smile session or mini-session, it is a perk: to get outside and wander around in natural beauty, when you might otherwise have stayed indoors in front of a screen. 

enjoy this little sampling of images..

For those who wanted to get in on Mini-Sessions this fall but missed the boat, I'll be offering them again in the late Spring, probably in May sometime. It will be one of my first post-maternity-leave activities. Stay tuned!

mini-sessions :: fall 2014 (Part 1)

in

This fall, I split mini-sessions into smaller clumps on a couple different dates. It seemed like it would open up more options so more people with different sorts of schedules could choose to participate. Honestly, it also seemed like it would be easier to reschedule a clump of THREE sessions in the event that I was called into a birth, than to reschedule SIX. 

May I be transparent with you for a moment? I'm sitting on the fence with Mini-sessions, guys. They don't seem to be as popular as they used to be, and I'm not sure I do them as well as I do other things. What I do best is the raw stuff, the unscripted, the natural. I don't excel at posing you and arranging you and trying to make your toddlers look up at my camera with genuine smiles dancing on their faces. There are many other photographers out there who do those things very well, so maybe I ought to send you to them instead? 

Or maybe it's time to creatively think about how to apply the raw, unscripted stuff I love so very much to the mini-session concept, since the lower price point and short, to-the-point sessions really do work well for many of you, and I do want to keep seeing you. I'm kicking around some ideas of what that could look like. But if you have more, leave me a comment, ok!? Let's put our heads together on this and see if we can come up with something stellar. 

Meantime, mini-sessions keep on truckin' and we are still getting lovely results! Here are just a few highlights from the first little chunk of mini-sessions in September...

So much thanks to the two families and the awesome 8th grader who came out to be photographed at Riverside Park. 

mini-session sunday : spring 2014 edition

in

i recently held my 6th mini-session sunday! i love doing mini-session sundays! the fast pace, the energy, the seeing and playing with so many families in such a short span of time. 

families (or couples or individuals) sign up for a 25 minute session, and they end up with 25+ finished images with full copyright permissions. the cost is $125. so it's a great way to get some update family portraits for quite a bit less than you might otherwise spend. 

anyway, i wanted to share with you a few of the highlights from the evening... look at all these happy, shining faces. people are amazing....

mini-session :: the saigeon family

in

michelle and eric are expecting a baby boy very soon. meanwhile, their darling daughter is nearly two. there was, therefore, much to celebrate with photos. so we had a little mini-session at my favorite nature center, to capture the fleeting beauty of a belly swelled with baby and a toddler growing quickly toward kid-hood. 

in about a month, shortly after baby comes, i'll do an in-home family photojournalism session with them, where we'll document the details of their life with their newborn son. i can't wait for that.

this is the good stuff. happy sigh. 

family photojournalism :: the huffs

in ,

katie, chris, and their kiddos tucker and savannah, registered for one of my spring mini-sessions a little while before they were given a hard-to-swallow diagnosis for tucker. and though the diagnosis made sudden sense out of so many behaviors and struggles over the previous two years, it also puts a certain weight on the future, a weight they were carrying with them on the day of mini-session sunday.

so, coming into the mini-session -- which are usually more posed, intentional family portraits -- they did not have high hopes of achieving a hold-still-and-smile set of images with tucker. honestly, that was (and is always) more than okay with me. so, we threw that expectation out the window and i said, "let's just follow him around and play. we'll see what happens." with the tension thus diffused, and tucker free to be his wild and active little boy self, we climbed fences and lept off them, did a few rounds of peek-a-book from the men's outhouse, and finally kicked off shoes and got into the creek. 

the end result is something that i just love. a story emerged that is really about tucker (but don't feel too badly for savannah, she had her own "milk time" session recently). to me, these photos celebrate tucker, in all his wild wonder. looking through these images of him playing, and his family right there with him in the midst of it, you can't help but fall a little bit in love with the cutie.