K. Cake Smash

You might recognize this little girl, since I've taken pictures for her family before.  So I was thrilled when her mom said she wanted to do a cake smash shoot, because they are truly my favorite shoots to do!  And I tell you, this girl is a professional cake smasher.  Other babies need to be coaxed into it, and might not always be as interested in the cake at first.  But this little lady dug right in with both fists with pure glee!

"You're really letting me do this, Mom?"

I loved seeing the frosting all over her toes!

And in the end, there was almost nothing left behind!

S. Family

I can honestly say that this family was the most fun I have ever had in a photo session.  Usually everyone except Mom is not happy about having their picture taken, and I end up doing all sorts of games and tricks to get everyone smiling.  But in this family Dad and one daughter were the only ones, and everyone else was 100% excited to take pictures!  Dad was even a good sport, too, after giving me my favorite sound bite ever.  "I don't know what my wife is paying you, but I will double it if you go home and we don't have to do pictures," he told me with a straight face.  Hilarious!  As usual, I made sure we did the shots with him first so he could be "done" and then let him sit back while the rest of the crew planned out jumping shots and solo shots and everything else they could think of.

In fact, a good portion of the pictures I sent them were what some would consider "outtakes", but Mom couldn't stop laughing at how perfectly it captured the bright personalities in her family!  That is truly my goal.  We all need the posed shot of everyone smiling, but I think it is just important for everyone to look a the pictures and say " that is SO our family!"

Baby T.J.

I never know what I will get with these sweet little newborns!  Momma was excited to tell me that he was a wonderful sleeper, and had slept most of the morning, but he didn't want to sleep for most of our session.  It wasn't his fault, though - he had gas bubbles coming out forever!  He was pretty calm about it, but not calm enough to stay still for pictures.  Oh, and I tried multiple times to wrap him up in a little cocoon, but he wet the wraps every time I did that.  I ran out of wraps!

The pictures are always worth it, though, because nothing in sweeter than a tiny little newborn baby.

Baby Charlotte

When I was prepping for this shoot, I tried to remind myself not to go overboard.  I always seem to go into things with tons of ideas for poses, only to remember that newborns take a half an hour or more to settle into each new position.  But this little girl proved me wrong!  She would settle into a new position in five minutes or so.  In fact, once I had done the poses I thought would fill my time, I realized we were only a third of the way done!  So I got to have lots of fun trying all sorts of fun set ups with this girl.  What a little sweetheart!

B. Family pictures

I was so excited that this momma called me back to do family pictures!  They are just the cutest family.  They were hoping for some fall leaves, and AF Canyon certainly delivers that.  When I went up to scout a location for us, it seemed like everywhere I stopped was the perfect spot.  What an awesome morning!

W. family pictures

This family photo shoot was a perfect example of knowing when to take that image you had from Pinterest that you wanted to copy- and throw it out the window.  With kids in the pictures, you have to be truly flexible!  Unfortunately, every time we set up for a family shoot together, one of the kids was not pleased about it.  They wanted to sit on the other rock, they were scared of the bridge, and so forth.  And that's not anyone's fault- that's just what kids do!  But you know what, when I started chasing them around the playground, they suddenly switched to beautiful smiles and shouts of "take picture here!" as they did something silly.  When you roll with the punches, the result might even beat out that perfect image you were hoping for in the first place!

U. Family Pictures

I don't normally do a family with so few little ones, but I am so grateful I got to take pictures for this fun family!  Their extended family is like mine- we never seem to make it all together in the same place at the same time.  They hadn't had a picture with everyone in it for over a decade, so when schedules overlapped for a few hours, Grandma jumped on it and called me!  We ended up doing things in the middle of a warm day, but thankfully she has a beautiful front porch in the shade.

M.'s Baptism pictures

You know, I learn new things every day as a photographer (which is a great thing)!  And yesterday, I learned that our Temple closes their gates on Sundays.  I actually was worried that would be the case, but sometimes you gotta jump whenever you get the chance to schedule things.  So we might not have gotten some of the shots I usually like to take, but with such a beautiful girl, I had an easy job getting some cute pictures no matter where we took them.

This, by the way, was my second little baptism girl that I sewed the sleeves on her dress before taking pictures of her in it.  My daughter was so jealous of the cascading, long skirt on this gorgeous dress!

Her mother has a tradition that when her babies were blessed, she got a picture of her in her wedding dress with her girls in their blessing dresses.  So Mom snuck into her dress again to get pictures together.  So cute!