Wow, kids have a way of making you feel old. I remember when this handsome guy was born and it sure doesn’t seem long enough ago for him to now be attending his SENIOR PROM and getting ready to graduate! I loved hanging out with him, his beautiful date and his parents who happen to be my friends and some of the sweetest people you will ever meet!.jpg "2021-05-11_0037.jpg")
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There was a time when a session like this would have caused me to panic a bit. Mikayla’s mom contacted me about scheduling a session soon…the end of February, in the Midwest. The week before it was -5 degrees. There’s no green trees or pretty fall colors. With most locations now requiring permits for professional photography there wasn’t much time to obtain one. When I was first starting out this all would have given me a lot of anxiety. I’ve always wanted every session to result in beautiful images that my clients loved and I would have doubted myself in this situation. Not now though…Instead, to make things even more interesting I decided to suggest we shoot at a location I’ve never used and wing it. The photography Gods were pretty good to us and the weather warmed up almost 70 degrees over the next week! There was definitely some improvising. Since nature wasn’t very colorful, I found one little green evergreen along a sidewalk and it became our color. Mikayla brought cute outfits with equally cute shoes, however because of the recently melted snow there was mud. A lot of mud. So we shot on sidewalks and in front of a storage building or bathroom or any small non-muddy patch of land we could find to get some good shoe shots, and then we ditched them. Mikayla was a trooper for sure and not afraid to brave her way to the “good spots” and kick off her shoes even though there was still ice hanging around. These type of sessions that used to scare me, are now like a treasure hunt. I love searching for good spots that aren’t obvious to the untrained eye and I hope Mikayla loves her images for years to come and remembers having some fun while creating them!
I wear many hats. The ones I am most proud of are the ones my children have placed on my head and end in the word “mom”. As a “gymnastics mom”, I was so sad to see this competition season cut short. These girls practice year-round, some for as many as 30 hours a week. They leave school early, miss extra curricular activities, parties, and events. They have calluses and “rips” (the skin actually rips off of their hands) and bruises. For all of this they get typically less than 10 meets a year where they get to show off and (hopefully) be rewarded for their hard work and amazing achievements. This year that was only 4 meets. I’m a “fixer”. As soon as a problem or dissapointment presents itself, my brain starts working overtime trying to figure out how I can fix it, or at least make it a little better. I couldn’t fix this but as a photographer I could give them a day in the spotlight. I could show the world (or as many people as social media will allow) how beautiful and amazing they are. It was hot and the day was long, but there was a lot of laughter and fun. I photographed girls doing what they loved more than anything. I photographed sisters, friends, teammates, role models…family. This was one of the most fun and rewarding sessions I have ever done.
Wow! This was my first session of the New Year and if it’s any indication as to how 2019 will go…it’s going to be AMAZING! This was kind of a new type of session for me. This handsome guy does a little acting and needed some headshots for his agent. I have been wanting to try some “Tween Sessions” for a while now but hadn’t gotten the opportunity yet so I was really excited to do this and it was so much fun. High School Senior sessions are some of my favorites and this session was a lot like that, but with a younger kiddo…So. Much. Fun. And geez, he was an awesome model!
