Phew! Things have been quiet around here because I’m just getting back from two weeks of vacation and am now catching up with all the craziness that has happened since being gone. I still have blogs to post that I haven’t gotten around to and so many exciting sessions coming up right away! I can’t wait to share them all with you.

I’ll probably be throwing in some vacation photos along the way as well if I can squeeze them in. Here’s one of my very favorites from our trip, one that my husband took of my sweet eight-month-old and I. Isn’t that adorable? I love it so much.

Also, if you’re wanting to get photos for Christmas, now is the time to book them! My August and September are getting extremely tight, and I’m booking into October and November right now, so email me or call me to get your session booked!

My husband and I are both pretty busy these days so the other night when we were both home we decided to set everything else aside and just spend time with each other, with our daughter, and with our dog. So we passed the camera (and baby and dog) back and forth, and I have to say I’m so impressed and in love with the images he got of me and my baby. I’ll always treasure them.

Six months old already. Wow. The thing is, I can’t believe it was only six months ago that I had her (feels like a very long time ago), but at the same time I can’t believe she’s already sitting up and halfway through her first year of life. Sad! And yet it’s so fun at the same time. So many mixed emotions that go along with this parenting gig.

Everyone says to me, “I bet you take a ton of pictures of your baby, don’t you?” But then I realized…lately I’ve been so busy with other people’s family photos that I hadn’t been taking as many as usual. So I pulled out the camera today to document her first days sitting up on her own and thought I’d squeeze some personal photos in between sessions here. She’s still pretty wobbly but it’s a big step.

I love the one where she’s scrunching up her nose because this is so her lately. She scrunches up her nose and breathes really fast in and out her nose to whine at me. I think it’s so cute, especially for a whine technique. I love this kid!

Well, hello there, daughter of mine. What do you have there?

Hey!

Put those cookies down!

Don’t even think about doing what I think you’re thinking about doing….

Okay, fine you can look at it, but don’t you dare eat those!

……hey!…….

Oh, fiiiiiiiine. How could I be mad at a face like that??

Okay, enough about my fattening grocery store impulse purchases and the cute baby who’s sneaking them behind my back… now on to the exciting news for you! Welcome to my first giveaway post!

Leave a comment on this post below to win a free full session + one 8×10 print + two 5×7 prints with Shannon Hunt Photography. Update your own family photos and capture this moment in your lives or give it to someone you love as a thoughtful gift!

PLUS! If you don’t win, you still earn $50 towards your next full session just by entering this giveaway!* Woo-hoo!

Now for all the fun rules, details, and disclaimers.

Rules, Details, and Disclaimers:

• Giveaway covers the session fee, one 8×10 print, and two 5×7 prints only. All other prints and products can be purchased separately.
• Session must be redeemed by July 1, 2010.
• Enter once by commenting on this post (only one comment per person).
• Enter again by updating your Facebook status about this giveaway (if posted multiple times, only one post will count toward a second entry in this giveaway) (see instructions on how to do this specifically below).
• Session can be redeemed within 120 miles of Temple, TX (including most outskirts of Austin and Dallas, TX).
• Giveaway will end next Wednesday, May 5th, at 11:59 PM and the winner will be chosen at random.

How to Enter with Facebook:

• First of all, make sure you “Like” Shannon Hunt Photography.
• Click this icon:
• It will bring up a new page with a status update and a link back to this post. Before you post it, be sure to change the privacy setting (the lock at the bottom) to ‘Everyone’. Also, tag my page by typing the @ sign and beginning to type Shannon Hunt Photography (then select it from the list), and write a message about this limited time giveaway. (This allows me to verify the entry even if we haven’t become personal Facebook friends yet.)
• Then post it and come back here to leave a comment saying you told your Facebook friends about the giveaway!

Crystal clear? Good! Good luck to you! On your mark, get set, GO!

*(This discount is non-transferable, cannot be used with any other promotion or giveaway, and also expires July 1, 2010.)

Phew, today was a tough one, which is why I’m glad to be posting cute photos of my little girl. I tell ya, I have a new found respect for parents of multiple kids. I just don’t know how you do it! One pushes me to my max sometimes. She was such an easy newborn, but she’s not letting me rest anymore, that’s for sure. She’s going through a stage that is seriously trying my patience and self-control!

So tonight of all nights, I’m really having to soak in these cute (quiet!) photos of her. What constantly surprises me though is that I can be on the utter brink of insanity, but as soon as I pick her up, I just can’t stop kissing her chubby little cheeks and hugging her, and suddenly the sanity is back. She really is such a sweet baby!

It’s true what people say about having a photography business: you spend about 90% of your time on the business side of it as opposed to the photography side. Actually I think people say that a photographer’s success is based 80% on business, 20% on skill or something like that, but regardless, there’s some statistical saying that says that once you start a business, the business part of it is very consuming.

Very true. I find myself actually behind the camera less often now because every second of my time is spent on business related details and tasks. I am a perfectionist and want my clients to only have the absolute best, and that takes a lot of time, a lot of work, and a lot of trial and error. I’m constantly trying to improve everything from workflow to product offerings to quality of prints.

So in light of that, I want to do something kind of fun today that just focuses on photography itself. Even though my week’s still crazy busy with the business side of photography (which I enjoy as well), I’ve decided that throughout the day today, I’m going to take at least one photo an hour starting when I wake up for the day. I’ll also continue to post them throughout the day instead of waiting until the day’s over so check back throughout! It’ll probably get kind of chaotic because I have a busy day but I’m excited to have a fun little self-assignment to take photos of my life as it happens. I think my blogging friends should do it too. Just grab your point-and-shoot and have fun!

8:45 AM: My husband actually started out my day by taking photos of me and my baby sleeping. Yes, I was still asleep (or I should say back asleep) at 8:45. My little girl decided to wake up in the middle of the night wanting to just talk and play, so I ended up falling back asleep in her room sometime after that. And that, as you can see, is my dog, affectionately named The Turkledog, which came about evolutionarily from his original name, Turk.

9:55 AM: Getting ready, showering, make-up-ing, all that fun stuff. Yeah, it looks like Clinique puked all over my bathroom counter… but I’m okay with that.

11:00 AM: Checking my email, Google reader, facebook, twitter, and the ten thousand other sites there are to check daily. Yawn. I really hope this day gets more exciting for you!

11:45 AM: Just a couple quick snapshots after her nap. I love when she wakes up happy!

12:30 – 2:30 PM: I went out to lunch with a couple of my good friends. I absolutely love these women to death. They are so much fun, I laugh constantly when I’m around them. You might recognize that cute little two year old too from their session last November.

3:30 PM: Umm, I posted the above pictures. Thanks to my husband for taking photos of me uploading photos! This photo per hour thing is making me realize how fast hours go by! Man, it’s tough to be doing anything worth photographing every hour of the day.

5:15 PM: Stocked up the fridge with Odwalla smoothie drinks. Mmmm.

6:30 – 8:00 PM: My family and I took a little outing together, and here’s what I got! I really love a lot of these. It was so much fun just to amble along and take photos, especially since tomorrow it’s back to work. Plus I got a few of my family I really love! Always nice to go out and get some different scenery other than our living room. I’m so glad I did this today. It was really refreshing. (One more set to go after this one!)

There was a yard we came across that was very whimsical. It was pretty cool to see the faces on the trees and all the hidden little statues and birdhouses in their yard. It made me really curious about the people who live there.

8:15 – 8:45 PM: Well, after that we went to Barnes and Noble, but I didn’t end up looking at many books like I had intended. I met this group of girls studying in the kids’ section and we had an impromptu little session. They were a lot of fun and such good sports! I hope I gave them a fun little break from studying. I think the third photo (the B&W one) is my favorite. Her laugh is just contagious! Thanks so much, girls! Feel free to drop me an email! I’d love to hear from you. Hope you do well on your test, and if not, well, at least you have proof that you were studying (at least when I wasn’t interrupting).

And that’s where I ended my day (since I’ve just been working on those photos, putting the baby to bed, and doing laundry since then. I consider it a success! I really had such a great time doing that, more so than I thought. I’m glad I had an excuse to pull my camera out and take photos all day (especially of my friends… I really don’t typically bug my friends for photos, but I’m glad I had a reason to today because I really love ‘em).

Hope you enjoyed following me around!

Today’s my birthday! And this morning I got a birthday email from one of my best friends that said, “I expect to see pictures of you in a hat with a noisemaker blowing out candles on a colorful cake. Please make that happen.” I don’t think she thought I would do it, but that’s where she would be wrong!

I usually make a big deal out of my birthday, but this year I almost totally forgot about it until about a week ago. I’m actually celebrating my birthday tomorrow with my husband and some friends, but I had to do something today, so I decided to obey her command, so here are just some fun self-portraits on my birthday (a little out of focus, but I’m going with ‘em).

And as always, someone started whining that they weren’t getting enough attention, so I grabbed my little girl for some birthday shots.

Enjoy, Aubrey! I hope these lived up to your expectations!

This is without a doubt my favorite photo of my husband and my 3-month-old baby girl. First of all, I can’t get over her eyes here. Then there’s the sweetness quality.

But I also love it for its timelessness. There’s nothing to really date this photo in any way, and that’s one thing I really strive for in my photography. I don’t want people to look at my photos in a few years and say, “Oh, that’s so 2010″ because of certain photography or post-processing trends. I want mine to have this timeless look.

From my baby to yours!

Babies are truly miraculous, and anyone who has had a baby will tell you that it’s all in the details – the tiny fingers, the bubbly toes, the lines in the palms of their hands, the softness of their ears, and the creases from their fat rolls. Even my 7-year-old nephew marveled at the lines around my 7-week-old’s wrists from her new chubbiness. Okay, maybe he said that it looked like her hands were being cut off, but I thought it was sweet that he noticed anyway.

I finally spent some time the other day documenting these tiny details that I love so much and left them completely untouched except for basic color corrections. I absolutely love them and am so glad I can keep them forever, especially with how quickly my baby’s growing up already.