Remember this baby I’m obsessed with? Here’s more from their session. I don’t have a lot to say on this one that the photos don’t say for themselves. This baby was adorable and fascinated with the camera. I admit I’m posting a lot of the photos that made me laugh as opposed to the “awww” photos, but her expressions are so cute and so full of personality, I couldn’t resist.

Some of my favorite portraits I’ve ever taken I was never hired or asked to take, like the ones below and these ones where the dad had just gotten back from a 30-hour shift and his daughter was still in her pajamas. The subjects didn’t get dolled up, no one was dressed in nice clothes, kids weren’t told for days they were going to have photos taken, no one thought about what they’d look like on camera. They just went on doing what they were doing. I would love to be hired to “stealth shoot” a family’s daily activities or even take photos of a family wearing their normal jeans and t-shirts without any coordination or thought whatsoever as to how they would look.

I was on vacation in Ohio a few months ago and staying with one of my good friends. One morning, as she was just getting back from a run and sat down to read to her granddaughter, I ran and grabbed my camera. These are a few of the images I took, and I love them. They’re so sweet, so full of personality, and so real. Real life is artistic and worthy of printing on canvases and displaying. Slowly but surely I want to show the rest of the world that.

Okay, I have to admit something: I am a little obsessed with this baby. And by little I mean a lot. She is SO cute and the most laid back baby ever. It was a blast going through the entire session on my computer when I got home. Some of them are sweet, some are happy, and some are downright hilarious. (And don’t think for a second that I’m not going to include some of the hilarious ones in their gallery.) I can already tell I’m going to go overboard editing these. I couldn’t even narrow it down to one for the preview. It was hard enough narrowing it down to three!

You’ll see what I mean when you see more from this session.

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!

This last weekend, I held my first day of mini-sessions in San Antonio. It was a humid, humid day and my legs are covered in bug bites (I’ve counted over 20 on my right leg from the knee down alone!), but I had so much fun meeting a lot of really cool people and some of the happiest babies ever. Seriously, one baby thought my camera was hilarious — wish they all did (but you’ll see her preview another day).

This preview is actually from one 45 minute session if you can believe it! We had a LOT of people and broke up a mini-session into five 10-minute micro-sessions. Here are a few photos from their gallery!

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for sessions at home. I am so honored that people have me into their home to take photos of them doing what they do every day. There’s such beauty in moms feeding and cuddling with their newborn babies and kids playing by themselves using their imagination and forgetting I’m there taking their photo. I love interacting with families and creating games to play with kids during our session, but I really adore truly candid photos where the kids go about doing their own thing and forget that I’m trailing behind them capturing it all.

Enjoy this sneak peek into this sweet family’s session who had me into their home last week! As you can tell, I had some beautiful light at my fingertips. I keep wanting to call it ‘delicious’. There are so many tender moments in this selection I picked out to blog, and even more in their full session, I love it! And to my lovely client, A: congratulations on the birth of your 2nd daughter! She’s gorgeous!

Yay, my self-appointed maternity leave is officially over, starting this week, and I couldn’t be more excited to get back to work. I thought I’d go back through some old sessions though and pick out some of my absolute favorite photos from them. I can’t wait to start showing you more new sessions! Enjoy!