Celebrating the New Year

These two cuties (seen a couple other times already on my blog!) were preemies. So by the time they were finally allowed to go home, they still weren't allowed out of the house for something like a month. When things began to settle down, there really wasn't time for doing things like pictures and birth announcements etc! So I decided to make up a New Years/birth announcement card for them.


I cannot take the credit for the actual design. It was half my mom's idea, half something i found online :) but hey! I just love it.

Erin has entered the boys and one of my photos into the Babies of 2008 in Rochester. Go here to check it out and while you're there vote for them! I would appreciate it and so would Erin, i'm sure :)

Merry Christmas!

Words cannot express how blown away I have been this year. I give all the glory to God for allowing me to dive into my love for photography with such success and I want to extend my extreme thankfulness to all the people who have given me the opportunity to make this dream a reality.

Thank you for pushing me when I didn't want to.

Thank you for believing in me when I said I wasn't good enough.

Thank you for being my friends even though i'm taking your money... ha! just kidding!

(mad props to Alicia for taking this picture :)

the best one yet

I mentioned last post that I was going to be putting Alicia's card up here. Originally, this was going to be a New Year's card... since it was too late for a Christmas card... however, that turned into a Valentine's day card... which ultimately resulted in this.


A personal ad. if you want to know more... phone number, stats, etc just let me know. HAHAHA!

Really, do I need to say more?

I *love* them!

Well, I missed a day yesterday... oops! but seriously, this is the only real Christmas card I have left. the next one i'm posting was supposed to be real... but it was late, we were tired... well, you'll see later on.



Aww! Look how stinking cute they are! Once again, Melissa rocks my socks. We were sitting together after mini-shoots a week and a half ago and she was like let's make a Christmas card... so we did!

It took all of about 20 minutes, record time. Because she was right there and we picked everything together. That's the way I'd like to do it with everyone!

I will be posting one more today... it's pretty much out of control

2 more days!

This particular card (as well as the one I will post tomorrow) were totally last minute ones. It worked out perfectly, and they came just in time to get out so they would arrive in mailboxes the week of Christmas!



Recently, I acquired a ton of vector art. I have been having more fun with it than I ever imagined. I don't even know how i survived without it before! The swirlies on this card is some of it. I love finding new things like this!

Flanders in da house!

I am laughing my head off as I do this post... becauuuuse

Tim's actual suggestion and desire for the card went like this.

Picture it: Same picture as shown here, but the wording changed to say, "merry Christmas... from the Flanders family (by faith)"

And then, 3 or 4 shadows lined up next to him here.



He is completely OUT OF CONTROL.

Anyways, good times, I like the way it ended up and since it was all his design essentially, he liked it too... good thing. HA!

Only 4 more days to go...

all wrapped up

Not like I think anyone really cares, but it's currently 11:56 and this WILL be being posted TODAY! All the way home I was thinking "oh no! what if i miss it and end up posting 2 in one day again?"

Like i said, I'm sure you care ;)



Anyways, only 5 more days til Christmas! Can you believe it? This is obviously Robb, Anna and Danielle's Christmas card hehe

Anna said to me this week after I gave them to her, "I should have had a kid a long time ago. Sending out Christmas cards has never been this easy." Hilarious I tell ya :)

I hope you all are cozied in during this crazy snow weather we're getting here in the ROC. I'm personally looking forward to my nice comfy bed right about now... speaking of which...

I'm out!

Smile!

Do you remember Joshua? and his mommy and daddy too of course :)



I'm very pleased with this one, it really didn't help that my subject matter was so adorable and good at posing! All three of them!

I'm going to keep it brief since I have a lot of work to do for upcoming family arrivals (ahem, cleaning etc) but I would like to direct your attention to the followers list I added to my blog yesterday. Please visit and click follow so I know who's stopping by!

And as the card says, I sincerely hope that this season is bringing you lots of reasons to smile :) I am, that's for sure!

because she's the mom, that's why!

These lovely people are my mommy and daddy. I still have yet to post their session, but that may be indicative of the fact that the cards were ordered before the actual pictures :)


This card was one of my biggest challenges as far as "making it work." I had an original design so close to this one, but not. if you know what I mean :) But this was the end result and I couldn't be happier, and I know for a fact that my mom couldn't be happier either... and that's what really matters :)

one more week...

At this time next week, the presents will be should be wrapped and under the tree... and I will be sitting in the very spot (hopefully) watching some sort of Christmas movie.

Anyways, this is my way of playing catch up since I miscalculated how many days were actually left til Christmas...

So i'm going to count the nighttime as an "extra day" and post this card also.



Out of all the cards I made, this one is my favorite. When i got it in print, it was almost 3D. I pretty much love everything about it. Instead of giving it to them to hand out, I shoulda just kept em and been all like, yah, that's my family. Oh, you're wondering which one I am? pshh, who cares right! haha

Anyways, I like how she chose to make this card more neutral for the entire year. While it's still obviously a wintery feel, she wanted to be able to hand it out all year long. And this was a really great compromise so that it could be used both ways.

So, that leaves us with 7 days and 7 cards. Oh this is great... i'll post another one "tomorrow" ;)

The Christmas card countdown!

Like i mentioned in the last post, I was thinking, oh yah, i'll just start posting Christmas cards in a couple days...

Cuz like, I wanna have it worked out so I can do one a day for 9 days before Christmas... yah, maybe I should get on that in like a couple days.

Wow. Wake up sista! It's already EIGHT days from Christmas! holy cow!

So, let it begin. I already shared with you the very first promotional Christmas card that I made in this post, but now it's time to start at the beginning of the mayhem that ensued shortly thereafter. I had NO idea how many people would take me up on doing Christmas cards this year... and now that the season is over, I am totally thinking about adding a cards/announcements aspect to my business.

This was my first request for a card from Chelle over at Creative Momma and I just LOVE it! We played around with a couple ideas before finally settling on this as the final creation.



How cute is the picture she sent me to use too!

Well, if you're not ready for Christmas by now, you better get on board! Cuz it's coming, and the cards will be too :) Stay tuned for more tomorrow... and the next day... and the next day... ok, you get the point LOL

the very first mini-session (rochester family and children photographer)

Yesterday was the last day to get stuff in to be on-time for Christmas and after it was over, I was so ready to take a break from staring at this screen constantly! I thought it would be really nice to take a whole day off from the lappie... but apparently I didn't need as much of a break as I originally thought :) This is in fact what I love to do! So, I'm back, and I felt it was only fair to share some more pictures.

This is the first mini-session i did probably about 4 weeks back now. It took just under an hour to get all 4 of these kids captured. They were all very good... except the 2 year old. But honestly, would you expect anything less of a 2 year old! I sure don't ;) Make me work for my money that's what I say LOL!



I am growing a certain affinity for sister pictures. I have ideas floating in my head for a sister's project, I just have to figure out how it all fits together. This particular picture is one of those that i saw so far ahead of when I actually clicked the shutter... that doesn't happen all the time. But when it does, it's nothing short of amazing. The last picture in this post is one that I will love forever and always... it's one of those pictures you miss in between everything else that is going on :)



I seriously don't remember how many I shot of the TWO OF THEM before I got this one! I'm not kidding when I say I think it was about 60. And this was the LAST one I took. Because when I got it, I got it haha! No need to drag it out any longer :)



This is Abigail... so sweet :) I don't know her very well but I have a feeling she has an artistic bent. She was very excited to do these pictures, and that's when I have the most fun taking them. It's always so much better when they want their pictures taken, am i right ;)



Here's Wesley. What a DOLL! I can say that because I'm fairly sure he won't find out ;)



This kind of picture is honestly one of my favorites :) just sooo cute! Lila was such a ham in front of the camera and it's so cute that this pic turned out because it really shows the silliness that she exhibited most of the shoot. that's the best!



And then there was "the 2 year old" haha! he is totally adorable, but he wanted nothing to do with me, my camera or anything picture related. Like i said before with the picture of the two boys together, this was another "shootasmanyasyoucanbeforeherunsaway!" shots LOL!


This picture is going in one of my all-time favorites. I have a lot of favorites, but there are only a few that make it to the favorite favorite list... how cheesy am i?

Anyways, there's only one more mini-shoot to post before I'm caught up with them... then I'm going to move into the 9 (yes that's right 9!) days of Christmas cards :) oh SNAP! that means I need to start TODAY!!! I'm SO excited!!! AHHH! Christmas is coming!

It's all Melissa's fault

In all my attempts to post once a day for as long as possible, I unfortunately do not have time to upload any pictures today! However, comma, I have been in Buffalo with Melissa, who is an awesome photog and she shot a couple mini-sessions of her own! Go check out her work on her photo blog.

I have a lot of stuff to post, but it will have to wait...

And I also decided that since I designed 7 Christmas cards this Christmas season (possibly 8!) so starting next Thursday (or Wednesday) I will be posting a Christmas card a day! Woohoo! Let the countdown begin! Christmas is soooo coming! and I still need to do shopping... oops.

three brothers are we... (rochester family photographer)

Remember this guy? Well, their mom had wanted to do pictures of the 3 boys even before we planned doing Bryan's senior pics.

I'm so glad we got this done! It was so hard for me... It's not my forte to do guys in general. so you can imagine that it was hard for me to make sure I was rising to the challenge. This was the second session I got to use the new camera for and I had played with the custom settings a bit and forgot to change it back before I shot these. And man was I glad I didn't!



The color in this picture is a little more dramatic than the camera actually took, but as I clicked away and then viewed on the lcd I realized these pictures were going to be different than anything I had done before.



I love this shot. I love when dead things can be so beautiful, and the woods in the winter are such evidence of how that is possible.



We met up at Mendon Ponds to take these pics... remember this chimney? It was a long trek into the woods to get here and it was COLD. I had the luxury of actually being able to wear a jacket... and gloves... and a hat... in fact I had to crop my mitten out of quite a few pictures LOL! They were freezing however, and although I tried to get these done as quickly as possible, it still took about 45 minutes.

Oh, and I know that it's one of those unspoken photographer rules, but you're not supposed to tell people when you screw up, but I think this one is funny. So I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The above picture was taken after we had come off the bird trail; for which we had brought a gallon size ziploc bag filled with dry bread. I forgot to move the bag out of the way before I took this set... and so when I downloaded these you can imagine how surprised I was to see that dumb bag RIGHT in the middle of the picture!

If you can figure out where it was (because I obviously got rid of it) I'll give you a prize. hmmm... ok, well maybe a high five LOL! What would I give out as a prize if I WERE going to give one? Any ideas?



While taking this shot, there were chickadees flying around everywhere! I only had to take this picture oh about 20 times before I got all three of them looking. Their faces and heads and bodies were all staying the same, but their eyes were moving all over the place. It was pretty funny scrolling through :)



Since Bryan had all his individuals when we did sr pics, I wanted to get a couple of the other two while we were out this time. I don't know what it was about this picture, maybe the balance of color or what, but I just love it.



And look at Bryce's ears, it was seriously freezing! I felt so bad!



I totally took this after I promised them we were DONE and I wouldn't take anymore... but we were walking back down the path and I saw this shot in my mind... it had to be done. I did it with all three of them alternating but I liked this one best :)



One of these days, I swear I'll get this shot right. This one isn't bad, but it could be better... eh, live and learn! I just love doing this shot though because it's so much fun! And everyone always does it differently



How's this for a classic shot? We were almost done and they reminded me to take this... I'm so glad they did because it ended up being a favorite :)

Well that's it for now. I have a bunch more to get up! I have been trying to post one a day, and I know i missed yesterday, but hey. What's a girl to do? I ended up making gingerbread houses most of today so I'm honestly shocked that I have time to do this right now. I got a cool shot of two of that fiasco, so I'll post something, but you'll be able to read the whole story over at my other blog :)

it was madness

mini shoot madness I like to call it. This pic was taken between shoots by my super photographer friend Melissa. But she's not my friend just because she's a photog... it's pretty much because she rocks!



Head on over to my personal blog notsoextraordinary to take a look at the craziness that we are together :)

thing 1 and thing 2 (rochester baby/twins photographer)

That's right! Here they are... the twins! I was sooooo excited to shoot these two little guys, and they so lived up to my expectations. I couldn't have asked for better little models!

I am so behind in everything... except my pictures :) And that can't be bad right?

This whole only posting once a day is killing me, although it's really good for me at the same time... cuz I write better in small doses :)

So, without further adieu, here are Marcus and Maddox.



First shot. This is when I went from thinking it would go good to KNOWING it would go tood :D



Can anyone say synchronized crawling?



If i ever have twins... they will totally have onesies like this. Seriously, it just kills me... cuteness stinking overload!



While they were laying next to eachother like this, they kept holding hands. It was so precious. Twins have such a special bond... It's really cool to see. So i wanted to capture a piece of that...


It was just about all I could do to NOT steal these hats! They are too adorable. This shot was preceeded by my entrance into the world of naked babies peeing while we take pictures! It happened 3 times last week, all different babies of course


Aaaand, you've seen this one before... but i just LOVE his little lip. I believe that one is Marcus... i may be wrong though! Anyways, what a joy these little guys were to work with... not to mention mom and dad. They are awesome. Thank you so much for doing this with me!

I'll be reworking the website probably about January, and these pictures are sure to make it on there. Along with a lot of others, but I will let you all know when it's updated. I'm also thinking about changing the colors/feel. I like the black and blue/green more traditional feel... but honestly i'm getting a little sick of it! That's me for ya. I always like change. If you have any feedback i'd be interested to hear what you think I should do with it. Comment and let me know :)