Summer. It's coming...

Awe.

This kid sees the world with such awe...Sometimes I am jealous I can't see it the way he does.

Beach.

So, Blogger decided to change EVERYTHING regarding their post settings, and I am having a REALLY hard time figuring out how to make pictures appear side by side. Grrrrrrr... Anyway, these were taken with my iphone (i know!)...and edited with VSCO Cam app.

Let them be silly...

Every time I go to a shoot that involves kids, mom and dad are usually stressed. Stressed that everyone's hair is brushed, stressed that everyone is paying attention, stressed that the perfectly clean clothes they are wearing are going to get a grass stain.

Now I'm stressed.

It's time to take a deep breath.

PHEW.

Everyone feel better?

I live for 'the real' in photographs. Kids have dirty faces because they were eating dirt. Awesome. The kids are running around playing tag, REFUSING to look at the camera. What a fantastic chance to get some action shots. I would rather take a photograph of a completely distracted (but happy) child, playing in the mud, than a child being forced to smile for the camera...who is completely miserable.

Look, I get it. Everyone wants the picture of everyone smiling, and looking like they're about to go to church...I want it too. (Ha! You couldn't PAY my kids to look at the camera and pose) But it needs to be said: That is not real life.

Real life is your kids half dressed in their undies eating cheerios, watching cartoons on a rainy saturday morning. Real life is the quiet moment you catch your 4 year old reading a story to his stuffed bear. Real life is the chaos on a summer evening when every one is running around with Popsicle stains on their face, jumping through the sprinkler.

I would so much rather remember 'real life' in a photo, than just an image of what everyone decided to wear that day.

All you need is a little Hope...

I photographed Luke and Breanne's wedding two summers ago, and I was so happy they asked me to come back at photograph their beautiful baby girl, Hope.

Look at the hair! THE HAIR!

Baby Ethan's Birth Story

Trione and Pat had a scheduled c-section, and to be totally honest, I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to capture the emotion I usually see during a labour. Wow. I was so wrong. CAPITAL WRONG.

Doesn't Ethan look like a really adorable garden gnome!?