Children’s Portraits can be fun! They can be especially fun if the children can be doing what they want to do verses asking them to sit still & smile. Holly & Maddison were great! I wanted them to have fun & play, and they did a spectacular job of both. I just took a few images while they had fun. As it turned out we all had fun & ended up with some pretty adorable portraits in the process.

When I was shooting Eilya’s family portraits I came up with some suggested settings for her parents portraits as well as settings for her two sisters & little brother. Eilya was pretty specific where she wanted her portrait taken. Eilya wanted to be photographed sitting on her tire swing. It was perfect.

This is the beautiful son of Liliana & Gary at twelve days old. I’ve learned that the younger the infant is, the more cooperative they are. Under two weeks old is best. Brandon was great! He slept, (which is exactly what I wanted) and made all those adorable little baby expressions as he had his little baby dreams. Both of his parents are wonderful so it is no real surprise that he is so adorable. Do you know anyone that is expecting that needs to get an infant portrait on the schedule?

No doubt this lad will some day soon have the ladies singing Kenny Chesney songs. This is one of the individual portraits I did as part of a recent family session. This young man (Judah) was amazingly patient and absolutely adorable. Typically you can not expect a lot of endurance from a two year old but Judah seemed to have fun and could always come up with a great smile.

Another shot from a recent family portrait session. Momo (aka Marta) surrounded by her four adorable grand children. This was one of the very last images I shot at the end of a two and a half hour family session. It was an amazingly productive afternoon with tons of great photographs of a wonderful loving family.

Now for something really different…
For those that follow my ramblings and are not aware, in addition to being a full time photographer, I exchange 15-20 hours a week of my time working at United Airlines for health insurance, free flights & pocket change.  My days start around 4:am and I am on my way home by around 9:am. Some mornings I am in a white shirt & tie greeting passengers at the ticket counter. Some mornings I am in what I refer to as my “village people” outfit pushing airplanes around & gently tossing baggage. Since this morning it was a record 11 degrees (F) outside in Austin Texas, of course, I was out on the ramp. I snapped this photo on my iPhone to send to my wife while I was waiting for the deicing crew to finish clearing the frost off the wings before I pushed this aircraft out & set it on it’s way to Chicago. My wife liked the photo & asked that I post it, so here it is. Just a little self portrait on a cold winter day.

I met Jo when I was looking to have a totem carved in our backyard. We had to remove a large Cottonwood because it was dying and the majority of the tree was in danger of falling on our house. My wife suggested we leave the stump & perhaps we could have it carved. Enter Jo & her husband Stacey the amazing chainsaw carving team of Robinson Carving. As it turned out, not only are they amazing artist, but Jo is a model as well & and was looking to have some new images for her portfolio. So while Stacey was finishing up our tree, I shot some images of Jo. I hope she is as thrilled with her portraits as we are with our new tree art!

Here is a work in progress snapshot of Stacey working on our tree.

Happy New Year to all! Recently I had the opportunity to do a portrait session for a wonderful family that will soon be moving out of their beautiful home complete with pond and relocating to a wonderful new home a few miles away. I was asked to do some environmental portraits that would not only show the family, but also a bit of the beautiful land where these children have been raised. It was a fun request helping preserve some memories in the process of out with old and in with the new. On this first day of 2010, I see the young man offering us the oar as a metaphor for opportunity.
I hope your new year allows you to grab the oar and create many beautiful memories.