Three kids are better than one

Last month I did quite a few kid shoots; I previously posted photos of Ruth and Bailey, as well as my daughter dressed as a bride. Ruth is very good friends with both of my kids, so at the end of her shoot we took some photos of all of the kids together - here are my favorites!

My daughter, the bride

When I received my in-home studio set up (pictured here in my basement), I was of course very excited to try it out! This involved not just putting everything together, but starting to figure out light placement, and really work with lighting. Fortunately, my daughter is always happy to be my model...mostly because it gives her an excuse to dress up for a little while! Since I wanted to photograph her on the black background, we chose her white bride costume and, well...here are the results!

Kid photo shoots

Recently I did two photo shoots for some friends of my daughter - one is her friend from daycare, and the other is a friend from preschool. I have my favorites in albums on Facebook:
Ruth Ellen's photos
Bailey's photos

Portrait idea a la Pinterest

For anyone who has spent any time on Pinterest, you know how easy it is to get sucked down into the ridiculous amount of amazing ideas that abound there, whether it be ideas for craft projects, home decorating, art, photography, recipes...there's just so much. Often when I go there, it's to look for something in specific and then I quickly close the window, as I just don't have the hours and hours to spend there! This post is my take on an idea I saw floating around on both Pinterest and other websites over the holiday season (this photo is just one of many examples that exist of creating the "bokeh" effect, as it's called, with Christmas lights). I thought that with a relatively simple set up (a solid backdrop and some white Christmas lights), I should be able to replicate this idea fairly easily.

In the pumpkin fields

About 3 weeks ago my sister and I took my kids to a farm in Ashland, Va for some fun fall activities. The farm included a tractor ride out to pumpkin fields, and the scenery was too beautiful too ignore.

In the ferns

The "woods" behind Evan's parents' house have a section that looks a bit like a sea of fern fronds. While we were outside playing there a couple of weeks ago, Natalie looked so beautiful walking around in them that I just had to snap a couple of photos!

Fancy photoshoot

I recently saw an idea on Pinterest to have your daughter dress up in your wedding gown, and give her that photo on her wedding day. Wonderful idea! However, my wedding dress is still wrapped up from when it was cleaned and pressed after the wedding, and I haven't had the guts to take it out and risk messing it up yet. So instead, I had the idea to let Natalie dress up in my sister's maid of honor dress from my wedding (which I had shortened a couple of years ago to wear to another event) and take some photos. I am SO happy with how they came out!

Beautiful eyes

I don't really plan to post many photos of my children on here, as I have my family blog for that. However, I do occasionally take artistic photos of them, and I feel that they belong more here than there. While playing this week, I grabbed these two shots of their beautiful eyes.