Koch Family

On Saturday I met up with the Koch family at Long Lake Regional Park for a family session. It was a warm sunny day but we had quite the wind going which made it a little trickier to get some non-windy hair shots. I love the colors they chose to wear, it's warm and adds to the feeling of the richness of fall and unity of family.
Hope you like your sneak peek!

Amanda

I was so happy when I got an email from Amanda's mom asking me about doing her senior portraits! We scheduled them for Friday afternoon, and through a turn of events ended up shooting earlier in the day than first planned. It was a good thing too, because by the time we finished up at Minnehaha Falls the rain moved in. It was about a half hour before her session was first scheduled to begin.
I hope you like your sneak peek Amanda, and have a great senior year!

Before the snow came

On Friday I had scheduled a session with my friend Amy and her family. We were getting a little nervous because of weather reports. It was cold and snow was on the way! After going back and forth on whether to go through with it or not we finally decided to try it and if it didn't work out to try it again another day. I don't think we'll have to do any retakes, I'm loving these shots and I hope you do to Amy!

Senior Sneak Peek!

I was really excited when "B" called me for her senior session. I've know her and her awesome family for about four or five years. I can't believe she's a senior already!
We met at a local school that had a great walking path and nature all around. "B" plays the most beautiful blue guitar I've ever seen. She's developed that talent very well! And it doesn't hurt that her guitar matches her pretty blue eyes.







Every once in a while I like to play around with colorizing, textures and brushes. I thought this was a good image to play around with a texture called "Cracks" by Johnny Magnoski. It's of a cement walkway, but I erased out the cracks in it and added some love letter brushes, which are the words you see in the background. I also added yellow toning to give a sunshine effect. I think I like how it turned out.



I also loved the fields we used, the colors of the grasses and wild flowers.


These are just a few images I played with while uploading her session to my computer. I hope you enjoyed your sneak peek "B" and can't wait to show you the rest of your gallery!

It's not often

That I get to do family portraits, and when I do, usually I refer them to my friends who do more family portrait photography than myself. I've mostly been doing babies and weddings. But I just couldn't pass up the chance to be this family's photographer. I was privileged to be two of these girls youth leader a few years ago and just adore their family. Their oldest daughter has graduated and is shortly going out west for college and their mom wanted family pictures done before she left.
Thanks A. for being such a trooper and walking all over the place to all the spots I asked (and Dad for carrying you!), I hope your foot heals quickly and you'll be running around soon!

When I loaded their session into my Lightroom, I couldn't wait to play with this one. I'd asked the girls to stand out in the grass and suggested they could do any number of things, play with the grass, look at the lake, talk to each other... and this is what they did.

Sisterly love... naturally.

brings a tear to my eye.