I can’t believe how fast this year has flown by. This time last year I was holding my newborn daughter in my arms, and now I have a little girl, full of personality, smiles, and love. My life wouldn’t be complete without her. <3 She has brought so much joy to our family, and we love her more than words can say.

Here are some (ok, a LOT) of our baby girl’s 1 year portraits. :)

Would you believe that these were taken in the deserts of Northern Arizona? One of my favorite things about photography is stalking out new, beautiful locations, and this is one that I’m sure will only look this way for a fleeting time.

We’re always battling with Millie’s hair…it’s in a half grown out and VERY fuzzy state right now, but for these photos, I just went with it. I let the wind do it’s thing, and let it fall where it fell, down over her eyes, sticking straight up…whatever! This is how we see her 90% of the time, so why not?

My sweet, serious girl…

One of Tavers for good measure…

This is one of those adorable pieces of childhood you will want to remember as your child grows up.  This is my 3 year old, Adrian.  He’s on a big cowboy kick lately.  Every morning, he puts on his jeans, western shirt, cowboy hat, belt, and boots.  And yes, he *must* wear it to bed too.  I HAD to get a picture of Adrian’s bedtime ensemble….it is SO cute.  And makes for some seriously great blackmail down the road.  :)

Isn’t that SO boy?  I love it!!

Ok, so in my title I mentioned ‘more’…well, that more would be that I *finally* joined the dark side and made the switch from a jpeg shooter to a RAW shooter (you photogs will understand).  I think it’s going to take some getting used to, but I’m hooked!  I had (ok, more like bribed and paid) Calista to do a quick session with me to get some RAW files to play around with.  These are my first ones!

I seriously can’t get enough of this place!  I’m showing my Pacific Northwest roots here, being raised in Washington state…I LOVE the green!  These were taken in the ‘golden hour’, or rather, the ‘golden minutes’ (literally just minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon).  Loving this sweet light!  And my sweet girl of course! :)

There are actually THREE of these old soda crates stacked up.  The grass is so thick and long that you can only see 2 of them.  Loving this little piece of heaven!

I think I have an addiction to ugly old chairs!  My husband’s garage is slowly (ok, maybe NOT so slowly) turning into a gigantic storage space for all of my props.  Whatever the case, I found this lovely piece for a STEAL at just $35!  Seriously, the more ‘ugly’, bold crazy colors, chipped up multi-layered paint wrecks the better.  You know, something with character. :)

Anyways, I do believe I’ve located the only patch of green for hundreds of miles.  And I’m serious!  I’ve driven all over looking and this. is. it.

Anyways, I had to test out my new ugly chair in my secret little oasis in the Mohave desert.  Modeling like a good model is my beautiful daughter. :)

Oh, and stay tuned!  I will be announcing a fun contest soon that will win you a free session fee and other goodies!

I had to throw this one in too…loving her baby blues!

I’ve always loved the urban style of processing, but don’t think I’ve ever pushed my colors/edits quite to where I wanted them.  I was totally inspired by the wonderful Tiffany of Follow Your Art Photography to really work that processing.

We have an *amazing* location nearby, that is a real treasure trove of old rusty cars, old coke machines, ancient machinery, old buildings and nick knacks…a real photographer’s paradise!  I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to get my butt back out there, but I thought it would be the perfect spot to take some pictures to play around with in the digital darkroom.  As always, it’s best to start with a properly exposed, focused, composed (yes, I SO should have moved the trash can :P ), white balanced photo, and then let the artist in you take over from there.

Just one of Miss C today…I think I’ll be back at this place often in the future!

SOOC = straight out of the camera

And the edit…

And just for the heck of it, the b&w version.  I don’t really think b&w can compete with color in a shot like this, but here it is anyways. :)

One more example…

SOOC…

And the edit…

Just the edits this time. :)

My 3 year old son recently got a little cowboy outfit.  He hasn’t removed the outfit except for washings since he got it.  He LOVES being a little cowboy!  At night, we can manage to get him out of his jeans and shirt, but he goes to bed, I kid you not, in his undies, belt, hat, AND boots.  Yes, even the boots.  I *will* get a picture of this very very soon as it’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!

Here are a few shots of my little cowboy. :)

And now, to completely change gears, my sweet baby girl Octavia is now 9 months old!  I can’t believe her first birthday is sneaking up so quickly!  She is the most laid back, lovable, expressive little gal…I love her top pieces!  She can just pull you in with her big, bright eyes and sweet little grin. :)

I got some seriously CUTE knit hats and cocoons from Flower Girl Designs (check out her shop!) and it was finally warm enough outside in my garage to do a test run with one of the hats yesterday!  My little gal is SO full of personality!  I love all her little faces!

Calista celebrated her 11th birthday just a few weeks ago, so I decided that we needed to do a fun urban shoot for her 11 year old pictures (as if I don’t have tons of pictures of my girl already). lol  I really wanted to incorporate some fun colors and try some new locations out…and I love how these came out!  Can’t believe how grown up she is looking!

Going for a Twilight look here…something different!

And because life isn’t all serious, my favorites from out session…these are definitely her!

One last shot to add…this was taken in a dry lake bed near our town that had actually flooded with all of the rain we’ve been having.  Love the sense of solitude from this one.  As a side note, this cost me $5 and a large bag of skittles…I mean really, who wants to lay in the mud in a sundress in February?  She’s SUCH a good sport!

First off, let me say that I deleted and re-typed Kingman BABY Photographer and Kingman CHILD Photographer several times before settling on ‘child’…my little girl is growing up!  *sniff* She’ll be 2 in June, and is such a sweetheart!  I’ve been wanting to take some new photographs of her lately, but keep putting it off as she’s at SUCH a tough age.  She generally likes to run away and look at anything but the camera. :)  Today I decided to take her out and try to get a few shots…whatever she was up for.  It was pretty cold and windy, so this was short, but I think I got a few cute pictures of my sweet girl. :)  Most of these feature ‘Puppy’ aka her teddy bear that we thought was a puppy when she first got it, but by the time we realized it was a bear, she had already named it ‘Puppy’…and let me tell you, they are literally attached at the hip. :)

I’ve been doing these shots since Octavia was a newborn.  It’s so fun for me to see her growth throughout this series!  The earlier pictures in the series can be seen HERE.  She is so full of personality!

And totally off topic, but I wanted to share this one while I’m posting too.  I had a Victorian style white dress made for Calista…I have some really neat ideas that incorporate this dress into my work that I want to try out.  I took it out for a quick test run the other day, and can’t wait to do more!

Yesterday, I took out one of my not-so-photographed children for a few pictures.  He was actually requesting them…and who am I to say no to a kid asking to have his picture taken? :P

This is Theron, my newly turned 7 year old.  These 2 photos speak of his personality so well to me.

Are you guys getting sick of seeing Octavia yet?  I like to  keep my skills in tune during the slow season, and she’s still immobile, so she’ll probably be making a lot of appearances here this winter!  I got a new ‘floor’ for my studio work and had to test it out today.  I really like it so far!  Who would know that it’s a giant rubber mat?

And a pullback for my photographer friends!  One day, I would *love* to have a real natural light studio, but for now, I’m thankful that I get excellent light in my garage.  Whatever works, right? Anyways, this was my setup for the above shots!  Sorry for the lack of a cute smiling baby, but she had had enough by the time I thought to take this.  She’d had enough by the time I thought throwing cool dried leaves all over the floor would look cool too…darn it!

Coming back to this one to add just *one* more…I drug her out again today because the leaf shot was eluding me! Haha!  She’s such a good girl, it was COLD and windy today, and not one complaint out of her!  Just more smiles!

I’ve been taking these shots of Octavia in Daddy’s hands since she was a wee little 13 day old newborn.  I’ve been trying to do them at semi-regular intervals to show her growth and changes.  It’s *amazing* to me how a new baby changes their first year of life.  I hope these photos help document that in Octavia!

13 days young…

4 months old…

And today at 6 1/2 months old.  She’s getting so big!  Daddy’s just happy he didn’t get peed on. lol

This is ‘Part 2′ to the photos I posted the other day of Miss Octavia.  I wanted to get some more of her, but we can only do a few minutes of shooting at a time.  It is cold in my garage, even by Arizona’s standards!

First, a few black and white goodies.  Isn’t she sweet? <3

Look at the big girl!  She can only do it for short periods of time before she topples, but we’re making progress!

And this is just a silly outtake, but I couldn’t resist saving it.  No babies were harmed during the taking of these photos.  You have my word! :P