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Category Archives: Newborns

Nov 09 2011

My Sweet Babies {Kingman Arizona Newborn, Child, & Family Photographer | Las Vegas Newborn, Child, & Family Photographer}

Posted in: Children | Families | Newborns | Personal

One of the things on my seemingly never-ending list of photos to take was a photo of baby Elliott with his 8 big brothers and sisters. Other moms out there will know that this is NOT an easy task. First of all, photographing your own children is inherently more difficult than photographing someone else’s child. Why? The same reason why most kids will behave better for a babysitter than they will for Mom & Dad…they don’t know what to expect from a stranger, but they will push the limits with you! Secondly, nine kids is a LOT! That said, I was determined…this picture was at the top of my priority list. Plus, I needed a Christmas card!

So, I set off to find the perfect location. I wanted beautiful fall colors, and pretty light. I took my 2 littlest girls out to test spots and found this gorgeous area. We were even blessed with our first snowfall of the year!

I dare anyone to tell me they aren’t adorable! <3

The next day was the day for the group picture. I tried to remain upbeat and positive and hoped that would rub off on the kiddos (having pictures taken isn’t usually at the top of the list of fun things to do). A huge storm system was moving in and the sky was getting darker (you other photographers out there know this can be worrisome for a natural light photographer). We hurried up to the spot I had scouted out the previous day, and got everyone set up. We kept a nice warm blanket over baby Elliott until the very last second before I clicked the shutter. He slept through the entire thing! Do you see the snow falling? Literally 20 minutes after we finished up, this turned into a full on blizzard; so much so, that we couldn’t even see the mountains from our house. Totally crazy…we made it just in time!

I LOVE these pictures. I love them because they are my babies, and I love them because their personalities are shining through. In the 2nd picture, I was telling a wonderful, potty humor laden story about the great overflowing toilet. Hey, whatever works! I’d say it worked well! :)

I feel like the luckiest gal in the world…seriously, who couldn’t love this bunch? And yay! I got my Christmas card picture!

A TOTALLY unrelated picture, but one I wanted to share anyways, is this one of sweet baby Elliott. Isn’t it amazing how fast they change? He is such a sweet boy!

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Nov 02 2011

Baby On Black {Kingman Arizona Newborn Photographer | Las Vegas Newborn Photographer}

Posted in: Newborns | Personal

As you go through your journey as a photographer, you find certain styles that you are drawn to. For me, that would be beautifully back lit images and moody black and whites. I LOVE me a moody black and white with dramatic lighting. Good highlights, gorgeous shadowing, and mid-tones still well in tact = perfection in my little world. Even more fun is trying to achieve this look in different locations using only natural light. I love the challenge! These were taken utilizing the light from a window in our living room. I adore this look. For those of you wanting to try baby on black photos…make sure you have directional lighting or you will wind up with the dreaded ‘floating baby’ and/or the ‘weird gray baby plopped on a black background’ look. You have to have shadowing and highlights to give dimension to and ground your subject.

Mr. Elliott is now a beefy 18 days old (how did that happen???) and definitely not as eager to snooze for his photos. With (LOTS) of snacks, he finally fell into a nice sleep for me. I wanted these to be more naturally posed…less ‘modern’ newborn photography and more ‘how a newborn would really sleep.’ These are among my favorite kinds of photos to take. They are simple. They are dramatic. They are all about the baby with no distractions to avert your attention. They are VERY newborn to me. I love them. There is no portraiture or skin smoothing here and very little editing other than blacking out the background, converting to black and white, and cropping. These may look very similar to you, but they all have small differences which make me love each individual photo in a different way. Different hand positions, different expressions, different angles. Same beautiful baby. <3

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Oct 30 2011

My Sweet Autumn Baby {Kingman Arizona Newborn Photographer | Las Vegas Newborn Photographer}

Posted in: Newborns | Personal

You would think that with 9 children, I’d have one born in almost every month by now. But that just wasn’t true! We have the summer group (5 of the kids were born between June and August), and the winter group (the other 3 were born between January and early March). There was not a fall baby in sight until Mr. Elliott made his appearance! Fall is, without a doubt, my favorite season of the year, so it was especially exciting to have a sweet new baby during the holiday season. I actually have a checklist written out on a piece of paper of all the shots I’d like to try to get of Elliott before his newborn days pass, and on that list was ‘a picture of Elliott in fall leaves.’ I wanted to commemorate the time of year he was born by doing a quick mini-session of him in some fall color. Living in the brown desert, finding any patch of color anywhere other than a shade of tan or brown is pretty exciting, so I headed to one of my favorite secret spots for my fall pictures of Elliott. I love this spot all year long…in the spring and summer it is beautiful, sunny, and green, with wild flowers growing throughout. In the fall, all the glorious shades of gold, rust, yellow, and red come into play. Elliott wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea of being tucked into a furry box, so these were done pretty quickly with lots of ‘stay happy snacks’ tossed in between shots, but I LOVE the results. Love. I’m trying to decide which of the first 2 pics here will go on a canvas in my home. What do you think?

My sweet husband took this for me…love him! <3

Please head on over to my FACEBOOK PAGE if you would like to see a before and after of one of these fall pictures.

Totally unrelated to the above photos, but remember how I said I wanted pictures of Elliott with each of his 8 siblings? Well, here are 3 more checked off the list…Quentin, Camille (aka Millie), and Octavia! Oh and yes, one with Mommy too. <3

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