Horsemeister boys & Mia

I had a session last week w/Mia who has turned one. Her momma had this shoe idea and brought a whole laundry basket of really cute shoes. I thought it was a darling idea, Mia didn't. I've been photographing Mia since she was just a tiny infant and she has been nothing but smiles, but it's just so typical of kids. You get this awesome idea and have the best layed plans and for no reason at all, THEY DON'T LIKE IT.
After a little play time w/mom though & a few goldfish, she decided it was the most fun ever to grab the shoes and throw them off the chair...and then she'd smile:)
Here are a few highlites from that session..





And then the Horsemeister boys. I had a session last week in the rain w/these guys and although we got some decent shots I was just not happy w/them. It was just ugly outside. So when we woke up to fresh snow yesterday, I convinced Judy to pull them out and let them run around a little. I knew I was getting some awesome shots of these guys. Evan (blue halter) is a huge show off and the camera LOVES him.


Valiant, the other hand (purple halter), is all about the LADIES. Judy would walk him out into the snowy field and let him go and instead of showing off for the camera he'd head straight back to the paddocks where the mares were. He had absolutely NO interest in getting his picture taken.



These 2 remind me so much of teenage boys, they can't just walk normally, they've got to contantly be jostling and goofing off the whole time. They were cracking me up.

feb rush?

Usually Feb is known a the slow month for a lot of photographers and has always been pretty low key for me too, only not this year.

I've finished the main directory pics for my church, other than a make up date in May and a few out at our retirement home, they are about done...except for keeping up with the emails/orders. I wasn't counting on how much work that part was going to be.

Yesterday, because my kids were off school and I still try to be a good mom, I took them ice skating. On the way I stopped to see if any orders were in and found a mountain of boxes! I guess I didn't realize how many small orders I had coming in. So when orders come in I usually spend a large part of the next day getting them sorted and in mailers, and addressed, mailed, and setting up pick up times for those on a deadline...get the picture of what I've been doing all day???

The other thing I did yesterday was run over to Horsemeister Farm and take pics of their 2 awesome stud colts...in the rain. We talked about cancelling but decided to give it a try. A grey day, taking pics of black horses, in the rain, I wish the sun would have popped out but we just had to deal with it the best we could. When the subjects are so beautiful I can at least get a few but I can't wait to do a summer session w/these guys. Even though they don't look it, they are actually supposed to be in their "ugly duckling" stage....if this is their ugly stage, I can't wait to see what they end up looking like when they come out of it!
The first weekend in March they will be at the state fair in Springfield, IL and they've hired me to come along to photograph that so that should be fun. These 2 collages were designed to be framed for the stalls.




My older 2 boys are part of a band called high time and are recording some music here at the diningroom table while I'm blogging and I just took a few candids of that...




playing w/the dof a little here...
They actually sound pretty good!

Now I've got to tackle some laundry before making a post office run...Luke is out of socks:)

How cool is that??

Today was a first for me, I actually shoveled snow in the middle of a wedding session! Of course that goes right along w/it being my first winter wedding.

I saw this cool pure white hill and thought, "what an awesome background for the wedding party". I'm pretty sure they thought I was crazy but my assitant and I got to work clearing a path for the party to walk through. Some places were at least a couple of feet deep, so we got a work out in the process. We were joking that we need a "there will be an extra fee for shoveling" in my wedding contracts:)

Anyway, here are a few shots from today....




Just to give you an idea of how deep the drifts were, here I'm standing on top of one.






The wedding party got pretty "into" it...

snow days

got dressed and went out w/my camera for a few shots. i had every intention of shoveling our sidewalk but it was under a 3 foot drift so i just took a pic of it. maybe we'll not see our sidewalk till spring?



our snow dogs...


sasha had a little frozen treat she had hidden...make that a 1/2 of her frozen treat...a bunnysickle.



i tried to get our horses to come out to the field to play and they just looked at me like i was crazy and went back to their shelter.



jess had some fun, too bad she had no brothers around when she picked up this snow ball...


look mom, no legs..


a little present for aunt karin:)

spotted the incredible hulk..aka logan


we walked over to the horsemeister farm and this is how raven decided to deal w/the snow, pretty smart horse....he too thought we were crazy and didn't bother to get up and say "hi".


some of our crazy neighbors came over skiing behind their horse.


We are actually enjoying being stuck here playing games, watching movies, & just hanging out. Which is a good thing because no matter what the groundhog says...i'm pretty sure we'll be looking at another 6 weeks of winter.

i am NOT getting sick.

I may have some body aches, and a headache, and maybe a tiny bit of a sore throat but I just flat out refuse to get sick. I'm just gonna keep downing vitamin C (even though my super smart 18 year old said that they learned in health class that doesn't help) and taking ibuprofin and keep refusing to give in.

Today was another really full day between taking almost 40 individual/family pics at my church and then a truely terrible volleyball game w/my league....yeah, all while dealing w/my not being sick. If I do have to get sick (not that I'm going to) tomorrow and tuesday would work for my schedule, but then after that I've got stuff to do.

Last week, one of my nieces brought in her 9mo little boy and we decided, rather than drive out to the studio we'd do some experimenting w/my slave flash here at home. I think they turned out great, but it did kind of remind me of just starting out when I hung a blanket over a door for a background:)


Here's one in my office w/my black couch in the background, check out the cheeks on this kid...so cute!


This is the same way I'm doing the church pics also, and I've got to say that slave flashing is alot easier than hauling around my big alien bee lights. I'm shooting at ISO 160, 6.3, & 160th of a second in a windowless room and the pics are turning out really nice. Great color and exposure. I've also been using a grey card for the first time since we are able to mass edit some of these shots.

Not too shabby!

Friday I had a studio appt for Dillon, who is Duncan's little sister. She was supposed to have her pics taken when Duncan came in however she was sick (not me) and had to reschedule. She was feeling better and full of smiles for me.

check her out!!!

This coming week has no sessions planned. Just some editing, then we're having a few friends over for a taffy pull and then again a Sunday full of individual/family pics, 3 more Sunday's to go.

Big guys & little guys

I am slowly getting back into the swing of things here. Had a couple of fun sessions this last week.

Connor came in for his senior session, and even though we did most of them inside because it was FREEZING, we snuck out for a few just for fun...really cold fun.


Another one of our kids turned 18 on Monday....Caleb is officially an adult...I guess.

We took our family, along w/3 of his friends to Fun City over the weekend. 3 days later and I'm still sore from climbing the rock wall!



Then one of my favorite little guys, "Duncan" came in for his 4 year old shoot. I've been taking his picture since he was a baby. It's so much fun to get to see these little guys grow up. Duncan is just one of those smiley little kids and he told me before he left he needed to give me a real tight hug!

Nothing makes your day like a really tight hug from this kid:)

nights and days

Break is over and the kids are back in school, but for awhile there it was like they were babies again...babies w/their nights and days mixed up!

Just about every time we'd bring home one of our brand new precious tiny babies from the hospital, for about the first week they'd sleep all day and want to eat all night. The past couple weeks it was like that again, only they're not so tiny anymore, but they still want to eat all night. Every night the kids went to bed later and later and got up the next day later and later. I remember when our kids could barely stay up till midnight on New Years....not a problem now.

We did have one case of stomach flu and I'm really hoping it stays that way. Of course that kid was sleeping up in a tree house bed way up high and couldn't get down the ladder to the bathroom so the clean up was extensive. Doing laundry at 3:00 a.m. is not my idea of fun.

Anyway, we are now getting back on the early bedtime, early wake up schedule and it's tough...but I like it way better.

This is officially my "slow" time and I'm not doing too much right now, just a few sessions. I am getting my tax stuff together and getting ready to file IL sales tax and then in a couple of weeks I'm going to start taking family pictures for my church's online directory. I think there is around 150 families so I think I'm just going to enjoy these next 2 weeks before it gets crazy around here again.