This baby girl’s parents won my services at an auction for our neighborhood school and meeting her mom while she was pregnant, I knew she would have a gorgeous baby! I had a great day with her family, even getting little brother B in on the action. He is going to be a great big brother. I bet he is getting lots of attention from his grandmother. The unusually large number of images in this sneak peek are just for Grandma since M told me that she doesn’t have a computer and also because several of the images were taken on her mother’s afghan (that’s your great-grandmother, Miss T!). I love it when clients use meaningful blankets or other items in their images.

Hope you love them A Family! There are so many beautiful ones still to come.

Okay, back to editing! K Family look for something later tonight and E Family, yours should be ready tomorrow!

I got lucky with one of my favorite families and we had a beautiful day. I’ve been so fortunate to take pictures of little Miss M as a newborn, at seven months and now, at a year! It is so much fun to see how much she’s changed!

I’m going to keep this short and sweet because you’re really here to see the pictures and I’ve got galleries galore to get up.  I’m going to try to get up some catch-up images from the sessions I’ve been doing over the past few months very soon.

Without further ado . . .

I love that G and L get the best of both worlds. They are city kids with a Nana and Papa who live on a farm – and a real one at that – hogs, smells, bugs, snakes, tractors and combines. G is going through a little phase where she is terrified of the littlest bug and almost incoherent at big bugs or flying bugs. So, she hasn’t been outside much : ) Plus, it is about a million degrees in central Illinois. But, she was brave today and went swimming in the hot tub for awhile (no swim vest, daddy!), picked strawberries with her sister and did all kinds of other fun things.  Papa drove the combine up to the mulberry tree so G could reach and L had so much fun in the strawberry patch pretending to take calls on her cell phone. We saw a big snake sunning itself and all in all, the bugs stayed pretty far away. I think maybe G forgot to be afraid for a little while. It was sweltering. The girls had sweaty, hot faces. But, they had a blast and we got fresh peas, strawberries, mulberries and carrots with dinner.

For all of you with summer sessions, you know how I’m always trying to convince you to do our sessions early in the morning or late, late afternoon? Check out the beautiful light in these images and you’ll see why!

I have a lot on the way – fun maternity shots, images of some new products I’m offering and even a few pictures of boys (it seems like I’ve only had girls around here lately!).

G, like a lot of almost 4 year olds, isn’t crazy about leaving the action and going to bed. It was a gorgeous night and she was in heaven getting lots of attention from Nana and Papa. So, I asked her to look at the camera. Just a quick one, really. I just wanted to check the focus, see what everybody raves about. No, of course, she wasn’t interested. So, and I know this is bad, I decided to threaten bargain with her. Unless she let me take her picture, she had to go to bed. Ugh, she chose BED! Seriously, when I tried to sneak one in, she said, “Mom, I told you I’d rather go to bed than take pictures.”

I can’t tell you how often I’ve begged her to let me take her picture. But, I just discovered a little trick – gorgeous dresses. G will do anything to put on a fancy dress. . . even get her picture taken. I wave a gorgeous dress in front of her and voila. . . a photo session. She’s even been asking me when she can do her next “shoot.”

Here are a few of her hanging out in her fancy polka dot dress at the end of our block.