Wedding Crasher

This little guy wandered into the middle of Taylor and Buck's ceremony yesterday, and I mean literally in the middle of it. They were standing up in front of everyone when this little guy waltzed in and stole the show. I was seriously contemplating how I could store him in my car for the rest of the day and take him home with us! Jack and Sawyer would totally love a new little brother, right?

#hothusband

On one of our recent engagement shoots, we started a new thing of handing off our cameras to our couple and letting them take pictures of us–sort of a payback of sorts. We found after two hours of them, them, them, smile here, look over here, look at him, don't look at her, this was a welcome break. Taylor and Buck (whom we love love love!) were the first ones to get to try out this new experiment, and I am so pleased to get such an awesome picture out of it! Look at how hot my husband is! And my hair is being perfect, even for just a millisecond. (I've seen the next picture in this sequence–it definitely went back to ruffled and tangly real quick.) Thank you, Buck, for capturing this wonderful photo, and to my wonderful husband who has amazing editing skillz (that's right, with a z)!

Sneak peak

Photographers Shooting Photographers

These are our friends Courtney and David Matranga of Day Photography & Co. We like hanging out with them. On Monday night we went to their place for a delightful dinner and some quality time, but before we went out to this abandoned field near their house in Lakeside and took turns photographing each other. Surprisingly, I think Courtney and I found it weirder to be back in front of the camera than our guys did. Chris and David seemed to jump right into the fun poses and nose nuzzles, while I felt a bit odd (and I think Courtney did, too) trying to be cutesy for the camera. It's been awhile since we haven't been the ones wielding the cameras, and it's definitely funny to hear someone directing you with the same stuff you're constantly telling people: "Brush your hair out of your eyes." "Tilt your chin down a bit." "Look up at him even though you can't really see him." Etc. 

Anyway, it was super fun. I was excited to download the snaps we got and start editing them a bit, and I'm also excited to see what they got of us. Fellow photographer friends are awesome!

Before our shoot, I took some time to dye a dozen eggs, thinking we could use them as props. We only kind of did, so it was a bit of a waste of eggs. But it was fun all the same.

Mmmmmmmm... not the same kind of egg, but even better.

February the eighteenth: Trinity's newborn shoot

One of my favorite types of shoots is newborns when the newborns belong to our friends. I don't know why, I just feel much more comfortable squishing our friends' babies into cute poses than I do with stranger's newborns. Weird, huh? 

Trinity was splendid all afternoon. She slept soundly almost the entire time and let us dress and undress and headband and re-headband her the whole time. And did I mention she's so little and squishy? I want to go back and do a whole second shoot with her because she was so darn cute!

January the 16th

We had fun with Jen, Justin, and Zoey doing Baby #2's photo shoot. Zoey was a leeeeetle crazy, but not so much that we couldn't get a few real smiles out of her. She seems to have gone from super duper shy and not wanting to look at the camera to super duper fun and thinking it's a game to not look at the camera. Two is a definitely an interesting age to photograph.

January the eighth (the one with the photo shoot)

We went shoot scouting on Sunday. Found this awesome little nook in Balboa Park. I modeled. Chris used his new tilt shift. We made magic.

January the sixth

With my new tutoring students, I had to change my schedule up a bit. Now I get out of work pretty early on Fridays, with no tutoring in the afternoons, which is great. I came home, got out the laptop, loaded up my current session (the Moses'/Bishop's) and turned on season five of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. 

( I love having HIMYM on Netflix. No changing of disks whatsoever. I could watch six seasons straight through if I wanted.)

Jack was feeling mighty cuddly, and I let him curl up into my arm since he just wanted to nap there. (We usually don't let them on the table.) 

Apparently Sawyer, who is not normally very cuddly, was jealous of this snuggle session, because this was the scene two hours later:

I was mentioning to Chris last night how much easier Picture of the Day is with two cats. No more trying to made mundane activities or inanimate objects interesting. There's always something interesting going on with two pre-teen cats.

Cuties.

We've been doing a lot of kid shoots lately until our "wedding season" starts in September. And for a long time, we only had families with boys coming to us for photos. These boys were generally in the 2-3 year old range, and while completely adorable, they were a little hard to get to sit still for some modeling. Sigh. 

So I was excited when a friend of Sarah and Kristen's (and I think she used to work with Chris back in his Long's college days?) asked us to photograph her two girls! Older sister was completely up for a little modeling session, and baby sister, while a little cantankerous throughout the shoot, did break through with a few grand smiles everyone once in a while. We also did an entire family session with the girls, their parents, favorite aunt, and grandparents, and I absolutely love the color scheme mom picked out for the whole group- purples, pinks, and blues look amazing for a family shoot!

We actually just did a second shoot for them, to celebrate big sister's fifth birthday, and I've been working on those edits for the past week or so- part of the reason I wanted to go back and look at these first shots. I'm logging off to finish those edits now, and then tomorrow Chris and I are off to Redlands again for another big family shoot with the Cowens!

Photo Editing

Here's one of the differences about Chris and me: He's all over shooting the weddings and engagements, while by far my favorites are the family and newborn shoots. 

I mean, seriously, how are shots like these not your favorite things in the world?

Monterey

Last weekend Chris and I trekked up to Monterey along with his parents, Bethany, and their Aunt Eva. That was two long days in the back of a van, but lucky for me, my resourceful husband found us a car adapter for our laptops. So I got some lesson planning done, while watching season one of Boy Meets World. 

(Pause. Let's talk about how great that show was. Seriously. It was awesome.)

So Chris and I went up to help photograph his cousin's wedding. We got a lot of great pictures- Chris is going through selecting the "picks" right now- and we're excited to start the edits. The wedding reception was at a restaurant on the wharf, and after the party was over, Chris and I headed out on our own to get some snapshots of Monterey at twilight.