| Hannah | Senior Portraits Class of 2018 | Decatur IL |

Well technology issues are absolutely NO fun but I supposed it was about time after years and years of nothing but little blips for us to have a major melt down crash of epic proportions and that’s exactly what happened last month to our blog and then website (which super fun perk, includes our email!). Luckily, a couple friends of mine from college have a small business web/design business so I was able to get them on the job and let them work their magic. And I’m so so so excited to say that this week we are back up and running and I have a TON of sessions to share with you from the weeks we missed starting today with Hannah’s first half of her senior session!

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We kicked off Hannah’s session at her beautiful home. I LOVE having senior (and family) sessions at client’s homes because it adds a level of personalization that we just cannot get anywhere else. Even if we aren’t showcasing the home (like we often do for family sessions) you’ll still always know that those were your trees, garden, yard, etc even decades later when you look back on the images.

Plus, these guys kept a little hidden gem up their sleeves and when I pulled in and saw this beautiful classic car I knew we had to work it into the session. It wasn’t originally planned but it worked so so well with Hannah’s outfit and added one more unique element to her session.

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After finishing up at her home we headed down the street for a bit more urban look and I love the locations we found!

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One super fun thing for me with parents on session is creating something they saw happening but had no idea was actually happening! The below images was a fun example of that. To start this shot I went back into the alley behind Hannah to setup the light… to the untrained eye I was basically meddling around in a dirty back corner of an alleyway. Then at Hannah’s premiere here mom saw these images and goes “OOOOOO that’s what you were doing back there!” and she loved them. We laughed about how she could not figure out what in the world I was doing back in the corner before shooting this.

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We’ve got the second half of Hannah’s session scheduled later this summer but we wanted to fit in the first half before she graduated. Stay tuned for more later this summer! And as always a big thank you to the talented Katie at Mint Salon for the beautiful hair/makeup.

| Chris Bradley | Decatur IL Music Performer |

I’m excited to share a few recent images of Chris Bradley who is a local lawyer and musican I’ve been working with for a couple years to create promo images for. This year we not only created the new promo images for his posters and website but also a headshot for him to use in his law practice. It’s always great to collaborate with Chris as he’s always got a plan/vision in mind for what we want to create and then I get to put my spin on things and add in my pose/positioning thoughts to really make it a duel collaboration.

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You can see some past images for Chris here. And check out some of his upcoming performances:

​5/18/2018     8:00 PM     Walnut Street Winery, 309 S. Walnut Street, Rochester, IL

​6/8/2018       7:00 PM     New Moon Café, 3755 E. William Street Road, Decatur, IL

6/9/2018       TBA           Warrensburg Fire Department Chicken Fry, Warrensburg, IL

7/13/2018     7:00 PM     New Moon Café, 3755 E. William Street Road, Decatur, IL

​7/20/2018     8:00 PM     Walnut Street Winery, 309 S. Walnut Street, Rochester, IL

​7/27/2018     8:00 PM     Monarch Brewing Co., 212 S. Independence, Monticello, IL

8/10/2013     7:00 PM     New Moon Café, 3755 E. William Street Road, Decatur, IL

8/24/2018     8:00 PM     Walnut Street Winery, 309 S. Walnut Street, Rochester, IL

9/14/2018     7:00 PM     New Moon Café, 3755 E. William Street Road, Decatur, IL

 

| Alyssa + Corey | Married | Decatur IL Wedding |

Today I’m showing off Alyssa & Corey’s wedding album! I met Alyssa a few years ago and I was thrilled when she chose me to create her portraits for her big day. She and I totally clicked and I swear we chat for 20-40 minutes every time she’s in even for just a pickup. And we are due with our little ones within days of eachother!!

We kicked off this beautiful wedding day at the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel (which has the most gorgeous large and comfy suites that are the perfect getting ready spaces). And that even gave me and the gals a chance to sneak out back for a few images before we headed over to Scovill Golf Course for Alyssa to see her groom and create some more images pre-wedding!

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One of Corey’s groomsmen might look a little familiar as he was also one of my grooms this year (you can see his wedding here).

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| James | Class of 2018 High School Senior Portraits | Decatur IL |

Today, I’m sharing James’ senior album with you all! Our albums are a product that nearly every one of our senior clients selects and with options from 14″ metal cover Italian-made designer albums down to 6″ pocket albums we’ve got an option for everyone to take home one of these custom-designs. They are one of my favorite items to create for clients since I know loose portraits can easily end up dusty in a box under the bed, digital images are more often than not never even downloaded and I haven’t had a client yet with enough wall space to feature 30-50 of their images all at once!

So albums give us the chance to highlight ALL your favorite images in a custom-design that’s easy to display on an easel on a bookshelf or even out on the coffee table. Plus, we want to plan for now, for this session and this kiddo, but albums help us plan for all future sessions too. Imagine all your family’s milestones… senior years, engagements, weddings, new additions, growing kiddos, etc all ready and at your fingertips in your matching albums over the years. It’s hard to make time to scrapbook or make these yourself (I know, I do this for a living and STILL haven’t made my wedding album yet!) so this takes the work out of it and instead of a project we provide you with the finished legacy instead.

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One of my favorite things about James’ session is that we worked in his bass fishing! This is the first session I’ve done with a bass boat and though we had a TON of fog for his early morning session it made for a really cool session!

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I also had some fun creating sunlight where there was NONE. The fog was THICK all morning on this day and they’d really hoped for some sunshine (what’s the fun of getting up for a sunrise session with no sun right). So I decided to create a little (see the last album design above).