Congrats to J & A - Maternity Portraits

 This session was from back in early May, their little bundle of joy is already here!  Congrats to you both, what an exciting year.

DJ Dickie Degrees - Portrait Session

DJ Dickie Degrees stopped by the garage studio recently for some business portraits. My goal was to keep it as simple as possible but give the feeling of a club or wedding reception.
I've got some behind the scenes shots I'll try to post when I get a chance (nothing special). We also did some green screen shots so we could put him basically anywhere.
Below are two of my faves.

K-9 Portraits

I had a request from a client to do some "non-traditional" family portraits. That get's a little tricky when you are confined to an indoor space this time of year. But we came up with a fun composite.

First the individual shots...




I pieced those together to form the shot below. I think I might even make one of these with my own family. You'd have the option to piece them all together, or frame each of them individually and hang them all in a row. That way they are easy to update and add to (for the growing family).

Snowy Portraits

Special thanks again to the lovely Caitlyn for agreeing to stand outside in the snow and gusty winds last weekend. Here are a few more shots from that set.

Look who turned 1...

Some of you might remember Nadeya from about 6 months ago (see here if not), she just celebrated her first birthday. Since she was a winter baby her mom really wanted to get some shots of her in the snow. This proved to be quite difficult actually... their schedule and mother nature just didn't get along. When they did have time, it was -20. When it was nice out they couldn't make it. Then it seemed as though all the snow was melting away. Until this past weekend that is.





3 Generations, I love these photos... so precious.


tags: baby photographer, photography, winter, MN, Savage, Burnsville, Prior Lake, family

Family Lifestyle Portraits

Some of you blog faithfuls might recognize this cute little family from a few months back. Well, I had a chance to visit them again, but this time I was trying out a different approach. I wanted to do an indoor Lifestyle Session. These are more commonly done outside as the kids run free and the parents chase them and try to get them to stand still. In a "Lifestyle Session" you are essentially letting the kids be kids and incorporating elements from their day to day life. There are no back drops, or props or poses, just getting the kids to open up and relax.
The best stage for this type of photography is between the ages of 1 and 5. Basically between the ages where they first start to walk and where they really understand how bribery works. Of course Lifestyle photography is great at any age (adults included), but where it really shines is with children.

The eyes have it! - The McCallister Family

First off - Happy Thanksgiving Everyone, I'll be watching re-runs of Alton Brown for the next few days in search of that "perfect turkey". I'll also be taking a little blog holiday until next week.

Now, since it's snowed, I'm dating myself by posting this one. I've been sitting on it for a couple weeks now and for some reason it got a little buried. This couple has two of the most addorable children (next to mine of course). Their oldest daughter has the most amazing eyes I have ever seen! To be fair, in this digital age, I suppose I need to tell you that NO touch ups or enhancements were made to the eyes (believe it or not). This gorgeous series was shot at Minnehaha Falls.

The "S" Family

Now that there is snow on the ground I've had to tidy up the old studio inside. Aimee and her family stopped by last weekend to get their Family and Christmas card pictures taken care of. We even managed to fire off a few shots outside as well (it's just to pretty out there to pass up!)

More from the last snowfall...

Another thing we try to do on the first snowfall, is take care of our Christmas card pictures! It's been a little tricky these past few years since it's so hard to know when that first snow will be, and if it's too late we get a little panicky. This last 10 inch snowfall sort of took us by surprise, I still have a lot of leaves under it (but that's not my fault, our huge maple didn't decide to drop it's millions of leaves until 2 days prior!).
I know it's taken me a couple of days to post this since taking them... BUT, I had to wait for the Art Director (my wife) to select her favorites. Of course the shots below AREN'T them (that would get me in a lot of trouble), the selected Christmas card shots are a heavily guarded secret that you will only see if you know someone who knows someone who knows us well enough to get one :) (but they are pretty close to the ones below).