All The Pieces Together...Form a Family

Family. What does it mean? Is it the people you are related to? Is it the people who take care of you? Family....is the people who love you. This family is creating their own family. They asked me to do their holiday fotos and I was excited about getting to know all of them a little better. Both the girls and the boy are Mom's...but the baby-on-the-way is theirs together. The girls personalities remind me of my sister & I when we were young...just because we were sooooo different! Just the ways they stood together showed their own attitudes. And I had to ask them to stand closer together....I received the typical teenage eye-rolling. Go figure. I loved the fotos with mom & the girls, "The Boys" and the 3 kids together. But, I think my favorites were the ones with Dad & Mom together, arms wrapped around her tummy, cradling the new family member with love's embrace.

Autumn in White Cross

Sometimes you have only to ask to get special permission. I've been to public arboretums in Atlanta and Raleigh but they don't compare to the place I went in October. A private arboretum hidden in the back roads of Orange County. Due to a turn of fate, I knew about this place 2 years ago through a friend of mine, but I never found the time to ask the owner if I could visit. Life has a way of getting in the way of your plans, you know. So, when I found myself with a few October weekends with no plans on my hands...I scoured my email for the contact information to this arboretum. After many emails and discarded dates, we finally settled on a Sunday late in October. As I got geared up to take this road trip, I casually mentioned to my 2 besties, Rachelle & Sarah, that I was going and would they like to join me for the ride. I thought there was no way either of them would be interested...I was way wrong. Both of them jumped at the chance to get away on a girls' road trip to a secret location! It turned out to be an overcast day with the leaves starting to turn and the colors really beginning to POP! We spent 1 hour driving there, 2 hours walking around with me taking tons of pictures of the scenery and of the besties, and an hour coming home. It felt like we were in the book, "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett (one of my all-time favorite books). Hidden from the world, in a garden that only a couple people know about, walking with 2 of my besties and surrounded by beautiful plants and statuary. We had a wonderful Sunday afternoon together and I took some pictures of my besties that made their mommas proud! It was a day full of memories, smiles and sincere, true friendship. It was a blessing and a bendiction from God.

Every Blessed Moment

As I take more Fotos, I am reminded to appreciate every blessed moment I am given. So many days rush by without even a moment to slow down. Or maybe we just don't take the time to dwaddle...for fear we will miss something...but we don't realize all that we are missing by running around. I took some time recently to take some very precious Fotos for one of my favorite families. It was, as Carolina always is in the summer, humid and hot outside. Even still, we got some good family pictures. I learned long ago that language is a barrier only to those who let it become a barrier. With gestures, smiles and love between subjects, we can accomplish much more without words than you might be able to imagine. I had only to motion for Grandfather to turn in toward his wife and he turned. I only had to capture the love on his face when he hugged his wife and daughter close, without me suggesting the pose. I love natural actions...I love natural Fotos. I am not the type to stiffly pose people...I want to capture the kiss from Grandmother to her grandson, or the adoring look of both parents down to the creation they brought into this world. I want to capture the true emotion of the people I Foto. I want to Foto people as they are naturally. I just want to share my Foto gift.

4th of July

There's nothing like spending time with family and friends to make a hot summer 4th of July get together fun! With so many models to choose from, I had to make the most of the fun. It was good to have a beautiful day for a backdrop. I am finding that natural settings are my favorite format. I love being able to use the backgrounds that God has given me. They are so much more interesting and changeable than working in a pseudo-studio or Foto-graphing indoors. I love the natural light and the ways it presents my subjects to me. It didn't hurt that Rachelle is beautiful anyways. One of these days we'll find the time to take the Fotos of her that I've been trying to do for a long time! Hope you enjoy seeing in the window to our fun, sunny day! Off to get my next Foto-fix!