Gracie Rose likes grunge, goats and graveyards.  Say that five times fast.   I loved her look and had a good time shooting off the beaten path.   Here are some highlights from her session showing some of the ground we covered.

With only 14,000 souls in our dear county, the gene pool is what some might call a little thin.  Seems like about a fourth of my classmates were my cousins, and most of our families have lived here for several generations.   Now, it seems like a good portion of my clients are related to me somehow, and so I get a chance to see how our genes are playing out.

Shayla is a good example.  Her father is my first cousin, one year younger in school.  I hadn’t spent much time around Shayla before, but I always heard the updates from her dirt bike adventures (at which Shayla was excellent) generally involving something broken or dislocated.  Shayla finally gave up riding dirt bikes.  Apparently it’s no fun to ride carefully.  I get that about her.  I really do.

So, here are some pictures of Shayla and her boyfriend of one year, Tyler (who is not a relative.)

And I know, I know, I shouldn’t post the first one, and I’ll certainly pull it if she squawks, but it is essential to understand Shayla’s general goofiness and pull to the outrageous which is not nearly as clear in “smile pretty” pictures.  Besides, she did it (more than once, I might add) and I just took the picture. 

Brittany Booth is a good friend to Morgan and came out with her to help during Morgan’s session.  We shot these pics of Brittany during part of Morgan’s session.  This session was on the heels of a long rainy spell, and many rain reschedules, so the sky clearing felt like a gift, and I couldn’t help but shoot it as such.

Samantha and Dustin Herdes came in for Christmas pictures and to get some pictures of Drake at nine months. Drake did an excellent impression of an elephant, complete with sucking on his trunk and charging the camera.  He must be watching Wild Kingdom already.

Oh, and any techies who might look at this, this is my high key converted from raw and straight out of camera.  I’d fuss with these more to make them pitch perfect for print, but just wanted to post them to the blog as is for cute factor.

The Allen Family came in for a session with their girls, Keisha and Kirstin, who had a bad case of infectious laughter.   These images make me smile.  Thanks, girls!

Morgan’s second session was rescheduled over and over again, but finally the weather gave us a break.  I’ve added a couple of extra images to her blog post as a reward for her patience.   Morgan shares my enthusiasm for fashion photography, so we leaned in that direction in her session.

Next up, Morgan’s friend Brittany came along with, and we shot some images of her in the grasses in her prom dress while she was here before her session next week.  Those are lovely as well.

Tom and Jeannine got married in Cobden, Illinois, a place I’m particularly fond of, because I lived there one summer in my youth.  They got ready at the Bell Hill Bed and Breakfast and had their reception at Rustle Hill Winery.

I met Tom and Jeannine just a couple weeks prior to their wedding at their engagement session and adored them.  Then I met Jeannine’s daughter Liv on their wedding day, and Liv stole my heart.

Thank you for including me on such a special day.  It was beautiful and altogether wonderful.

Here are this year’s Fall Festival Queen Candidates and last year’s queens.  The Louisville Fall Festival is October 23rd and 24th.  The queen pageant is Friday evening with crowning on Saturday.  Looking at these pictures, simple as they are, I realize that I just find people’s faces very interesting.  They don’t have to be doing something spectacular or to look a particular way.   I just like them like they are.   Portrait photography strikes me as an exercise in seeing people in their best light.

I have four weddings to blog, all beautiful, all loved, and so here goes.  Katie and Dustin were married at Blue Sky Vineyard, and I felt most of the time that I’d walked onto a movie set.   Katie and Dustin and their love for one another registered for me as larger than life on this one perfectly clear fall day.  Thank you for sharing it with me.

And I know without any more evidence than this, that Dustin is a good soldier, because Katie did not crack him with her vows.  When I heard the first line of the vows she’d written, I locked onto Dustin’s face, and I swear I could see him mustering strength.

Jady came to see me again for his three month baby session.  Kristen brought outfits for him and we shot all those, but first we took some pictures of Jady in his jammies, per Kristen’s request.  Turns out those are some of my favorites.  Perhaps because I think my daughter lived in striped footy jammies until she was one, so that’s how I photographed her.   Anyway, here’s Jady looking particularly like his cute and cuddly self.