It was a pleasure meeting Kayla and her mother and Grandmother.  I doubt Kayla would call herself this, but looking at her medals and plaques, I’d call her a track star.  I wanted to do some motion pictures, so here’s one of my favorite images of Kayla running.

I love a good challenge. One of my challenges for myself this year is to not take any more boring sports pictures. While I love a lot of the sports pics I’ve taken in the past, there were some that I felt I was just duplicating what I’d seen done locally, what sports pics were “supposed” to look like, what clients who had only seen local work expected. This isn’t the way I shoot anything else, and so it bothered me. I’ve spent the past few months collecting ideas and studying imagery from photographers across the country (Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and Michigan to name just a few places) who shoot incredible sports pictures, who, I think, looking at their work, love sports pictures more than anything else they shoot. These photos and photographers have inspired me and I’m having a great time bring that inspiration to my work.

We shot Nathan’s football pictures in studio on a rainy day, but went out to the baseball diamond for some of his baseball pictures on a sunnier day. I think we got lucky with the clouds that day. Here’s one of my favorites from Nathan’s outdoor session.

My grandmother passed away this week after a long sweet life.

I put together a collage of some images of Grandma and her family for the funeral, and then scanned some new images of Grandma, thanks to my cousin, Randy, who showed up with 30 originals — thanks, Randy!  I’d been hoping to get a fresh scan of the image below of Grandma with her sisters since the first time I saw it.  I just love it.

I picked up the following template and idea from a fabulous Michigan photographer by way of an excellent Oklahoma  photographer (thanks, guys!).   I’ve seen the idea black and white only, but am playing with color and selective color versions to try to keep the jersey colors.

We thought Grant would be happier and more comfortable at home, so we shot his three month photos on location at Jennifer’s parent’s house.   Grant is growing and changing so fast, and it’s great fun for me to get to document that special first year as their character starts to come to the surface.  I love Grant’s expression in this one.

Just a heads up that as of this morning, I only have two appointment times left before the  senior summer sale ends, which is half off session fees (minimum $50 savings) and either 2 sets of free wallets (one pose) or 50 double-sided two image cards (details in the Senior Give Back Program Post) for all sessions before August 15th.  Due to the great response and the appointments filling up so fast, I extended the sale another two weeks from the original August 1 cutoff date.  However, I won’t extend it again, so this is last call.

Update.  The senior sale is officially booked up.  Thanks for the great response!

Hannah is an aspiring photographer and takes a lot of self portraits so we wanted to incorporate her camera into some of the images.  Here are a couple of my favorites from her session.

It was storming just south of us, but it made for a dramatic sky. Here’s a couple for now of Cara.

I’ll add a couple more images later, but here’s one of my favorite’s from Krystine’s session, shot in the twilight after the sun had set. Krystine reminds me in this picture of Joan of Arc.