These days you don’t see many large families so it was so fun to be able to shoot this crowd.  Yes, they are all siblings ranging from 6 months up to middle school age.   Being the youngest of 6 myself it was great to see the different dynamics among the siblings and how each of their personalities came out during the shoot. We kept busy trying to keep their attention but it was a lot of fun.  One of my favorites is them walking on the hill.  It shows alot about a big family.  I love how the one boy is making faces at the baby, the other two are occupied with each other and big sister overseeing it all. You know this house if full of fun, laughter, and I”m guessing a few disputes once in a while.

It has taken only a year for Noah’s mom and I to get our act together to photograph Noah.  But we finally did it and I love it.  I just have to say I love Noah’s hair.  It has a mind of its own and when I heard he wanted to cut it I said if we can only find 15 minutes we have to do this.  Noah did great and I have to admit he is the shyist kid that I have ever photographed but he did such a great job.  He was such a great listener and has such a sweet person he was a joy to be around.  To view some more of his session click here.

This shoot is by far the fastest kid shoot I’ve ever done in my life.  If I wouldn’t of had 4 other adults, an expedition, and a break in the weather I never would of been able to pull this one off.  We went to Minnesota to visit our good friends and their new baby.  The plan to spend some quiet days up at the cabin, relaxing and having fun.  Well of course we have to throw a photo shoot in there somewhere because why not add to the chaos.  Well we had a time and day planned but the weather didn’t agree with the schedule.  So, we were expecting rain and not sure how we were going to pull this shoot off  when low and behold while cooking dinner the sun peaked out.  I turned off the stove, looked at my friend and her mom and said “get the kids dressed asap” , the dads loaded the couch in the expedition and we were headed out within 20 minutes to a field right up the street from their family cabin.  In fact, if you look down the road that is  Uncle Ernie’s cabin.  I laugh when I say that the session was less then 20 minutes because it could of been shorter. It was all a whirl of barking out orders and doing silly things to keep the kids attention.  We had a 5 day old and three other kids under 9 with more storm clouds coming and us battling a swarm of mosquitos.  Of course we forgot to spray the kids so dad ran back to the cabin to get some OFF while I snapped and mom batted mosquitos away with a burp rag.  If someone was taking video I’m sure we would of won the $10,000 award.  As you can see from their legs and arms that they had battled the blood sucking beast all summer but what would a midwest summer be without mosquito bitten arms and legs. They are the battle scars of youth!  You have to do what you have to do.  They are only that small once in their life.  All in all it was a memory and I was blessed to be the first to take Miss Emma’s first photo shoot with her siblings.  Welcome to the Chaos Miss Emma!

Had this idea for a while and in the end it took its own direction.  I laugh because we had to reschedule this shoot several times due to weather, vacations, sicknesses, or the sheep.  Yes, I said sheep.  Ronin and Sean’s parents are originally from Ireland and I learned they grew up on sheep farms.  Well, a while back I found these great rolling green hills with sheep on them.  Hence the idea for the shoot.  But as Murphy law works by time we were able to get it all together the sheep were moved days before the session.  We ended up in this great field of wild everything but it made seeing and photographing them hard.  So, the sheep shoot will have to wait for another day but we got some wonderful shots of the boys which was the whole purpose anyway.  These little guys were awesome as they trudged across this huge field.  They got a couple of stickers in them and they still kept going.  The best part was our Shepherd gave them a little science lesson about the different things in the field, what the sheep were eating, and found them some mustard plant to taste.  They had a great time and it was fun to spend an evening with them.  They were delightful!

Welcome baby Grace! What a fun day I had getting to know little Grace.  I’ve had the privilege of photographing her parents for their engagement, wedding, maternity, and now the beginning of their family.  She was a little doll and was fantastic for her session.  She cried at the very end but we worked her hard and she was so hungry and sleepy.  I just love it when they are this tiny.  It is so hard to believe how big they get.  I just love photographing the size comparisons of her feet with her parents and how precious her little head looks like in her daddy’s strong hands.  Moments like these just make me happy.