…but there will always be a little bit of Riner, VA in Mrs. Ashlee Proffitt Just in case I haven’t embarrassed her enough already with this week’s earlier post showing part 1 of her shoot with her sweet boys, here is another post dedicated to my beautiful friend and graphic designer extraordinaire! This girl was in desperate need of updated pictures for her website – I will be the first to admit that the last ones that I took on the fly a few years ago seriously did not capture her beauty or personality So this time around we made sure to go with a look and feel that much more closely captured her fun, feminine and no-fuss style…while showing a bit of her southern roots and finding a little piece of “country” to shoot in out here in Tampa, FL (there are far more fields and cow pastures than one would expect out here actually!). Anyway, I love them! With the light changing so quickly during our quick shoot we were able to get two different fun looks, one a little more warm and sun washed and the other a bit cooler with a beautiful color palette. Here are my favs!
I recently did a two part shoot for my sweet friend and fabulous graphic designer Ashlee Proffitt that I have been itching to share! As a part of some rebranding and new projects that she has on the horizon she wanted a few images that capture the half of her that her clients don’t get to see but is the driving passion behind everything that she does, and thats being a mom to her two boys (and little girl on the way!). Ashlee is an incredible example of what it means to be a businessowner-entrepreneur-mom…the mom-ing is her first priority and everything else that she is able to accomplish flows out of that passion without disrupting her priorities. I love her. And I love these little boys as if they were my own:) Here are just a few of my favs from her shoot! Enjoy!
Don’t even get me started! I have written about this before and think about it often as it relates to my work as a photographer and more importantly as a mom of an impressionable (princess and makeup enamored 2.5 yr old).
My practical advice for photographers is to know where you stand and how you feel about “modifying” your client’s images, especially if you are in the early stages of beginning your business when you are especially prone to wanting to do whatever you can to make everyone happy. I am not just talking about the the moral dilemma that it presents (what are we as photographers saying about what constitutes as beauty?) but even just practically speaking…is your bride under the impression that you are going to remove her wedding day acne out of 700 wedding images? Is mom hoping that you will take a few inches off of her in her family portraits – all 50 of them? If you do some of these more in depth edits to the “sneak peak” images that your client sees on your blog, will he/she be disappointed when she sees the rest of the images that didn’t receive that same hollywood treatment but are truer to reality? Why isn’t reality beautiful enough? Whatever options you decide to offer to your clients it is worth giving it some intentional thought and then educating your clients in a way that builds realistic expectations while helping them to see the beauty that you see in them. Learn to do the “hard work” up front of making your clients feel beautiful during the shoot which goes such a long way to getting beautiful natural images. In addition,your compliments, coaching, outfit suggestions, lighting and posing can often do just as much as photoshop can.
On a separate note, as a mom blessed with the task of raising girls in today’s society (scary!) I want to make sure that my daughters understand the reality behind the message in this video and that they are constantly reminded of what biblical beauty looks like:
“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Prov 31:30
“I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it very well.” Psalm 139:14
So here were are 10 days into the new year and I have entirely given up on the whole “2011 recap” blog post…and the whole “2012-big-things-ahead” post for that matter. haha At the moment the only big thing around here is my growing belly! But the truth of the matter is that when I look ahead at the coming year I feel like I am in that moment at the top of the roller coaster, holding my breath about to take the plunge, not exactly sure what to expect, both scared and excited at the same time. Ready. Set…
In just a few weeks (Lord willing) I will become “mommy” to a second little girl. Two and a half years now into being a mommy to Chloe I more fully understand the weight of that task and the mere thought of the “bigness” of it is so overwhelming that it literally takes my breath away. There just is nothing as {hard.amazing.challenging.exhausting.overwhelming.wonderful} as being a mom. One resolve that I have for this year is that I am not going to attempt to “balance” everything. It can’t be done. You have to choose your priorities and the scale will and should tip in that direction. Practically speaking for me that means there are a few changes that I am making for the coming year as it relates to photography.
1)I am taking a few months off for maternity leave, February-May. For those of you who are not yet mothers…this can easily be misunderstood as taking some much needed vacation time to sleep in and sit around in stretchy pants smiling at your new little bundle of joy. For those of you who are mothers…you know that maternity leave is more of a necessity than an option. As in…for the next few moths I will be running on 2-4 hours of sleep a night. All of my clothes will be covered in either poop, vomit or breastmilk (sorry guys) making a “professional” appearance laughable. I will be functioning essentially as a fridge…or 24 hour buffet. My available hours for e-mail will be between 2am-4am but I will not be able to guarantee that they will be coherent, let alone sweet. I may or may not know where my phone is to answer your call, and if I can answer I will likely have to lock myself in the bathroom to secure any silence or privacy. Just saying.haha. And yes, there will still definitely be stretchy pants and smiling at my new little bundle of joy involved.
2) I am not taking any weddings in 2012. I am actually really excited about this. haha. I have been planning this for awhile but my pride has kept me from making it “official”. But honestly, I need the break. I need to give myself time to figure out what it is going to look like being a mom of two. I need to make sure that weddings are where I want to be focusing my business. I need to have a year free from the pressure of keeping up with the wedding industry. I need to give my business and myself some time to breath, regroup, and gain some clarity before I charge ahead. I literally do not even know what it means to just be a mom without business related “work” that I need to get done each day. Thankfully, I am blessed with the opportunity to even do this without my family relying on my income. I am really excited to take the pressure off of myself and see where things go. I also really want to pour more of my time into teaching and mentoring other photographers, which leads to me to the next new change…
3) In addition to continuing to do workshops (the next ones will likely be in the late Spring) I will be focusing my efforts on one-on-one mentor sessions for beginner professional photographers. I am REALLY excited about this and if you are interested in hearing more you can check it out here!
Well, my husband just walked into my office looking incredibly handsome and said that he is taking “his ladies” out to dinner. haha.I don’t turn down things like that, so, I am off to doll myself up…in whatever outfit I can still manage to fit into…and join my sweet husband and precious daughter to soak up every last minute of “just the three of us.”
I cannot believe that I only have about 10 more weeks until we get to meet sweet little Vera and welcome her into our family!! For some reason this pregnancy has just flown by at breathtaking pace. I think because I was so sick during the first trimester that those first few months were just a blur of mixed emotions. It is hard to be excited about and feel connected to something that you can’t feel or see and yet is causing you to have to pull over in your car because you cant keep your breakfast/lunch/dinner/water down. ugh. I really was completely mentally and physically MIA as a wife, mom and friend those first few months so when I finally got into my second trimester I was just so happy to be feeling like myself (and like a normal human being again!) that I went full speed ahead trying to make up for lost time! And then I blinked and the second trimester was over and now I am moving into what Graham calls the “endurance phase” of pregnancy. haha. Your body literally feels out of control/taken over by an alien (albeit a very cute one) and you start to become glad that you can’t see past your belly b/c honestly you dont really want to be reminded of what is going on with the bottom half. haha. All of that to say that I am BEYOND excited to bring our second daughter into the world and I feel enormously blessed and excited with every little kick in my belly.
Last weekend we overhauled Chloe’s room and fortunately she was SO excited with the changes – literally spinning around singing “thank you, thank you, thank you!!!” (pictures of the room transformation to come!) She loves that Vera has a crib in there now and will be sleeping with her. hehe. I think making progress on the girls room has been as good for her as it has been for me. It is all becoming more real and I just feel so blessed that God is giving us another girl – a sister and “forever friend” (as we say to Chloe).
I am trying to transition mentally into this next season of my life as well. Re-prioritizing, coming to terms with how things are going to have to change a bit once I have a second little one. I might have a million blog posts that need to go up, and they just may not ever happen, and I am learning (slowly) to be ok with that and not fight against this next season of my life the way I did when I had Chloe. I lost too much time mentally when I first had her, trying to “balance” my photography work with being a mom. Here’s the truth…you can’t “balance” it. You have to make some choices. You have to prioritize. The scale will tilt in the direction of where your heart is and I want my heart to be in my home with my husband and my girls. I don’t want to be bitter toward my mom responsibilities or even worse, my kids, because I “didn’t get enough done” in my business today. That is an awful feeling that it has taken me awhile to learn to recognize and shift my thinking.
I will still do photography. I will still run a business as much as God continues to give me work to do. But I am learning to welcome the fact that the next few years of my life will look different than the last in terms of what I will “accomplish” with my work. And I am ok with that. More than ok…blessed to know that my business is in God’s hands and that gives me freedom to be the wife and mom that I really want to be!
I just wanted to share a few pics from my commercial shoot with Ashlee Proffitt Design for her 2011 Christmas card series! I especially loved this first set up for her tented cards! If only you could have been there to see the reality of the situation…kids screaming and crying everywhere, kids running off with our props, kids trying to get into the frame of the pictures to “help”…such is life for us business-owner mommies:) All of these gorgeous Christmas cards and more can be found in her Etsy shop! Check it out!
Don’t you just love this fun take on address labels!?
***Additional photo prints, high res digital negatives as well as additional Christmas cards can all be ordered separately for those of you with lots of friends on your list!
Ok friends, I need your help! With Chloe we didn’t choose to find out what we were having so I never actually got to have the fun of putting together a nursery specifically for a little girl. So, of course, now that we will be welcoming sweet little baby Vera into the family and Chloe’s room will become the “girls” room I cannot wait to get to painting and decorating!!! They will be sharing a relatively small room that doesn’t have a lot of natural light so I want to open it up with nice light colors in a palette that is airy and sweet…but I just cannot decide which palette I like better…I love them both! Will you help me choose? You can vote at the bottom!
Palette #1: Peach, Pink and Gray
The walls would be a very light gray, almost white with white furniture and peach and pink bedding and accents.
Palette #2: Peach, Lavender and White
With this palette the walls would be a very light grayish lavender (as pictured), furniture would be white, accents would be peach.
Those of you who know my husband and I know how long it took us to pick a name for Chloe. We just weren’t good at the whole committing-to-a-name thing and although we only had two names in the running we didn’t actually make the decision about the first name until we were on our way to the hospital (the middle name we settled on after she was born!). So it is funny to me that we knew so “early” (to us) and with so much certainty that this name was perfect for this little one due in February. Vera Elise Cochrane (phonetically – “Varah Eleece”…Chloe’s translation – “Bera Eleece Quockrane”. Vera is from the latin root verus and means “truth” and Elise means “consecrated to God.” I am not much of a crier but when we were considering the name and looked into the meanings I definitely burst into tears knowing that this was the one:)
We cannot wait to meet baby Vera and finally hold her in our arms. We are beyond excited that Chloe will have a little sister and our prayer already is that they will become the best of friends.
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when sisters live together in unity.” -Psalm 133:1
Meet the Winn family! We met up on Saturday evening for this family’s first (gasp!) professional portrait session! hehe. Sweet little Meredith was instantly smiles and Riggs (who is almost my daughter’s age) did not disappoint with his dashing good looks and all-boy energy level. We had a nice long session with time to get a little bit of everything before the sun went down…we even had time to snap a few of just mom and dad – what a concept! A self-described “classy but fun” family, I think these images capture both in addition to heaping piles of love:) Here is a little peak at some of my favorite images from their family session!
Just in case I haven’t embarrassed her enough already with this week’s earlier post showing part 1 of her shoot with her sweet boys, here is another post dedicated to my beautiful friend and graphic designer extraordinaire! This girl was in desperate need of updated pictures for her website – I will be the first to admit that the last ones that I took on the fly a few years ago seriously did not capture her beauty or personality 
So this time around we made sure to go with a look and feel that much more closely captured her fun, feminine and no-fuss style…while showing a bit of her southern roots and finding a little piece of “country” to shoot in out here in Tampa, FL (there are far more fields and cow pastures than one would expect out here actually!). Anyway, I love them! With the light changing so quickly during our quick shoot we were able to get two different fun looks, one a little more warm and sun washed and the other a bit cooler with a beautiful color palette. Here are my favs!
