I am off to photograph Monica & Todd’s wedding today, so I am out of the loop… stay tuned for images tomorrow or Monday!

I am simply beyond thrilled with what I captured.  Kelly, thank you so much.  I cannot wait for your big family session!

North Shore Peeps… stay tuned… next week I’ll be announcing some local mini sessions that you can take advantage of in preparation for holiday card season… yes, it’s approaching that fast!

I was so happy to be able to photograph this family again… and at this location again!  Even though I know their new house will be fabulous, I can’t help sighing over these roses and hydrangea.  So when you have a location like this, filled with so much natural beauty, then you add in stunning family members and robust colors, and a bit of amazing late afternoon light, you really can’t go wrong.

Sangita, thanks for having me over again.  As always, a wonderful evening with your lovely family!

I loved meeting Clive’s parents… his dad is pushing through that looooooooong last semester at Babson for his MBA.  And I know how that feels.  And his mom is just beautiful, and looks amazing for 5 weeks postpartum [who am I kidding, she looks better than me at about 92 weeks].  She has an amazing sense of style and had his little nursery just done up right with these wonderful colors and stories!

Couldn’t have started my weekend any better.  Really.  Thank you.

We had a great day at Elm Bank and I had a blast with these guys.  It was a fun challenge to shoot two different sessions and not just replicate one after the other.  I really like people to have different, and unique sessions.  The kids were great and I really loved getting to know them all.  I love watching how kids interact with each other and I love looking back at the images and seeing how the kids resemble their parents in not only features, but affectations, smiles, glances.  I also love developing connections, finding out how parents met, figuring out what makes them work as a family.

What I netted out with these two families is that good parents make good kids.  Plain and simple.  So that’s my lesson for the day.

Enjoy the weekend.

Meet Bode.

Meet Ketch.

Kit-kat came home from school, literally RAN past me to the shower so she could look all awesome for our session… and she was a ROCK STAR… no, maybe more like a Gap model.  Sort of like Christofer, she’s a little excited because someone else is around, but WHAM she can turn it on for the camera in a split second.  She is ever gorgeous, ever a teenager at age 5.  Love her.

And Erica is beautiful.  Really.  What else is there to say?  I stinkin’ love her too.  She and I have these off the wall conversations that I think about after I leave her house and I kill myself laughing.

I want to post more, but I have to go pay a few moving violation fines so I don’t end up in the clink… and as much as there are about 30 more I’d love to show you, we really want to keep them a surprise!  We’ll share another time!

Megan picked the date and then and we worried a bit early in the week about weather… and a little cut or bruise here and there… then about the wind… but I think we can both say that everything was perfect.  Including her kids.  I think we were able to get some traditional family portraits with really fun candids mixed in and I love how everything came together.  The outfits were perfect…it’s like the sky called and said “wear some blue.”  Needless to say, this is tagged in “What to Wear!”

Love.

So this totally adorable family won the nursery contest.  And you can see why.  They are very cute, very put together, very creative, and most important, very happy!  I had such a great time getting to know them.  I came home and immediately sized up my mismatched upholstery issues and was motivated to finally decide on some fabrics.  Then I painted the kid’s [Owen's] bathroom.  It would be nice if I was this inspired every day.  But really, this home/nursery has all the little touches that I never think to complete.

This family is also just really neat.  I love meeting families who are just really in sync and so clearly love each other.  It is so evident in how they interact that they are threesome that is just blessed to be joined together.  Baby Paige is adorable… and she’s going to be a beauty.  She has a great little attitude, complete independence (I’d bet pretty soon they’ll hear “I do it myself!”), but still knows enough to snuggle in with her mom and dad.

Thank you for a great morning, and for participating in my contest.  I am thrilled I was able to capture your family as it is today.

An explanation.  Sometimes I shoot a session and immediately run home to blog.  This is usually the case if I am not behind on blogging OR if I get home and no one is home bugging me, and making me answer the never-ending question “Why do you come home and immediately race up to that computer?”  Sometimes I shoot a session and immediately proof it because of specific conditions and it’s done, blogged and in the can super fast.  And sometimes I have a hybrid of those things and I don’t blog until the session is proofed, but the bonus is a big blog sneak peak and the client gets their blog/slideshow/gallery all in one shot.  I just figured I’d explain that because it’s not that I forget about people or jump people ahead in the queue… it just depends on what harddrive I have with me and which child is needing me.

Catching up with Wendy and Gerard was great.  I hadn’t seen them since our wedding and now we are combined 5 kids into it and both finally seeing the light with kids being a tiny bit more self-sufficient and self-entertaining.  We commiserated over how your life becomes a time warp and a time suck and how even though you wouldn’t want it any other way… man, it is HARD being a parent [and a spouse].  I am thinking parenthood is a lot like the weather in New England — one nice day makes up for twenty days of rain, snow and wind! Anyway, she looks amazing, her family is beautiful and we decided there is no way we can let another five years go by.

I am off to Austin mid-week for an amazing wedding, so hopefully before I leave I’ll blog the 2-3 sessions that are all proofed and about to go out to some very cool families I spent time with last week/weekend (including my nursery contest winner and a very awesome family with a very awesome house).  And tomorrow is another installment of the Jack & Will Show!

On that note, I am outside pretending to garden with the littlest terrorists [this actually means I put on a garden glove, stand with a shovel, and play with my iPhone and when I hear Owen I pretend to weed and dig -- and occasionally keep the kids from running into the street].

Second to that, nothing makes me happier than shooting families that I really like.  And I really like this one.  There are a few reasons why.  Obviously they are strikingly good looking.  And they are very gracious and nice.  But it is really special to me to photograph extended families — it’s one of my favorite things to do.  And I feel so fortunate that I was able to photograph them twice, once with each set of grandparents.  To have multi-generational photographs is absolutely priceless.  Finally, I just love this mom.  This winter, shortly after I left IBM, I drove through some really treacherous weather to get to her house.  I got there two hours late and was really out of sorts.  I was a little overwhelmed with life and wasn’t really sure everything was going to pull together like I had planned.  When I arrived, she made me a latte and we ended up discussing life on a very philosophical level.  And I learned so much in about 30 minutes that pretty much upgraded my entire level of thinking about why we are in this world and who we should strive to be.  So that meeting was perfect timing in my life.

So with that mouthful out, here are the images from an absolutely wonderful second perfect timing event.  Grandparents in town, everyone available, schedules coordinated, kids really happy and simply gorgeous weather!