White House Photography

{wright kids}

As much as I truly love meeting new clients on a regular basis, I seriously love having the opportunity to do photo shoots for my own family and close friends. These happen to be four of my FAVORITE people to shoot...my 3 nephews and my niece. So love them. Not only are they ridiculously cute...but they are SO MUCH FUN! My sister and her hubby have done an AMAZING job raising these 4 kids....who are SO well-liked by EVERYONE..and SO...NICE. Love that. This time around, we decided to shoot at Daybreak...and couldn't have asked for a more beautiful picture day. :-)









Every time I have the opportunity to shoot pics of these awesome siblings, I get such a kick out of watching them. It is very apparent that my niece picks out HER three outfits FIRST (because we ALWAYS have at LEAST one to two wardrobe changes every shoot..lol..HIT IT!) and then picks out the boys' clothes to match her own. It's so cute to hear even her older brother say "Ok. What do you want me to wear now?" LOL! They are such good sports. But MAN, does she know what she is doing.....their ensembles always match perfectly and are so trendy and fun! Love that. She is one seriously awesome fashion diva.









It's always fun when I happen to have a little more time to spend on a shoot. We took 87 million shots. As you can see, I had a really tough time limiting their "sneak peek proofs" to just "a few." There were SO many that I loved!










As I'm posting these, I keep thinking that I am nearing the end of how many proofs I edited. LOL! Nnnope. Generally, I try and stick to between 10-15 for sample edits. I went slightly a little crazy on these. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THEM!


SO LOVE these next two shots of them laughing. My one nephew's big laugh is so amazing...classic. LOVE IT!!!! These make my heart happy. Love these kids so much!




After a while, I decided I was sick of the "usual poses" and wanted to play around a little bit. These kids are so CRAZY fun, they were up for just about anything...and playing around and pulling "vogue poses" came naturally to just about all of them, except the oldest. LOL! He was so funny...the 3 youngest were able to pull the most crazy awesome vogue poses without even CRACKING a smile...and the oldest brother was a hot mess and kept giggling. SO funny. Love that. Still, we managed to come up with some pretty AWESOME "playful shots" that most likely won't show up above the fireplace.....but will likely ironically be some of the most PRICELESS shots someday. SO RIDICULOUSLY FUN!!!!



The picture below made me laugh so hard. All of them grabbed a piece of wheat to put in their mouths and my nephew on the far left, without skipping a beat said, "I actually prefer to WEAR my wheat." LOL! Hit it! So funny.

This picture below is so funny to me. When my clients' smiles get a little stale, I generally have them relax and squish their cheeks. LOL! So funny that I caught this shot....hilarious. So here they all are, RELAXING their smiles by squishing their cheeks....and some dramatically so. So funny.
And now, for my two, all-time favorite shots. Oh my goodness...these are so classic. If it were me, these pics WOULD be enlarged and displayed somewhere. They make me laugh remembering the moment, but as funny as they are....I actually REALLY love them. Classic. AWWWWWWWWWWESOME!


Oh how I love these babies!!!! What a ridiculously fun time we had and it is so apparent just how much LOVE there is between them. LOVE THAT! Hard to believe that my sister is the mama to 4 teenagers...when I so distinctly remember holding the oldest when he was a chubby little toddler...like it was YESTERDAY. Goodness...how fast the time flies. Not a fan. But DEFINITELY a fan of these 4 amazing kids!

Many thanks to these great kids and my sister for giving me the opportunity to take their portraits again this year! I hope that you are as pleased with these proofs as I am. Thanks for such a FUN afternoon. SURE LOVE YOU!

{ciera}

Oh, my heart. I have been so ridiculously anxious to edit the images from this shoot from the MOMENT I took them a few weeks ago, I could hardly STAND the wait while I got caught up on my other shoots. This has to be one of my all-time favorite sittings....of one of my all-time favorite High School Seniors. Ciera isn't like any other 17 year old girl I have ever met. She is most definitely a rare and fabulous "find." Ciera lives upstairs and we seriously hit it off almost the very day we met just over a year ago. LOVE HER!!!!




Ciera reminds me so much of myself when I was in college....she totally takes me back there and makes me feel YOUNG (not that I'm anywhere NEAR old, but you know what I mean. LOL!) She is the "CRAZY FUN CHICK" that is NICE to everyone..and the majority of her friends are guys. She is so confident, loves who she is and is so fun and carefree. She is not afraid to be CRAZY and PLAY, PLAY, PLAY...and doesn't care WHO is watching. SO love that about her!!



Those who know Ciera, will be SHOCKED (in a fabulous way) by these pictures. She is generally most comfortable with her hair flipped up, wearing her high school swim team hoody and some jeans she most likely snagged from one of her guy friends. The ridiculously AMAZING and breathtaking "natural model" you see here is NOT the "Ciera" that most are used to seeing. Ciera is most DEFINITELY a KNOCK-OUT. And get this....she is ONLY wearing mascara. That's it. No other make-up. She is every guy's DREAM....a gorgeous girl who can "let her hair down," can ride a mean longboard and do just about ANYTHING a guy can do...and possibly better than they can. What a BLAST we had on this shoot...mixing Ciera's very NATURAL glamour with her very prominant and FABULOUS "Tom-Boy" side. I mean seriously.....fire red heels with black lace on a longboard????? FREA-KING AWESOME!!!!!!! Steady boys... ;-)






Ciera has to have been one of the easiest subjects for me to shoot. She is SO outrageously photogenic and needs very little coaching. She and I get along so well, that it's very easy to catch some pretty awesome candids, since we are constantly laughing together. Love that...and love that I had a little extra time to really play with some new backdrops, poses, etc. and not feel as if we had to rush.






The moment I took this NEXT shot below, I reviewed it and immediately said, 'WHOA CIEC...this pic is WAY TOO HOT for a senior pic!" LOL! She is gorgeous...I can't stand it. Every shot was A-MA-ZING. This shot below has to be one of my MANY faves from the shoot...

Until Ciec has a chance to review all of the images from her shoot, I thought it would be fun to post a few of MY faves (that I OBVIOUSLY struggled KEEPING to "just a few") as a little sneak peek for her. I am OVER-THE-MOON thrilled with every single one of these proofs and hope that she feels the same!!

As amazing as the first half of our shoot was, I couldn't WAIT for the second half.....that was MUCH MORE fitting for the Ciera we all know and love. After these awesome shots above, Ciera changed into her comfortable jeans and a three-quarter length casual tee, snagged her longboard and we headed downtown to The Gateway FOUNTAINS! I can't believe how awesome our timing was. We arrived with about 5 minutes for me to get my cameras and lenses all set to go, test lighting, etc. and then the FOUNTAIN SHOW started. Love these few shots of Ciera playing in the fountains just before the actual show started.





When the actual water show started, the recording asked everyone to step out of the fountains. Um...we didn't. Oops. :-) It was PERFECT. With everyone out of the fountains, Ciera was the ONLY ONE in the water...AWESOME! To be honest, I didn't get a million fabulous shots DURING the water show, since there is a LOT of water. Holy crud. LOL! Half the time, she was SO completely covered by HUGE fountains of water, that I couldn't even see her. LOL! It was hilarious watching her simply PLAY....getting COMPLETELY DRENCHED and LOVING every minute of it. The spectators got a kick out of watching her. I almost wish I had had a shadow shooter to snap pictures of THEM watching her. LOL! Ciera is absolutely, utterly uninhibited. She didn't care that a TON of people were watching her...it's like they weren't even THERE. She played in that water like she was a five year old little girl. It was SO FREAKING AWESOME!!!!




Once the water died down a little bit, we whipped out the longboard for a few shots. We didn't want to ruin her board with the water, so we just snapped a couple quickly. Oh my gosh, it was hilarious. With her laying down on her board, she was REALLY REALLY REALLY close to where the fountains shot up! Over and over, she'd get smacked right in the face with a burst of water and just giggle. LOL! It was awesome. She was laughing and playing her heart out.


What I didn't notice until after I reviewed the pics, was how AWESOME it was that Ciera's SHIRT matched the wheels of her long board. LOL! LOVE THAT! What a seriously, amazingly fun shoot! So glad that Ciera had such a fun idea to hit the fountains for the second half of her shoot. Loved being able to catch the many sides of Ciera for her senior pictures. What a blast!!

Many thanks to my sweet Ciera for giving me the opportunity to take her Senior Pics this year. What a gorgeous and FUN, FUN, FUN high school senior....TRULY a photographer's dream. Absolutely have to chalk this up as one of my VERY FAVORITE SHOOTS...EVER!!! I am so OUTRAGEOUSLY pleased with how these proofs turned out and can't WAIT to see what she thinks! Thanks Ciec, for such a CRAZY FUN DAY! I sure love you!!!!

{wood fam}

What a great opportunity to take portraits for my friend Mekenzie and her cute little fam a few weeks ago. I am so blessed to be Mekenzie's visiting teacher and loved her from the minute we met. So enjoyed spending the afternoon with them on this PERFECT picture day.









Until the Wood fam has a chance to review all of the images from their shoot and choose the 10 pics that THEY would like me to edit for them, I thought it would be fun to choose a few of MY faves to edit and post as a little sneak peek for them.





As many of you already know, I have a thing with kissing. I love it...and I think couples should do FAR MORE of it. I especially love being able to get couples to smooch for pics that are not GENERALLY comfortable showing public displays of affection. It is my opinion that not only should couples kiss more in private...but they absoLUTEly should do more (tasteful) kissing in public to show the WORLD just how in love they are. SO fun to not only get this usually "shy-about-public-smooching" couple to kiss for a few shots, but even have FUN with it. LOL! Love the fun pic of them kissing with her hubby's leg wrapped around her. CLASSIC! LOVE IT! LOVE is AMAZING, and the world should SEE that there STILL IS SO MUCH LOVE out there!!! Love these shots!




So fun....those seriously make my heart happy!!!! :-) Love how all of these proofs turned out and hope that the Wood fam will love them as well! Pretty hard to go wrong with a family as cute as theirs. :-)



Many thanks to Mekenzie and her fam for giving me the opportunity to take their family portraits this year. Sure love you and hope you are as pleased with these few proofs as I am. I will have a proofing CD ready for you within the week.

{carter fam}

I'm not sure that I could ever blog about this woman and even REMOTELY come close to describing how much I love her....and how eternally grateful I am that God very literally ushered her into my life. Our story is a pretty awesome one....without a doubt, Divine. My friend Karen is nothing short of an angel and I don't have a doubt in my mind that she and I were MEANT to be friends. What a blessing for me to be able to take pictures of her beautiful family last week.






I am always thrilled to find new places to take pictures and loved this fun park in Cedar Hills that Karen suggested. And other than a few little patches of sun here and there, we couldn't have asked for a better picture day!





In addition to a few "formal" family pictures, a shoot of this cute-as-heck fam wouldn't be complete without throwing in some fun UTE FAN SHOTS!!!! And even as a COUGAR FAN, I have to admit, these are some of my FAVORITE shots from their entire shoot!!!! SO love how they turned out!!!

Karen has the type of smile that lights up a room...and a laugh that will lift you no matter how low you feel. She has that amazingly awesome contagious laugh that makes EVERYONE laugh right along....not matter what. LOVE that about her!!! She is pure and amazing positive energy. Love this first picture of her below, showing one of her MUCH-LOVED, classic "Laughing Karen Smiles!" LOVE IT! And I have to admit, though her kids are not my own, there was something about the pic of her on her oldest's back that made me tear up. I'm not sure what it was....but I love that shot...so much, in fact, that I zoomed in on it and posted it again cropped.



Until the Carter fam has a chance to review all of the shots from their family shoot and choose the 10 images that they would like for me to edit, I thought it would be fun to choose a few of MY faves to edit and post as a little sneak peek. I hope that they are as pleased with these few proofs as I am.

Oh how I love this sweet Mama and her babies! I love my job SO much....and love it even more when I am able to capture sweet moments for those who are VERY dear to me. Karen, I love you so much...more than I could EVER adequately express. I will have a proofing CD ready for you within the week. :-)