Maryville Portrait Photography - Austin and Ava Super Spring!

Spring is upon us. Blooming flowers, budding trees, warming weather, and cute kiddos. Well, cute kiddos happen year round, but we just happened to photograph these cute kiddos last weekend. Austin and Ava's aunt won a gift certificate from a breast cancer awareness fundraiser that our friend Sarah at Vivid Tattoo held last year. We're so happy that she supported a great cause and happy that she called us to photograph these adorable siblings.

Easter is right around the corner and Austin and Ava were very excited to get a sneak peak at some egg action.

Aren't they cute!





I asked Austin to give Ava a kiss, which he did willingly. Then I asked Ava to give Austin a kiss… and this was his reaction. :)

Um… just don't try that with the real thing in a couple weeks.

Easy there tiger… you have to share.

This one cracks me up.



Austin was excited to show off his new soccer skills… until Ava swiped the ball.

Too cute!!



No flowers were harmed in the making of this super-cute photo. I think.

Thanks for playing along Austin and Ava!

And to everyone else, Spring is a wonderful time for some portraits! Give us a call or email… we'd love to photograph your kiddos, your family, and/or you!

Foto February : The Dog Blog

Welcome to the last of the Foto February posts! Sad? I am. This was a fun project. And even though I didn't get to shoot everything I wanted to in February due to time constraints, I still feel like I got a really cool variety. The best part, creative batteries charged!

This last post is one I saved because I knew a bunch of you would love it. Plus, it took the longest to work on! After the initial Foto February post, one of our awesome brides from 2010, Kristal, messaged me asking if we could take photos of her dog. I've toyed around with the idea of doing some studio pet photography, so why not? And then I got another doggie email. And another. So I decided to make an afternoon of it. Best of all, I hired Maddie, our oldest daughter, who loooooves dogs, to be my assistant (she got an ice cream cone as payment).

We start off with Seumas, a Scottish Deerhound, owned by our friend and tattoo artist, Sarah. Poor Seumas had some stage fright. He couldn't get used to the floor and the big white backdrop.

So the first lesson in pet photography: improvise. We took Seumas outside and he was much happier.

I don't know much about Scottish Deerhounds, but they're pretty cool looking.

And I suspect they are born to run.

Next up that day was Chance, Kristal's boxer mix. He was all happy and hyper.

We bribe kids with Smarties and dogs with Snausages.



Puppy kisses.

I was trying to get a good photo of Chance looking up and he wasn't cooperating. All of the sudden, Maddie squeaked a toy I forgot we brought and Chance perked up. After I was congratulating Maddie on being super smart and thinking to squeak the toy. At first, she took my congrats, but later she admitted that she was repositioning herself and accidentally leaned on the toy. :)

Next we met Holly, a Scottish Terrier.

One of our brides from this year asked us to get some nice photos of Holly for her mom. Holly is apparently the apple of her eye.

And she rocked the pink bandana.

In between sessions we asked Mr. Lequire, a gentleman that works in our building, if he wanted a few photos of his beautiful and well behaved Flat-Coated Retriever, Montana.

She was so laid back we bored her. ;)

Next up is a scrappy little punk we've known for a while. Guiseppe belongs to our dear friend Traci. He's a long hair daschund mix and is pretty stinking cute, especially if when he goes from frizzy to Alfalfa.

We bored him too.

I love this one. His body language and the faux-hawk just scream "what did I do to deserve this?"

If I had a monkey bed I'd be happy too.

Traci and her pooch.

Lastly, meet our pal Griffin, a yellow Lab/Golden Retriever mix. We got Griffin last year and he is an amazing dog. 75 pounds of pure puppy. Danielle helped me with his session the next day. Here she's trying to get him to drop his beloved bone. It ain't happening.

But we did manage to get him to ignore it for a few seconds and pose.

But that was it. ;)

Griffin is a dang good looking dog.

We tried getting a few shots of him airborne because he has a vertical leap comparable to NFL wide receivers, but he kept slipping on the floor. But this gives you an idea about how huge he is.

Wow! Dogs! Did you like them? Should I do more? Maybe there's some pet photography in our future? I might just do some all day sessions like this again, so if you're interested, shoot us an email or message on Facebook. Thanks to all the dog owners that brought your critters to the studio!!

Foto February : Some Beautiful Yoga

Welcome back to us! We had a wonderful spring break trip with the girls and now it's back to work. Today's Foto February post was a bit of a surprise. Well, a surprise for me. I never thought I would get excited about yoga. And to be honest, when Danielle, one of my Danielle's college classmates, contacted us wanting some scenic photos of her doing yoga, I was a bit skeptical about what I would get. But as I began scouting locations, I started getting more and more excited. We had a few weather delays, but when we finally got together it was a beautiful day and we captured some amazing photos.

I'm not even going to pretend to know the names of the different poses.

These first few are from the Foothills Parkway.





I *love* this one.

I could tell you where this cool bamboo is, but then I'd have to kill you. Wait, that probably goes against some of the peaceful ideals behind yoga. Sorry.



This field is near our house. I've wanted to shoot something here for a while.





And then there's an abandoned subdivision near us as well.

Aren't these trees cool? I also played around with my lighting some. This is available.

This with with off camera flash.

And this is with a wee bit of sunset.



Who knew I could have this much fun shooting yoga?!? Thank you so much, Danielle!!