2012 Fall Portrait Sessions

Autumn is here! It’s my favorite time of the year to do portraits and I couldn't be more excited about the upcoming sessions that I have planned. Want to be a part of the fun? Here’s the 411:

portrait sessions:
A full-length family session is the best way to get personal, custom portraits of your family. Sessions are done at the location of your choice and last for up to two hours, so it can be at your favorite park, downtown at the River Walk, or even your own living room. We will have plenty of time for natural, lifestyle images and clothing changes if desired. The portrait session fee is $150 for evenings and weekends, or only $125 for those that take place M-F between 9am and 2pm.  Immediate family only, please.

mini sessions:
Mini sessions are short and sweet, and are designed for those that don't need a full-out session.  Lasting only 15 minutes, they take place on selected Sundays at specific locations. Each mini is good for 2 people (two kids, one kid and one parent, etc) but you can book two consecutively to get a whole family. Mini sessions are $50, and include approximately 15 proofs in an online gallery, but you can still take advantage of any of my great products such as custom cards, fine art canvas, or portrait collages.


Here is the Mini-Session lineup for 2012:
Bracken Pumpkin Patch October 9th,  from 9am-12pm (perfect for the little ones!)
Rock Wall Ranch October 21st, from 3pm-6pm (for a rustic and truly-Texas look)

holiday cards:
One of my signature products every year is Holiday cards!  I'll have a gorgeous selection to choose from, and for those that want something completely different I offer custom designed cards.  Please note that a $200 print order is required before custom products (including cards) can be ordered.

2012 deadlines:
Please note the following holiday deadlines:

Last day for sessions: November 25th
Last day for orders: December 2nd
Last day for deliveries: December 19th

I can't wait to see everyone this season.  Book early to secure your portrait session!

Change is Good

It has happened too many times to count: I walk into a recent clients home and see the images that I created for them framed and hung on the walls, but instead of being elated and thrilled for them, I am a little sad. Sad, because I know that if they had just gone a little bit bigger it would have looked soooo much better.

What makes me feel worse is knowing that it's my fault. I wasn't taking the time to tell them how much impact a large, beautiful portrait has, I wasn't showing them exactly what it would look like, and I was letting my clients down. Even if they didn't know it, I did.

So, I'm making some changes. For one, I want to find out, before the session ever takes place, exactly what each client wants from their portraits. What kind of mood are you hoping to convey? How and where do you plan to display your images? In order to find all this out, we need to talk, so step one of my new procedure is to schedule a pre-session consultation.

 We can talk about locations, clothing choices and anything else you need to know to make it a great shoot. This will help me so much when it comes to taking pictures of your family. For example, if you mentioned to me that you would love more than anything else a single framed portrait of the entire family to hang on the mantel, well now I know that I absolutely must get a horizontal image with everyone in it. If you said that what you really want is a series of gallery wrapped canvasses that you can hang on the staircase, I know that we need to get at least one vertical image of each family member in a similar setting that can be hung together.

  Another thing I'm doing differently is...Presentation Sessions! (So excited about this.) About one week after your actual shoot day, we will meet again. I'll come to your home to do an amazing presentation of all of your images. You get to see them BIG, projected onto a screen, in a slideshow that is set to music. We will go through them together so that you can choose your favorites, and then comes the best part...I will show you exactly what the images that you have chosen will look like on your wall! Can you imagine how easy it will be to make a decision about your images if all the guesswork is eliminated?

This is Casey's bedroom. She has some artwork on the wall, but she mentioned that she would love to have an image of each of her daughters here instead:

 

Here is what I designed for her:

 

These are 20x24 prints, with 6 inch Parisian Frames in Brown Cow with Wavy trim in Gold.

Now, typically in the past, my clients would order two 8x10s for this space, and since I didn't know what they were doing with the images I couldn't make any suggestions. Here is what I have seen all too often in my clients homes:

 

You might be laughing but I REALLY have seen this.

These two changes to my process-the pre-session consultation and the after-session presentation appointment-are going to do so much to help my clients get exactly what they want from their time with me.   The guesswork is eliminated, the process is so much more fun and intimate, and the final product is going to be stunning.

Like I said before, I am sooooo excited!!

Until next time,
leah

Faith's 1st Birthday-San Antonio Lifestyle Photography

One of the very best things about moving back to San Antonio is the fact that I get to be close to my most awesome clients. Donna and Casey are sisters, and between the two of them I think I have photographed them at least a dozen times for birthdays, a wedding, a funeral (believe it or not), an adoption, a newborn in the hospital, a senior portrait, family portraits,etc. This week, I am doing two more for Casey and her husband Chris. Their baby Faith is 1 year old, and yesterday was her mooovelous party! I knew the details were going to be fabulous, all of their parties are, and I was very excited to see what Casey had in store for Faith's first big bash. I wasn't dissappointed...check it out for yourself: Later this week I'll go to their new home to photograph Casey's girls. Casey is hoping to get some updated portraits for their walls, and I am so excited to spend some time with her angels. Until then! xoxo, leah

Kaia's 10th Birthday!

Home Sweat Home

Yes, I know it's supposed to be "Home Sweet Home."

We have a cute little chalk board sign in our kitchen that we update with seasonal quotes, and soon after we moved in my youngest daughter took it upon herself to come up with something new. Her mispelling was so appropriate that I had to leave it-I am indeed an exhausted, sweaty mess after our do-it-ourselves move halfway across the country in the middle of summer.

I wasn't really onboard for the move, to be completly honest. I looooved Arizona. I had wonderful friends and business was really booming for me the last few months (finally). And don't even get me started about how beautiful and clean the city of Gilbert is. I literally felt peaceful and happy just driving around.

  But moving home was the best decision for us financially, and with my oldest starting college this fall here in Texas it was a no-brainer. I very reluctantly packed up our stuff and headed right back home, literally to our old house. It was surreal to put things in the exact same spot that they had been in. But what most surprised me was how comfortable I felt once we were settled in. I have quite a bit of furniture that I had aquired in AZ so the house does look a little updated, plus the renters that were here had painted the entire house so that REALLY made it look different (I am repainting very soon, however, because the colors just don't go with my things).

Best of all, though, is getting to spend time with our families and all of our awesome friends. In the three weeks since I've been back, I've been to my parent's for dinner several times, a Thrity-One party, hosted a BBQ, lunch with friends, a swim playdate and a welcome back BBQ given by my oldest and dearest friends.
 

I've known Gina and Donna since the 3rd grade, Jennann since 7th and Carrie since high school, so we all go waaaay back. They are and always will be my absolute best friends, and I am very lucky to get to live near everyone once again.

It is good to be home!!!

Lauren & Steve: Married!

The Marriott at McDowell Mountain in Scottsdale was the setting for the wedding of Lauren Bird and Steve Burdorf this past weekend. It was, I believe, the first day of the year that the temps reached 100 degrees here in Phoenix, but I don't think the day could have been any more beautiful.
Lauren was relaxed and happy as she got ready:

Steve and his groomsmen were looking sharp:


The ceremony was held out on the lawn, under a beautiful, flowering tree:

The ceremony site had beautiful light streaming through the tree-tops, which made it the perfect spot for portraits:

Cocktail hour was held outside on the patio:




I adored the place cards and reception decor:


Their first dance was sweet:



And they danced the night away:

Lauren and Steve, thank you so much for allowing me to capture your day for you!

Wall Gallery in the Abrahamson Home

TO REALITY:





I love it when everything comes together after all of the planning, the photo session, the ordering meeting, and the many decisions and changes that go into creating a custom photo Wall Gallery. My absolute favorite moment is right after I have helped my client get their images hung on the wall and then we step back and admire our work.

The images above are from the home of Marcia and Rich Abrahamson. They chose to do a Wall Gallery using the images from their family session, and I was so happy with how it all turned out. We used hand-made custom frames that were created with exactly the colors the Marcia chose and in the sizes that I recommended. The three 5x5 images on the left are of her three children, there is a family group portrait on the top right and on the bottom right, the image that is everyone's favorite, a back-lit family silhouette.

One of the reasons that I started offering custom frames and Wall Gallery design is because of how important I think it is to display your family images as Art. Now that photography is digital, I believe that most of us are leaving our pictures on the computer and failing to print them. I'm guilty of it, I know my friends are (I know because I asked on FB recently), and I hate to see my clients do it. Our kids should see us print their images, put them in amazing frames, and hang them in a prominent place in our homes. It tells them that they are special and that we think they are beautiful and important.

Marcia has told me how friends and family walk into her home and immediately are drawn to her photographic art and just oooohhhh and ahhhhh over her children. I know this makes her feel fantastic, and it makes me oh-so happy to hear!

Lauren & Steve: Engagement Session in Scottsdale, AZ

Lauren and Steve are such a sweet couple. They are getting married in a few short weeks, so last weekend we headed waaay up to Cave Creek to grab a few engagement photos. It was a beautiful day, and we had so much fun wandering around getting some great photos of the two of them.





We did the session at a hill-top church that is just on the outside of The Boulders Resort, just north of Scottsdale. The light was amazing and we had a dozen different spots to choose from for pictures.











Toward the end of the session, we drove around to the entrance of the resort and decided to take a few images on the gorgeous property:



Lauren and Steve we fun and relaxed, and that tells me that the wedding is going to be fun and relaxed as well. I am waiting on pins on needles for the wedding date to arrive, I can already tell that it is going to be awesome!