Category Archives: Maternity

Peek into the last three + months

There has been so much going on here the last three months!

With the birth of Landon, we welcomed home the most awesome baby.  He is so good and sooooo low maintenance.  The twins were definitely high maintenance and either one of them would have been considered high maintenance on their own as well.  It is such a treat to have such a happy and content baby.  He smiles all the time, wants to sleep regularly {including almost all night!}, loves to be held, loves to chill on his own and just generally brings us all joy.

A couple weeks after Landon was born I had my tailbone removed since it had been paining me for 8 years.  Being up and about was no problem, even a few days post op, but sitting at my computer was an issue.  Posting new images and articles on the website was one of the things to suffer from the inattention to the computer.  I was still doing sessions and working on clients orders, but not really able to do much more then share a few images on my Facebook page.  Sharing images there is all good, but it is so much more fun and interesting to put in the comments and backstories!

Here are some images from the last three months.   It’s going to be so hard to only pick one image from a session!

We did a pirate and princess theme session with Miles and his sister.  It’s so fun to dress up little kids and celebrate the beginnings of their imaginations by representing their playtime in images.  Just other day our daughter, Madison, stood up on an old hard cover suitcase and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen.  Blake and Maddie will now present a show for you.”  So cute.  Anyway, the images of Miles and Ava will also be used in their 3rd birthday party invitations for their pirate and princess themed party.


There are so many non crying images, but we call this one “Missing Daddy.”  He is currently deployed for a year to Afghanistan and left just 2 months after she was born.  Both mom and baby Ava can’t wait to have him home again.


Ryan is celebrating his arrival to 18 months with joy.  We had a very busy session chasing this little guy around.  His brother Anderson was in a few shots too.


Capturing relationships with extended families is one of my favorite things.  It is so rare that most people take the time to capture these special relationships as adults.


Emily, my summer intern, got to practice shooting my friend, Sandy’s, two girls.  I took the position of second shooter and let her take charge of the session only jumping in occasionally to give advice and suggest poses.  While she had the older of the two girls off on her own, I got this beauty of mom and daughter.


Of all the baby milestones I photograph, the six month {sitting not crawling} age is my favorite to do an urban session.  They aren’t going anywhere so we don’t have to worry about them stepping in glass or eating rusty stuff.  The textures and colors are so awesome in the background and create a stark contrast to a babies beautiful new skin.


Newborns are just so precious.  Little Julian loved the hot humid air and slept contentedly while we moved him around for different poses.


Just before we gave Emily and Drew cakes to smash up, we captured a few poses of them just sitting for us on the grey backdrop.  This is one of my favorite images all year out of all my personal and professional images!  I love their joy an her advancing on me… 


Newborn Hazel is a sweetheart.  I think her voice is also just like her older sisters!   I always enjoy capturing Heather’s family.


Coming in September Adrian and Jennifer will be getting hitched!   We had a lot of fun marrying Adrian’s love of architecture with Jennifer’s more traditional design wishes.  It was so much fun getting to do both urban and green for both the engagement and bridal sessions.  It is so hard waiting to share the bridals!


Here is one of the only images I can share from Jennifer’s bridals.  :-)


Emily has been a huge part of the last few months while she interns with me.  This girl will definitely be going places with her fantastic natural talent and great personality.  My kids love her.  They tell her they love her all the time and also include her in their prayers.


Mom was thinking of putting Miles and Ava into modeling so we did a mini session for a couple images to submit to an agency.  After capturing them both individually we got a few super fun images of them together.


Baby Hazel {still in mom’s tummy} with her big sister & mommy.  I love how sweetly excited Cora was here in anticipation of meeting her baby sister.


We had lots of family visit us after Landon arrived.  Corri is Guy’s sister.  She asked if they could do a session while they were here.  YES!  I love to capture our family members.  It is so much fun to see what they order.  Corri basically bought the store.  :-)  I’m pretty sure she loves getting her items at cost because she is family.


Josh is a very interesting person to talk to to and to have in front of the camera.  He shows a range of emotions and looks.


Keatyn’s 3 month session was at home.  I loved how they remodeled and decorated their home.  It’s no wonder they sold their home quickly when they decided to move back home to Louisiana.   I’ll miss being able to photograph Jade’s adorable girls with their stylish outfits mom picks out.

~ Shannon

Great decision

When Ann was talking with me about booking a newborn and maternity session I thought she wanted to do the normal mini maternity session.  We ended up doing a full session which we all had a great time planning and doing.  Here are some of my favorite images.

Adorable little baby booties on a belly most of us would totally be jealous of.  I can retouch the skin for those that have stretch marks, and I’m sure she is very glad I didn’t need to!


It is so fun when couples have cute stories to go along with different themes or items they get for their children.  I’ll share the frog story when the newborn images are posted.


I love the shots of Ann lying down.  The little sweater is perfect for maternity images that show off the belly!


Not even sure what to write about this favorite image of mine.  My husband, Guy, will sometimes help me choose the best images from a session.  He said this one was the best of their session.  Thanks honey!!


Happiness is…  I can imagine this image hanging in the babies room for her to look at as she grows up.


We had a plan to take a few images outside if the weather permitted.  Natural light and greenery are so beautiful to me.   We also got to use a new chair I just got.


Lovely mommy to be!


Right at the end it started to sprinkle which got me these great laughing shots as we snapped a last few before jumping back in the SUV.

Next month we’ll have more delicious newborn goodness.

~ Shannon

The Happy Maternity

I love new ideas!  Melissa had a fun idea to paint her belly for the shoot.  She ordered the paint and picked up some balloons.  Loved it!

Now, if only the paint hadn’t taken so long we may have had a little better light.  We had one spot and a super short period of time to take these images in.  Both of us were really pleased at how much we got in such a short time.

When a boy is into something so much why not make part of his happiness part of the image happiness.  He loves to slap on this helmet, onto his motor razor and be off!

The toddler way off and running with the men standing around wondering what to do.  Melissa was serenely happy with her adorable painted belly happily announcing baby number 3.

Love how the red and yellow play off each other here!

So cute!  This perfectly represents all of their personalities.

And this was the capture of the best expressions.  Love the surprised look on little Boo.

She only wanted to be off and stomping in her boots.  This got her happily smiling for a few images.

The balloons were so cute with the belly.

My favorite of the day!

My second favorite.  Both of their looks really convey their loving relationship.  These two are soooo much alike.

Loving on the soon to be here baby brother.

~ Shannon

Maternity

~ Shannon

More October sitting goodness

First off just let me say how cool it was to have some of my stuff featured on the Savvy Photographer blog!!! Like, how stinkin cool is that?!?!

I had to upload the images prepared for this post again as I missed a crucial step {sharpening} needed for web presentation!

After a long drought in maternity sessions I’ve done two in the last two months. Yay, me! Both of them are people dear to me, and we are all waiting anxiously to meet these sweet babes. Melissa is a my friend because of photography. She was one of the three wonderful girls who earned mass credits towards their wedding photography back in my ‘pretty much wedding photographer only’ stage. It was at her wedding that we started to really become friends. Her and her husband were a little unsure of Guy as many people often are at first. One day he really got them giggling like school girls as he is more then capable of. That was it. Our friendship has been rock solid ever since. It isn’t often you find friends as a couple where all four poeple totally dig each other.

Her Maddie is very excited about the baby. It was a bit weird having two kids called Maddy in the same house the two nights we stayed with them.


Don’t you just love the dog kissing her belly?

Ahhh, B&W is a great thing.

Though I held out for a long time on the aged photo look, but both my clients and I love it. I still want to thank the two girls on the 4-wheeler who provided the great dust for the shot on the right! Lovely. Should an 8 month pregnant woman run just to catch the cool dust shot?

My favorite. This perfectly shows Melissa’s personality. Perfectly!

Her husband, Andy, thought the cotton field looked superimposed.

These guys always get the coolest perfect cloud days for their shoots. All the moody clouds and peek a boo sun were fun to work with. They loved having their city as the background.

I love incorporating things that are important to a family in their shoot. The journal writing and the stuffed dog are really important right now. Oh, he is all boy. If it’s a typical boy thing he does it. Talk about adventuresome. Baby Paige is so sweet. Her mama calls her Sweet Baby Paige all the time. I love the nickname. The last shot of the four definitely captures her girly girl self that is very curious and does tomboy things.

This spot was so cool. I’d caught a glimpse of this bridge a few months ago. It was definitely a cool find.

I think they like each other. I like photographing them.

These last two are the images used to make a pocket accordion album. I love how this one came out.

Another of my wedding couples from years ago. The last time we saw them was just before Braxton was born. He is now a super cute and big three year old with loads of energy.

The family shot here is perfect of them! Love it. We went out to dinner after the shoot. Tina was telling me about their main picture wall at home after I asked if they still used bold colors on the walls. They have a big picture of all of them making silly faces with a smaller picture of each of them around it sticking their tongue out. Love it! That is so something I would do. Nah, more likely it would be portraits of our feet. Oh wait, we already have that.

Tina’s favorite shot from the shoot.

Again, B&W {especially a warm B&W} are especially yummy.

I stood in the fountain to get this reaction from Brooklyn. I was doing my, “Wait, one more” repeated about 20 times towards the end. There just kept being cool stuff on the way back to the cars.

I think this would make a great big gallery wrapped canvas.

Adorable kids. The side of the big love sign was the cool red background.

Ha ha! What are the odds some random display would have Slavery written on it? We had to do it, and they gave me the perfect faces!

~ Shannon

A little bit of everything! – Christmas Card sessions!!!

First off, I am happy to announce three days of mini sessions with Christmas cards And an 11×14! The Saturday will be November 7th from 10:30 am until 4:00 pm with fabulous downtown Raleigh as your backdrop! Monday November 9th & Wednesday November 18th will both be from 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm with the pretty Lake Benson park as your backdrop!

Each session will last about 25 minutes and we’ll take a few poses in the same area to give some variety and texture to your Christmas cards. Please feel free to spread the word on this great deal! Referral credits will be $5 for any booked Christmas card session you refer. All regular sessions booked will still be a $20 credit. Of course, our regular full custom sessions will have the opportunity to get their own custom Christmas cards!

The rest of these shots are all from recent sessions I just haven’t had time to blog about!

This silhouette is soooo stinking cool. We were on our way to the shoot location when this great run down industrial site. On our way back we stopped her for a few shots. Love them all. Ladies who are preggo, it isn’t all about the naked belly anymore. We can really showcase this special time in your life with so many cool shots. You’ll see more of these later for sure!

By the way, my girl here is about 5′ 1″! Doesn’t she look waaay taller?

These guys were a lot of fun.

Most of my session pictures are the typical shot you see on my blog with the great contrast & saturated rich colors. A few families lately have really fit having a more vintage look to some of their shots. They have all loved those vintage edits too. I love this family, and we’ve really become friends over the last year of sessions every three months. It will be sad to ‘only’ get to spend the fun session time every 6 months now. We do get to have play dates though, which has been loads of fun.

The next two storyboards are of a brother and sister. I think they will look great hanging on the wall side by side or in their seperate rooms! They shared some cupcakes at the end of our session for some fun and messy shots.

The last two storyboards are of one of my pretty seniors. Her and I are both total chatterboxes so we hit it off immediately. There was this great bridge it would have been cool to get her up on the concrete cross piece. Unfortunately we didn’t have a big strong man with us or a ladder! The small attempt we made at trying to get her up there ended up with my foot 1/2 inch away from a fire ant hill! Yeah, we aborted.

~ Shannon

Some preggo pics

My friend, Melissa, came over for a mini pregnancy session. Baby girl is due in just a couple more weeks now. Can’t wait to meet her.

This has to be one of my all time favorite photos!

They brought the whole family along. Great Grandma was even able to get in on the action.

I think this one needs a little more tweeking, but I like the pose.

This one has some cool lighting.

Love her big expressive eyes

A classic shot. This sweater is tooo cute! Every pregnant woman should own something so cute since we are so not feeling comfortable and cute most of the time.

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~ Shannon
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