We’ve been waiting for this for over a year and a half.

When I first started this business back in 2008, I never dreamed it would grow into what it is now. I started it to be able to charge people for my ‘hobby’ and to keep it all legal.

I never intended to do photography full-time.

But that’s where I find myself now. About a year and a half ago we made the decision to move to doing this full-time, and on June 17th I said goodbye to my colleagues at the insurance company I worked at and left my cushy well-paying day job and benefits to do photography full-time with my husband Brandon.

It’s an exciting time. Somewhat scary, but such a thrill as well.

The best part is that I’m no longer working all day and then coming home and working evenings and weekends too, so I get to spend lots more time with my beautiful family and have some time off. Not only that, but I have more time to really focus on the business and get things exactly where we want them to be.

Where we’re headed:

Over the next few months you’ll see a lot of changes around here. We’ll be changing our name as my husband is just as much a part of the business as I am (although it didn’t start out that way).

We’ll be building our new website and launching that as soon as we can, hopefully by the end of summer. I’m so excited to get that off the ground! I can’t wait to have the new look, and a much more functional site that’s easier to navigate and looks far more amazing than this site. SO excited!

We’ll be adding portfolios for Weddings and Portraits. Right now there’s just recent blog posts, but I have a number of portrait sessions that have never been blogged that I can’t wait to share. We’ll be doing more portraits this year and look forward to sharing more of them with you.

Join us!

We are sincerely grateful for all of you who have made this dream possible. We could never have done it without you.

Thank you. Truly. It means so much to us and our family.

We’d love to keep in touch and would be honored to have you sign up to be a part of our growing business family. We’ll be sending out a newsletter at most once a month to anyone who signs up with all sorts of goodies inside.

Our newsletter will contain

We’d love it if you’d join us now. All you need to do is enter your first name and email address into the form below. You’ll then get an email in your inbox asking you to click an link and confirm that you actually signed up and that you’re not some crazy robot who wants to spam us or something. It’s that quick and easy:

2011 Wedding Photography Special!

Now that we have a bit of extra time on our hands, we’d like to take on a few extra weddings this fall. We currently have a few Saturdays in August and October that are still open, so if you’re planning a wedding for later this year we have a special deal for you.

We’d like to offer you $500 off any remaining 2011 wedding dates. Contact us now for full pricing and availability.

And what post is complete without a few photos? The photos in this post are from a wedding in Oshkosh that I’m currently editing that hasn’t hit the blog yet.

For those of you who are interested, we were drinking “Evening in Missoula” from the Tea Source. This is the only tea I’ve been wanting to drink latley. It’s amazingly fresh, you can order it online, and the prices are super reasonable. Check it out! They also have a great selection of other fine loose leaf teas.

Oh, and for those of you who may not know, here’s the link to my talented husband’s literary blog. It’s a mix of thoughts, small pieces of writing, and details about the journey we’re embarking on as we seek publication for his amazing children’s book. I honestly think it is the best children’s book I’ve ever read, but then again he wrote it for me for our 5th anniversary, so I’m probably a bit biased. Hopefully we’ll find an agent and publisher who will agree with me about it. Anyways, onto the tea party!

Here’s Madeleine, pouring her tea (notice her proud little smile…)

Nothing like a little taste…

This is probably my favorite one. I can just see her as an adult enjoying a cup of tea. It’s hard for a mom to see her sweet little ones growing up so fast, but I’m also very excited to watch her turn into the woman God created her to be. I’m already so proud of her (and all my kids!)

Just happy to be having tea with her mom.

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…go look. I mean it….

Okay, now that you’ve seen how stinking awesome his work is, you can see why I’d want to learn anything I can from him. Don’t get me wrong – I totally love natural light and the moods that it can create, but learning how to do this type of photography well will only allow me to be more creative as I shape a shot in my mind in the case where natural light just won’t do. So I finally splurged and bought his OneLight DVD seminar. Worth. Every. Penny. Pure gold.

I don’t really intend for this to be a review of the DVD (other than to say it may end up being one of the most influential learning tools in my photography career) but I had to mention it for all you other photographers out there who might be afraid of using flash or off-camera lighting and to share with my clients about what I’m doing to spur on my creativity. I purchased a few modifiers and radio poppers and set to work playing with them. Zack made it totally easy to understand. While I haven’t had a chance to get out in daylight and play yet, I wanted to share this one shot I took with it set up in my entry way with tungsten ambient light that never could have been taken without off-camera lighting. Thanks to my good friend Tamara who graciously modeled for me. I’m completely excited to play with these techniques and can’t wait to see what good things are in store for this year.  

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