The Fielding Family {Utah Family Photography}

"In the midst of winter I found within myself an invincible summer."

Isn't that a beautiful quote?

This is the Fielding Family and that quote was the theme that we built their session around. I can't express enough how much I love it when people put thought and meaning into their images. I think it makes for a much stronger emotional connection and brings more joy to the heart when you see your beautiful wall art in your home.

p.s. You have to notice that their color theme is Americana...get it?...summer??

This is one of my favorite locations, especially for this time of year and it has personal meaning for this family which makes it even nicer. The image above is my favorite from the session. This adorable little girl was a bit reticent about having her photo taken and she had a pretty tight grip on her special doll. In this image her mom has just tossed the doll into a snowbank in hopes of getting a shot sans doll. I'm sort of hanging over the edge of a bridge at this point and I had a clear view of the little darling's face and just held down the shutter. Priceless!

Utah State HEY! Aggies all the way!!

Just another reason I love this family! Most of them actually came straight from a USU game to our photo session. Sadly they told me that the Aggies hadn't played well but we just won't speak of that. ;)

By the end she was happier and can I just say that this little girl is loved and adored!

We had such a wonderful day. Thank you so SO much Fielding Family!

Hadn't Thought About It That Way {Utah Family Photography}

Greetings to the Longhurst family. There is a lot of love here. They like to laugh and be together and you can tell that they are very close.


When I was getting their print order ready I had an eye-opening conversation with Mary (the lovely mom). I've taken shots like the one above a few times before without really stopping to think about why I was doing it. Oh, I know that it holds to the rule of thirds and the added interest of foreground and background elements but I hadn't thought clearly about the emotional content. Mary told me that she had to have a print of this image because it reminded her of how important it is to have a relationship with your spouse outside of your children. Children are important and wonderful but if a marriage isn't strong then the family will suffer. It is so important to take time to just be with your significant other. I was so grateful that she shared that with me and now I lok at this photograph with new eyes. This is only one in a series of shots. Cory and Mary were in the background twirling and dancing and my favorite has a big dip complete with kiss.

The above was the "money" shot for me. As soon as I took it I had to show Mary. I absolutely love the connection between the family members and my favorite part is the daughter leaning her head on daddy's shoulder. This is the one they got printed large for their wall art and I am so very glad that they did.

I wanted to give them a different "look" to chose from for their big family picture so I took them over to the river. This is one of my very favorite locations to shoot at during late fall and it turned out very nice. They had to have a print of this one as well...I don't purposefully try to make it hard to choose. ;)

My Golden Family...Merry Christmas! {Utah Family Photography}

I love this family and they have had a busy year, note the addition of a brand new son-in-law {I got to photograph the wedding-yay!}. There aren't words for how much I love them and I was thrilled that with how busy they were we were still able to get a family session and Christmas card in. I talked them into a two-sided card this year, change is good right? They were thrilled, I was thrilled, life is good. Happy Holidays everyone!

The Lund Family {Utah Family Photography}

I love fall and this has been one of my favorite locations to shoot in for about a year, partly because I can have good light for longer than usual and partly because as yet the hordes have not discovered it. This is a wonderful family whom I have known for as long as I can remember. Their youngest son was leaving on a mission four days after these pictures were taken and Saturday Oct. 1, 2011 found us traipsing through the weeds in the dark{ish} at seven am. It was darker than I expected and I was panicking a bit. At the last second I threw my studio lights in the car and when I got there {I like to arrive early and set up} it was pretty darn pitch black and there were mysterious shapes lurking...I admit to being a little apprehensive. I told myself that they were most likely deer and would leave as I got closer, sure enough they were and they did. Curse you Dave Carver for telling me all of your bigfoot stories!!!

You can see here that the sun is coming up over the mountains, the light sure moved fast but we were able to get all that we needed before various members of the family had to rush off to other engagements.

I love this picture. I love his eyes. I always try to take at least one photograph of small children looking up at me because that is the way parents see their children most often and it is a reminder in later years of when they were small. Ironically the family was concerned because this little guy is usually super smiley but he is not a morning person at all. It's still my favorite picture.

This is Joni and she is a sweetheart. I really like this picture of her, I think her wonderful personality shines through.

Some back-story to this session was that the night before was the closing night and cast party for a show that I had been doing at Centerpoint Legacy Theatre. I got home probably around 3-4 am, took a two hour nap and then ran out to photograph this session still in full stage hair and make-up and in my ensemble from the night before...that just makes me laugh.

Here is a link to my facebook business page if you would like to see a few more. :)

https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10150402810018727.353188.111853783726&type=3

Personality and Then Some!! {Utah Family Photography}

My poor siblings! It has to be annoying sometimes to have a photographer for a sister who is always bugging you about pictures. Luckily this time my sister-in-law Becca got the ball rolling so I feel a lot less naggy. ;) This is my sister Katie and her family, I think this (the photo above) is my favorite of their family that we took that day. I called her when Becca asked me about doing their family because I figured I could do two birds with one stone, so to speak. We had fun! I just wish my other two siblings were around. My sister Leah lives in the land down under but hopefully we will get her and her family here this summer. Photo-op!

The point of this location really is to get the colorful graffiti but I'm a sucker for black and white and I still like the patterns that the paint creates.

My nieces are too, too cute! Riley's magic word was gummies. To see her face here you wouldn't know how un-thrilled with taking pictures she was but say the word gummies and she was all smiles.

So cute!

Awwww, you two are the best!

I love this photo, looking at my nephew Davis (the little guy in the middle) makes me crack up every time. He is a character and then some, what a personality!

I had fun playing with this image in photoshop. Sometimes I just take a picture and run with it. I was playing with color and then I thought, "Hey, why not pop the color in the flower" then "I'll make the skirt match" then "What about her eyes". It's fun to do that sometimes.


Mason is such a sweetie!


This is my favorite of course, I love goofy pics. I think Davis was getting tired and done so we did a sill pic to help get a little more time out of him. I do that a lot when shooting families, it works most all of the time. If I can get the kids to feel like they have a part in what is going on they are more interested in the process and cooperate better.

....aaaaaaand scene! Well, at least until next year...ummm time. ;)

The Rollo Fam' {Utah Portrait Photography}

I love this family! These are my pseudo-Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. Uncle Rex grew up in Huntsville with my Dad and they have been life long friends, so we grew up with the Rollos and the Layton family. Ironically both the Rollos and Laytons are all boys which is probably why I turned out the way that I did!

Every summer we would head up to West Yellowstone to stay at the Rollo's family cabin. Oh the crazy fun we had! Chasing squirrels, water-skiing on Hebgen (freezing, glacier fed) lake. Running around Yellowstone Park like lunatics...good times!


Now that we've all grown up I hardly ever get to see them anymore. It's tragically sad. I was so thrilled when Aunt Nadine called me about taking their family pictures. I took my children with me and they think Aunt Nadine is super nice, they are right. She is the very, very best.



We used to get together every New Years Eve and hopefully it will work out that we can see them this year! You can NEVER have enough cousins!

A lovely friend. {Utah Family Photography}

One of the benefits of being a photographer is the opportunity to see friends that one hasn't seen for years. Everyone needs their family photos updated and even if one lives out of state there is time during trips home to visit. Plus I love to travel (hint,hint). This is my friend Sarah and her beautiful family. Sarah was one of the wonderful people who took advantage of the special that I ran to help my sister and her family who lost pretty much everything in the flooding in Australia last January. It was a win for everyone. Sarah got a great deal, I got to see my friend and not have to charge full price (which I hate), and my sister was able to purchase a fridge which we will all agree is rather crucial to family survival. Sidenote: My sister and her family are finally back in their home along with an addition. Leah had a beautiful baby boy who sadly I haven't seen yet but hopefully will in the next year.

Sarah wanted an urban look and also to not travel too far as they were all so tired from all the visiting and travel and reunions so we chose this location in Ogden.

I loved meeting her children, they were absolutely delightful!

When I photograph families I like to take both headshots for the Moms and also let each child pick their own place to take full-length and three-quarter shots. I like to get the kids involved in the shoot so that they feel that they have some say and are a part of the process. They always seem to like picking their spot and it makes them excited for their turn. I always get more cooperation when it's "their" idea. Every once in awhile I get a challenge location chosen so if it's too nutty I still shoot in the place that they have chosen and then I say "Hey, let's just do a couple more over here." Always works!

We chose this location partly so that they could have the two different looks of the urban buildings and the green of the foliage behind the bridge. I also love the beautiful rim-lighting that I get here as the sun is going down,

I love two-year-olds, they are so much fun! It's a little challenging to get them to sit still and smile at you so I just shoot and shoot and shoot like a madwoman. Of course, when I'm editing I see all these fantastic expressions that I just love and can't possibly choose between so I love to make composites. This is a 20X20 nine image composite and it's meant to be printed as a gallery wrap. As a parent we love all the different expressions that our children have and here they are, all together. I'm working on making these up for each of my children, I just think they are so much fun!

Thank you Heiner family for the opportunity of photographing you. It was so great to see you all and I hope it won't be long until we can play together again. Loves!!

Photo Groupings {Utah Family Photography}

I recently had the opportunity to photograph the family of a good friend of mine from high school who now lives out of state. I was telling her about ideas for photo groupings for her family pictures and as she had to go back home and was unable to come to my house to see some of mine I told her I would send her some pictures...I figured a blog post would be even better so that more people could see what I was talking about.

See how lonely and sad this family picture looks, all by itself, above my couch? Now, this isn't a small print. It's a 20X30 inch Gallery wrap and I absolutely adore it. But even though it is a large print it just doesn't look right all by itself. There is way too much empty space!


Doesn't this grouping of pictures look a lot better? The space above the couch is nicely filled with plenty of room on the sides for reading tables and lamps or whatever you would choose to put there. FYI the smaller prints are 8X10 inch gallery wraps, but of course framed prints will work equally well.

My secret for hanging prints is to cut paper into the sizes that I think I might want and then carefully tape the paper on the wall, moving the "pictures" around until I get the arrangement that I am looking for. In the grouping above I didn't have any idea of the sizes I would need until I saw how the papers looked on the wall. Another added benefit to this method is that once you have everything exactly where you want you can hammer the nails into the wall through the paper and then just pull the paper away. It works a lot better than trying to hang by eye and you have a lot less nail holes in your wall. I do this EVERY time I am working on a new wall in my home.

Another tip for hanging pictures is that they should be hung so that the middle of the picture is at the eye level of an average sized women. In the case of a grouping I would place the main center picture at eye level or in the case where you have rows put the middle row at eye level or the middle of the entire formation at eye level. It is very common for people to hang artwork too high, especially in homes with tall ceilings. Hopefully these tips can help.

I love to have art on my walls and I consider portraits of my family to be the best kind of art. I stare at them every single day and they bring me great joy. With just a little time and planning you can have beautiful groupings of family art on your walls. Much better than a few pretty 4X6's shoved in a shoebox somewhere! Good luck and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

We make this, look good! {Utah Family Photography}

I'm starting this post with one of the last images from the photo shoot because this was the main image that we were trying to capture. A good friend of mine had purchased this fantastic dress for her daughter and wanted to tailor the shoot around having her look like a movie star in a back alley, like she was headed to the theater surrounded by her bodyguards. She even said that she wanted to have her boys have a Men in Black look. When she said that I was hooked!
I was originally planning to do this image in Salt Lake but the day before the shoot my friend called me and said that she also wanted to have her kids portraits taken at the ponds in Kaysville so in order to have the time to get both images we decided on taking the above in a little alley behind the Kaysville theater. I really like how it turned out though I would have wished for some ambient lights in the background. If that light over the doorway would have been on it might have made this perfect. The kids were so fun and so willing to try anything. As it turned out I was glad that we hadn't tried to go to Salt Lake because the little one had had it by the time we were done. We had to bribe him with frozen yogurt...it was really good! As a general rule I try to keep family sessions to an hour though sometimes more stylized sessions like this take more time. It takes a lot of energy to have your photos taken and kids especially don't need too long of a marathon session.

This was a quick grab shot as we were starting. I love casual images like this and the light was just magic. I took out a lot of flying cotton which is a bit sad because I loved the look of it but this turned out to be one of the clients favorite images and I don't think she wants white smears all over her gorgeous wall portrait.
I get many questions about what to shoot from aspiring photographers. I tell them to shoot from their heart and they tend to look at me with baffled expressions. You know those moments where you see something and your breath catches a little and your heart skips a beat? Take the shot! I don't care if it's random, or unplanned, or not what you were looking for. Those are the pictures that mean the most. And if they don't turn out? Who cares! Creativity is a muscle that needs to be developed, just like anything else.


Love the casual walking shots. I was telling them to walk in slow motion so I had more time to shoot and they started going into slow-mo walk and we were all laughing so hard and I just kept shooting. I absolutely love the image below. My cheeks hurt just looking at it and remembering how much fun we had!
Thanks guys! I can't wait for what we come up with for the next shoot!