Family Gathered at Christmas Time

This fun and beautiful extended family asked me to take photos for them on Dec 22nd while they were all gathered for Christmas. The weather threatened to ruin our photo opportunities, but blessed us with beautiful clouds, no rain and great cloud-filtered sunlight. It was a great photo shoot and a very fun and relaxed family. I always love when people give me feedback after I provide them with their images. This family gave the feedback that I should give more direction while posing them. This is a weakness of mine because I don't like to be bossy or interrupt the natural way people will pose themselves. I will continue finding a good balance with that.
I am pleased with the photos we created together.

Santa Claus

My children visiting with a kind Santa Claus.

A Gilbert Temple Wedding

It was exciting to take the photos of this happy couple at the Gilbert Temple. Happiness is so fun to capture!

A Family Sealed in the Mesa Temple

I enjoyed my time with this great family taking pictures in celebration of their recent sealing together as a family in the Mesa Temple. It also happened to be their adorable little girl's first birthday, so we got plenty of shots of her cuteness. A lesson I learned from this photo shoot is how too much backlight (sun in this case) will create a lower-quality image with discolorations and lack of sharpness. Also, with the baby's dress being white and the sun so strong, the exposure of several photos was a hard balance. I tried to correct some the best I could with editing, but several opportunities were lost because of my failure to have a good angle with the 2:00pm sun.  

An Almost-Three Year-old Photo shoot

Beauty Around my Home

Camping

My kids love camping, dirt and bugs. Within one hour, they each came up to me individually to show me the bug they found. Their mom knows that the best way to keep their bugs is to take pictures of them.