I’ve known most of these kids since they were teeny tiny babies – I have photos of the oldest boy and my middle daughter together when they were two…and now they are in the same class at school!  Mom wanted to do a secret, surprise session to surprise dad with some neat images for Father’s day!  Fortunately, I’m about 100% sure that dad doesn’t follow this blog! Hopefully he’s thrilled with his Father’s day gifts – it’s hard to go wrong with such cute kids! We spent a rather overcast May evening at Shaw’s Cove in Laguna Beach playing, finding crabs, chasing waves and getting a few photos taken in between. As is usually the case, the photos take on more of a documentary feel with the littlest guy…getting a posed shot of the four of them all together AND looking at the camera (and not making goofy faces) did require some head swapping (resulting image is the first one). Most of the rest of the group shots looked more like the following collage of photos with the three oldest kids posing nicely for the camera and the youngest running off to his own fun adventures! Good times!

I had so much fun catching up with Daley Erickson, who will very soon be launching a new website for her awesome new business, and is, as she puts it, “a happy wife and mother, health advocate and Personal Power Planner helping people meet their goals and craft their very best lives.”  She’s also a great friend with an amazing family, who I got to know when I shot their first portrait session years ago!  I always look forward to taking photos of their family, but this session was just to update Daley’s professional head shots and to get some images for her new website, which you can find right HERE! She’s looking pretty amazing right now, so getting some nice photos at the lovely Shaw’s Cove in Laguna Beach was a piece of cake! Enjoy your sneak peek!

Yes, summer is coming. And with it the plethora of portrait sessions at the beach!  Many of those I do each year are from families out of town. But this session was from a local Irvine family who needed a portrait to hang on the wall in time for company coming to town!  I loved the little pop of color that the coral shirts the girls were wearing to the other light colors.  Everyone was super well behaved and we had a gorgeous evening with perfect light and a fairly uncrowded Picnic Beach for a Saturday night!

Sometimes you meet someone who just carries a natural grace and poise about her that is unmistakable. Such was the case with “K” – she was so natural in front of the camera and such a joy to be around. I loved her fairly modest attire that let her true inner beauty shine through!  She will be heading out to UC Santa Barbara this fall and I am sure she has a very bright future ahead of her! It was my pleasure to spend the afternoon with her and her mother! Congrats on graduating this year and enjoy your sneak peek!

I am submitting this family portrait favorite into the “Rock the Shot” contest this month which has the theme of silhouettes.  I have a lot of favorite silhouette photos, but this has to be my latest fav… I just love the feeling of camaraderie and love this family exudes. This was one of the last shots of the day from this fun and fabulous family session…I saw the setting sun low in the sky and the beautiful colors from the sunset  and had them “play” pass around with their sweet baby one more time…brought my exposure down about a stop and boom! There were a few other fun ones you can see on their original blog post here.  Check out the other fabulous silhouette submissions at www.rocktheshotforum.com by clicking here!

This session felt jinxed from the beginning. Having had to be rescheduled due to bad weather, we made a second go at it last Thursday!  This sweet family wanted to do photos at Crystal Cove State Park because they live right there in Newport Coast.  But there wasn’t enough time to properly submit for a permit to shoot there and Crystal Cove State Park requires a permit from the CA Film Commission. I told them we could give it a try to get some shots at their own stomping grounds, but there would be a chance we’d be cited or asked to leave. Sure enough, not two candids into our session we were approached and asked for our permit and then made to leave. Bummer. But fortunately for us, Shaw’s Cove is just a hop, skip and a jump down the beach from Crystal Cove and is a beautiful setting for portraits. So, in spite of our unlucky beginnings, we were able to capture some beautiful memories, in a beautiful location on the coast of Laguna Beach. I think the end result was well worth all of the hassles! Enjoy your sneak peek “C” family!

This lovely couple will be getting married next year up North, but wanted some engagement photos down here at Wood’s Cove in Laguna Beach while Sara finishes up her law degree here at Chapman University!  So Shane and Skyler came down for a very fun and warm sunny afternoon by the water.  We kind of morphed this into both an engagement session and a family sessions, since these lives will be intertwined with this sweetest of little girls! You can readily see in my next post that Skyler loves both her dad and her soon to be step-mom!  I love sessions where the love is so apparent!

The Christmas season is in full swing and I have a record number of last minute (or last few weeks) sessions to get out and edited this time around! Which means blog posts long on photos and short on words!  I loved the fun props brought to this session and this adorable family!  I think we rescheduled this session 3 times for weather, but scored on a beautiful afternoon when it was finally not raining on us! We ended up fitting in a Senior portrait session for Alex as well, and they all turned out beautifully! Enjoy your sneak peek!

I was so excited when my good friend and roommate from BYU came down to visit California with her family!  I knew I had to find time to see them in my busy schedule, and since my kids love to go to the beach, and her family wanted to go, we decided to meet at Diver’s Cove for a fun afternoon in the surf and sun!  Of course I brought my camera along, and although it wasn’t the best time of day for pictures and no one had coordinated outfits, we took a few posed family groupings and lots of fun candids.  Here are the results – and they bring back warm memories from a fun time together earlier this year. Enjoy Tami and John!

Gorgeous Stassia recently moved here from the mid-west.  Water polo player, big sister, beloved daughter, great student….and fabulous looks  - she’s got it all going for her! We had an amazing time last October at the beach, and I couldn’t have asked for a prettier day …or a prettier sunset! Here are just a very few of my favorites from this session: