Julia’s Blogfest

Again, loving this sitting up age.  Happiness.  Love.  Peaceful.  I shot Ainsley over the winter when she was a tiny thing along with doing her mom’s maternity session just a week before she had her debut.  Check it out here.   I am always amazed with the rapid growth these little people show in a short period of time and how much change they experience.

I am headed on vacation in a matter of hours but wanted to blog this session for my sweet friend and regular client Janene!  Love her children and they were SO good for me at our session a few weeks ago.  Little Christian came to me when he was just a few weeks old and again at around 6 months old.  His sisters popped in for some shots when he was an infant as well.  He is now nearly 2 and long and lanky and his sisters dote on him.  Love his outfit!

I did 2 portrait sessions in July, by choice, and this is one of them.  I intentionally took the month off of shooting so I could relax somewhat with family and really enjoy summer.  But truth be known, I did work every night just not everyDAY.  **SIGH**   So now I’m catching up with editing and blogging those as well as many August sessions (already!).

Jan hired me last winter as a gift for her mother — the Matriarch!  She told me she and her brother wanted to give a family session of everyone to her so we did that.  We decided to do this at their family home in Southern MD on the water in Newberg, MD.  It was a bit of a hike for me for just a portrait session but so worth the drive.  I have never been down that way and have lived in Northern VA my entire life.  It was such a treat and the history of the Donohoe family property goes back almost 100 years!  There are many acres of land where we shot this session and a few homes that are occupied by other relatives.  I love the story.  So there were 3 generations here and I loved seeing all the family dynamics.

Grandma and her 3 grandchildren.

Jan and her youngest.

Jan’s brother and his family. 

Jan’s family

Jan, her mother and brother. 

and this is the view from the cottage/house on the property.  There are others as well but they are all spread out so each home has a yard and plenty of room to make it private.  It’s so awesome.

So I trumped some of my other sessions to blog this one.  This is unusual.  I did this session last night in DC and had to post these now.  These two love birds hired me to shoot their wedding 3 weeks ago…and their wedding is TONIGHT.  Yes, tonight.  Now their story is a bit different.  They both work for the State Dept and are assigned overseas — Tony in Iraq and Sheena in the Republic of Georgia.  They have seen each other 2x this past year!  When she emailed me about a month ago I was confused b/c she didn’t give too many details on this other than saying they were getting married Aug 5 in Old Town and they needed to make arrangements STAT!  So she booked me via email and I think we had maybe one phone conversation before I met them last night!  She was 9 hours ahead and it was tricky to get a phone call in so all correspondence was done via email and we managed to pull it off — pricing for their unusual wedding (read:  short with only some family), contracts, and payment.  So we met in DC last night and had a gorgeous, breezy evening.  I wanted to use the Capitol in some of the shots…yes, a bit trite.  But I do so many sessions in VA so it was fun for me.  Traffic is light in DC in august and parking is easy up by the Capitol after business hours so it was a great excuse to get into town.   Sheena flew into the US Saturday, Tony arrived Sunday and they both head back to their respective posts this weekend.  In a few months, Tony will join Sheena in Georgia.  I think that’s better than the other way around!

This was one of those sessions where I was giggling behind the lens b/c they were having so much fun and while I couldn’t hear what Tony was saying to her (I am using my 70–200 so pretty far away) he was busting her up!  It was so cute.  It’s really too bad they are not one of my 8 hour wedding couples!  Loved them!

And since this is a whirlwind wedding, I wanted her friends and family not attending the ceremony to at least see some photos of them together sooner than later.

I have to hurry up and blog this because I have so many other sessions to blog!  Bevin, Mike and I met up last month for their engagement session on one of the storm-free summer evenings here in Alexandria!  They are one of my Baltimore wedding couples and will have their wedding at Loyola Chapel and the Intercontinental Harbour Court Hotel in Inner Harbour this October.  Since I don’t usually shoot in Baltimore this will be a nice change for me and I really look forward to these venues and working with them.  I love Bev’s pop of red in her shirt and high heels to give the sessions a fun little UMPH!