A few months back, Nichole and Sarah had us capture a gender reveal session for them. After little Evi was welcomed to the world, they asked us to join them in their home for a newborn lifestyle session. We were so honored to capture their newly growing family!

Click below to see the cutest baby pictures you'll ever see! :)

Now that the holiday has passed, I can share this session. I got together with an old friend of mine, Nick, and his sister and two cousins. They wanted to re-create some old pictures they had taken together to use as a Christmas present. Needless to say, re-creating the photographs was hilarious. 

We used an empty living room as the shooting space. The lighting was simple, as the walls were white and allowed for a lot of bounce and fill. I set up 1 AB1600 shooting through a 5' umbrella that was high and camera right. There was also 1 SB-28, plugged into an external battery back (SD-8), that was slightly behind the subjects, and camera left. This allowed for a lot of big, soft, light and it translated to photographs wonderfully. 

This was my first time using the external battery pack on the SB-28, and I have to say I was majorly impressed. I did not have to replace batteries once, and the recycle time was around 3-5 seconds for full power. I can't wait to use this set up when I shoot my next wedding reception. The pack takes 6 AA batteries, but you still have to put the 4 AA batteries in the flash. That is a total of 10 AA batteries, total, to power the flash. I actually purchashed an off brand battery pack, that I will be testing, and posting a review of, as well.

For the shoot, we started off by re-creating the older pictures. This broke the ice, and got the easy stuff out of the way. From there, we shot a couple of the group just smiling. At this point, my wife and I, decided to try and have the group play a game. As a way to get more geninue smiles and interactions, we had them each try to hum a song, and have the others guess. They found this funny, and ended up with some great shots of them laughing and just hanging out. From there, we shot a few more regular group shots. I found that having them  play the game actually allowed them to relax and feel more confident in the shoot. This is when we got the most genuine smiles! Definitely is something we will play with more in the future.

If you want to see the re-creation shots, and some other select shots from the shoot, click "Read More" below!

A few weeks ago, we spent some time with Zoe and Ramsey taking maternity photographs. We did the photographs in a partially finished basement. This had its positives, with plenty of space and white walls, but also had its negatives, with some major vents / blemishes that had to be cleaned up on the walls. All-in-all it was a fun time, and we produced some awesome pictures for Zoe. 

If you want to see more photographs from this set, click "Read More" below! :)

Since the holiday's are over, and Kadie has sent out her Christmas cards, I wanted to share some photographs from their Christmas card shoot. For this shoot, Kadie decided she wanted some family portraits in front of their fire place, by their tree, and then some individual portraits of Jude. I shot everything with one AB1600 bounced in a silver umbrella. I don't remember the settings, as it's been over a month since I shot these.

Anyway, click "Read More" below to see shots from the day.

Last month I had the pleasure of spending some extra time with my sister, and fellow Jade Renee Photography contributor, Kadie and her family. My nephew is 18 months now, so we got together a few weekends ago to take some quick family shots and portraits of him. It was a super hot day, which caused challenges of all their own, but we still grabbed a couple of nice portraits from the day. We also went back to Kadie and Justin's house to get some shots of Kadie breastfeeding Jude. All in all, we ended up having a good time and got some good pics.

Click "Read More" to see some shots from the day!