siblings loving on the baby belly, need I say more? <3 Shannon is due in two weeks and we hiked more than we probably should have for a mama this late in pregnancy, I am still sorry about that! when the parking lot was finally in sight, she said “I’m definitely counting this for Walk Kansas” LOL. the weather was lovely, the kids were in a great mood and we had the place to ourselves. their kids have the best smiles, usually the first 15 minutes or so of each session is letting kids get used to my camera in their face but my first picture of this session was a keeper so that gave us a whole hour of opportunities. full disclosure, I am friends with this family (we met in MOMS Club) and the kids are familiar with me, though I will say that does not always mean it’s going to be an easy session. In this case we had an easy-going session and I was incredibly happy with how it turned out. I loved spending my morning with this happy crew and cannot wait to meet their newest baby boy!

behind the photos | good morning sunshine! this session began at 9:15 am and it was bright so it took me a little trial and error to get them in the best light. I was not quick to shove them in the shadows though, harsh sunlight is not ever going to be my favorite kind of lighting but it does make for some very dynamic photos (aka amazing b+w’s). my kit hasn’t changed at all, eventually I’ll be writing a post about why I sold all of my lenses and shoot only with prime but that is a lot of words for another day. this session was shot with a Canon 5D III + 35L + 85 1.8. I do want to shortly address something I heard lately – that a 35 is not a portrait lens. a lens is just a tool and is whatever you creatively make it. rules are meant to break so break away and your work will grow & thrive, and most importantly become your very own style that you can be proud of. my next goal is to make a 24L a portrait lens in my arsenal (cue the critics) 😉  the color images were hand edited and the b+w were Mastin Labs + hand edits. I learned a new LR skill while editing this session – gradients! the sky in two photos were borderline blown out so I used graduated filters to bring some color and contrast back into the sky. I used to do the same thing with layer masks in Photoshop but the results were never quite as natural as what I achieved with gradients in Lightroom in only a few seconds. go LR!

there were many favorites from this session so get scrolling! enjoy 😉