Posts Tagged: baby outdoor portraits
Ava Turns One
Sweet little Ava enjoyed this one year birthday portrait session almost as much as we did. She toddled with her Mom and Dad all over an Ashe County NC pumpkin patch, with more wardrobe changes than a pop icon on tour. Great facial expressions – check. Cuteness on cue – yup. She loved sharing Zinnias from the fields, laughed at squatting on pumpkins, eagerly tugged on her dad’s beard while giving him Eskimo kisses, and jabbered away in her special language with her Mama. This year has been filled with so much joy in her presence. I’m excited to watch and photograph her in all the years ahead. We LOVE you, Miss Ava.
It’s hard for me to believe that it has been a year since we took her first photos, even though I’ve quite literally watched this child grow. Her parents are close friends of ours. We photographed mom Judy’s maternity portraits, Ava’s newborn portraits, an outdoor orchard session in blooms and a 6-month portrait session where this little nugget looks like a fairy in every image.
During the last 12 months, I’ve given Ava some of my very own clothes, some hand made and others hand-me-downs from when I was a child. My son, Finley, has shown no interest in girlie fashions, and to be honest, I’ve found it hard to resist shopping for frills for her while I’m thrift store shopping. So many options sing out to be hers, even though often I find that she’s going to outgrow them 10 minutes after I drop them off! I’m not even her mom, but the pull is strong ya’ll. I just adore this kid.
I also love her doting, attentive and thoughtful parents. I’m so looking forward to her next year ahead and all the fun, silliness and growth we can expect to see for her.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Baby Ava is 6 months and makes a perfect woodland fairy
Mom Judy has vision. Maybe she uses Pinterest, maybe they come to her in a dream, but if you look at her maternity photo shoot you can see that this lady is not your “let’s book an hour at some studio and sit under hot lights in chairs wearing semi-happy expressions” kind of woman. She has tons of ideas. She, husband Travis and baby Ava – now 6 months – came to a spot I selected after listening to Judy’s ideas. She wanted it to be outdoors, light and airy (see the shots in her maternity session of her in nature, wading into a stream), with everyone bathed in natural elements and surroundings. I took a moment, talked to Ryan about a plan to capture it all in natural light and said, “let’s go!”
For this particular shoot, I chose a spot that reminded me of a woodland cathedral – with trees, dappled light and multiple shades of green. It is a heavenly setting. The day of, it was mercury-busting hot and the mosquitoes thought Travis was scrumptious, so we had to work hard not to melt or be chewed alive, but <dramatic sigh> we were all troopers.
From a creative photography standpoint, Ryan and I decided to try two techniques in tandem. He shot using only the natural light and I worked using our portable studio and supplementing the natural light with studio lighting equipent. You can see in some of the images slight variations in light, but the results are beautiful and our clever client mom was happy.
At the half way mark to her first birthday, Ava is adorable and a little ham. She was perfect as a newborn, is clearly comfortable in nature, but she really captured the essence of a woodland fairy at this shoot. It helps that Judy and Travis are pals of ours. Everyone was comfortable around each other and having Ava crawling and sitting up was exciting to watch. That first year is an adventure to say the least. We love these guys.
Want your portrait session in mother nature? We’ve got you.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.