Take advantage of fall – creating pictures when the trees and foliage are turning color.  Take photos in an area where the colors are strong.

A senior session this last Friday took me back to my roots.  I grew up on a farm in Audubon, Iowa.  Even though I was a farm girl, I have always been a town girl at heart.  However, this last week, while taking pictures on a farm, I became a bit nostalgic.   We went into one empty building where I saw a mama cat with 2 baby kitties scurry away to hide behind a hay bale.  New life is always exciting on a farm, and my family loved to tame the new baby kittens we found in the barn.  We walked among the chickens during the session.  My chores growing up included gathering the eggs and feeding the chickens.  One thing I did not anticipate was taking pictures, such as this one, up in the haymow.  I haven’t climbed into a haymow in at least 27 years and I stuggled a bit getting up and down, reminding me that I need to work on my upper body strength.  I was reminded of the fun we had spending hours playing in our haymow growing up.  The pictures that we came up with were totally worth the workout and I am enjoying the memories that came back to me during our session!

Today is Labor Day and traditionally, in our home, that is usually what we do – labor.  Past activities on this holiday having included trimming the bushes, tending to flowers, mowing the lawn….  This year, my weekend has primarily been dedicated to working on pictures.  The first task was finishing assembling pictures of my kids – namely assembling my son’s track pictures from the spring into books for him.  As much as I like creating pictures for others, I love creating timeless photographic memories for my children to cherish as they grow up.  The rest of the weekend was dedicated to retouching and ordering pictures for clients.  My husband is a family practitioner.  One of his sayings is, “You get the best diagnosis from your patient.”  In other words, you learn so much simply by listening to others.  Likewise, I can get the best pictures of my clients, simply by listening to them – their ideas, favorite colors, interests, and by observing their personalities.  This picture of Christie was created after she had expressed an interest in having a picture that represented her love of her old school and her new school – she thought that something that looked like a reflection of the past would be cool.  You are looking at the final result of the collaberation between the two of us.

Photograph the insides of buildings, not just the outsides – especially beautiful are churches and buildings of historical significance.