Beautiful Maternity

Take a look at the video above! Just an idea of what is possible if you are willing to step outside the relm of average everyday portraits. Melissa was ready to try something different and I think we definitely succeded in creating some amazing pieces of art for her from her maternity session. A maternity session in the snow is certainly a creative and fun way to capture some amazing portraits. I can't wait to meet the newest baby Coss - he should be here in a week or two. Keep an eye out for some amazing portraits of him very soon.

Award winning prints!

The annual Professional Photographers of Iowa convention and print competition was this past weekend. Sara and I took a few days off and headed up to Des Moines to learn from & hang out with some of the top photographers in the country. This was our first time attending and I wasn't sure what it would be like, but it was a blast! We also entered some of our prints in the competition to see how they would compare to what everyone else was doing around the state. Monday night was the awards banquet and the judges seemed to really like our work.
We swept the competition in the digital category - 1st, 2nd, 3rd and honorable mention! I also took 2nd place in Mr Photogenic. 6 of my portraits were awarded Distinguished Print & 7 others Honorable Mention. Quite an honor to get so many awards as a new member of PPI. Now that we have a better idea of how prints are judged, we've got a new goal in mind... top photographer!

(1st place digital)

(2nd place digital)

(3rd place - digital)

(honorable mention- digital)

(2nd place - Mr Photogenic)

The following were awarded Distinguished Prints:

And these prints awarded Honorable Mention

So you think summer is the only time for great portraits, think again

Makenzie, Lauren, Sami, and Hillary came in for some fun portraits a few weeks back. When we'd talked about what they wanted to do and wear we had no idea how cold it was going to get on the day of their session. The temp barely broke zero that day, it maybe reached 4 degrees tops and that's not an exaggeration. I was almost positive they were going to reschedule -especially because they wanted to wear their prom dresses in the snow.

Wow, did I ever underestimate them! Not only did we do everything we planned but we spent quite a bit of time doing it. They were spinning circles with their dresses, climbing snow hills, jumping, and running. We had a blast!

















playing around with some vintage looks













A sweet January sunset at 4 degrees.