Chad and Jessica have three gorgeous children but requested the kiddos be left off the internet.  They did give me permission to show their beautiful faces though, and I’m excited to be able to share this subset of images with you.

The George Eastman House is a location that meets all of the Great Location criteria (to learn about how to choose a great location, click here). It has beautiful architectural features, plenty of color, and a wide range of backgrounds to choose from. It also has great parking and is completely free to walk around in the outside garden and photograph your heart out.

There always seems to be some kind of wedding or formal photos of some kind happening there, but family photos are definitely less common. This makes it a little off the beaten path in an on the beaten path kind of way, if you know what I mean.

Chad and Jessica received this family photo session as a Christmas gift and redeemed it on her birthday. When you do that for someone you love, you get a wedding invitation style gift card, which makes for an excellent presentation, and I’ll mail it wherever you’d like.

Thank you so much Chad and Jessica for sharing your beautiful family with me!!!  I hope you had a lovely birthday weekend.

This beautiful girl is 3 years old now and I recently realized these images never made their way into a full blog post.  It seemed sad to leave them in the bowels of my external hard drive, so here you go internet!  Warm fuzzy feelings are on their way.

This quilt was a gift to Story when she was born. It was a bit too bright to incorporate into her newborn photos, but perfect for one year old photos.

She had an equally snazzy diaper cover.  Kara was my cloth diapering mentor and left me with a little bit of “I-wish-I-had-another-girl” envy.

Robert is the kind of dad people who didn’t have this kind of dad wish they had.

Story’s language skills were out of this world. She could identify 10 body parts before my kids could say “ba.”

This image was fun variation on the below shot from their maternity session.

It was an impromptu idea.  It reminds me of the change from no children to children – such as the way our body language and expectations change.  To view the rest of their maternity session, click here.

In another fun recreation of a session image, Story had the opportunity to be photographed with her mom and dad’s love letters to each other.

At one point they were writing a memoir of the story of their lives together.

Here first photos with these letters were in the image below.

To view more images from her newborn session, click here.

And because she was such a good sport, we were also able to get some more mom and dad images.

Story was very interested in this statue. Kara and Robert were even able to sneak in some kissing.

And last but not least, a few individual images of Story exploring the world.

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful life with me.

As Kate developed her knitting patterns company, Black Bird Knits, it was important to her that the models be “real.”  She didn’t want the images to be photoshopped past the point of believability and she wanted her knitters to see themselves in the images.

Patricia first supported Black Bird Knits as a host when she offered her house for the first photo shoot, then she was a model for another session.  This time she reappeared as a model so that Kate could have images both of someone young and beautiful as well as someone equally beautiful but who has clocked a little more mileage.

Patricia is clearly a friend that Kate is lucky to have in her back pocket because being a model does not top her list of favorite activities, yet here she was.

During this session we were aiming for simpler backgrounds to bring attention to Kate’s beautiful textile work. She’s looking forward to having this piece featured soon on Shibui Knits where she has been previously featured.

Patricia is a globetrotter and a very proud grandma.

To purchase these and other patterns, click here.

Wow.

I’m a huge fan of hers as well.  I almost want to take up knitting.  But then I remember how many kids I have.

I met Megan a few years ago through a remarkable woman who transcends a title like friend or client, and had the privilege of photographing her senior portraits. She agreed to model for us, making us all wish we were 18 again.  She was also a great sport about wearing other people’s shoes and shirts and sporting wool on a 90 degree day (without looking overheated).  Modeling is not easy!

Kate is adding this shawl and cowl to her Black Bird Knits collection. The patterns are available for purchase by clicking here.

It turns out that shawls are kind of challenging to photograph because of the way that they hang. It was easy to lose hands and a sense of shape.

The cowl was much, much easier.

Thank you so much Megan for being such a joy to work with, and a huge shout out to Kate, as always, for her artistic vision and for being an all around fantastic person. I’m already looking forward to the next time we get to hang out!

We also took a bunch of belly shots that I love, but are most definitely private.  Kara inspired me to take some similar photos of myself, which are also private.