Newborn Photography: Alexander David Braaten

Right around the time I did this photo shoot, we found out we were pregnant again! My bursts of energy with editing completely died away as the first trimester exhaustion hit, mostly during my usual hours of work: Sophie's naptime and at night after she went to bed. Hence, the massive lack of recent blog posts, and the delay of all my editing!

I'm nearing the second trimester and my energy is coming back. Today, I didn't have an afternoon nap for the first time in two months. I caught up with some editing and now want to present to you this gorgeous little baby boy, Xander, who is now almost three months old.

Grant and Tabitha (click here for maternity shoot) lived with us for 8 months and had a home-birth, with baby Xander being born on Jan 28th. We got to enjoy the first 6 weeks of Xander's life before they (sadly) moved back home to Kansas City, Missouri. We miss them so much and are so thankful for facebook, where we can watch Xander grow through Instagram! He's already changed so much!

Here, finally, are Xander's newborn pictures, taken at just one week and a half:

Bonjour Family (now with Isa)

A month or so ago, my grandma emailed all her grandkids, asking for some recent pix of everyone. My bro called me and set up a quick little shoot, so he could send her some recent pictures. The last shoot I had done with them was when Beth was just a few days shy of delivering their third girl, Isa. I love being able to bless my family with photo shoots, so we went for a walk down by the McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Gardens and did a mini-session. We always love walking together and taking pictures so we all had a fun time.

I love doing shoots with these guys, because I feel like they always come out so bright and colourful! The girls always pick these gorgeous flowery dresses, and it just adds so much colour to the pictures. I love their headbands here too. Gorgeous girls!

Family Shoot

The fun thing about this whole photography malarkey business is that we can have our own family shoots any time we want! I recently purchased a remote for my camera (an idea I copied of my brother-in-law and his wife!) and we set out for our first remote-controlled family photo shoot last week. And it was so fun. It was great to be able to set up the tripod and then take as many pix as we wanted in that one spot, instead of having to run back and forth to set the timer. We were able to walk away from the shoot with 60 pictures instead of 8! What a difference. The only thing we didn't have was somebody standing behind the camera smiling at Sophie so she would grin back.

Speaking of Sophie, I am just loving having her in my life. And I'm loving being this little family. I love John time and I love Sophie time, but my favourite time ever it John & Sophie time. I didn't realise how much I would enjoy having to take care of this gorgeous little person. She's quite the cutie and I am amazed at how much love I feel when I watch her sleep, see her smile, watch her under her playmat smiling at the little helicopter dangling above her or when she does just about anything. And then I'm amazed too at how she came from John and I, that we made her, that she is part-him, and part-me. We see bits of him and we see bits of me, and all those bits together make up this unique, brand-new, never before seen or made, little person. Parenthood truly is quite amazing!

Anyway, here are my favourites from the shoot:

Recent Family Shoot

I had the pleasure recently of shooting this wonderful family; Angie, James & Chazz. They wanted a photo for their holiday card. It was absolutely freezing the day of the shoot so we did just a quick walk-around and took just a few photos. We connected over the fact that we both have babies just two months apart and are stay at home mums. They have just moved to the area and she was all excited to hang out with another mum and have a playdate. We have just hang out once since the shoot but it was a really fun time and I'm excited to get to know her more and hang out some more! So fun to have a new friend from a photo shoot.

Here are some pix from the shoot (my favourite is the one where they're kissing their son on each cheek!):

Bonjour Family

I had the wonderful privilege to be able to do a quick shoot with my brother, his wife, and two gorgeous daughters. Despite Beth being 38 weeks pregnant and myself being 36 weeks pregnant, we were able to get a few beautiful shots of their wonderful family. I went ahead and did some early edits for a sneak peak:

Photo Shoot

In the midst of enjoying my wonderful photography class, I get an email from someone who had found my Craig's List posting and was interested in doing a family shoot. I was ecstatic. December and January had been completely dead for me with absolutely no shoots booked, and minimal contact from potential clients. This gave me a reason for me to continue to work to make this business happen. We had visited the Shasta ruins back in January when John's family was here to visit, and I found some really nice spots that I made a mental note to return to for a future shoot.

I had the family meet me there and we spent just under an hour walking around and taking photos. I think I was my most relaxed, and was able to have new creativity for some photos as well as a new eye for details in the photos along with the bigger picture of the shoot. They were a gorgeous family and I had a lot of fun. After doing more Photoshop tutorials and googling and spending a lot of time this week editing, the shoot is complete! I feel like again, I have been able to put in what I have learnt and come out with probably the best shoot I've done so far.

Here are my favourites: