I had a wonderful opportunity to photograph The Creasey Family a couple of months ago, when ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition built them a brand new (gorgeous) house. The entire experience was quite something, and I have some lovely images of the family to share - but not until after the show airs. ...AND the show will air this Sunday, January 31st at 8pm EST/7pm CST on ABC. I look forward to sharing some beautiful photographs of The Creasey Family, a couple with adorable 5 year-old twins and a lovely 13 year-old daughter. The family also includes William, a dad who has been trying to keep the decaying house liveable while also trying to meet mounting healthcare bills and care for his 37 year-old wife, Tricia, an impressive mom and middle school teacher battling aggressive stage IV cancer while continuing to teach .. and to prepare the entire family for what comes next. Tune in this Sunday to see how this family's story, the gorgeous home they received and, also, the 50+ images I photographed that are placed throughout the home (and were generously donated by Buckeye Color Lab), to beautiful effect.

One of the things I most love about photographing headshot sessions is that it gives me the opportunity to work with people from all sorts of interesting professional backgrounds. I have photographed performing artists, models, counselors, realtors, teachers, financial planners, government officials...you get the idea. And, each client has specific needs and looks they are hoping to achieve, which helps to keep me on my toes, creatively-speaking. Shannon is a gifted professional opera singer, and she came to me back in the Fall for some headshot and website images. We had a fantastic time discussing our ideas for the shoot and pulling inspiring photos from books and magazines. We were really able to play and get some fun, interesting looks for her. Just recently, Shannon came back for another session, this time bringing along her colleague, Megan, a violinist. They will be performing together in just a few weeks and we focused on producing some images for marketing their performance. I think these women are so beautiful and can't wait to see their concert in person. First, a few images from Shannon's first session:

And, a few shots from our most recent session with the lovely and talented Shannon and Megan:

Available now on DVD! After nearly one year of storyboarding, filming, editing, animating, audio mixing and more editing, I am thrilled to announce the release of Inside Contemporary Children's Photography, a collaboration between our studio and Ballard Productions (available now on DVD).

When we first started thinking about putting something like this together, we had no idea what it would turn into ... and what it became was due, in huge part, to the direction of Rex Ballard, who oversaw production of the entire project. We first met Rex through Charlie Engle ~ they had remained friends after working together on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. We'd heard from Charlie that Rex was "the guy", a genuinely kind person with some amazing experience in the industry ~ if he could find time for a meeting, he could give us some great ideas as to who could help us out, possibly even give us some idea of how to even get started. After our initial talk, though, we were surprised to learn that Rex, himself, was interested in the project ~ due to his genuine love for visual arts, I suspect. And his passion for production. He read through a lot of my materials, put together pages and pages of notes and came up with the entire idea for what we would be filming. We all agreed right out of the gate that it was vital that everything about the creation of this product be authentic ~ no scripting, no glossing over real challenges, we'd go out on "real" shoots, not hire models, and deal with the everyday issues we encounter on shoots, such as lighting concerns, personality issues, technical questions, all the stuff that you have to think about when you're photographing children. The initial challenge was schedules. Everyone's calendar is full enough with work and family and life. In addition, Rex is on the road 274 days a year filming Extreme. The show is split up into two teams, but he and host Ty Pennington are the two guys who travel to each and every location. But he worked around his schedule, and often through it, going over footage in the evenings at hotels around America. And, over time, the project grew in scale, scope and depth ... evolving to its current state right now, an educational product that I am thrilled to be any part of, a product that actually blew my growing expectations out of the water. Because the truth is that Rex, his exceptionally talented wife, Susan Ballard, and Lisa Walter, our wonderful Studio Director, all saw something in this that I hadn't seen when it was first being conceptualized. I knew it'd be pretty cool, but ... wow. I love being sooo pleasantly surprised.

Inside Contemporary Children's Photography retails for $199.00. You can purchase it directly here!

I love looking back through these images of the delightful Miller family. Reminds me what a serious case of the sillies we had that morning. I have found there is no Starbucks concoction that energizes me in the same wonderful way as chasing around three giggly children for a couple of hours. (And, that is a well-tested hypothesis on my part, being that we work 200 feet from a Starbucks!) Cute, cute, and cute. Here they are...