Grady C., 3 weeks old | Portland Newborn Baby Photographer

Baby Grady is a big healthy boy at 10+ pounds in his fourth week of life!  He was very alert and strong throughout our session, holding his head up and looking right at me and the camera & lights and I even caught some baby smiles, what a cutie.  He is much loved by mom and dad and big brother Cole, who turns three in January.  These guys just relocated from the Bay Area to take advantage of all that Portland has to offer families!  Congrats 🙂

PDX Kids Calendar Portrait | Portland Family Photographer

This past weekend I met up with Ali & Tabitha from PDX Kids Calendar to take a few photos to say “thank you!” for their help on a recent promotion & giveaway at www.pdxkidscalendar.com  They are pretty much celebs around these parts so it was really fun and exciting to plan a shoot for them.

We chose two locations… first location is Sellwood Park, which is a gorgeous natural park overlooking Oaks Park amusement center, with a gorgeous view of the downtown Portland mini skyline.  As the kids warmed up to me, I took some larger group photos, and then I forced Ali & Tabitha them to pose with a taxidermied (is that a word?) squirrel named Mort that I borrowed from a friend.  I thought it fitting since their PDX Kids Calendar logo has a squirrel in it.  Luckily that didn’t creep them out too too much and they allowed me to continue taking their pics at Nectar Frozen Yogurt Lounge in Sellwood afterwards. What a cute location for a photo shoot, and the staff at Nectar couldn’t be nicer!  We had some pumpkin frozen yogurt, YUM.

For most of the park photos I used my 50 mm 1.4 lens with no flash or reflectors, and in the yogurt shop I used my 35-70 with a Speedlite & umbrella on a light stand triggered by an on-camera master/Gary Fong LightSphere (sometimes master enabled, sometimes just used as a trigger).

Fun day, gorgeous pictures!

Family Portrait in the Studio | Portland Family Photographer

I am so excited to share these portraits from my new studio in SE Portland!

The photo on the left is outdoors; we couldn’t resist capturing the spectacular fall colors between rain showers.  The rest of the portraits were done in my studio using 95% natural light with the occasional soft fill from my 580 EX speed light on a stand with an umbrella.  I’m really enjoying my Mini TT1/Flex TT5 Pocket Wizards, so glad I sprung for them (vs. the Plus II’s, which cannot be controlled in-camera).

This little sweetie pie looked dashing in his red baby thermal & denim overalls, so very Portland!  He was accompanied by his doggie, who did “play dead” and a number of other impressive tricks, including capturing the attention of a 4-month-old, which is of course very helpful to me!

I got so many great portraits from this session that it was very hard to select my favorites for editing & presentation–such is the advantage of relaxing in a studio when it is cold & rainy outside rather than struggling to get the shot when everyone is shivering & wet.  Love it!

I have an extra busy weekend coming up with several new shoots as well as a review going up on PDX Kids Calendar from this shoot back in October.  I’m dying to read it!