Ella is a high school senior and I had the privilege of photographing her senior portraits on an extremely warm (!) fall evening. She handled the extreme heat and the garden variety bugs like a champ. The light and the wildflowers cooperated quite nicely and we had a great time! Ella is sweet, passionate, fun, and loves cats and dogs (my kind of person). Her mother claims that she’s existed entirely on carbs up to this point (which I can definitely relate to), and we also have tuxedo cats and an older sister in common. She also loves pizza, but she’s a pineapple-on-pizza type of girl so I have to draw our pizza comparisons to an end there. She’s skilled at sports and played softball for most of her education, but now she’s looking forward to a profession in nursing in order to help people. I can’t wait to see what Ella does in the future! I grabbed a few shots of her sister Claire and mom Susan toward the end – such a fun bunch who came along to support Ella and give her reminders of mac and cheese as she posed.

This beloved family of mine! Well, technically they aren’t my own family, but they are my clients and they have taught us how to make some of the best cocktails we know how to make, so they’re basically family. There was also a brief mention of them possibly inserting Geoff into the background of their Christmas card with the intention of telling people that they recently adopted a 36 year-old software engineer. Maybe next year. You guys remember these folks from our million past sessions with them (go look at that link if you want to reverse time and see Laurel and Sam when they were SO LITTLE – I can feel myself embarrassing them as we speak). We love them and adore them. They went through a lot of heartache last year after losing their beloved Frenchie named Frank, but after a while they decided it was time to add a new Frenchie to the mix, and they recently adopted Simon. Simon is a little ball of sturdy muscle and cuteness. He just turned one, so they threw him a little party. He was mildly impressed. We were much more thrilled than he was to see him wear a birthday hat.