As I have the past several years, I am offering a free photography workshop for beginning photographers. Just like last year, the workshop has two parts. First, we will talk about basic photography tips that can be accomplished with any camera. Things like composition, light, etc. We will take a break, and then we will talk about using an SLR camera, including what all of the modes and functions mean, what different lenses do, etc. The workshop is not geared towards professional or aspiring professional photographers, and we will not be discussing business-related things at all.

I created a Facebook event to keep track of who’s coming and to have a way to contact all participants. Click here to view the event and to join us:

Photography Workshop  **Edited to add: The workshop is on Friday, January 27 at 6 p.m. I’m guessing it will last 2-2.5 hours. For some reason, it didn’t show up correctly for someone on Facebook, so I wanted to make sure you were all there at the right time!

Two-year-olds can be a challenge to photograph, but it’s one of my favorites. They are who they are, and there’s nothing phony about it! I loved the images from this beautiful family’s session:

This particular image is one of my favorites that I’ve taken in a long time! Definitely would’ve made my “favorites” post from a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve photographed a lot of senior boys this fall! Here’s another handsome guy we photographed in November.

I’ve photographed this little guy a few other times and I think he gets cuter every time!

I hadn’t taken an “official” portrait of my two children together since spring. I looked back to link that blog post here, and realized I never posted it. Here they are last April:

Do you see how they’re both smiling so cute for the camera? What little angels. Evan is always a little a little angels for pictures now. He’s 7 and old enough to understand to cooperate. My biggest challenge with him is getting “real” smiles vs. posed ones. Campbell was a bit more of a challenge, but she was about 11 months old there and still pretty willing to sit and be held and was amused by silly voices.

Fast forward a few months to this fall. Evan is still cooperative and willing, but Campbell is now almost a year and a half old. Here are a few things she doesn’t like doing: standing in one spot, posing, smiling when not in motion, sitting in one spot, laying in one spot, kneeling in one spot…you catch my drift. I took around a million shots (okay maybe 80) and this was the best I could come up with. It was actually the very first shot I took. When going through the images, I initially passed over it, as Evan’s arm is kind of at a weird angle, Campbell’s finger is on her mouth, and my neighbor’s house is in the background. However, after looking through the rest, I realized it was the ONLY image where both kids were looking at the camera with a pleasant expression on their faces. So, I did some quick photoshopping and cloned out my neighbor’s house, and came up with this:

Not perfect, but it’s the best I could do. I’m not sure if I will have the energy for Christmas portraits this year; we’ll see.

This beautiful woman is the photographer for All Smiles Photography in Tampico, Illinois (she’s very talented–check out her site HERE). She was smart and hired someone else to take her family portraits, instead of using a self-timer and racing back and forth like I always try to do. They are such a sweet little family, and I was honored to take their family portraits!

Check out this gorgeous young lady and her stunning blue eyes!

We had a great time photographing this handsome young man at the the country club in Morrison.

We included some family shots, too!

How beautiful and in love are these two? They were incredibly sweet together. I love capturing the “in between” moments during engagement sessions.

Catch-up day 2…another stunning family at Rockwood State Park!