I'm happy to see y'all here! I am also happy to report that I have something very special in store for you. I am starting a new series. Y'all always get to hear my side of the story. You hear me rant and rave about my amazing clients, but you never get the other side. You never get to hear first hand accounts of what it is actually like working with me or how my clients feel about their pictures/session. Well. Now you do. I would love to present you with my first installment of "The Other Side of the Lens, the Client Experience"!
You get to hear from some of my previous clients completely honestly and unedited. I love these posts because I feel so connected to my clients. I mean, taking pictures of a young family year after year or capturing someones wedding day is extremely intimate. My clients are my extended family. I love them. Truly.
I especially love watching a young family grow not only in age but also in size. I've been shooting the Blankenstein family since they only had two little blond haired blue eyed beauties. They now have four! FOUR wonderful kiddos...and I've had the honor to watch them grow up and be part of their lives in such an incredible way.
Unfortunately, I do not live near this wonderful family any more so our sessions are a little more spread out. Regardless, every time I see them all of the munchkins run up with huge smiles and give me the best bear hugs a girl could ask for. I love these kids. And I love watching them grow up into such awesome medium sized humans...can't wait for when they're full sized humans to see what amazing things they will do.
What was it like working with Melissa?
We have worked with a number of different photographers, and sincerely feel like Melissa is the best! Not only is she easy and flexible to work with beginning to end, she has such an amazing energy. It is super important to me to see genuine smiles in my kids pictures, and I have found out over the years that not every photographer can elicit that. I feel like the older the kids get, the more they unfortunately have to 'fake' their smiles. Well, it was even more obvious to me this year (2016) since it had been 3 years of not using Melissa. We no longer lived by her and had to venture out to different photographers. You know how sometimes you don't know how good something is until it's gone? Well, that's what i'm trying to say. So, this year was no different....as soon as Melissa starts a photo session, all of my kids (ages 4-13) are captivated by her sincere excitement and happy energy. We tend to laugh a lot, and before we know it, the session is over and once again my precious munchkins have been captured as their genuine selves.
What are some of your favorite things you've done with you pictures?
I love to get big prints (16x20) of each of my kids to hang on the wall in our home. I love closeup head shots so I can document and preserve how much they change from year to year. I'm big on keeping record and love looking back throughout the years and being reminded of how important it is to enjoy the moment because time flies. For me, it can be easy to look forward to a certain milestone coming up and think..."life will be a bit easier then..", but again, looking back on great pictures helps remind me how precious these memories we're making now are and to just soak it up. So, I guess that what I'm saying is that the other thing i really like doing with my pictures is to use the digital images and put them in a scrapbook.
What is one of your favorite pictures or photo session that Melissa has taken and why?
I have a couple memorable photo sessions. When my kids were young, we went up in the mountains by a bridge and got some good shots. My youngest was only 10 months old and sometimes that's a tricky age because they need to be full and rested in order to find those happy smiles. I love the picture of her looking up, showing her only 2 teeth and chubby cheeks as she's giggling. This was a great photo session because we could be ourselves and get those genuine smiles I love.
Another year, I was slow in getting organized and it was already late in the year before we got things scheduled. We had bad luck with weather, and had to reschedule once and then after thinking we'd need to reschedule a second time because of snow, we decided we could make it work in our own backyard in the show. Even though the brightness of the snow was almost blinding to our blue eyes, they turned out amazing.
I love my oldest (age 8) in this session who looks like she's ready to laugh and is proudly showing off her 4 missing teeth. It didn't matter that we were using the old wooden fence right in our backyard, because it only added to the beauty of the picture. There were even a couple serious faces in this session that turned out pretty.
My 5 year old in black and white looking right at the camera, and me staring off into the distance with a snow covered tree in the background. This was a great session because even though the location and timing wasn't what we planned, the kids were happy, cooperative and Melissa got some great pictures as usual because she was happily pulling those smiles and beauty out of us.
I love my oldest (age 8) in this session who looks like she's ready to laugh and is proudly showing off her 4 missing teeth. It didn't matter that we were using the old wooden fence right in our backyard, because it only added to the beauty of the picture. There were even a couple serious faces in this session that turned out pretty.
My 5 year old in black and white looking right at the camera, and me staring off into the distance with a snow covered tree in the background. This was a great session because even though the location and timing wasn't what we planned, the kids were happy, cooperative and Melissa got some great pictures as usual because she was happily pulling those smiles and beauty out of us.
Thank you so much, Janelle! And thank YOU, Humbletakes Fam for taking the time to get to know my wonderful friends, the Blankensteins!
Shoot ya Later :)
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