It was an honor and a joy to shoot Elements Dance Center’s individual and group portraits this weekend. I am still working my way through images, but wanted to go ahead and share some. If you need dance, sports, school, head shots, wedding, high school senior, family, maternity, or most any other kind of photography – including on-location, in my studio, in natural light, or with artificial light, I can help you out. Please contact me with your needs and I will be happy to meet for coffee or work up terms or a quote for the work. As always, thank you for your interest in Roots and Twigs Photography!
I had the honor and pleasure of photographing Contemporary Dance Academy’s performance and warm-up classes for their ballet performance of Clara and The Nutcracker, both at The Lincoln Center, here in Fort Collins, Colorado, in December 2017. It will take a while to go through the performance photos, but I wanted to share two early favorites, with many more to come!
Many of you know I have a whole other professional career, which I am very proud of, and passionate about. However, my serious work in – and love affair with – photography pre-dates that career, and working as a professional photographer was my dream for decades. It wasn’t until I had children and chose to stay at home with them during their ongoing early years that I had to cut way back in my other career, and was able to carve out smaller chunks of time for photography projects. Four years ago today, I officially launched Roots and Twigs Photography. Long before my first “birthday”, I was booked solid with weddings, events, and family sessions, week after week. Soon after, I moved across the country and had to start all over again, which is no joke. Re-building has been harder and slower than I ever imagined, but momentum is building. Just this week, in a twenty-four hour period, I booked a local wedding and finalized plans to be flown back to shoot three big sessions back in my previous market. I am looking forward to busier times ahead!
As an incentive to bring more new clients in, I am offering 50% off all print packages for every session booked through the end of November. Session must take place by the end of 2017 to take advantage of this offer.
Professional Print Packages, Available only at time of booking
Aspen Print Package: $100 $50 >> Includes (1) 11×14, (3) 8×10, and (25) 4×6 or 5×7 Prints;
Spruce Print Package: $75 $37.50 >> Includes (2) 8×10 and (15) 4×6 or 5×7 Prints;
Pine Print Package: $50 $25 >> Includes (1) 8×10 and (5) 4×6 or 5×7 Prints
Many of you will want photos for holiday cards, or just some updated family shots. I also want to make you aware that I am available to shoot throughout the Thanksgiving holidays, so if you have extended family gathering, there’s no better time to capture some memories of your time together! I hope to hear from you soon!
The November blog circle theme at Share Six is HARVEST. I hope you’ll take the time to link around the full blog circle (next link at the bottom), and then submit to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages for a chance to be featured.
I have lived almost all of my adult life in cities and when I have gardened, it has been in small raised beds or mixed in with flower beds. However, as I tell people, I grew up “gardening by the acre.” It’s in my blood, but I am far from a legitimate farmer these days. Still, I want to ensure that my children know where food comes from and that they have a certain measure of self-sufficiency when it comes to growing and preserving their own food. The images I am including here include home-grown carrots, lettuce, and rhubarb. There’s also an image I shot at my childhood home, as my daughter learned how to crack open walnuts from the walnut trees there on the property with a hammer, just as I did as a child. And I’m not sure I could get away without a couple of pumpkin harvest shots! I haven’t grown pumpkins as an adult, but we grew them a lot when I was a kid, especially “Tennessee cooking pumpkins” which are great for pies, but less brilliant orange for jack-o-lanterns. Of course, we carved them up, too, and also toasted the seeds for snacking.
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I sincerely appreciate you dropping by to check out my take on HARVEST.Next in the blog circle is It’s Still Life Photography by Elizabeth Willson! Please link over and see the post Elizabeth has generated for our theme. For a chance to be featured at Share Six, please submit your HARVEST images to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages (tag #sharesix_harvest) by December 5th.
I looooove working with families with dogs! They inject so many more opportunities for candid moments than many sessions offer. Plus, I am just a dog person. =) We got such beautiful light for this session, another golden hour one. Thank you so much for a fun and beautiful session, guys!
I just realized that, while I shared photos from several of my last sessions, I never blogged them, so watch me go add them! I met this fun and easy-going family during the golden hour for a park session. I love it when the parents are happy to let the kids be themselves and express their true personalities in photos. The son, especially, did this in front of my lens. Thank you so much, for such a great time, guys!
The July blog circle theme at Share Six is ARTIFICIAL LIGHT. I hope you’ll take the time to link around the full blog circle (next link at the bottom), and then submit to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages for a chance to be featured.
Just one year ago, as an almost-exclusively natural light photographer, I was quite intimidated by studio lighting. For years prior to that, I claimed (and believed) I hated flash photography. Well, I’ve come a long way, baby. Learning to control and position off-camera flash have been wonderful skills to develop, and they have made me a much better and more versatile photographer. I now regularly use off-camera flash in my photography studio, but also outside quite a bit, to supplement or balance natural light.
For this post, I considered blogging Independence Day fireworks, but quickly decided to focus on getting some simple, but nice studio shots of my son. He is eight years old with a silly streak a mile wide and zero attention span when his sister is engaging him, as was the case when I snapped these, all within the few minutes he granted me. I took some similar ones of my daughter a couple of months ago while he was at school, so I am especially glad to finally create a set of him. He seems to be in some in-between stage, but I suppose children always are? I am so very happy to have this record of him, with his mouth full of awkward adult teeth, too-long summer hair, Peanuts bandage, and sillies. When he simply couldn’t keep it together anymore, he sneaked off with his sister and they returned in various ridiculous costumes and fits of laughter. Those made for some good images to ward off high school girlfriends and to share at his wedding, should I feel a bit naughty!
I sincerely appreciate you dropping by to check out my take on ARTIFICIAL LIGHT.Next in the blog circle is the wonderfully talented KG Ledbetter Photography! Please link over and see the post Kathy has generated for the theme. For a chance to be featured at Share Six, please submit your ARTIFICIAL LIGHT images to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages (tag #sharesix and #sharesix_artificiallight) by August 5th.
The June blog circle theme at Share Six is DREAMY / DREAMS. I hope you’ll take the time to link around the full blog circle (next link at the bottom), and then submit to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages for a chance to be featured.
Macro photography feeds my soul. I passionately love looking at the world – particularly the natural world – from new and different perspectives. Although it may sound odd to some, macro photography reminds me of my snorkeling experiences, in that it leads me to observe things I simply don’t see everyday. I refer to my macro botanical work as “buds and bugs” as I also love witnessing life at the scale of insects when shooting macro.
For this themed post, I took a little time to shoot in my gardens, something I hadn’t done in recent months. As an aside, you know how when you go biking or running, you often become aware of hills you hadn’t noticed before? The same thing happens when shooting macro in nature and breezes. Those tiny breezes magnify so much. I say this to say the breezes – nay – the WIND – in recent days made several of the subjects I wanted to include unusable, for lack of focus as the plants swayed about! In any event, I love the abstract qualities and the delicious, dreamy bokeh in these images, and hope you enjoy them, too!
I sincerely appreciate you dropping by to check out my take on DREAMY / DREAMS.Next in the blog circle is the highly talented Ceri Herd Photography! Please link over and see the post Ceri has generated for the theme. For a chance to be featured at Share Six, please submit your DREAMY OR DREAMS images to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages (tag #sharesix and #sharesix_dreamy or #sharesix_dreams) by July 5th.
The Queen of Hearts came by Roots and Twigs Photography’s Studio for some pretty fierce promotional shots for Canyon Concert Ballet’s April production of Alice in Wonderland at The Lincoln Center, here in Fort Collins. Look for these photos in various print and online ads, promoting the show!
The April blog circle theme at Share Six is CONNECTION. I hope you’ll take the time to link around the full blog circle (next link at the bottom), and then submit to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages for a chance to be featured.
As noted in my March Share Six post, I am working towards better work-life balance. Part of that resulted in limited shooting this month, except during a family vacation and some gadget photos. The majority of the most special and intimate moments of late were captured only on my gadget or not at all, and that’s OK, as that is part of living more in the moment lately, even though I don’t have amazing images from those moments to share. In any event, I am pulling some of the images from as far back as last April, but they haven’t all been previously shared.
When I think “CONNECTION,” I think of my children more than anything else. As a parent, beyond basic health and happiness, my highest hope for my children is that they become and remain close friends for life. I work to nurture that every day and never plan to relent. Perhaps it’s because I lack that in my own life, or maybe it is simply natural for a parent to want that more than anything. Most likely, it’s both. In any event, my children are almost 3 years apart in age, and often into pretty different hobbies and interests. Like most (all?) siblings, they fight regularly, unfortunately. Still, I know in my heart that they truly, deeply, love one another. I don’t know if they would go to the mat for each other just yet, but I think in time, they will. Sometimes these authentically documented moments of them loving one another help get me through rough patches with them. They are visual reminders of the depth of love in their relationship, even when it’s a bit below the surface.
Hammock Time
I am tempted to say, “This is everything.” But it’s not, because the cumulative love shared here – and in all the images that didn’t make the final six cut – they are everything!
These kiddos are still little and thankfully their feet don’t stink (much) yet. They snuggle often and can’t stand to miss out on whatever the other one is doing, ever! If I am on my (better) hammock, both of them are on it, too. If one kid is in my lap, they both are. And so it goes with their own little special moments, too.
Halloween Day at my son’s school
After enjoying Halloween fun at my daughter’s preschool and then downtown, she and I headed to my son’s elementary school to celebrate there, as well. My Mommy heart swelled so huge, as my kids grabbed hands and ran ahead of me in the haphazard costume parade through other classrooms. Once we returned to my son’s classroom, I melted watching him welcome my daughter to work right alongside him, shoulder to shoulder, on all their fun activities – BINGO, scavenger hunt, and more. I mean, what little boy does that, when he has his entire class full of friends to play with? My little boy.
River Rock
This is the only image in the bunch that was posed in that I sent them out to the rock. Their adoring expressions as they hung out on the rock together, though? One hundred percent authentic, of course.
Soccer
They can be so boisterous and silly! However, they are also often quiet, caring, helpful, and loving. Here, my son is tying his sister’s new soccer cleats, which she just had to have because big brother had recently received some. (The same thing just happened here with roller blades, too.)
Saturday Morning Snack
I spotted them just like this, facing the wall across the room next to my office. I quietly grabbed my camera as quickly as humanly possible to freeze this sweetness forever.
Easter Morning
They were sharing a bedroom this time last year. They both slept in rabbit ears the night before Easter, then climbed into our bed the next morning. By this point, only my son was wearing his bunny ears, but have you ever seen so much sweetness between a brother and sister? Their connection melts me at times.
I sincerely appreciate you dropping by to check out my take on CONNECTION.Next in the blog circle is one of our newest blog team members, Claire Porter of Wilhelmina Photography. Please link over and see the post she has generated for the theme. For a chance to be featured yourself, please submit your CONNECTION images to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages (tag #sharesix and #sharesix_connection) by May 5th.
The March circle blog theme at Share Six is RESTORE. I hope you’ll take the time to link around the full blog circle, and then submit to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages for a chance to be featured.
My take on RESTORE is more introspective, raw, exposed, and broad than most of my posts. It is a multi-faceted view of renewal and restoration of many aspects of my life, including Spring’s return, physical and mental health, relationships, and my home.
Renovate
Being Major League DIY’ers, my husband and I have been personally, extensively renovating our homes since before we married. We are in our fourth home together, and the only one that didn’t succumb to our vision was our last one: beautiful, extremely well-built, only 10 years old and good to go. Unfortunately, there was no rational reason to renovate it in any way and thus put our own stamp on it. We lived in it for only five months before pursuing our current one. Apparently we require a project house at all times.*** I typically describe the course of action as, “We accidentally bought a second house in less than a year of living here.” In any event, our current home, known both as “The Tree House” and “our forever home,” is no exception to the renovation trend. The highest priority project at the moment is the master bedroom suite, shown here. We have been in this home just over a year and have never actually slept in our bedroom. Juggling all the crazy of every day life with kids, hobbies, and hands-on renovations keeps us quite busy!
*** In all seriousness, our first house in Fort Collins truly was a wonderful house, but it lacked the tight-knit community we wanted. When we heard through the grapevine that our current home would become available, in the neighborhood we originally wanted to buy in, it was not that we truly wanted another project house. Instead, it was that our forever home here is in “the village.” You know that saying: “It takes a village to raise a child.” We have two kids to raise and are finally living in that village we have longed for. Despite all the hard work we put into aligning our mid-century modern home with our architectural vision, we are living the dream in our fabulous neighborhood.
Restore
As far back as anyone can remember – at least since I was 3 – I longed for a classic Mustang: red convertible with a white top and interior. I am not really a car person, although I know more about them than most of my peers. Still, there has just always been something about classic Mustangs. I love old muscle cars in general. OK, I like many old things in general, but Mustang-love may well be where it all started. A few years back, my husband surprised me with my dream car for my birthday – except that Ruby has a black top and interior, instead of white. Happily, I have found I actually prefer the black these days. We were living in Washington, DC at the time, and he had been late coming home from work a few times, always to my irritation, as I was anxious for help with the kids. As it turns out, he had been out shopping to fulfill my dream, often riding the Metro train out to the end of the line, meeting someone with a Mustang for sale. Each time I was upset about him getting home late, he sucked it up and provided a plausible explanation about working late – never giving up the surprise even the tiniest bit. I had NO IDEA. He pretty much won Husband of the Universe with all the stunts he pulled in securing and hiding this car from me until the big reveal at my birthday party! Ruby is a 1967 in show car condition, almost entirely original, never wrecked, and largely restored in the 90s. We have added a few safety features and kids’ car seats, with more tweaks to go, but she’s completely road-worthy (and awesome) as is. The unofficial deal at our house is: Ruby is my eye candy and joy ride, and my husband is responsible for keeping her on the road and running well. Maybe he drew the short straw, but I think he actually enjoys his end of the deal, too, if for no other reason than giving me the ongoing joy of having my dream car. This weekend was beautiful, so he backed Ruby out of the garage, fixed a leak of some variety, did some magic voodoo work on her power steering, did a few other maintenance things, washed her, and then sent me out to drive her around a bit. My first ride of the season was relatively brief, but awesome! #mylittlepony
Renew fitness
I have recently re-committed myself to physical fitness, after a long period of time where I simply fell to the bottom of the priority list too much to provide proper care for myself. For a whole host of reasons, fitness has been a lifelong challenge for me, but I have finally reached a point in these parenting years where I can realistically prioritize my health every day, and I am doing so. I can’t wait until great weather is more consistent and I can do nearly all of my daily cardio exercise outdoors through Fall. Until then, I am grateful for my treadmill, with a view of the Rockies, on the off-days. The downside to this fitness journey is that I am spending much of my former personal photography time working out, and I am not dragging my camera along on the trails and to the fields where I often take my kids, because I am no longer sauntering along with them. I have important work to do out there, and it doesn’t involve a camera! Once our warmer weather is in full force again, I hope to hike in the mountains with my camera more, and run on the trails by our home a bit less, so perhaps I will then strike a better balance and combine my photography and workouts more.
Revitalize
No successful physical fitness approach would be complete without taking great care to nourish the body with healthful, vibrant foods. We were in a rut at my house of making huge, one-pot meals, with a heavy emphasis on filling staples such as brown rice. Given that, I had sadly, genuinely forgotten how wonderful salads can be. With my priorities in check again, we are enjoying not only wonderful salads, but more homemade sushi, summer rolls, baba ganoush, and a wide variety of fresh, whole foods. My family is vegan, and preparing enough veggies and proteins to satiate growing children is no easy feat, but everyone seems to be enjoying our recent meals more – including a return to more thoughtful and visually appealing presentations of it.
Return of Spring
This time of year is everything to me. I absolutely delight in watching all the blooming lovelies make their appearance in our home gardens, even before we have our last snowfall. With Spring’s return, I also reflect on the parallels with my own health and self-care.
Rejoice new skills and new wheels
Spring is all about new things – new babies in nature, new buds, and – in the case of my daughter – a new life skill! She recently graduated from a balance bike to this pedal bike and she is slaying the trails as I jog along behind her. Meanwhile, my son has done the same with rollerblading. Alas, they are already outpacing me, and I am struggling to figure out how to continue sharing this great, quality, bonding time on the trails with them, while allowing each of us to become stronger and more capable in our various modes of transit. I am open to your suggestions! Right now I think I will get them unicycles. That should slow them down until my running pace increases enough to keep up with them, yes?!
I sincerely appreciate you dropping by to see my take on RESTORE and perhaps learn a lot more about the person behind the lens.Next in the blog circle is Mike Wade of Rural Life Photography, our guest blogger and winner of the recent {Music} theme. Please link over and see the post he has generated for RESTORE! For a chance to be featured, please submit your own RESTORE images to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages (tag #sharesix and #sharesix_restore) by April 5th! Especially for this theme, we welcome some back story on how your image represents the theme!
Roots and Twigs Photography 