Elements Dance Center Portraits – Fort Collins, Colorado Dance Photographer

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!

The Nutcracker by Contemporary Dance Academy, 2017 – Fort Collins Fine Art and Dance Photographer

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!

Roots and Twigs Photography’s Birthday Sale!

 

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!

Best,
Tori

November 2017: Harvest at Share Six | Fort Collins, Colorado Lifestyle and Fine Art Photographer

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.

 

Teen Twins – Fort Collins and Boulder Family Photographer

Family with Dogs Portraits! – Fort Collins and Boulder Family Photographer

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!

Family Portraits – Fort Collins and Boulder Family Photographer

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!

August 2017: Collections at Share Six | Fort Collins, Colorado Lifestyle and Fine Art Photographer

The August blog circle theme at Share Six is COLLECTIONS. 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 struggled with this theme. The biggest reason was that I simply have way too much on my plate lately, and haven’t had time to plan and shoot for it. I pondered recycling some old images that might pass for the theme, but eventually settled on sharing images from my family’s recent trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We only spent 2.5 days there, along with another 12.5 days in the state, but it was just the second time my kids have been to the ocean, and they were too young the first time to enjoy or remember it. We covered many of the typical tourist sites (Currituck, Bodie Island, and Hatteras Lighthouses; Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum; Wright Brothers Memorial; and a brief stop at the Elizabeth II ship) – and hiked the dunes until we found wild horses in Corolla. Still, the best memories will probably be the simple ones at the beach. I am a lifelong mountain girl, but the beauty, serenity, and joy we shared there on this trip has me re-thinking my status! My take on COLLECTIONS is the collection of MEMORIES we created on this trip and – for the first time ever – I am not sharing  six, but ten. Sorry?! As I write this, I haven’t even viewed all of my trip photos, yet I am packing to leave for another trip, so I decided not to agonize on the culling process. Cheers!

 

I sincerely appreciate you dropping by to check out my take on COLLECTIONS. Next in the blog circle is the wonderfully 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 COLLECTIONS images to the Share Six Facebook and/or Instagram pages (tag #sharesix and #sharesix_collections) by Septemeber 5th.

July 2017: Artificial Light at Share Six | Fort Collins, Colorado Lifestyle and Fine Art Photographer

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.

Canyon Concert Ballet Showcase Studio Portraits, Fort Collins Dance Photographer

Canyon Concert Ballet Promotional Studio Portraits, Fort Collins Dance Photographer

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!

 

April 2017: Connection at Share Six | Fort Collins Lifestyle and Fine Art Photographer

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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.)


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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.


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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.

Roots and Twigs Photography Feature at Dads in the Wild, “Back in the Den”

 

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I was recently invited to interview with Dads in the Wild, sharing some more information about the main Dad in my life. I hope you’ll take a moment to click below to see the images and thoughts I shared!

Back in the Den: Roots and Twigs Photography