Butterfly Bliss

 It always seems that the shoots I throw together last minute turn out to be my favorites. The ones where I'm frantically making phone calls while throwing things in my camera bag and running out the front door to make it where I need to be before the sun goes down. This shoot was certainly no exception.

The morning of the shoot I made a million phone calls and finally found a man that sold these butterflies about an hour away and there was no way I wasn't going to get my hands on them. They were absolutely gorgeous and they photographed better than I even imagined they would. This is probably one of my favorite shoots, and the image above is definitely in the top ten of my favorite images in my personal body of work.  

Here's a couple behind the scenes pictures.

Needless to say, everyone had fun with the butterflies!

Happy Tuesday!

Shadow People

 I got a call around four o'clock yesterday unfortunately informing me that my shoot for the afternoon would need to be rescheduled. I was still desperately in the mood to shoot and began instantly running through the list in my mind of ideas I wanted to try and friends that might be able to meet me so last minute.  The two lists in my mind magically crossed at my friend Kelle's name and the "bedtime story" series I had thought about starting. I called her, said hello, asked if she had plans, and explained to her my idea all in one breath. And without any hesitation she replied simply with a "get your stuff and get over here". 

  With Kelle and her sweet babies' help these turned out just as magical as I saw them in my head.

*just in case anyone was wondering, those crowns took a grand total of about 8 minutes to make. Just cut paper triangles hot glued to a piece of satin ribbon.

Goodnight!

Smoke at Sunrise

 I finally got to complete the shoot that in my last post I said I was so excited about. It had a little bit of a creepy twist on it, which isn't usually my style, but I'm really happy with the way it came out.

Rachel was an amazing model and such a good sport. I also have to thank my amazing boyfriend who woke up super early and helped us with the smoke. They were both such troopers. We shot at sunrise and it was cold and we even had to deal with Collier County Police Enforcement because the neighbors thought the woods were on fire. 

 After we were finished with these and before the sun got too high we decided to try a different outfit and some colored smoke. We hadn't thought we'd have enough time to try these but I'm so happy that we did.

A super big thank you again to Rachel and Alex, you both are amazing!


I've been working so much lately and trying I've been trying to fit in as many shoots as I can, particularly creative ones, just to keep myself sane. Yesterday I had the day off and it was rainy and gloomy but I was feeling inspired so I grabbed a friend and we threw this little shoot together.

Thanks, Nina. Good luck in Chicago next year!