Will & Jamie: Babies Bump Shoot

It's the most mundane things that often lead us to a crossroad in our lives. Like going to a friend of a friends house and there you meet the love of your life, your best friend for eternity. The man that can make you want children when you never thought you would. That's what happened to Jamie when she met Will and I feel I can take the liberty to speak for Will here when I say he feels the exact same way about Jamie.

They have had quite the journey to get to the place they are today. Five years of trying to get pregnant and no success led them down the path of In Vito. A physically and often emotionally painful and demanding road to walk. Nevertheless they wanted a baby so badly they moved forward with their plans. Now this is the part of the story where we sat on the floor of our cousin Jamie's living room with our mouths hanging open in shock, 20 eggs harvested, some were immature while others disintegrated. They were left with 2. Two tiny little chances, no back up, no safety net. Those two precious embryos were implanted and then on October 14, 2012 they found out they were pregnant. November 4th they got the news that they were having twins. Both embryos took! Little troopers these  teeny tiny cousins of ours. You just never hear In vitro stories like this. Amazing. So it was our distinct pleasure to document the early stages of their lives. Here are some of the highlights of our day together.

After an hour of shooting this Mama needed a break. Since the doctors have Jamie on bed rest we shot the entire photo shoot on this futon in the living room. Nevertheless, twins can make a girl tired.

How do you lure a 7 month pregnant woman out of drowsiness?

Cupcakes!

Ice Cream!

 

GO BLUE!

Nothing happens in our family without an audience of grandmas, aunts, cousins mamas and siblings. This photo shoot was no exception. Family runs deep around here, Jamie can recognize our Grandma's dinner rolls in a line up from 50 feet away, and that's the one you eat, because Grandma made it and you stay loyal to your Grandma's dinner rolls. That's the type of family that Chancellor and Gwyneth are coming into.

 

One final shot. This is Lily. She would like everyone to know that she is Jamie and Will's FIRST "little girl". And don't forget it.

Thank you Jamie and Will for letting us document this monumental time in your life. It was such an honor to hear your story and see the big love you have for each other. These two babies are so blessed to have a mommy and daddy who love each other so much. We can't wait to take baby pictures!

Love you cousins!

Courtney and Cory: Engagement Sneek Peak

They both walked the halls of Ludington High. Four years apart though, their paths never crossed. Same teachers, same classrooms, same small town, yet high school wasn't the beginning of their story. Still they have the sweet air of being High School sweethearts and those 4 years have made no difference because eventually boy met girl and they and fell madly in love and will be married in the spring. Spring, however, was the farthest thing from our minds. The weather map looked a bit more like this.

Okay, so I'm being dramatic. It was not this cold Sunday during our shoot, but what this lousy map doesn't show is that the wind was blowing the snow sideways and that our bride weighs about as much as a feather, so we were very concerned that she might be swept away. Anyway, the task of taking beautiful portraits becomes a bit tricky in these conditions. It's hard to hold still, noses turn red, eyes water, glasses and camera lenses get foggy and appendages go numb. The trick on Sunday was to change location frequently, I don't think we stayed in one place for longer than 10 minutes.We got things rolling in the protective shelter of the doorway in an old downtown building.

Sufficiently frozen we headed to a more sheltered location. Once there we settled in for a few more pictures since we were safeguarded from the North wind.

We left our protective shelter and headed out into the open.

After about 5 minutes we had all had enough and decided to head to McDonalds for coffee and defrosting.

While we coddled warm coffee cups and blew on icy fingertips we got to chatting a little and found out that Courtney is very girly and has an affinity for all things pink. This means we are going to have a blast shooting her pre-wedding prep. Girly girls have the most fun getting ready pictures on their wedding day! Cory is a brainiac engineer and his line of work brings him into contact with the trains and the railroad. If you have watched any old films from the 1940's there is always a romantic scene where a train steams into a station and the camera goes all soft focus and dreamy. So we decided to suck it up and head back out into the frigid outdoors and find us some dreamy railroad  tracks. We had also been waiting on Mother Nature to deliver us some glorious snow...and deliver she did.

Beautiful! We were so thrilled with the pictures we were getting here that we stayed until noses started turning red. We packed it in and headed out to the State Park and enjoyed our 15 minute heat blasting drive. Now, can we take a second to admire the winter beauty in this place we call home? Great job sister! I love this shot.

This next shot is so adorable and you were such troopers sitting there for a good 5 minutes with frozen bums.

As Courtney said, "You can't live in Ludington and not get some shots at the beach." True dat Courtney. Beach shots in January are brutal but uniquely beautiful. Anybody can sit pretty on the lakeshore in August. You have to be a hardcore Michigander to handle the big lake in January. Unfortunately it was as we were midcalf in snow heading down to the beach that I realized after all this time, Cory was wearing shoes! Not boots. He never made peep through the entire shoot. Ever. Not a single complaint. Courtney, I think you got yourself a real man.

I particularly love this next shot. When I look at it, it feels like we are not even there. It has a real feel of privacy. I like that.

Now that we all know Cory didn't have boots on I feel like maybe Courtney should've been carrying him up the hill.

While we were at McDonalds, Courtney spotted their fireplace and thought she would like a few indoor shots in front of a fireplace, so with a quick call to mom, who was not expecting us, she set it up and that is where we ended our shoot for the day.

Thank you so much for allowing us the privilege of documenting this special time of your lives. We had a great time shooting you last Sunday and we can't wait for your big day this Spring.

Kirstin's Senior Sneak Peek:

We officially have a full year under our belt as Two Sisters Photography. Every single time we go out to shoot, I learn something. I'm not sure if Christy does because she is pretty darn smart and always remembers to take her lens cap off before trying to take a picture. Don't ask her where her lens cap is, she probably won't know. But she is uber professional and it's not on the end of her lens whilst shooting. Me on the other hand, I probably have her lens cap and can't figure out why my camera is so bloody dark! Anyway, what we learned during Kirstin's shoot is that a tight knit family yields some fantastic photos. Kirstin, her mom and her Grandma travel as a unit. They reminded me so much of Christy, Kayla and my mom. Oh don't forget little brother Tyler who was such a superstar! He flung leaves in his sisters face, which did not take a lot of convincing. He carried ladders and made runs on the Rhino back and forth to get whatever we needed. Thanks Tyler. OK, enough yakking and on with the photos. I know you have probably all skipped this and already scrolled down to view the pictures. Whatever. We love you anyway.

Like I said, Kirstin travels with an entourage, 2 photographers, a stylist, and adoring fans.

Did you know that we can not only take your picture but we give sexy lessons? Truth. Now there was this very large rock that we were trying to pose Kirstin on and it was looking a little like, girl on a rock. So leave it to my sister to take this opportunity to give Kirstin a lesson in how to be sexy. Where do you think Kayla gets her moves from? And the best part, Mom and Grandma didn't gasp in shock or anything, I think they actually hooted and hollered and threw in a few cat calls to make it more realistic. They were great fun.

And here is the end result of that 30 second sexy lesson. Smolder baby, you've got it!

Can we take a moment to pay our respects to the barn. We love us a good barn.



Most of you know that Christy, Kayla and I are excellent fake laughers. Well, we give fake laughing lessons as well. Really we should not have had to do this with Kirstin as she and Kayla are pretty tight and quite frankly Kayla you should have passed your faking skills on to your friend.

The great thing about fake laughing is that it truly does dissolve into real genuine laughter, so the true beauty of a person's laugh ultimately shines through.

A change of venue brought us to this stunner of a tree. Mother Nature was being a total show-off with her soft breezes, blue skies, vibrant fall colors and we lapped it up.

Get in that tree Kirstin. Work for it. (Sister-I love this shot! Great Job!)

I got ahead of myself a little bit. Before the tree there was a swing and a Grandpa that cruised up, like all cool Grandpa's do, on his Cub Cadet. We could not resist a quick photo shoot with him. These pictures make my heart swell a little. Such beauty in the face of a Grandpa that loves his girl.

I want to transplant this tree in my yard. I would swing under every single day.

I hope it's OK with you Kirstin that we threw in a couple of little brother. Let me tell ya, little man was very aware of the camera ;-)

In this next shot we posed Kirstin under our dream tree on an old orchard ladder. Now while we were setting this shot up the breeze was a thing of pure beauty. The sort of warm autumn breeze that kisses you and lofts your hair gently. Kirstin is on the ladder posing beautifully, breeze gone. GRRRRR! Wait, wait, wait, wait discuss blowing on her, getting large piece of cardboard to fan her, ask why we don't bring a fan, decide it's because we need electricity for said fan, blah, blah, blah, wait, wait, wait....the breeze we all know and love returns. Click. Got it. See how pretty Kirstin's hair is because of  a gentle little whisper from a prima donna diva breeze? Pretty.

Moving on to yet another beautiful barn. This is what we love about barns. The light comes through in shafts and is softly filtered by the dust that is ever present in every single barn in the world. Everything takes on this soft dreamlike glow. The picture below is the face of a baby who hears her Mama up in the haymow.

I know you've already seen a few of these on Facebook but I couldn't resist. This one especially just gets me every time I look at it.

I'll say it again if I have to, pay your respects to the barn people. And while your at it give some love to the late afternoon light.

So insider secret, we airbrush. Now let me explain. Sometimes light can do funny things, like super highlighting some little scar that you can barely see with your own eyeballs or maybe you stayed around the bonfire a little too long and became a feast for mosquitos. We always do a gentle airbrush to remove those things. Well, airbrushing did nothing to these 18 year old legs no real difference in the before and after. So I rolled my eyes and moved on.

So Kirstin and her perfect legs hopped on Duke for a little ride and we just followed and shot.

By the way, real laughter below.



Apparently, Duke likes eating, a lot.

This next shot was one of our favorites of Kirstin looking back as she rode. Taking a good shot of a horse from the rear can be a logistical nightmare, if you catch my drift. So just for laughs we "edited" this shot and included it in the blog anyway.

Our last location was down by the river and in the river. It was freezing, so we hear, at least that's what Kirstin said, but we just watched her wade into the icy water from the warmth of the riverbank and said encouraging things like, "Be careful" and "Don't slip." What can I say, we are very helpful.

Hello glorious light. Thank you for showing up on time, it was a pleasure working with you.

Real bona fide laugh. We had made a mildly inappropriate PG comment.

What an absolute pleasure to spend the afternoon with this family. These 3 generations of women and the bond they have really speaks to how family should be, bonded. And let me tell you, Tyler is going to be a better man for having grown up amongst you. At one point in the afternoon Kirstin's Grandma looked at me with total seriousness and said, "Aren't we fun?" Yes you are. That is undeniable. Thank you again.

P.S. One final shot to say Welcome to the family Mr. Mark 5D. We love you.

Also, Seniors, winter time snowfalls, pine trees, warm wooly sweaters and cozy mittens and hats would make for the most beautiful senior pictures, don't you think? So all my little Senior procrastinators, call us.