Purple Lemon Photography

Showing posts with label This Season. Show all posts
Showing posts with label This Season. Show all posts

This Season: T's first year

Thursday, May 25, 2017
A special little guy just had his first birthday! Baby T is ready to cruise the streets and and enjoy this next chapter ahead: Adventures in Toddlerhood. I loved photographing this family for a This Season session. We spent a great morning together enjoying his special Radio Flyer tricycle, a breakfast picnic, and walk through their neighborhood park, which just so happens to be Forest Park. Can't beat that! 
What I love about a session like this is getting really personal with a family. They really let their guard down and engaged with each other, laughing, munching, and playing. I got up close and in their face, but they were perfectly in tune with spending time together, and I love the special, relaxed glimpses we get into their family life.



This Season: Dinosaurs

Tuesday, April 25, 2017
I write often about seasons and our This Season package here and on social media. I think one of the reasons I love it so much is because I see these special glimpses of my every day life that are simply wonderful. Full of wonder.

I step back often and have to just take in the incredible life that God has given to my family. Certainly there are challenges and hard parts, but alongside that- and perhaps because of that, sitting in almost magical contrast are the sweet, miraculous, and warming moments that fill us up, let us savor the goodness.

The seasons change often all too quickly, and the little moments change. The light that drifts through the window is filtered through leaves that come with the freshness of spring. The interests of our children shift and wane and blossom. The milestones and rhythms of our families change as our children grow up.

Our middle son amazes me. Even in this year of change in our family, with three rowdy boys, two of which are preschool age, he takes a long chunk of almost every afternoon to enter into imaginative play and whispers to himself involved stories and complex characters. There are voices and independence and creativity. I tend to let him play alone, but one afternoon in midwinter, I asked if I could observe him with my camera. Unscripted. Unposed. No consulting mom on wardrobe.

Special details that make the difference. Slouchy socks, train shirt, necklace from the treasure box at school transformed into a form of dino transportation, and PopPop's hand-carved dinosaurs.

This is his season of imagination.

Unfazed by my camera, this is what I saw.

This Season: Engagement of Sami + Collin

Thursday, April 6, 2017
Last fall, I photographed Sami and Collin during their season of engagement before their wedding.  I design this type of session to be a date. We highlight favorites that represent their story and their normal type of ways to celebrate and enjoy their relationship.

For Sami and Collin, this meant a sunrise picnic (Collin and I surprised Sami with photos from this part of their date; She didn't know I was there!), running, walking, and laughing as we took a long walk around Forest Park in the early morning hours as the fog rose off the Grand Basin.  We then switched gears and headed to one of their top coffee shops- Foundation Grounds- in Maplewood, near their new home, and took a walk and explored another favorite- a bookstore along Manchester in downtown Maplewood.

I am thrilled to present a show highlighting that day with a mix of real moments, striking portraits, and many details that surrounded their morning date. Grab your lemonade, sit back, and enjoy!

A Boy and his Rocky Donkey

Tuesday, November 10, 2015
As a business, I am in particularly interesting season, because as a person I am in a particularly interesting season. We thought that right now I would be on maternity leave, so most of our Purple Lemon work is on hold.  We are adopting a son from Ghana and his homecoming has been delayed. (To keep up with that story, you can follow our adoption blog, Ghana Love.)  This has left me itching to photograph, and with time for small personal projects. 

A few weeks ago, the sun came falling in soft stripes across our floor in the familiar way that it does each fall as the sun sits lower in the sky. Our not quite three year old's Rocky Donkey (his rocking horse) sat right in the shafts of light, accompanied by a sole cowboy boot.  As I began to photograph this little scene, our son began to engage with the scene and realized there was a stray string on the boot. Determined to fix the problem on his own, he got a table knife and began the detailed child's work of cutting the string. 

It was a such a pleasure to document this everyday scene, seeing the artfulness in our common occurrences, as my child matures and does the hard work of learning and figuring out his world. 

There are so often moments we have with details you'd rather not soon forget.  I love the photographs we have of my kids reading books with my husband on the couch. With projects spread across the kitchen table. Or of our family getting apples ready for apple sauce.  These are moments that are full of beauty and memory, and I have found a great love in capturing that with my camera both to share and remember. 

A year or two ago, it really struck me how valuable these tidbits are and how much enjoyment I get in photographing the experiences and the details. It's part of why I love our specialty of photographing weddings, it's full of experiences and details.  But it applies to so much more of our lives than big noteworthy events.  The little things are, too. 

We have even created a package called This Season that does exactly that. It lets me be a fly on the wall of whatever it is you do as a couple, a family, even an individual- as you do it on purpose with those you love. I'd spend a few hours just capturing the details of This Season of your life. 

As winter comes, often full of warm fuzzies, and you think you are stuck indoors for months on end, (First, consider going outside. It's nice.) consider it as a perfect time to use your own home as the location you have for This Season. 

(Yes, I know I have this exciting maternity leave coming sometime, hopefully sooner than later, but it won't last forever, so let's get something on the calendar...)
Then he climbed on the trampoline, which perhaps, lacks some of the darling aesthetic of his Rocky Donkey with it's neon orange duct tape, but still, a photograph I'd like to keep.


This Season: A new kind of photography session

Thursday, May 1, 2014
We have created a new kind of photography session. Beyond a simple mini session of your relationships, we have something a little more...you.

A showcase of the season of life you are in this year.

In our family, the seasons are huge. We love nature. And we love food. We eat what is in season each year, and over time our tastes change and our activities change. Whether it's food or life, it's the same idea. I'd love to let you keep a glimpse into your own life during this season.

I'll spend a morning, afternoon, or evening with your family (large or small, young or old) and capture the reality you are in right now.

If that is bedhead, jammies and banana pancakes on a Saturday morning, awesome. Or if it's headed out for ice cream and a walk through the park. If it's sailing the toy boats at Lafayette Square. Or playing out in the backyard. Or cooking dinner together. Changing diapers. Reading books on the couch. Hiking through the woods.

Or maybe, like us, you enjoy a little picnic with laughs
some peanut butter and jelly
and a nice crisp apple or two.

Whatever it is, it's in season right now.

Savor it now before the season is through.