The birth of Sophia Josephine | St. Louis Birth Photography

Posted on February 2, 2012

A quick post for the sweetest momma ever tonight… quick because after two hours of sleep on my couch last night and a full day with my kids today I’m wiped. But you guys, I’ve photographed quite a few births now and NONE were so tough as Carla’s. Quick pushing actually but MAN did she have a rough morning of just being sick. And when you add sick onto a labor, birth and pure exhaustion it’s not super fun. She was a rock star though and dealt with it all so gracefully and with a smile.

There are a lot of images I love from last night (early this morning) but this one of her thanking God for bringing her another baby girl is my absolute favorite!

And look at John just gazing at his new baby girl!

(Hat from HERE!)

To say it’s an honor to be a part of a birth is such an understatement. You get to see families, women especially, at their most vulnerable. They have to be vulnerable in front of hospital staff but they chose to be open to you. It’s a priviledge and one that I don’t take lightly. I am exhausted right now, my head hurts and I pretty much neglected my kids today (and especially all other work, at both jobs) but it was all worth it. Going through these images tonight makes every tired sigh I uttered today so so worth it. Carla and John trusted me with one of the biggest days of their life and it was such a blessing to see them welcome Sophia Josephine into the world on one of the most beautiful February days ever! AND I got to hold her! LOVE that!

Thanks Verbsky family! I hope to watch Sophia grow!

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happy love | St. Louis Children’s Photography

Posted on January 31, 2012

A quick peek at our Valentine Mini sessions last week!

A huge thanks to EMILY for creating that AMAZING backdrop! I’ve had that idea for a while and finally met up with Emily at a fabric store, picked it all out and she made my dream a reality! SO incredible! Another huge thanks to NATALIE for making most of the banners/buntings/etc. hanging in the photos. She brought me so many I still haven’t used them all! I’m in LOVE with her work! Find Emily HERE and Natalie HERE! Also thanks to my assistant, Missy, who I am starting to not be able to live without! She’s SO great with kids and helps me in so many ways! AND a last thank you to all of these awesome families! Mini sessions are always a bit chaotic and everyone was totally awesome that day!

And a quick share… these are my current favorite kid valentine’s! It’s SO simple, gets a cute shot of your kiddos but also gives them some creativity and a hand in the process. I just cut a heart out of simple poster board and then you can print them, hand your kid a marker and let them sign their name to each valentine they give!

Just pretend that my logo is actually a cute little girl’s handwriting that says “Grace”!

If I can get my act together I’ll share what my kids are handing out this year!

ps… those super cute templates? From Vol. 25 of course! AND go check out her newest overlay set! Featuring my all-time fav photog’s images! Go HERE!

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I spy with my little eye… | Miller’s Professional Imaging

Posted on January 25, 2012

Hello Wednesday! Nice to see you! Thanks for the awesome rain, chilly temps, 100th day of school and a little man with a sinus infection IN HIS EYE. Ugh. Wednesday can kind of go away except that my boss (aka MOM) treated to a GREAT lunch that was just delivered, I’m cranking out the work here at KCCI, sneaking in a quick Fresh Art blog post, my little heater has my toes warm and toasty and I’m hopped up on caffeine which is making my 1am bedtime not feel so horrible. OH and I’m rocking my new skinny jeans + rain boots on this rainy cold day! So maybe Wednesday can hang around a little longer!

ANYWAYS.

I wanted to pop in here and tell you that the Valentine sneak peeks are COMING. Tomorrow hopefully. I got all the boudoir done last night (hence 1am) but need to get disks burned and in the mail before I tear into all of those cute kiddos!

AND.

I really wanted to pop in here to show you this…

That, my friends, is the Miller’s Professional Imaging booth at the Imaging USA conference that was held in New Orleans recently. A conference I’d LOVE to go to someday! That and WPPI. Someday. When we have extra cash. Which might mean never. Which is sad b/c I’m dying to go to a conference like that and just absorb all of that awesome info! I’ll start saving my pennies for next year maybe! BUT if you look REALLY closely you can see TWO of our awesome clients gracing their booth wall THIS year!

LEVI AND GRETCHEN!

Do you see them?

10 points to the first person that spots our shots in those darling frames!

When we got an email a couple of months ago from Miller’s asking if we’d be willing to give them some images to use in their 2012 marketing campaign and we were THRILLED! SO honored and SO excited! When I popped onto their blog this morning and saw those two sweet images I nearly died! We DID make it to IUSA! Kind of at least!

We can’t wait to see if any of our images pop up anywhere else! THANKS MILLER’S! We LOVE you guys!

Ok, back to my other job! HA!

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the anatomy of a logo

Posted on January 20, 2012

Lately I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the font we used for our logo and so I thought I would do a quick post about it!

When Kim and I sat at a Bread Co three years ago for HOURS trying to come up with a new name we finally settled on Fresh Art because it had an available domain. Seriously. After hours that was our only criteria! I think God was smiling on us that day because it certainly wasn’t our first choice or even our 20th but now, of course, we know it was perfect. So we bought the domain and I set about creating a logo.

I LOVE doing logos. I love playing with words and text and fonts and design. Not all of you might like doing them as much but a lot of new photographers can’t afford to hire someone to design one for them so you’re stuck doing it yourself. OR if you’re like me, someone who’s been in the business for a little while (5 years in March!), but STILL can’t afford to hire a designer… you’re still stuck!

So I thought I would just break down my process for you!

First, I always work with logos in Illustrator. I am a dinosaur and still work in CS3 (for PS too) but I love it and again, haven’t afforded an upgrade yet. I’m not sure if my opinion is just because we don’t have a ton of money but I don’t think you always need the new and best thing out there to do good work. Just sayin’!

Then I basically type in the name and start playing. I try different fonts, I move stuff around, I play. I like logos to fit together well. Like a puzzle. Here is a logo I did for my church (I created about 10 to start and after lots of meetings and votes and committees talked the church chose this one so it’s not like I just created one and it stuck!) and I love how it fits together…

I’m a creative person but I’m also a fan of symmetry. I like things to fit together and be tight I think. This is NOT to say that a more “messy” logo couldn’t work, it’s just not my style. Here’s one I did about 9 years ago for my parent’s business…

Here is an example of my old Jodified logo and it is what I would call a “messy” logo…

It uses three different fonts (none of which I love), the “J” is too long and I HATE the circle up at the top. Messy. Hard to fit into marketing pieces or print pieces. So after living with it for awhile I eventually redid it to this…

MUCH better! For me at least. It still has three fonts but I love how clean it is and simple. Maybe that’s it, I like simple logos. AND I like when you can take out an element of the logo and still have it as a recognizable part of the brand. For example I used to use the “circle J” on things without the actual name… kind of like how you see the “swoosh” and know it’s NIKE without having the word Nike on anything. Not that Jodified is comparable to Nike but you get the idea!

So going back to Fresh Art! I played and played and played and just didn’t like anything. It was the “fresh”. It was throwing me off and I just hated all the script fonts I had. In an effort to save time searching for new fonts to buy and money to buy new fonts I ended up doing something I’ve never done before.

I just wrote it.

“Fresh” in our logo is my handwriting! Combined with my all-time favorite font, Century Gothic, which I’m sure is totally “out” or dorky or something by now but I still love it.

There are two main things I love about Illustrator for logos as opposed to Photoshop. The first is that while it does work in layers you don’t have to go and actually click on the layer palette. You can just click from design element to design element and it brings it up which for me (probably b/c I learned IL before I tried PS) is just faster and easier. I love layers in PS but they also kind of drive me insane when I’m doing design work and not just editing an image. (Although I will say that when I design ANY kind of card or template or marketing piece I only use PS now and getting further and further away from using IL)

The second thing is I love how the paintbrush works. If I had hand-drawn “fresh” in PS it would have not come out so smooth. IL’s paintbrush kind of automatically smooths your lines as you draw which is how I got my handwriting to look more like a font. There may be a way to do both of those things in PS and I’m sure someone will tell me I’m a huge idiot in the comments BUT I am self-taught on both programs and readily admit to my lack of total understanding on BOTH IL and PS! I figure out what I need to do and just go with it. There may be a better way! Actually I’m sure there’s a better way… but this is MY way!

SO once I had the “fresh” looking ok I took that image and started playing with the text. It was pretty easy from there. And again, I like having a logo that is easy to mess around with as I’m sure you’ve seen me do because I am constantly taking out the “art” in our logo and changing it for “class” or “boudoir”… you get the idea.

I will say, if I’m totally honest, there are still parts of our logo that I don’t love but they all have to do with symmetry so I’ve let them go. Or embraced them. Or whatever. At this point I love our logo and get asked enough about it that it seems other people do too! I always feel both proud and kind of bad when someone asks what font “fresh” is and I have to tell them it’s not one they can buy! Proud because we have a totally unique logo simply because it’s my own handwriting and bad because I never mind sharing that kind of info with people!

Kind of random for a Friday post but I got three emails just this week asking about it (which is a lot for one week) and then just now Katie texted me and said, “This is super random but I really like the Fresh Art logo”! So I thought I would share!

Happy weekend everyone!

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Desmond’s Gotcha Day | St. Louis Family Lifestyle Photography

Posted on January 18, 2012

Today I had the incredible honor to be with my sweet friends Katie and Russ as they officially welcomed Des into their family (by law because I think they “officially” welcomed him the same second Katie first laid eyes on him!). To say I was nervous was an understatement because while I’ve photographed a lot of different things, never an adoption! And this wasn’t just any adoption! It was Des. And Katie. And Russ+Elliot. The first family I ever photographed and definitely the family I’ve photographed the most! But Katie, who is quickly becoming such an important part of my life as a friend and as a part of Fresh Art… I wanted to make sure I did a good job for her. She was putting a lot of trust in me!

Looking at the images there are a few thoughts.

1. They are G.R.A.I.N.Y. Oh man. It was dim and dark and dingy in there.

2. I wasn’t able to photograph the actual adoption process. Once the judge began I was supposed to turn my camera off. I certainly won’t admit that I might have ACCIDENTALLY flipped my video camera on and recorded the part where Des was named a MOHR officially. I DID NOT accidentally break any laws today. And Emily, who was sitting next to me, certainly DID NOT tell me that HER adoptions were allowed to be photographed completely to make me feel better. AND Katie certainly didn’t smile HUGE when I mentioned, QUIETLY, that I just might have had the video camera rolling… man it’s a good thing I’m a good girl and never do anything wrong!

3. It went fast. We were there for less than an hour. Most of it was waiting. So while there wasn’t a lot of action to photograph it surprised me how much LOVE you see in these images. The LOVE on adoption day, GOTCHA DAY, is palpable. For so many families. Walking out of the court room everyone clapped. Everyone, being all the other families waiting to adopt that day I’m guessing. It was awesome.

4. Grain or not I love that this is just what it was. Could I have tried to smooth out the grain or edit them better? Probably. But I love how photojournalistic these are. For the photogs out there these were all shot at ISO3200 and a lot of the shots were at f-stop 1.8 just to let the light in.

KATIE RUSS ELLIOT AND DES… I hope you know how happy I am for you and how incredible it’s been to be able to capture little parts of your journey over the years! You are such a blessing in my life! CONGRATS FRIENDS!

Don’t you love how bored Elliot looks? HA!

The last shot I sneaked in before it was CAMERA OFF time. Before, you know, the video camera randomly popped on! Huh.

The judge was SO sweet with Elliot and had 6 adopted brothers and sisters herself! SO cool!

One more seat on their couch is filled. And that makes my heart so incredibly happy!

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The Jehle Wedding | St. Louis Wedding Photography

Posted on January 17, 2012

Before Christa and Jeff celebrate their first wedding anniversary I thought it would be a good time to finally blog their sneak peek! They’ve waited TEN weeks for this sneak peek which is totally insane and also totally my fault. Although I told Christa it was HER fault for booking a (mostly) portrait photographer to do her wedding which happened to fall in the smack dab MIDDLE of our busiest season of the entire year! SO her fault! HA! And I think most women, newlywed ones especially, would have been emailing me constantly asking about the images but Christa? Nope. She emailed once. ONCE. In ten weeks. And DUH I would have been emailing by then too!

Christa, Jeff and their entire clan of family and friends were so amazing to work with. Relaxed, funny, casual… it was such an incredible day with GORGEOUS November weather, lots of laughter and so so much love. Skipping through their gallery I pulled “just a couple” for their blog post and when I looked at how many I had it was 46! HA! SO needless to say this will be an even more edited version with the rest of the sneak peek showing up on Facebook tonight!

Their wedding was at night in the fall so the sun had set before the ceremony ever even started which meant portraits afterwards were going to be a challenge! AND they chose not to see each other before the ceremony, which we totally respect, but it just meant the ONLY shots we’d get of the two of them were after. In the pitch black dark. Secretly I was rooting for Love Light! HA! But that’s not totally conducive to an entire wedding party!

So what did we do?

Oh we dragged our large light out into an alley in the middle of Soulard with a battery pack! It was all kinds of awkward but all kinds of awesome too!

One light, chilly temps and working fast is how we got through these and to the reception on time!

SO many more on FB! GO check them out!

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Valentine Mini Sessions | St. Louis Children’s Photography

Posted on January 10, 2012

I feel a little strange posting this right on top of my boudoir post! A tad inappropriate maybe? HA! Keeping it real folks. Keeping it real.

So at the very last second after hemming and hawing about this for days I’ve decided to just jump out there and offer these sessions. I was hesitant because I don’t want the less expensive price to detract from the very awesome value of our full session. But then I realized that this is a great add-on for the year for any family that may have already booked our full session! OR if our normal session isn’t in your budget right now (which I TOTALLY understand) then this is a great way to get some fun shots of your kids from a professional! I feel like either way it’s a win-win for everyone so I’m officially announcing these insanely last minute mini sessions!

Oh and in an effort to TRULY keep it real I put in a grammar mistake just for you. No really. I swear I did it on purpose and not just because I was working quick and careless. See if you can find it!

Saturday January 21st starting at 9am. Two sessions per hour. At our studio in Kirkwood (please read the menu option titled “our studio” to see where we work and WHY). Session times will fill at a first come (first paid) first served so email quick! These can be for individual kids or siblings but rarely will we have time for both (unless your kids are incredible well behaved!) and these are NOT for families (no adults allowed!) or any babies under 6 months. Let me know if you have any questions!

OH! And I’ll have LOTS of handmade kid Valentine ideas there to give you some ideas on what you can do with your images! Something like THESE:

Lots of fun stuff!

Who’s in?

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