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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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?

Saturday I worked from 8am until 5pm shooting women in a beautiful suite at the Ritz Carlton in Clayton, MO. At 7:15pm after Chris brought me a huge burrito from Chipolte I passed out on the bed. I did wake up an hour or so later to hang out with my sweet husband but I can’t even describe to you how tired I was. The awesome part of it was though, is that it wasn’t exhaustion like I have after a wedding or a full day of kid-mini sessions. I’m tired after those kind of days but this was different. It felt like I was absorbing every single woman’s insecurities and nervousness while trying to give them empowerment and the truly strong belief in the fact that they’re gorgeous.

You guys, I take a lot of photographs in a year. A lot. I should check my shutter clicks from last year! And a lot of shots that I take are important life moments. Weddings and births come to mind as some of the most important. And they are. SO are newborn photos and family sessions and really, any photograph you take that allows that person to have that exact moment captured forever is important. A lot of photographers say photographs are the first thing you’ll run into a burning house to get (after your family is safe). They’re all important.

But after this weekend I truly believe that boudoir photography might be the most important shots out there.

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A woman walks into the room clutching a bag filled with items she purchased for that day. Pieces of clothing that she felt bad spending money on because she so rarely spends so much just on herself. She stands there praying for confidence, probably having skipped a meal that day and most likely having done some kind of crash diet that week. She’s greeted and told to make herself comfortable so she sits but all that’s running through her mind is how in the HELL are they going to hide my cellulite and what do they do about stretch marks and as she goes down the list of things she hates about her body she’s also accutely aware that since giving birth no one has seen her this naked with all the lights on in a very long time. Her palms sweat a little, she feels the tingle of heat under her arms and she starts trying to calm herself down to stay cool. When she’s asked  to go change she stands in the bathroom and quickly disrobes while carefully looking at all she brought to figure out what the hell she was thinking and wondering if it’s not too late to back out. Choosing the most conservative thing she owns she takes the tags off and slips it on. Slowly and breathing ever so carefully she looks up at the full length mirror and shudders. Three babies and eating too late at night and too much soda and never making time to exercise and that damn sweet tooth is staring back at her. It’s painful. Her eyes go directly to all the bad parts and tears spring to her eyes. Is she insane? How can she go through with this?

She knows they’re waiting so she puts on a brave smile and walks slowly out into the room.

Something changes during a boudoir session. You go from being completely insecure and making excuses for your body shape (whether you’re skinny or fat or somewhere in the world of chubby like me), blaming it on kids and age and whatever to feeling free.

At the end of a very long day I somehow got the nerve to let Missy and Katie photograph me. And I’m talking photograph ME. They saw my nipples and my chub and well, everything aside from the true nether region that no one needs to see unless a baby is popping out. As they photographed me and told me I was beautiful and looked at the back of the camera smiling over the shots they were getting something in me started to change. Or melt. Or open. I’m not sure how to describe it but something MOVED in me. I began to feel sexy. I started to believe them when they said I was beautiful. I was excited to try new poses and asked them to keep going.

In my opinion, every single woman needs to do this and some (like me) need to do it multiple times. Not for our boyfriends or fiances or husbands but for ourselves. I don’t care if you’re a size 14 like me or a perfect size 4, there are parts of you you’re insecure about. Every woman is. If you’re skinny you’re too skinny or worry your boobs are too small. If you’re chubby you’re probably worried about a whole lot more. But regardless of what you hate about yourself, when you take part in this kind of session you stop worrying about what isn’t perfect and start loving yourself.

I got my photos uploaded and even looking at them after the fact I looked at myself with different eyes. I could appreciate my curves. Actually, I love the softness that they bring my body. I have great boobs and have never been more proud of them! Even with all the quirks and pieces that I’m not in love with I kind of fell in love with myself. Not in a conceited way but in a way that is so much healthier than when I was in the bathroom near tears as I put on my first ever piece of lingerie.

I’m not saying that I’m the best boudoir photographer out there or that Katie is the best boudoir stylist out there. We still have things to learn and bumps to smooth out if we’re ever going to do mini sessions again.

Here’s the thing. IT’S NOT ABOUT US. It’s about YOU. Whether it’s us or someone else, you should suck it up and let someone take these images for you. Chose someone you trust and that’s good at shooting+editing of course but do it. This was life changing you guys. Life. Changing.

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Next go HERE and read about what another woman who came Saturday felt after the session!

Over Christmas break I got to photograph a family from my church and it was such a pleasure! I grew up with Liz and Carolyn but haven’t really seen them in years and years. Now Carolyn’s a mom and Liz is on her way! It’s SO much fun to see old friends become parents! Little Ellie was adorable (we’re totally buddies now!) and I had so much fun watching this family love on her! Grandma, Sara, asked me to come over for just a little while and capture them, as they are. Which is of course the best kind of session! Casual and relaxed with some quick portraits thrown in!

Thank you all for letting me come and get a peek into your world! Liz… I hope to meet that little man soon! Good luck with the rest of your pregnancy!

Oh my gosh I don’t even know where to start! Do you ever have weekends that just FEED YOUR SOUL? Times that fill in the gaps you were missing so that you return home feeling more solid and ready to tackle the week? That’s what the last 48 hours were for me.

It started Friday night with the BEST DATE EVER that Chris gifted me for Christmas. It started with FREE baby sitting (all night!) and a Love Light session with Kim! I’m not sure if you guys know this but I kind of invented this form of photography. We were even published for it and now other photographers are using my idea around the country! It’s one of my most proud accomplishments and I’ve never gotten to experience it myself! So this was HUGE for me but even better that Chris planned it because he kind of hates being in front of the camera!

And you should have heard Katie and Kim yelling at me! I was the WORST client! Seriously BAD. Leaving the session it hit me though, I think I was verbalizing what most clients are thinking! “How does my stomach look? Can you see my fat rolls? What about my neck? Do I have two chins or one? Are we good kissers on camera? We’ve never kissed like this in front of anyone! How does it look?” And oh man the list goes on. I couldn’t shut up! It was uncomfortable and HARD to be on the other side of the lens! Katie and Kim were doing a great job, it was just ME! Every time they’d get us posed just perfect I would burst out laughing! There are so many shots of Chris looking at the camera like he wants to kill me and I’m hysterically laughing! HA!

Ultimately we had an incredible time and I feel SO blessed to have Kim and Katie do this for us for free! THANKS FRIENDS!

From our Love Light we met our BEST friends out at our favorite restaurant (Trattoria Marcella) for dinner where we had awesome conversation, the most incredible food and for the first time ever I found a wine I actually like! I so rarely drink alcohol because 1. I hate the feeling of getting tipsy/drunk 2. I have massive control issues so the thought of my body losing control bugs me and 3. I hate the taste of it all. BUT man, did I like riesling wine! Then from there we went to Cyranos for dessert!

To end the night we checked into the most gorgeous suite at The Ritz!

I’ll blog soon about our time at The Ritz doing 7 boudoir mini sessions yesterday! For now though, I want to show you our Love Light session!

See? Chris=totally frustrated and me=laughing hysterically!

AGAIN! Me laughing and Chris looking at Katie like, “what the hell do I DO with her?” HA!

Ready for me being REALLY dumb?

Chris is just looking at me like I’ve lost my mind! HA!

Towards the end even Chris started acting silly! Or maybe he was just reacting to me shoving my leg in his face!

You guys, I can’t tell you how  much this means to me. I’m going to make an album with ALL the images first because I love the silly ones as much as I love the serious ones (maybe even better b/c those are SO us!) and then Chris and I will decide which one is our favorite and I’m printing it big for our bedroom! These certainly won’t get stuck on a hard drive!

THANK YOU KIM for shooting these and editing them SO darn fast! She totally knew it was driving me crazy not knowing what they looked like! Can we say impatient? HA! And a big thanks to Katie too for giving up her evening to fight with me over posing! Next time I swear I’ll listen to you better!