O' The Luck of The Irish!

I've got a client who used to send out Christmas cards but in the hustle and bustle of the holidays she didn't send any out last year. When the new year rolled around she called me and wanted to set up a shoot for the kids because she wanted to send out Valentine's Day cards instead. She told me that she wanted to start sending out cards on other holidays when most people wouldn't be expecting to receive a cute card from their friends or family. So, last year was Valentine's Day and this year she called me at the END of January and said, "I want to send out St. Patty's Day cards this year so we need to book a shoot!" I am loving this! It's so fun to plan the shoots and cards for these various "other" holidays. Since we got some really cute photos of her kids, I wanted to share a few!

Senior Music Video

The twins mom came by for her viewing appointment today and she LOVED the photographs! Here's their music video which turned out so cute!

Twin Senior 2016 Shoot

I photographed my first set of twin senior girls last week and they were so cute together! They were so sweet with each other especially when we did their sister shots together. They giggled together, held hands with out me asking them to and just hugged on each other. I might've over stepped my boundaries when I asked them to go nose to nose. It took them awhile to get there plus had a lot of laughing involved but made for some cute shots. Seeing their relationship, reminds me of me and my sister's relationship. While we may not have been that close in high school, we grew much closer in college when my big sis who was a junior took me under her wing when I was a freshman and showed me "the ropes" at Mizzou. We even signed up to take Geology together! Ha! We had our large lecture class together and then we signed up to have our lab together, too. That way we saw each other every day for class and then were able to study together for exams. Having that time together when we didn't have our small town friends around us to lean on helped our sister bond grow. When my sister graduated with a fashion journalism degree, she decided to go study at the Paris Fashion Institute for several months so we knew we wouldn't see each other for a long time and I will never forget that good bye. This was back in the day when you could actually walk your family and friends to their gate at the airport. Right before my sis loaded the plane I gave her a journal that I had started with entries and photos in it and then I wanted her to write about her European adventures in it and share it with me later. We both boo hooed like the biggest babies at the gate and could barely let go of each other. Life takes us on interesting journeys and it's always more fun to take those life journeys with your sister! These twins have many life journeys ahead of them and I'm sure they'll have fun doing them together.







Here's a shot of the journal I gave my sister to take to Paris and when she brought it back to me she had filled the entire journal with all her adventures

Cute Cousins

I've been editing my niece's birthday photos in preparing to make her annual birthday album...7 months later. Whoops! Thank goodness my sister has the patience of Job. Well, she used to. Hmmm, now that I think about it her fuse has gotten shorter in the last few years. Good thing I'm working on this album now! I came across this shot of my son with his cousin at her 8th birthday party and just smiled ear to ear. She loves her big cousin Sloanie and this first photo just shows it. Plus, how cool is your older boy cousin if he'll drive you around in your Barbie Jeep on your birthday. Love! Now, that I'm reviewing over the photos I do see there could be a little teasing going on in a few of these shots. It looks like Sloan is chasing her down and taunting her in some of these, too. Yes, as the older cousin he loves to taunt his younger cousin. Anyway, I just had to share.

Madison Rocks her Senior 2016 shoot!

I had the pleasure of photographing Madison last week for her senior shoot. It took us 3 x's rescheduling due to our lovely Texas weather we've been having but our 3rd time was a charm! She wanted a park setting so we decided to use the park in downtown Austin so we could have some skyline shots, too. We did have some wind to deal with but over all her hair had that beach look to it to start so I felt like the wind just added to her beauty. Her mom was helping me with the sun reflector which was a hoot and half. Marian, her mom, is tiny so at one point I thought she might catch sail with the reflector and we'd lose her to blowing across the park. They were both troopers and we got some amazing shots. Enjoy!

My Family's Photo

It just so happened that me and my son and my sister and her family were all going to be at my parents house after Christmas all at the same time so I decided to give my parents a family photo shoot of our whole family for one of their Christmas gifts. It's a rarity that the whole family ends up at my parent's cottage at the same time very often so I wanted to take advantage of it while we were all going to be together. Plus, my personal family status changed this year so we were due for an updated portrait. Let me just tell you from a photographer's stand point that it's not any easier photographing your own family! You still get the belly aching about getting ready and the mumbling under the breath and then my mom even laid out my dad's shirt that he was supposed to wear and he waltz's up to get in the photo with his MIZZOU hat and his MIZZOU jacket on and I had to scold him to take it off and put it back in the car. Then, he wasn't happy. Sheesh! Come on, people! Since we were doing this in late December, we knew the weather could be challenging but we watched the weather for the 3 days we were there and decided Tuesday looked the best! Tuesday was the best day by far but we still ended up with 40 mph winds which needless to say makes for a very challenging shoot! My parents moved to the Texas Gulf 4 years ago and they LOVE living on the beach so I knew we had to have the beach as our backdrop. We all looked so good when we left their cottage and within our first step out of the car all the hard work of fixing our hair was gone...G-O-N-E...gone! Why'd we bother? Probably all should've just worn our sweats and tennies and pony tails...my mom would've been happy either way. She was the only one smiling out there just proud as punch to be doing this. I have to say she actually did really good looking at the camera for this. Because she doesn't like to be photographed, she likes to look off to the side instead of directly at the camera which usually results at me yelling at her, "LOOK AT THE CAMERA, MOM!" Not this time though! She was ready and happy to be there and did perfectly. We got the car angled on the beach just right to try and block the wind for everyone while I got my gear set up. You'd never know that half the fam grew up in Missouri in blistering cold winters but now we're all big babies in the cold weather. Once I got my gear set up, the other challenge was that I was the photographer and I was in the photo and I wanted to use my long lens for a nice soft blurred background so I had to set my tripod even further from the group which made my run to get into my spot with the group, get my body positioned correctly, get my hair out of my face and smile almost impossible! As soon as I'd hit the self timer, I'd sprint over to my family while their all yelling at me, "HURRY! THE LIGHTS BLINKING! THE LIGHTS BLINKING!" Der. Really? I'm the one who pushed the button people! I know the lights blinking and I have about 10 seconds to get it right. So, I thought I'd share my bloopers today of all the wrongs it took to get it right. I got really tickled as I reviewed through the photos and saw how the wind was not our friend that day but like I said before my mom was going to be happy anyway you sliced it...even if I did look like Chewbacca. Here's a little slice into my personal life that hopefully will make you giggle. Enjoy!
This one I like to call "Brandi Attacked By the Octopus"

This one is the shot where I look like Chewbacca

This one I've got a great side sweep going

Oops! The "I didn't make it to the photo in time" shot

The Combover

This one I'm trying to whip my head around in time to get the hair out of my face but it looks more like I'm doing a Broadway production here

This is as good as it gets!

Happy New 2016!

I don't know about you all but I was SO ready for a new year! I am celebrating the new year by blogging about a really fun family that I photographed right before Christmas. There were 25 people in this family from a 2 month old baby all the way to the 80 year patriarch of the family! This particular Dec. 23rd decided to be 80 degrees and sunny on this Texas day and so we had to work in shade at first while we waited for our sun to come down a bit. They were all real troopers! When I was photographing Nancy and Izzy with all their grandkids I told Izzy to kiss his wife and boy he didn't hesitate for one second. He leaned in and grabbed his wife and laid one on her and then they kept kissing and kept kissing and kept kissing. The expressions of the grandkids as they egg their grandparents on is priceless! I wanted to start the new year out by showing the LOVE and sharing the LOVE! Now this, this is what we all need... PASSION! I think we can all take a little lesson from Izzy and Nancy here...keep that passion alive always!