Meet Elliot. He joined his parents and big brother just before the new year—what a great Christmas present! It’s always fun to watch how things change in a family with the addition of a new little brother or sister. So far, Elliot’s brother thinks very highly of him :) Congratulations on your new arrival, Mike and Kristi!

Matt called me in September for headshots. He writes scores for films and needed some professional photos for publicity and his website. Fun thing about shooting with Matt is we went to grade school and high school together, but haven’t talked for at least a decade, probably more. We had a great time walking around the Woodstock square catching up and doing portraits. It was a very relaxing session with lots of laughter.

At one point we were questioned about what we were doing by a very intoxicted individual threatening that some people in Woodstock don’t like having their photos taken. "Just thought I should warn you," he said. Well good thing Matt hired me and I didn’t force him into a headshots session!

Anyway, here are some portraits from Matt’s session—enjoy!

Meet Chrissy, a 2012 senior from Cary-Grove high school. Chrissy’s session was in the beginning of August and probably around the worst time for mosquitoes of the entire summer. Unbelievable how horrible they were. But that didn’t stop us from getting some awesome portraits. We startd her session on the Woodstock square and then headed to Bull Valley for some nice rural settings.

Chrissy was great in front of the camera, very confident and very natural, but she’s used to being in the spotlight with different acting and performing gigs. That experience certainly made things easy for our shoot!

Meet Abby, a 2012 senior at Woodstock North high school. After contacting me for her senior portrait session we discovered we’re neighbors—we live just down the street from each other. Such a small world!

Abby’s session was a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time on the Woodstock square and then wrapped up at her home. The September weather was beautiful and so we made the very best of it.

Highlight of shooting on the square was finding the word READ graffitied on an alley wall. Abby is an avid reader so it was a no-brainer! She even brought a box of books—perfect!

Amanda waited until the last minute for her senior portraits, but not to worry, we got them done. We squeezed in her session just a few weeks before she headed off to Winona State University for her freshman year. We had a great session and made some beautiful portraits. And locked the keys in the car at our last location. That’s all I’m sayin’ ’bout that :)

Best of luck at Winona State, Amanda!