Luck. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad.

If you’re Stanford and it comes in the form of Andrew, then it’s good. VERY good! Looking forward to seeing him in action this weekend when we beat Oregon (Sorry, Dad!) Ack! A few lines in to this post and I’m already digressing. This blog isn’t about college football! That’s my other one. Yeah, right. Sorry. Let’s start over.

Luck. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad.

Heading in to last Friday’s photo session, our luck seemed bad. Terrible, in fact! While it rarely rains here in good ol’ Southern California, the two times this client and I have scheduled a session, we have had to battle RAIN! All day long, our phones were busy sending and receiving texts. Should we move forward? How’s it look over there? Is it sprinkling right now? Are there clouds? The sun’s peeking out here. What about over there? What’s the internet say about the next shower? How’s your schedule look next week? In the end, we decided to push forward … and as LUCK would have it, the rain clouds parted just long enough to squeeze in a session. In exchange for our faith and perseverance, the weather gods gave us gorgeous lighting to photograph this beautiful family.

K&T, your family is absolutely beautiful – inside and out! It was such a treasure to spend time with you guys and watch you guys interact with each other. You guys are playful, fun, adoring, sweet, successful, kind and loving. There’s something magnetic about your personalities that makes others want to spend time with you. Probably in the hopes that some of your charm and enthusiasm will rub off on them! Thanks for staying flexible amidst your busy and chaotic schedules and having a great attitude about everything (including the way our session ended!) I feel incredibly LUCKY to call you my clients, but more importantly, my friends.

Love to you both! Enjoy this peek at your photos.

This family portrait here isn’t my typical style. I thought I’d push myself and try something a little different. What do you think? I am loving it!

Have a great week!

A few weekends ago, I had the pleasure of snuggling the most adorable little baby girl. She’s the newest addition to a family near and dear to our heart. The father in this family and my husband go back many years, having gone to Loyola High School together. Throughout the years, these guys have stood next to each other throughout many of life’s greatest milestones. The best ones being him adding all these fabulous girls to his family – first his wife, then their first daughter and now, baby sis.

This little one’s got the best cheeks (I just want to eat ‘em up!) and cute little rolls, reminding me so much of her older sister when her sis was that age. Just a few I wanted to share of Baby Kaia.

Kaia, in an outfit from her auntie. This should make auntie smile, yes?

Here are the two sisters, side by side, both of them at four months old:

And here’s big sister today:

She’s grown up so much! You can see pics of her at eight weeks, four months and six months. (Looks like I forgot to blog her one year pics.)

M & JJ, enjoy your sweet girls at this precious stage! Erich and I look forward to celebrating the girls’ milestones throughout their lifetimes as well. xoxo

So when I first introduced my special mini-session offerings last year, I was nervous. Would anyone be interested? Would anyone bite? Would my Facebook announcement sit there, looking lonely and without comments for one and all to see? (Yes, that is my typical worrywart thought process – the hope-for-the-best-but-prepare-for-the-worst mentality my mind often follows.) Fortunately, for me, this wonderful family snapped up my first slot! Within SIX minutes of me making the initial announcement! I was totally thrilled. I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow and danced a little jig. This little special might actually work! Hooray.

I love getting together with this wonderful family. And it’s especially fun and special for me to see a family with two brothers. I love to see how they poke, they prod, they giggle, they fight, they play. It gives me an idea of how my boys may act together five or six years down the road. And if my boys grow up to be anything remotely like these sweet, well mannered and playful boys, I will be thrilled.

Here are a few faves.

For the past three years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with this wonderful family. Not only do I love these sweet children, but I have a blast working with Mom and Dad. Mom, because she always has a very specific vision for her shoot (and the resulting output, whether it be in the form of a custom holiday card or canvas collage) and Dad, because he laughs and chills when Mom and I collaborate over every little detail – the placement of a bow, the size of a snowflake, the color of a border. It’s wonderful working with clients who put as much thought into a shoot as I do. It truly makes me feel honored when someone with a specific vision – and high expectations – will trust me to pull it off!!

This year, we went for a more formal, traditional, fancy, elegant feel. I think I was able to execute her vision while staying true to my personal style. Here are a few highlights:

It’s fun getting a chance to introduce some new faces to the mix. New to viviZ, that is. Certainly not new to this town. The mom of these kids knows everyone, I swear! They’re an active family with a very busy schedule (club soccer plays a wee part in that equation) but somehow we managed to align our schedules for a quick session this winter. I am so happy I got a chance to photograph these fun and gorgeous kiddos. (The adorable pup, too!) Just look at ‘em! Gorgeous.

So I’d never done a mini session before and I was nervous.

A lot of photographers offer them. But would *I* be able to pull ‘em off? Could *I* produce the quality and variety of photos I’ve come to expect from a viviZ session in just 15 minutes? (Fifteen minutes flies by, people!!) And with sessions lined up back to back to back to boot?

My nerves were jumping out of my skin and my stress level sky-high. I’m sure I was not all that pleasant to be around at home in the days leading up to it. (My husband may plead the fifth on that if you ask him.) Thank goodness my first session was with a repeat client (actually, most of them were). More importantly, the first session was with some fantastic friends who totally put me at ease. We had a great time and I knew, without even looking at the pics on the camera, that we had rocked the session. What a great way to kick off the first of eleven mini sessions!

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE:
After I uploaded these photos to the post, something in that last photo made me realize that I had uploaded the proofs and not final ready-to-print versions. I thought I’d take the opportunity to point out one of the many things a professional photographer will do. (There are a ton of things, but this one is subtle yet still obvious to the untrained eye.)

On the above photo, which is cute in and of itself, you will notice (now that I point it out) that the little girl has one little crazy section of hair towards the top. In a best case scenario, the photographer will catch that and try to fix it. In a “realistic case scenario” when dealing with young children, the photographer is going to realize she’ll lose the natural smiles if she forces everyone to wait in order for her to muss with someone’s hair. So she’ll fire away, sacrificing the perfect in-camera shot.

Now I can’t always fix every problem. And I certainly try to get everything as perfect as possible in camera. But I am learning to improve my photoshop skills so I can take care of distracting elements like this to take the portrait to another level. Here’s the shot with the little girl’s hair “combed” oh-so-nicely! It’s a subtle edit, but one that really improves the quality of the photo.

When you submit your print order, I go through every selection with a virtual fine tooth comb (ha! pun intended) to take care of things like this, making sure you get the best possible output from your session!

ONE MORE NOTE:
It’s always fun to see how clients grow and change from year to year. Here’s the same family at the beach the previous summer, in August 2009.

Their smiles are contagious and their positive energy, infectious. You just can’t help but find yourself happy and upbeat when you’re around this awesome family. I was so happy to spend my Sunday evening with these guys, capturing a bit of their beauty and documenting a lot of their love.

Witness some of the beauty and love for yourself.

As much as I love the portraits above, I think my blog readers know that I actually prefer and love to document the candid moments like the ones below. The images where I can feel the love and the connection, where I can hear the giggles. Those are the ones that warm my heart and the images I love to produce for my clients.

Before I sign off, I just had to find a couple snaps to represent this little guy’s current obsession with his favorite character.

Here was Brek’s expression when Mario made his first magical and surprise appearance during our session. Love it!

Tiff and Scott, we did it! We finally pulled off the shoot and have some beautiful images to show for it. Hope you will feel that all the effort leading up to yesterday’s session paid off. I’ll be in touch soon!! xoxo

Summer flew by and was crazy busy at expense of the blog. This tiny little blip on the world wide web was neglected, unfortunately. Boo.

We had a great summer and there were so many things I had intended to blog. But alas … the life of a busy, working mom caught up to me. So here I am, realizing that summer is practically gone and the soccer season is already upon us.

Here’s my little guy in action. (It was a bit confusing for the guys today as both teams had the same jersey and just looked like one big team. I have to admit they did better than expected!)

Our kids have been buddies since they were itty bitty wee l’il people. My kids call her Auntie Erin. Her kids call me Auntie Viv. So it would make complete sense that they would call each other cousins, right?

When Erin (whom I met in college) first told me that her kids referred to my kids as their cousins, I giggled. If I was their Aunt, of course my kids were their cousins, right? Well now that these darn kids are getting all smart and technical on us now, they don’t just accept things at face value anymore. Nate was a bit confused and kept asking whether they were cousins or friends, friends or cousins? Erin’s oldest, Evan, asked me several times if I was his mom’s sister. And if no, then why did they call me Auntie Viv?? Their desire to draw the lines on our family tree and connect the dots between Zimmermanns and Clausens was simply adorable. And just one more sign of how quickly these kids are growing up. The days where we can just make stuff up and tell ‘em whatever we want are coming to an end …

Although our visit was quick, there was no shortage of photos as both of us moms shoot professionally. (Head on over to Erin’s website and check out her images; they are fantastic. Especially her newborn work!) But first, check out the mamarazzi snapshots below.

Here, the cousins are about to hop in the pool. Can’t you see the family resemblance?

Aren’t these boys cute?

Working on their diving technique …

… as well as their back floats

And since all five of them have birthdays sprinkled from May through August, we had a little summer birthday celebration. Complete with the most delicious cupcakes from Whodidily Cupcakes in Montecito. Thanks, E, for making the pitstop on your way down! They were scrumptious.

The kids stake their claim:

This little one thoroughly enjoys her birthday treat:

These two enjoy some post-swim DS time:

You don’t get much cuter than this. (That’s my Godson, by the way. He is just too sweet for words.)

She’s got a sparkle in her eye and the warmest smile.
She’s friendly, energetic, playful and caring.
She can play red light/green light like the best of them and knows how to elicit the same sort of smiles and sparkles from her grandchildren!

It’s no wonder her family adores her and and rallied to organize such a thoughtful birthday gift for her: a custom photography session for her and her grandchildren and the extended family. What a treat it was for me to meet — and photograph — and play with — the extended family of this family. And seriously, what an awesome gift! No trinkets or knick-knacks, no gift receipts and things to return. Just a quick afternoon with me and then later, some great portraits to document her beautiful family and the sweet relationships she has with the various family members.

We met up in Santa Barbara late Sunday evening and captured some fantastic images. It was tough deciding what to blog, but I picked an assortment of images to give you an idea of the fun and beauty we were able to freeze in time.

We weren’t quite ready to begin but these little cousins were eager to start snapping away. They had to beg and plead to have me take their photos. (You can tell that’s sarcastic, right? I was clearly ecstatic to have such gorgeous and willing models!)

We knocked out the family photo first while everyone was fresh, relaxed and happy. (Might that have anything to do with that afternoon’s wine tasting excursion??)

We loosened up and had fun with our portraits, capturing some stuff like this.

The grandkids had a ball playing with Grandma on the large, expansive lawn.

There was lots of laughter that afternoon.

Then a fun and casual shot with Grandma and all her grandsons.

Last, but not least, we have Grandma with the baby and all the girls, including her own mother (the Great-Grandma). Great-Grandma was in incredible shape!!

I have a feeling it’s going to be tough for Grandma to decide which images to print … this preview is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots more to come. Happy Birthday, Judy!!!