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first place:

BROCK

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second place:

EGAN

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third place:

GAVIN

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fourth place:

KYRA

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fifth place:

IT’S A TIE!  HOLDEN & CALEB

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*First Place will receive a free session with ae photography.

*Second Place will receive half off your session + a $25 “ae credit”.

*Third Place will receive a free print set when you book a session with us which includes: (1) 8×10 (2) 5×7s (8) wallets.

*Fourth Place will receive a free 5×7 when you book a session with us (remember you also get $25 off your session fee for being part of the contest!)

*Fifth Place will receive a free set of 8 wallets when you book a session with us (remember you also get $25 off your session fee for being part of the contest!)

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE WINNERS!  CONTACT US TO BOOK YOUR SESSIONS!

THE NEXT CONTEST WILL BE IN APRIL & WILL BE FOR ALL OF YOU NEWLYWEDS OUT THERE  CHECK BACK SOON!

p.s.  The next post will be full of photos!

Each photo below is numbered.  Please post the number of your favorite image along with the child’s name in the comments section.  The more votes, the easier it will be to have a distinct 1st, 2nd and 3rd place–so tell all of your friends and family to vote!!  Post it on your facebook, tweet it, blog it… get it out there : )  If we hit 100 votes, we will add on something special for 4th and 5th place.  We have never even gotten close to 100 comments, but hey–I think it’s worth a shot…. plus, I know how many hits our blog gets daily, and if everyone who looked voted, we would have waaay more than 100.  Let’s just see how high we can go.  Yes, you can vote for your own photo : P

1 - KYRA

2 EGAN

3 HOLDEN

4 AUTUMN

5 DREW

6 PEYTON

7 GAVIN

8 CHARLES

9 CALEB

10 JACOB

11 SCARLETT

12 BROCK

I wanted to make sure to include some tiny ones : )  While they may not be doing anything crazy, they still have a look of sweet, childlike innocence–and I love it.  I didn’t realize how almost all of the submissions were boys!  Let the voting begin!

I want to give a shout out to pishposhes on Etsy for the use of the awesome headpiece.  I absolutely LOVE it–along with everything else in that shop!  I’m happy to say I will be creating a stash of some of these great items to have on hand for our sessions!  So you will be free to use them as you wish if you book us!  Check out her shop!

More to come from Leslie’s session along with a bunch from our Boudoir Event!

Keep those submissions coming for the “Cute Kiddos Contest”!  We’ve really enjoyed seeing your adorable children : )  I will posting some of our kids soon, as promised!  Now it’s off to take my little miss to dance class, and then we are headed out for a consult.  Let the crazy busy season begin!

Eric and I really had a great time with these two.  We had shot a wedding the day before, we we kind of bummed it and wore our hoodies and moccasins to help ease the aches from the previous day.  It felt nice to walk around the city in cozy clothes and just have fun shooting.  Chris and Natalie are such a great couple, and we could tell in just the short amount of time we were with them; they are perfect for each other.  I’m pretty sure she said they meet in college–both “geeks” as she called it, butI would just say incredibly smart…. and I’m jealous : )  Not only are they fun to be around and extremely intelligent, they are quite artistic.  I saw some walls they painted in their house through some Facebook photos and–whoa!  They were incredible.  I want Natalie to come paint my walls like that!

Love these two!  Can’t wait to post them on our new “lifestyle sessions” website (coming soon, when we don’t have a million other things to work on ; ) )

(The building in shot above was actually the public restrooms.  Find beauty in everything, people.)

www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Well, while our job requires us to do some those, that is not what comes to our minds when the word “portrait” is said.  We are all about showing the truth of the moment and creating an honest image.  Lining people up in a row and having them say cheese, or putting them in some awkward stiff pose is the furthest thing from the truth in our book.  We realize that these types of photos can be necessary during special events to insure all of the important people get photographed during the day, but a portrait can be so much more than what immediately comes to mind.  These “traditional” shots are what can create the weird and sometimes quite hilariously awkward frames you can find at  awkwardfamilyphotos.com … have you ever been there?  Go have a look.  : )  Here is a taste:

www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Hahahaha.  : )   Sooo… here are some tips to give you a tad bit more natural shots… if that’s what you’re looking for.

NOTE:  If you like the styles above, you may be following the wrong blog : )  And, a big thanks to www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com for the perfect samples and giving me a hearty laugh at least once a week!

When you’re photographing little ones, don’t pose them in some uncomfortable way and force them to smile.  Get down on their level.  See the word through their eyes.  Let them play with their favorite toys and capture what they truly do when they’re teeny tiny.  Thinking ahead, wouldn’t it be 100x more special to have that picture of them laying on the floor in their playroom, playing with their favorite toy when they were 3 and, in turn, showing off a fun, natural smile, because they were doing what they loved to do?  Not only would you get the “specialness” of that moment when they were so little, but you will be able to remember the way the room was decorated and forever have the memory of their favorite childhood toy.  You may think that these are just snapshots and not something that would actually look professional, but this is what we do!  Welcome to a lifestyle session, folks!  They are full of fun and truly capture the realness of what goes on in your lives.

When photographing families, same thing goes!  Of course, everyone wants that one great traditional shot, but you have to think outside the box.  What does the family do for fun?  Puzzles, books, going out for ice cream?  Ask them these things when they book you.  Make a plan to have them sit our the couch and read their favorite story.  It will be cute, cozy and full of smiles : ) Meet them at a local ice cream shop and have them all get cones.  It’s pretty easy to imagine the great shots you could get with that set up.  For winter shots, have them build a snowman or make snow angels.

99.9% of the time, we don’t pose.  We put people in a situation and then let them do their thing.  This way of shooting is applied to everything we do; seniors, kids, families, engagements, all mini sessions and during weddings.

Another tip about portraits–still going off what people typically think of; a portrait doesn’t always require a face.

“A portrait doesn’t always have to have a face in it. Be aware of your subject’s body language and look for ways to depict emotion that are not obvious.” Isabel Lawrence

I couldn’t have said it better myself…. so I didn’t.

The portrait above show the entire family without showing a single face, and still manages to tell the story perfectly.  Dad and child playing in the background and mom + baby in the foreground… mom in the “aching back stance”.

Here is one Eric took of me.  No face, but I do believe the hands in the pockets tell the story:

This photo show both tips.  Miss Ella is doing her favorite thing; drawing.  That girl goes through 20 sheets or more a day.  And to us, the photo will always be a memory of how she is such a fashion statement.  She refuses to wear anything by a dress, and pink tights are the best… heck, anything pink will do!

This “no face” thing is something we seem to do all the time.  For me, they are probably my favorite shots.  Here are some more examples to show you some ways we put this tip into action at weddings.  These photos, as well as the portraits of the guys above, are all from Jake + Maggie’s beyond stunning wedding.

I hope you find these ideas helpful.  And, I hope you enjoyed some more of our Hintzsche Christmas ‘09 shots ; )  Someday I may actually do a full post… but for now, just little peeks here and there.

I found it quite hard to narrow her session post down to a reasonable number of images.  We just had so much fun.  She knew exactly how to “pose” and completely understood our crazy shooting ideas/locations.  It was wonderful.

Of course it was hard for me to pick a favorite, but I do believe this is the one.  I love so many, but this one… : )  Perfection to me.

That being said, I have a new idea/suggestion… well, more of a demand, really.  With all of these daily posts, I would love to hear your favorite/s from each one.  I am extremely interested in the style of photos that really stand out to our followers.  So…. if you could quickly take a second and leave a comment with your favorite photo each time I do a photo post… that would be just fantastic!

Emma and I talked a little beforehand about different ideas we might want to try, and I brought up balloons.  We had never used balloons up until then–so here are our first shots with the new “prop” idea…

Let me tell you, those things got twisted, tangled…. one popped, one blew away… strings fell off.  Needless to say, balloons are something we won’t be using too often : )

So all of those photos, aside from the first (my favorite), were taken from the first day of shooting.  We did two days; one day of fields, barns, rural stuff and one day of downtown, buildings, etc. Sometimes  we are able to hit all of these locations in one day… but we wanted “golden hour”, plus she had school and it was getting dark quickly.  So, we decided to go for the two day shoot.  I’m glad we did.  We got such a great variety.  The next set is from the second day:

I do believe that was the longest post in the history of our blog.  I hope you enjoyed it : )  Now it’s time for me to get back to editing and working on our upcoming events.  January is a super busy month… and here we thought it was going to slow down after December!  I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s favorite/s  ; )  ; )

-ae

We are trying to catch up on the blog posts : )  If you haven’t seen any images from your session or wedding, don’t worry–they will be up soon.  We are trying our best to get at least a few images up from everything we photographed throughout the summer.  To all of our couples who have “posting date to come” on their Online Gallery, your posting date will be up shortly.  Keep checking back.

Lauren, your photos will be up within the next few days!