It's a love thing

Meet Joe and Jenn!

Michelle and I met Joe and Jenn in Stillwater on a very sunny October day to shoot their engagement session. We trapsed all around that little town and came up with some pretty great pictures. We started at the river by the bridge.

They climbed the stairway of love to pose for a few on the fire escape. Of course we did not see the no trespassing sign clearly posted at the enterance. 



Took a little stroll down Main Street. There are so many great historic buildings, we needed a picture on the stoop.

A little romance along the way.

There they are... at it again

The front stairs of a fine residence.

They went along with all our silly ideas. Yes the living room on the railroad tracks.

Love is in the eye of the beholder and his eye is on his beloved

I can hardly wait to share their special day. 

To be continued ....  July 14,2012 they will be Mr. & Mrs. Wold

Best of luck to you two!



It's A Cowboy Thing

Justin - Class of 2012 I had a great time doing Justin's Senior Portraits. We had a blast and my daughter Stephanie tagged along as a second shooter with me. That was a total blast working with her.

I don't know what it is about this kid, but we had such a great time. Maybe just maybe it was his smart sassy comeback lines, his over confident personality which I assume anyone silly enough to ride a crazy bucking horse has to have or just maybe it's that smirk and those dimples!

We did a split session, took some pictures at the Pine City HS Rodeo event in September and also borrowed the rodeo grounds at Dead Broke Arena in Hugo. Which was very appropriate since this is the same place he won the title of

2011 MN State High School Rodeo Saddle Bronc Champion
Music Included. Adjust your volume accordingly. (3 minutes long)

Sweet Sassy Sunshine

Alex - Class of 2012
Alex is near and dear to our family. She has been hanging around the house for a few years now and every time she comes in the door she's a huge ray of sunshine. I would have been insulted if she didn't ask me to do her senior pictures. We had a lot of fun.

Alex is one of the most beautiful girls in the whole world. She's gorgeous on the oustide but you can't help but fall in love with her sweet pure good spirirt with a little stubborn mixed in.

Vinnie was honored to be Alex's prom date last year and we had so much fun taking prom pictures. Here's one from prom. I think she must have been the most beautiful girl in the room especially with this purple polka-dotted dress that just screamed Alex!

The perfect couple.

And...Always Daddy's little girl.

Rodeo!

A fine fall weekend spent at Pine City for the MN High School Rodeo! It was a great weekend, great weather, great contestants and great memories were made!

I have uploaded images from the event. Saturday Night performace is available at kleidascope.photostockplus.com/album_915382


I have pictures of most events on Sunday. I will post what I have within the next week. There were a lot of activities and a lot of images taken. Sunday Images are at http://kleidascope.photostockplus.com/album_917826 (more to come)

Better Get out of the Way! There's no stopping.

Someone is a little over excited to catch a calf!

Quick Hands. This is how you do it.

Take him down!

Can't we just play nice?

S

Three Turns

Stick doing a Victory Lap

Handsome Lil' Guy

Well summer is over, looks like I completely overlooked the blog for the summer. So back on track we go here.  As I get caught up, I'll share some summer sessions.

The first one is Evan's one year pictures. It was so much fun to spend an evening with Evan and his mom. She was so willing to jump around, sing and do all kinds of crazy stuff to get his attention so we could capture some pretty amazing photos of the little guy.  It didn't take much to entertain him, he was so happy and cooperative.

And it would not be complete without a train related photo since his mommy the most awesome party planner ever went a little overboard with the train themed birthday party.

Horse Show 6-25-2011 Upload Update

Washington County Fairgrounds Horse Show 6-25-2011

So far tonight I have Key, Tandem, Western and English uploaded. There are more to come. We're working on it! Wait until you see some of these pictures from Jumping figure 8! some pretty cool yet scary jumpers out there.

SunnyView Show and Enchanted Evening

The link for pictures from Enchanted Evening 6/24/2011 and the SunnyView WSCA show on 6/25/2011 will be available ASAP!  Pictures are uploading and should be completed by Wednesday. Please check back!! We ended up with so many cool pictures it's taking a while to get them online. Thank you!

School is out

Summer vacation! The best time of the school year. How I wish I still had summer vacation. I hope everyone has a safe and happy summer. There's so many things to do over the summer, family vacations, time with friends, summer jobs, and so much more.

If you are going to be a Senior next fall, it is also important to get your Senior portraits booked and done. The school year will go so fast and before you know it, it's June 2012 and you are graduating and moving on to a new phase of your life.

A Senior portrait should capture the true you at this milestone of your life. Think about it, you are closing one part of your life and moving onto the next phase. More than likely the next time you have a portrait taken will be at your wedding. This is important.

Book your Senior Photo Experience NOW. Sessions are filling up fast. Contact me so we can talk and plan out your experience. I know of tons of cool places and also have a studio in St Paul with some pretty neat backdrops and tons of options! Book before July 1st and you might be eligible for some great rewards!

Spring is now Summer

Can't believe it's been over a month since the last blog update. WOWZA. It's been a busy month. The studio is up and running in overload now. What a difference a month can make. If you haven't been there I encourage you to book a photo shoot or just stop by and say hello! I can think of a few little kiddos that need some updated photos - hint hint! 

The studio is such an amazing playland for wonderful studio mates Michelle and Mary and myself. (Although Mary keeps going on vacation and her own excursions - like a work shop in Santa Fe, NM) Can you say JEALOUS! Back to recent activities. There have been lots of photo sessions at the studio the last month. Here are some peaks at what's been going on, I'll get some more posted this week.

The studio schedule is filling up fast. It's time to start thinking about booking those Senior Pictures. Time goes by so fast, not to jinx anything yet but Summer will be over sooner than later.

I could go on endlessly about how incredible every member of this family is, it would take me pages to tell the amazing story of this family, maybe another day. :) To sum it up, I would be so blessed if my family grew up to be as special as this family.



Jessica actually has been to the studio a couple times in May. She has amazing looks. We have even adopted a make up artist and hair stylist, so if you want to add something a little extra to your next photo shoot, they are available and eager to help make you look fabulous.

This little darling is the MOST photogenic child I have EVER met! I could hardly stand it, and it's nearly impossible to pick out the cutest picture from her session. I just had to randomly pick two to share here. I hope little Miss Morgan comes to visit us some more - when she's a famous model on the cover of every magazine some day I can say I photographed her!  I think she went through every prop bin in the studio and then smiled in every picture. What a blast this was.



Our littlest visitor yet. I believe Miss Payton is 4 days old in these pictures. Her poor momma was even recovering from a C-section. Momma and baby are just fine. They were such good sports and up for anything. I think some little girl already has daddy wrapped around her little finger.

 

Studio Sneak Peak

The dynamic trio signed a lease 2 weeks ago for a studio, and we have been moving in slowly. What do you get when you combine three prop accumulating photographers? You get a photography playland that will offer endless possibilities to our clients. Oh man we are going to have so much fun in playland! 

I still have to pinch myself that this is really for real. We have a fully functional studio, even had our first in studio clients today.  I can't wait to invite our friends to come play in playland. Here is a sneak peak at what it's shaping up to be!

A fully operationa backdrop roller system. Yeah it was a little challenging figuring how to mount this without finding a beam in the false ceiling. Thank you to the wonderful Steve Schimek for his determination, imagination and tool power. He figured it out and made an amazing mounting system. 
And a whole corner full of the most amazing props.

A full black and white wall. 12 feet high and painted perfectly solid. No need for hanging backdrops for these walls. My back will greatly appreciate this.

The fairyland back drop and another wall filled with containers of props. We already figured out we need more shelves

The rock wall and baby poser table. Today's customer, the bear is probably going to be the best client on the baby poser.

I'm so excited, just can't wait to have guests at playland!

Getting caught up

It's been crazy busy here. The last wo weekends we had mini-bunny shoots to get in the mood for Easter.  I have been spending every possible second trying to get those photo sessions edited and completed, promise they should be done soon! Thank you to our wonderful clients for being so patient and supportive.  There are just too many way too cute pictures to go through. It's tough when you get too many cute models to sort through all the pictures and pick favorites.

Brotherly Love!

Mason and his bunny friend!

The Easter Bunny delivered my little brother



On top of the Bunny shoots, to addd more chaos to our lives; I've now joined forces with 2 other fabulous photographers and we leased our own studio space in St. Paul! More to come on that. I'm sure we are going to have to have some sort of Grand Opening. We are so very excited. The future looks bright.  I have tons more bunny pictures to go through that I can't wait to share.

Could it really be SPRING?

It was Spring in the Studio on Sunday when we (Michelle Schimek Photography) and I teamed up and did Mini-Shoots with the Bunnies! 9 sessions in one day is a lot, but we were like the Energizer Bunny! It was so fun to see all the little ones (and big ones) dressed up in their Sunday best and the giggles and wonderment of real live bunnies for some of the younger kids.

Look at that suit and those spiffy white shoes!

It was so fun to see some old faces and meet new clients and I have a few that I can't let anyone peak at because the Easter Bunny is going to sneak a few pictures into Mom and Dad's Easter basket. How fun to be in on the surprise. I would have loved to have been surprised with pictures when my kids were little without having to be involved in the whole dress 'em up, keep 'em clean and smiling process.

I think we might have found some favorite new models. These guys were AWESOME natural posers that's for darn sure. Keep an eye out here, I'm sure to post a few more of these guys on future blog posts. Some of the pictures are absolutely darling. This is the one mom picked for her Easter package. Serious though - little Miss M and Mr. B will be featured here again that's for SURE!

We changed it up a little with this guy and went country! I can't tell if he was thrilled with the bunny or not. This bunny was one of the kiddo's favorites out of the 4 we had in studio that day. She was pretty mellow and went with the flow.

Animals and Children - not the most predictable that's for darned sure. We had a cage break and a little x-rated action (even though we were told they were all female). Luckily most 1-2 year olds don't understand the birds and the bees, or in this case the rabbits.

That's All FOLKS! Stay posted for more.

On a side note.  For the first week of the new blog I've had over 350 views. WhooHoo. Hope you enjoy visiting and come back often. I have over 500 pictures to go through from Sunday and am excited to share more.

When it works - it works!

I just have to add a quick note here this morning in order to allow my brain to move onto the routine tasks of the day. I won't be able to look at all the great pictures from yesterday's mini-photo shoots until this evening and it is going to drive me crazy all day knowing what fun images await their turn to be processed!

I have such a great teammate.  Michelle is awesome! She's a great photographer and we work so well together. It's amazing when you just click (get it... JUST CLICK - photographer humor - haha) with someone and instantly read each other's minds and things just flow.  We both are just bursting with creative ideas and the scary thing is we have the same thoughts.  So imagine how big ideas get really fast. I can't wait to put some finishing touches on a few things that are already in the works.  Oh it's going to be a wild ride.  I can hardly wait to offer some of these opportunities to our wonderful clients.

OK - daily grind here I come. Let's get this done. Everyone stay tuned for the next episode. I'm sure we will HAVE to post some sneak peaks this evening. The pictures from yesterday are just way too cute.

It's All About being a Woman

Ok girls! I'm ready to do this again. Wait until you see these All Girl pictures!  A wonderful opportunity to embrase your beauty and the joy of being a confident, sexy, beautiful woman! The energy that was flowing during these 2 hours was so amazing.

This session has to be ranked as one of my FAVORITES!  There are just days when I love my job. This session was one of them, adn it was a little extra special too.

I remember "C" when she was just a teenager with a little more spunk and attitude than your average teenage girl. Her family lived a few houses down from us in our old neighborhood, it's been almost 10 years since we moved from that house. I was surprised when she contacted me and had this awesome idea to do a 'pin-up' photo shoot.

It was a joy to meet up with her again and hear about what a good life she had made for herself, married her high school sweetheart and living a happy life with him and how they've grown up into great people.  Even better than that to see such a strong confident woman, who could still giggle and have fun!

We were both a little nervous to do this, neither having done it before - but here's our first shot at it and I'm positive we'll be doing it again now that we got our jitters out of the way and both learned so much and besides it was just wwwaaaayyyy toooooo much fffuuunnnn!

Who gets to have this much fun 'working'? Love the lady in red!

 That giggle, it was contageous. There were times where we couldn't regain composure we were laughing so hard. Something romantic about this one for me.

 Red Alert! Even big kids like fire trucks!

One of my favorites of the day!

Oh baby... That LOOK!

Oh baby! This little guy has more expressions than one could dream of. It sure was fun trying to capture them all. Don't you just want to wonder what he's thinking? I know...  these crazy ladies with their cameras won't leave me alone and dress me funny.

I'm trying some different features-  here's an attempt at a slideshow.

River Falls Girls

Thank you to all the girls that came to the studio for a girl night photo shoot. It was a blast. I learned a lot and thank you all for being so patient and rolling with the flow. I hope you all enjoyed the shoot as much as Michelle and I. 

This link should be to the slide show. Let's see if this works!
RF Girls slide show
I have some more pictures to add and have to get a copy of Michelle's photos to get loaded in here.  There seems to be some technical issues with loading files up in the gallery. I'm pretty sure it's something I'm doing but I did contact their help line. I have for sure had my share of technical issues these days. Have I said I hate technology yet?

Again, thanks! It was really really FUN!

New and Improving

Welcome to my new web home. It seems everything is getting more expensive these days. If you have an automobile that requires fuel so you can leave your driveway you know exactly what I'm talking about. It seems whenever fuel goes up everything else increases. I am trying not to pass along increased expenses to my clients. I decided to give up the website and licence for my domain to reduce my expenses so I can continue to offer a quality product at an affordable price.

I am in the process of reestablishing this site. It may take me a while. Those who know me know that I have a tendancy to change my mind a lot. I use to blame that trait on being a Gemini but since all the planets have realigned I can no longer use that as an excuse for my split personality. I'll just have to blame the entire universe now since it's all out of balance.

I do have some exciting plans on the horizon to which will include some cool portrait experiences and opportunities. I'll be doing some trial runs on some possible future offerings this weekend. Hopefully pictures to post as well! It's an exciting time.

Check back!!!