Ian and Jessica: Engagement Pictures

This past weekend I got to take engagement pictures for one of my oldest friends. Ian is a year younger than me, but I often tend to forget that. We grew up going to school, church, and more together. He came to my birthday parties I went to his. My junior year he was my date to the Sadie Hawkins dance. When I was 4 I cut my finger off in his basement....and I like to blame him for it...luckily they were able to reattach it. :) Ian only has brothers and I loved my role as his stand in big sister. He still starts almost all of his texts, messages, or facebook posts to me with a "Hey Big Sis!" Love it. In middle school we started swing dancing together. His parents would teach swing dancing lessons around town and we would be their "models." They would describe the move, we would demonstrate it. The first time we swung dance together was at the middle school dance. The one year where I was in high school and he was in the 8th grade was a huge bummer because we couldn't show off our skills. :) But every dance after that we would tear it up whenever Zoot Suit Riot would come on (we were usually the ones who requested it). We even got to swing dance at my wedding (minus the flip, for obvious reasons :)). Here are a few pictures that Annie Werner took that night....so much fun!


And just to go back a little further...Ian and I after the Salthawks won their very first state championship. Ok...enough of memory lane. We split Ian and Jessica's photo session up in to two smaller sessions due to some time constraints. The first night we did all the ones in the Red Sox shirts and the next night we mixed it up with some downtown shots and country shots. I had the HARDEST time narrowing it down. I loved so many pictures! Hope you enjoy your preview guys....can't wait to photograph your wedding in less than a year! :) Loved the sun in these next couple shots. We went up to Sunflower Electric to take a few pics since that is where they got engaged. We had plans to go up to the roof, but in the end decided it wasn't worth the effort (this was after Ian was already on the roof...oops! :)). But that was ok because I was OBSESSED with the inside of the building. I must have talked for 20 minutes straight about how they need to turn it into an event space. They have a huge elevator to transport people up, plenty of room for tables, bars, dance floors, etc. And the MOST AMAZING windows. I loved them. Here are a few pics so you can see how neat this space was, too. On to some country shots... Ok, all done! And to think I had so many more I wanted to share! Thanks again, guys!

Abe - Senior Pics

I'm sure you are starting to see a theme as I post senior pics on the blog, and that is that I feel very connected to all of these boys. Abraham is no different. Abe is another one of Joe's close friends, and like Joe, he is the youngest of four kids. Except unlike Joe...he has three older brothers. Since he never had the amazing privilege of having older sisters (I mean I'm sure that's how my brothers would describe it...right boys?), Bets and I like to think of ourselves as his  "psuedo big sisters." Abe is one of those people whose life is just one big funny story. Even if he didn't mean it to be. :) I just want to laugh and go "Oh, Abe." My family loves telling the story about the time Abe recited a book on tape on our way back from a Tulsa soccer tournament (I fell asleep and woke back up and he was still telling the story about the underground railroad), or the time he told a YMCA coach "My dad knows the mayor and you WILL be fired!" If you ever have a few free minutes, ask me about Abe and Joe's class field trip to the fair. It is one of my favorites. :)

I wanted to try and hunt down a few old school pictures of Joe and Abe, but my facebook isn't working right now and I don't have any hard copies on hand. Darnit. Oh well...here is a little preview of his senior pictures!































And this is only a preview the outdoor shots...we took a lot of formal indoors in my makeshift studio and we still have his swimming pictures to take as well. I think Abe will have a nice selection of photos to choose from when all is said and done! :) Thanks for letting me take your pictures Abe...see you next weekend! :)

I love Savs (and Joe!)

Ok...so I know I said I would be back in a few days. And that really was my intent, but then school started, life got busy, and lo and behold it ended up taking a few weeks instead of a few days. Sorry!

As you know, when we were out in Montana I took a few senior pictures of Baby Joe. Lucky for me, his sweet girlfriend Savannah let me take a few pictures of her, too! Joe and Savannah have been dating for almost two years (although really it feels like a lot longer than that....the "pretty friend" stage, as we like to call it, went on for about 6 months prior to the official dating title). She has basically become a part of our family and to say Bets and I are pretty attached to her would be a major understatement. As big sisters, all we want is for our brothers to date nice girls that we like and want to be friends with. We would also like them to treat our brothers well and bring out the best in them. Not too much to ask for, right? Well, our brothers have certainly delivered. Thank goodness they have good taste in women....otherwise Bets and I could be making lots of 17-20 year old enemies! :)

Savannah is great for a lot of reasons (just ask Joe...he isn't shy when it comes to talking about how awesome she is) and one of those reasons is that she was willing to let me just play around and take some pictures of her. I'm hoping to wrangle her into taking a few more sometime in the next couple weeks. When we took these we waited until late morning so our lighting wasn't great and a lot of shots I wanted to get were nixed because of the direct overhead lighting. But either way, we still got some great shots. I took a few pictures of Joe and Savs together, too...so I'll share a couple of my favorites of them!

Joe thinks Savannah has the prettiest eyes ever...and after taking her pics I completely agree!









 Joe Henry loves this picture...apparently she scrunches her nose up at him a lot. :)







And then a few of them together...I know I'm biased, but I think they are so precious

 











I know I keep saying I'll post Joe's senior pics...and I will soon, I promise. I want to take a few of him in Hutch then just do a big post. Until then, I'm taking some for one of his friends tomorrow and will get those up soon, plus some football ones and random catch all post from the summer. Until then....

Oh..PS....Joe asked Savs to homecoming yesterday. I guess it swept the school by storm because last night as Joe scrolled through all the tweets about it I asked if he was ever going to stop. SO MANY TWEETS! Haha...I guess that's what you get though when you get a bunch of freshmen to stand outside one of the biggest hallways at HHS and ask your girlfriend to homecoming. Seems everybody was pretty impressed....and luckily she said yes! :) Homecoming pics coming in approximately 3 weeks! :)