Joy in the Journey

You all know how much I DEARLY LOVE to photograph newborns. I LOVE meeting new babies and new families. Recently I got to photograph a family that I have chatted with so many times about our mutual love of babies and children.   Babies are  Dr. Guzman’s specialty. Dr. Guzman is good friend of the family and works as an OB/GYN at Drs. Goodman and Partridge OB/GYN office.  He delivers babies at Mountain Vista Medical Center.

There are some people put on this earth to do certain things and they truly excel at whatever they do. This is Dr. Guzman…he is a very kind and gentle person and that has made him the  fabulous OB/GYN that he is. It truly fits his caring personality.

I was SO  very excited when I found out that this couple was pregnant…and even more so when I found out that they were having twinners!!!

His babies were an absolute joy to photograph and we all cried while taking their pictures because it was such a sweet experience. I am so happy that they are such healthy happy boys.

The boys are fraternal twins and it was so fun to see similarities but also how each one looked so much like dad!

I photographed the Guzman boys in their home and then Mrs. Guzman gifted her sister a mini-newborn session with me as a baby shower gift! What a priceless gift!

These next shots are of sweet miss “K”. She is a little bit more of a feisty thing and it will be fun to see how she bosses her cousins around! No seriously….she did so great at my home studio once she had a wee bit more to eat.  Mom, Grandma and I all got a little teary eyed while photographing her too…it truly is such a blessing to be able to hold and photograph these little ones. They are so fresh from heaven and it is so hard to have them leave my home because of the peace and calm that they bring.  Grandma was visiting from Iowa and it was so nice to meet her and have her share in such a fun memory. She is getting ready to move here and I can’t wait for all the fun photo ops we will have with all the grandkids!

Each baby I photograph is so different and I LOVE customizing the session around  each individual newborn and really making sure that their session is unique to them. I love doing similar shots but really like to mix it up too.  I have started collecting so many fun items and it is such a treat to meet each new baby and see what  items I will get to use that will  work best for them.  I got to use a beautiful white coverlet from Germany for part of the shoot and love the simplicity of the items used with Miss “K”.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how the focus is on the fingers for this shot…

dang…i love baby toes….

So if you are still needing a mother’s day gift you can give the gift of pictures…..it’s a gift that NEVER goes out of style! Email me for details!

Up next tomorrow is a fun bluebonnet maternity session!

I really feel blessed and humbled to take part in so many people’s lives.  I get to photograph brand new babies, people getting ready to have babies, children that I have just met and oodles of adults and teens….and I LOVE it…truly LOVE it.

Recently I was traveling with my daughter to Austin to photograph my sister and her new babe. I had missed my flight to Austin (I was pretty bummed about that but everything worked out okay) and my daughter and I were getting a quick snack before getting ready to board our plane.  We were eating at  a Paradise Bakery in the airport…and up walked a family of 5 adults and two kids. They all looked to be related except for two of them…which I later found out they were the in-laws in the family.

One of the girls was mid twenties and was struggling to hold her darling, curly headed 9 month old baby while eating her lunch….they were obviously in a hurry. No one in her family offered to help hold the baby while she ate…I offered to hold the baby since I had already started flirting with the baby and she was making googley eyes at me!   So this complete stranger let me hold her baby so she could scarf down the rest of her lunch.  I LOVED it! And then it hit me….I lOVE people….always have. I love watching the social interactions people have. People watching is one of my favorite past times…my hubs and I do it for date night at least once a month. I love to study peoples faces and see how the mother and daughter have the same eyes or the grand daughter has her grand mothers lips. It truly fascinates me.

And so as I was holding this fun little girl and making silly faces at her I noticed how she had moms hair, grandma’s eyes and her mothers olive complexion. I am truly amazed with the beauty of each human face and it tickles me that I get to study so many little faces all the time and see so many expressions!

Recently I taught my 202…finding the light class…and it was a doozy…we had a LOT of kiddos that we photographed. It all started in the morning with little miss ray of sunshine!

This little cutie is the fourth baby born to her parents…

our group was having a blast photographing her….

after photographing miss ray of sunshine and her family we had lunch…chatted about the images we had taken and then photographed oodles of kiddos. My mother in law raises chicks and so I borrowed three baby chicks for the shoot! They were a HUGE hit with the kids. One baby chick was enjoying getting petted so much that she layed down to go to sleep….we thought for sure the chick was dead and then all of a sudden she popped up and ran off! Hilarious!

This little sweetheart above and below is my son’s girlfriend….or so he claims. She is a super fun girl to be around and I was so happy to have some Lizzie Larue’s on hand to be able to photograph  her in.

And I got to meet some new little kiddos! Check out this little darling…she has the awesomest hair and the sweetest little lips.

She has similar features to her brother…

do you see the similarities? Now check out baby sister….she looks even more like sister…

and oldest sister has different features  but she still looks very similar. Isn’t it fun….to see all the similarities within the siblings. And these children were the sweetest most mild mannered children.

Here are another set of siblings….and there are definitely smaller similarities….but you can still seem them!

I will be coming back tomorrow and showing more from this super fun day! I keep falling asleep at my computer so that is my cue to go to bed!

So I have been teaching photography classes in the valley for the last 3+ years. I LOVE it! I LOVE to see the light bulb moment when a student finally figures out how to take a picture indoors with out a flash or when they get a picture that looks amazing and they jump up and down with pure excitement OR when they get an action shot that isn’t blurry! It truly gives me the BIGGEST rush to teach! I enjoy every second of it.

Lately I have been doing  one on one mentoring sessions! This girlie came all the way from New Mexico to come to my Nikon 101 class and then she and I hung out all day the following Monday and she learned how to photograph newborns and babies!

It was a blast and I REALLY enjoyed hanging with her all day and I can’t wait to watch her grow as an artist!

We got to photograph a VERY special little girl during our mentoring session. Her mother was Cinderella all over the world as well as Ariel but most importantly she was Cinderella at Disneyland! When I told my kiddos that I photographed Cinderella’s baby they were SO excited to see the pictures. You should have seen their eyes light up!

This little baby was such a doll and slept for the whole entire mini session….she was SUCH a trooper…

My aunt travels frequently and will often bring me back all kinds of things from different countries. A couple years ago she brought me this beautiful table cloth/drapery of sorts from France  and I held onto it just waiting for the PERFECT baby to use it with…

and I was LUCKY enough to have my gorgeous POPPIES blooming in my front yard….so far no one has believed me that I literally took these images just stepping out my front door!

All of these images were shot in my home studio. I am so excited to photograph another sweet little baby girl this morning in my home studio!

***I am currently running a special for newborns and babies.***

Newborns and Babies up to 1 year old are photographed in my home studio on Friday mornings.

Sessions last 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on the age of the baby.

Sessions are $95. Digital negatives are available for $395 for 10-20 images.

Prints are available as well and start at $25 for 5×7’s.

If you are interested in a newborn/baby mini session you can email me at sarah@sarahgoodmanphotography.com

SO….my friend Lindsey is an AWESOME pampered chef instructor and she was needing a couple new pics for her blog and Pampered Chef website and so we did what any fun photographer would do…..we drove around in search of beautiful flowers and fun locations to shoot! And here is just a little sprinkling of what we came up with!

and since I couldn’t resist we did a couple non headshots too….just for fun!

To see all of the rest you can go to  my facebook fan page and check out oodles more! I update my fan page a wee bit more than the blog so you can always get the latest tips, images, and specials there!

ALSO…Lindsey will be having voting on which image is your favorite on her blog! Once it is up I will send you the link so you can help her pick which image should be her new headshot! She also has all kinds of give-aways on her blog as well…it’s so much fun to see what you can win.  SO stay tuned to checking that out!

Meet my newest nephew…Emmett…or known to his 3 year old sister as Emmint! He is also known around the house as Yoda! He has the cutest little Yoda ears. I have been lucky enough to come to Austin and photograph him in the bluebonnets…and I got this shot right before my battery died!

He is a super chill kid and his mom and my sister is totally blessed to have such an easy going baby….

because he is the youngest of 5 kids under the age of 6! Check out his BEAUTIFUL parents and siblings…

Now….often I get asked what the heck to wear to be photographed in.

I FIRMLY believe that clothing is everything. It can make the image or change it drastically! I am staying with my sister and so we went into the closets of all the kids and I am going to break down the clothing choices to help all of you get a feel for what I feel makes a great image.

I think that before you pick what you are going to wear you need to figure out what kind of mood you want to portray with your image. With my sister’s image I wanted something that portrayed fun but also the serenity that bringing a new babe into the family brings.

I think that you should wear clothing that you would normally wear but just stepped up a bit. EVERYTHING in this image was in their home or in my home….we did not purchase a single item of clothing. NOW…typically I will tell people to grab a couple new things or I tell the mom to find something that makes her feel like a million bucks and then coordinate the family around her! Because if mom feels great in her skin she will exude that and the shoot will go great. My sister just had a baby…3 weeks ago so her wardrobe is a bit limited at this point so we chose a green dress that would coordinate with everyone and threw a blue scarve in for color. The green dress had a collar which helps  draw your eye up to the face. I LOVE collars on people…can’t really describe why…but they just really help people out!  Dad has the most amazing blue eyes (except for my hubs ofcourse) and we wanted to bring those out….and so we chose the turquoise shirt from his closet instead of a dark blue or a green shirt. I also wanted him and his wife to not be matchy matchy.  He actually had a green tie that matched my sister’s dress but we forgot it at home! whoops!

Next up is the oldest sister and she has a polka dot shirt and white skirt…I didn’t want white next to the face for anyone except for the baby so that he would stand out more than anyone else. He is fresh from heaven so I wanted that to be shown in his blanket.  Brother in between parents has a striped shirt that pulls everything together with the two blues. Next up is little sis with the red hair….she had a dark blue shirt on and we threw on the turquoise jacket in for a pop of color. The jacket looks REALLY bad next to dad’s shirt but I knew that I would keep her next to mom and that would always look good. Lastly is little brother and we gave him a good dark blue sweater to bring out the darker eyes and hair that he has and to really set off dad’s shirt.

When talking to my clients I tell them to grab all the clothes and lay them out on the bed….if they look good on the bed then they will more than likely look good on them in the picture. I also tell people to pick colors that make their eyes/lips/ or hair pop! Blondies look great in pinks/yellows/greens/ and blues. Brunnettes look fab in jewel tones and browns.

One last thing to take into consideration is where you are going to put the image. For instance….if you decorate with red and yellow in your home and then for your family pics you wear hot pink and black you won’t really want the image to go on your walls! SO take these things into consideration next time you are thinking of what the heck to wear for family pics!

Now….behind every shoot there is ALWAYS a story and this shoot had about 30 stories…but because it is a LONG story…I will just do a bullet point story so you won’t get too tired of reading!

*the day started at 8am with me getting lost getting to my sister’s house-twice…after missing my flight from phoenix-austin the day before.

*i have NEVER missed a flight…almost missed once but never missed completely. pretty humbling…took me 10 hours to get to austin

*we(my sis, my cousin, and i…along with numerous kid helpers) photographed baby emmett at 9am the day after I got there  because it was supposed to rain for 2 days straight….which it has.

*after photographing emmett we went through ALL the closets for anything blue, green or turquoise as that was our color scheme. We found oodles and made a ROYAL mess figuring it all out…it took us about an hour to make sure everyone fit the clothing and that it would look good. We even tried it on and then held up other clothing items.

*Then  we gave child number 4 a haircut….and well he looked like a girl and so he REALLY needed one.

*for the haircut I was officially in charge of feeding the 22month old candy while my sister cut and my brother in law held his head.

*after the haircut came bathing 4 children and feeding them…and putting the diaper back on the 22month old for the 400th time ( he really wants to potty train himself and we have started using duct tape to keep his diaper on)

* then we ( my brother in law, sis, and me) got everyone dressed and threw everything in the cars except my extra batteries….ugh…

*we drove to one of three spots that we had scoped out earlier in the day when we drove around for an hour looking for the perfect location.

* we snuck on private property (a total no-no….but I was just so excited about the flowers) and a VERY large TEXAN man with an even bigger hat on came barreling down the mountain in his SUPERSIZED cab truck and proceeded to YELL at us in front of all 6 children (i had my daughter with me). He proceeded to tell us to get off the property and wanted to sick his dogs on us. At the same time as this man is yelling at us (now imagine 6 kids under the age of 6 and three adults and a whole lotta camera gear and clothing) Ethan…the 5 year old is getting attacked by ants through his flip flops and the baby is SCREAMING all of a sudden. fun times.

* so I got rid of all ants off of Ethan’s shoe, helped buckle in the gaggle of children and high-tailed it away from mr. meany pants. I just wanted to take a picture…is that so bad. I own property and wouldn’t care if someone wanted to take pictures there.

* so we went to our back up plan place…a cute little cemetery with an open gate and oodles of bugs and creepy crawlies.

* we got a couple pics when I realized that we were 1. losing sun and 2. my battery was about to die…not good

* so I say prayer number one and hope that my battery will last.

* we get some great pics in the bluebonnets and then decide to take advantage of the great light and some pretty yellow flowers.

* as we are walking I see Ethan (mr. sensitive) step on a squishy dead squirrel in the same flip flops that the ants bit him in. Mom said that “Ethan….that was a dead animal” to which I reply…”Oh, Ethan your mom is lying” (knowing that if Ethan knew it really was a dead animal….he would start crying for about 10 minutes and we would not be able to edit that out)!

*So then I get the third degree for lovingly persuading (not really lying) to Ethan for the sake of pictures.:)

* So we taking a couple pics when Ellie….the red headed three year old tells her dad that their is a spider on his shirt…well…we didn’t really listen to her until we heard a SCREAM from one of the kids about a HUGE spider on dad.

* the spider was a huge one crawling across dad’s chest and threatening to come near the baby but then dad flicked the spider onto mom who was holding the baby…to which mom screams “not on my baby”.

* at this point the sun was going down…i was laughing so hard from everyone scrambling everywhere…and my lack of batteries and the HOURS we had spent getting ready! So we killed the spider, dad stood on top of it’s carcass and we tried to get everyone to do another picture but then EVERYONE seemed to have an imaginary spider crawling on them that wouldn’t let them stand still.

*So we called it quits and went back to the bluebonnet field to photograph 3 week old Emmett in the bluebonnet field. Sure enough a spider starts crawling on him across his chest…we quickly flicked it off and did NOT tell his mom.

*So then my battery died and I said three more prayers to get it going again and we got the images you see above!

*So after all was said and done we took all the kids to McDonalds to get an ice cream and to decompress!

And that my friends is what sometimes happens in a photo shoot…