Sprouts by Heather

Last week I had the pleasure of driving out to a farm in West Alabama to welcome a sweet family’s newest arrival… Miss Violet Elizabeth. Violet’s mom, Lana, and I went through 5 years of Architecture school together at Auburn and recently reconnected after we moved back to Alabama. Lana and I could have talked for hours when I was there to photograph Violet at 8 days old. I have a feeling Mason and I are going to be visiting the farm again soon to run around with Violet’s big brother Levi. Levi will have lots to show Mason about life on a farm, and it will be the perfect excuse for me to see this little beauty again!

She is such a little lady with her long eyelashes….

It was one of those perfect days where the temperature outside was pretty much the same as it was inside so we wandered freely.

I couldn’t leave without getting Levi in front of my camera for just a few minutes…. a few very active minutes. He is such a beautiful child! I think I can call him “beautiful” for another year or so right?

Beautiful beautiful children! Congratulations Lana & Luke on the addition of a little girl to your sweet family. Sugar and spice and everything nice….

I think you might recognize this little guy, my sweet Mason boy, and he is with my sister’s little girl Ella, and my cousin’s girl Caitie. This side of my family is just C-Raze-E about pictures, there are more DSLRs when we get together as a family than in most camera stores. We have tried every time we are together (which is pretty often) to get a picture we love of the three of them together and it just wasn’t happening. With a 3 year old, 2 year old, and 18 month old….I suppose you can guess why this task was almost impossible. So a few weeks ago we decided to create a picture-perfect set for them to play in together and I stepped back and captured the fun. These 3 are super-active and they have so much fun together. They keep us laughing for sure. Yesterday we surprised our grandmother with a big storyboard of these images of her great-grandchildren, so now I can share them here. Hope you love these sweet ones as much as we do!

I continued taking a picture of Mason every day in September just as I did in August. I have to say that after two months, I am hooked. Some days I forget to take out my big camera, but I usually have at least an iphone picture from the day (you will notice a few of those below with the small light grey border around them). It is so fun to look back through the two months of pictures that serve as a journal of what we did each day, and now I have so many candid pictures of Mason that I love, that I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t committed to taking a picture  of him each day.

Some things I will remember about this month….

Mason has hit a stage where he is constantly moving. He is a total ball of energy that I can barely keep up with …. even on my best days.

He loves to play with toys but he also has a great imagination. I love how he delights in simple games of peek-a-boo and swinging at the park.

I also love that he is starting to approve of wearing hats. He has so many cute ones and he is starting to leave them on his head…. just in time for fall and winter.

Mason is quickly growing into a little boy and transitioning out of the baby phase. It is bittersweet, but I grow more and more in love with him each day. He is so much fun and it overwhelms me how sweet he is. I adore the little boy that he is becoming.

My friend and local photographer Grethel Van Epps is the main person who really inspired me to begin the 365 project. She captures her children’s everyday activities in a fun and exciting way, and she just did a FAQ post where she shares tips on how you can do it as well. Check out her post here.

Picture a Cure on Fox News

This morning if you watched Good Morning Alabama on Fox News, you may have seen a special interview with fellow photographer Ashley Warren and her friend Letitia Kennedy talking about Picture a Cure. 12 Birmingham area photographers have teamed up to do a fundraiser for an organization called Stop SMA. SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) is a deadly neurological disease that affects children. The medical field is hard at work trying to find a cure for this awful disease and Stop SMA is there to help raise money to fund the research. When I think about other diseases where much progress has been made in treatment over the last decade or two, I see much hope in these doctors fighting to find a cure for these children and their families. It is possible (!!!!!) and teaming up with an organization like Stop SMA can help bring these families HOPE! As photographers, we are donating our time to each provide mini-sessions to the public (with digital files!) and 100% of the proceeds go to Stop SMA. It gets even better because Stop SMA is also a 100% volunteer organization, so they will then turn around and give 100% of that money to fund research to find a cure. If you want to get your family involved in making a difference in the lives of these families, go to the Picture a Cure website to sign up for a mini-session. All sessions are 20 minutes long on September 11th at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. You will receive 15 edited images on a disc with full printing rights, perfect for Christmas gifts for family and for Christmas cards. (This is actually a really great deal with all of these photographers since the digital files are included.) Not to mention, the opportunity to truly make a huge difference in the life of another family! I hope you’ll join us. Go the website to choose your photographer and sign up for a session. (Pick me! Pick me!)

If you’ve been following the blog very long, you may remember that my husband Jeremy is from the Bahamas. His family is from Nassau (his parents, grandparents, and extended family still live there), and his older brother & family live in Georgetown, Exuma (a little town on a southern out island), and his sister & family live on a little cay in Abaco (a northern group of  islands). Then we have his younger brother and his wife, and ourselves who all live in Alabama currently. We are all pretty spread out. With the addition of all the grandkids (5 in the last 3.5 years and another on the way) its been a little hard to be so spread out and only get to see  our niece and all of our nephews a couple of times a year. So it was a wonderful treat that all of the grandkids ended up in Nassau on the same day at the end of our vacation. As you can see, Nana and Papa were pretty happy to have all 5 of them together for the very first time. From left to right is Joss, Emit, Olivia, Mason (our son), and Luke. Aren’t they an adorable little crew?!

Jeremy and his older brother Dallas are best friends, so it was fitting that we spent most of our trip with them in Great Exuma. They love free diving and spear fishing together so when they get together they are in the water pretty much constantly. I really enjoy seeing Jeremy in his element and “happy place”. Here is a great underwater video of Jeremy and Dallas teaming up on a nice size grouper (a delicious dinner!). They are free diving up to 50′ to spear and it is ridiculous how easy they make it look!

Spearing Brothers on Youtube

Great Exuma is one of the largest and most southern cays (pronounced “keys”) in the Exuma Cays, a chain of hundreds of islands. Most of them are uninhabited, but some have little settlements and some are privately owned by the rich and famous from around the world. It is a beautiful paradise, so natural and untouched and uncommercialized, unlike many other parts of the Bahamas and Caribbean. You might be wondering what Dallas and Tamara do for a living to be able to live on a little island in paradise. They own a company called Out Island Explorers (check them out if you want your next vacation to be a truly unique and amazing experience!) They rent out kayaks, sail boats (Sea Pearls), and camping equipment for people to explore the Exuma Cays. They also lead amazing guided trips by kayak or sail boat where guests are privileged with being immersed in the beauty of Exuma. Camping on private beaches. Sailing the beautiful turquoise waters. Spearing (or line catching) fish during the day and Dallas grilling it up for dinner at night with one of his famous marinades. It is such an amazing experience for a group of friends or a family. The kind of trip that all other vacations are measured against for years to come. I can’t wait until our family is complete and our kids are a little older so we can spend a week out on the water together like this.

So now that you know who they are, what they do, and why we were there, let’s get to the point of this blog post.  I was SO excited that it worked out one evening to take these guys out to the beach for a family photo shoot. Usually when they are back in the States it is a very busy, fast-paced trip so I’ve never been able to photograph them as a family here. But I am so glad that it worked out to photograph them at home in Exuma. They live in a beautiful bay off the ocean side of Great Exuma and spend a lot of time at this beach as a family. I was so thrilled to capture them in a place that is so meaningful to them at this stage of life with the boys.

We started out with a few family shots before the sand and water enticed.

There is something extra special about seeing our siblings (in-laws) playing with and loving on their children. To see the happiness and love in this little family….I just adore it! They are all four so perfect together.

The photo shoot was fast….both in terms of amount of time I spent shooting, and fast in terms of the movement of my subjects. There is nothing like photographing two little boys on their turf. Especially when those two little boys are your nephews! I love these sweet little faces!

Joss & Emit play this little game where they run around in the sand and push each other down (all in the name of fun!) or just dive down in the sand on their own. I love this next one because it is such a familiar scene with these two!

I LOVE to see them in action!! Can you hear the giggles?!  I love that the sand is like their very own version of accessorizing their outfits. It wouldn’t be Joss and Emit without a good layer of sand in the mix! They were having so much fun!

And I can definitely say this is my first photo session that has ended like this.  LOOVVEEEEE!!!!! As you can tell I’m pretty smitten with this pair of coppertone babies!

And just for good measure here is an extra dose of cuteness for you. These three cousins had the best time together! Joss and Emit did a great job of inducting Mason into the island crew.

And a little more beauty….

Definitely check out the Out Island Explorers blog for more pictures and underwater videos from Exuma……and start dreaming up your vacation to the out islands!!

We took a few weeks off and went to the Bahamas for a few weeks to visit Jeremy’s family. This was Mason’s first trip there, so he met a lot of family members for the first time. It was wonderfully refreshing, but now I am back to work and booking sessions for the fall. I will share pictures from the Bahamas soon, but for now, here is a darling little pair that I photographed right before we left for vacation. Palmer and Davis are beautiful children with such sweet temperaments. It was a joy to spend the morning with them!