Ideas from this session go way back to when I first met Carly & Adam.  As I always do, I explain that I love to personalize my clients’ photography with mixing something unique to them with a little creative extract from me.  I call it my “Signature Shot”…thus because a signature is unique to an individual, and I love being able to produce something that will always be unique to them.  I’m going to sound a little corney explaining it this way, but when I mentioned the Signature shot to Adam, I swear I saw a little spark go off in his head.  He told me two things that that instantly sparked something in my head.  Instant ELECTRICITY OF CREATIVE GENIUS! 🙂  …but first let me show you the beginning of our session…which is definitely what built up to the highlight “Signature Shot” at the end of the session.

I should also mention that Carly & Adam are adorable in every way. 🙂

So what if cars want to run us over…or my pretty yellow flower…these were fun and worth it! 🙂

Our session started off at a place of sentimental value to Carly & Adam.  Wait, wait….I should also mention Adam is a total ROMANTIC!  Ladies, I swear you will want your boyfriends and husbands to take notes. …anyway, Adam told me that he surprised Carly with his marriage proposal by taking her out to dinner at Lill’s on 17th (which has a pet-friendly patio).  He planned everything down to bringing the dog and including the owner of the restaurant.  Carly was successfully surprised!  And of course, she accepted.  🙂  So…thus the reason I decided to call the lovely owner of Lill’s and ask permission to photograph them there.  She remembered them right away and told me I was more than welcome.  This restaurant is SUPER FABULOUS, BTW…so if you get a chance, I highly recommend an evening dinner there.

I had to include this one…CRACKS ME UP!  Anyone who’s ever had their portraits taken knows that hand placement is sometimes a chore. “What should I do with my hands?” is a question I get often from my clients.  Adam asked a few times and then it was like the weird hand thing…hands can be so weird. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ok…so this was the second part of our photo adventure….into the signature shot(s) we go.  I had in my head sort of what I wanted for this particular concept photo…but it wasn’t until the night before that I found a perfect spot for it (which Matt and I found at about 11p…in the dark….pitch dark…walking through English Landing…trying not to trip…and freezing in flip flops and shorts).  So here’s what we did….Adam and Matt (the tall dudes) hung twine from the branches and I helped tie little white lanterns to the ends.  Carly was the candle-fairy and started the fires.  And WALA!  We had an AWESOME scene under a lanterned-filled tree overlooking the Missouri River. 

This is one of those FANTASTIC-LIGHT-LOVING mutli shots.  This one consists of 29 shots!!!!  Which tops my standing record of 25.  I just want to say, these take a ridiculous amount of time to put together (especially this one since Photoshop was not smart enough to photo-merge/align for me with the branches and such…all MANUAL, baby!), but when you see it at full resolution in all it’s glory….yeah…it’s totally worth it. 

And then there was this little shot I thought would be cute… umm…yea, it was sort of a fail.  check out the video a the end. But I did really love this one shot..it was right before we all started chuckling and couldn’t stop.

This was the second “Signature shot”.  …I know, “Second one?” you say…  Well, Adam & Carly had given me two different, but equally awesome ideas to spin off from…and I just had to do them both.  …And I want to tell another little short story…Again having the idea in my head, finding the location is always the hard part.  This location was discovered by fate.  The day before the session, I was getting some machine press drilling done into rocks (crazy, I know…but it’s a special DIY wedding decoration I’m doing for my sister-in-law’s wedding)…so there I was leaving the man’s workshop and I get a phone call as I pull out.  I had to stop the car and dig around in my purse for it…by the time I had found it, a train had pulled up over the crossing I needed to go through.  …BUT, I am a patient person…so I wait….and wait…and WAIT…until finally I see the end of the never-ending-long-train…but just as the end gets close, the train slows down and stops…RIGHT OVER MY CROSSING!  Again, trying to be patient, I think “Surely, it will start moving momentarily.”  NOPE.  In fact, while it was stopped, another never-ending train started through going the opposite way.  Nice.  So my tolerance level was breached and I decided to go on a little adventure down the road side I was on in hopes there was an outlet somewhere.  I go down this basically-deserted road and found a new route to the highway…and in the process, I found this spot where there was absolutely NOTHING.  Nothing.  No houses, no buildings, no trees…no nothing.  WALA again!  My concept shot had a location picked out.  I was so excited that I took Matt out there to show him that night (which was right before going to English Landing for the other location hot spot.  Again, it was pitch dark…and let me tell you it was like something out of a scary movie.  It was creepy dark & deserted….but again, well worth going out there for the shot. :)))  Oh…and the idea behind this picture is that Adam told me that something he likes to do with Carly is lay outside and pick out stars and make up stories to tell her about them.  So SWEEET!  AH! So here’s the video as promised.  I keep watching it over and over again.  It was a total fail. …but successful blooper. 🙂