The close of a calendar year is always bittersweet for me. This year is no different. Looking back I’ve enjoyed documenting the growth of families, the accomplishment of a young lady, and the celebration of love – both young and old. I’ve met some amazing people, many of which I look forward to seeing again over the years. Thank you to all my clients for making this year special and inviting me out to document your life.

Now let’s chat about 2012. Not toooooooo many changes with the business side of my life, but personally there are some BIG changes. For starters, this April we are expecting a new addition to our family! I’m pretty sure my daughter hasn’t fully grasped what this means quite yet, but she’s pretty excited to be a big sister. So of course this means I will be on maternity leave for most of April and all of May. If you’re planning to book a session please contact me before April. After that, openings will be very limited. I will also book a few weddings this summer, but not nearly as many as this last year. In fact, July is already booked, with only a couple of openings in June and August. Then…in September my little family of four, will be making a temporary move all the way across the country to Augusta, Georgia so my husband can finish some school. Considering I’ve lived in Nevada my entire life, I’m both excited and completely terrified about this move. In the very slim chance someone from Georgia is reading this or knows someone out there, don’t be afraid to shoot me a message. I won’t know a single soul. Eeek!

This will be my last post of the year, so I’m leaving you with my top most cherished images from this last year. Thank you all for your support. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and I wish you a happy new year!

Brian and Sarah were a complete delight to work with. So much so that I am going to share pretty much their entire session with you. I don’t know if it was the light, the locations we chose, or the connection these two had, but I have so many personal favorite from this particular evening. Plus, who doesn’t love giant bear heads in the middle of a park!

I seem to have a thing for squeezing in photo sessions just before my clients skip out of town. Although their wedding is not for another year, we didn’t want to take the chance of not being able to hang out for an afternoon. So, with a packed car and two very excited dogs, we made our way to Chimney Beach to make some portraits. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Sometimes when my husband and I have nothing better to do we’ll hop in the car and just go for a drive. Most of the time we can expect good conversation to take place. On rare occasions we stumble upon magical places. Back in March we discovered this old orchard and of course from that point on I could think of nothing else but photographing a beautiful couple there. Once the trees started blooming in Reno, I paid a visit to that orchard about every other week to see if those apple trees would follow suit. Nothing. I began to think they were dead. Until last week when I stopped by and found them bursting with blossoms. It was all falling into place. Now if I could only talk Mother Nature into providing some warm golden light. Considering I haven’t had much luck in that department I wasn’t going to hold my breath, but we somehow managed to pull it off!

Joe & Amanda asked for traditional Nevada landscape for their engagement session. Which I’m sure when you read that each one of you will think something entirely different. Luckily we all had the same thing in mind and they were game for just about anything. I’m incredibly excited for their wedding next month and knowing these two they will turn out some pretty awesome details. They’ve already filled me in on a couple of their ideas!

In one of their images they used a chalk board and wrote a little note that for obvious reasons reminded me of this song from James Yuill – This Sweet Love. It’s been a song that I’ve had on repeat for the past few months – it’s that good!

I think Jessica and I would be better off communicating the old fashion way -snail mail! Between missed emails and phone calls this session almost didn’t happen. Thankfully it worked out in the end. These two are such a wonderful couple and will be tying the knot in a little over a month! And I’ll bet you’ll never guess how these two met. I’ll give you a hint: it has to do with salsa, and not the kind you eat!