The view from above

So, Sandia Crest can still be a little chilly in April! At least once the sun sets...
Our intent was to meet Lauren and Raul at the crest and then hike to the rock house to shoot the session. Our plans quickly changed when we saw the 5 foot deep piles of snow that covered the trail its entire length... so we hiked as far as possible and the views were amazing.
We had a lot of fun in-spite of some other very loud hikers messin' with our mojo!
And I came away with an odd craving for PEZ...

Alva, faith trust and pixie dust

Alva, came to the studio a few weeks back wanting to do a session for her high school senior year. She had just one suggestion she wanted to be a fairy! Well, even though we had the wings in the studio we had never really put them to use other than with little kids. I also had some globes in the studio that I have been wanting to put to some good use! Well when Alva wanted to be a fairy. We knew we could do something cool. So, here is one of the images from that session.
Alva came with faith and trust and I just added a little of my pixie dust!

Nua Music

We visited my family in the Phoenix area recently. While we were there we photographed our brother Telepeti "Bet" Fanua. He writes and records and produces music. He is always writing and producing but most of the recording has been for other people. We convinced him to start recording so he whipped out this song in the course of a day or two and sent it to us. Take a listen! We are trying to get him to write and record more so if you like it please leave a comment and let us know. Also since this his his freshman attempt recording in this genre, any comments or suggestions on making it better would be greatly appreciated!!
Bet and my mom Cindy-Rae own and operate Nua Music Design. If you need some music for your website, film, or video projects, slide shows, TV spots, or you just need some custom music for any reason, get in touch with them. They can talk with you about what you need and get you set up!!
listen to bets song here:



Here are some images we did of Bet out at Tempe town lake near ASU. Enjoy!!

I'm no professional but... oh yes, in fact I AM a professional and this is some pretty sweet lighting. First person to tell me how I did this image below, what type of light i used and where, I will send them a crisp clean one dolla bill!

This image below also had some magic light, any guesses?

last but not least, under the tracks. This lighting was pretty obvious! and no I didn't use my super wonderful speed lights.

Normally Desiree is shooting with me but for this, I dragged her out of bed to come be my mobile light stand! Bravo Desiree not only is she one of my all time favorite photographers, she is my new favorite light stand!

Just for fun

Just a quick post. We had an Intimate session the other day. At the end of the session I remembered about this mask that we had for a bridal show a number of years ago. I pulled it out and asked if we could get a few pics with the mask. I shot 6 or 7 images and here are two of them, I dig 'em hope you do too!
Yes, these were shot in our studio.

Motley Family

A few weeks ago we had another opportunity to work with some great people and good friends. The Motley family met us out at the petroglyph park and we took the evening to photograph their family before Terrance left on a church mission. He will be gone for two years in Italy teaching about the birth, teachings, atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. It's an amazing thing to see a 19 year old young man have such a dedication and love for the gospel that he will dedicate two years of his life to it. We wish him all the best and hope that his family doesn't miss him too much!
We look forward to when Terrance comes home so we can do another session with the entire family.

Legacy

The wrinkles in Flora's hands were more evident against the young skin of baby Olivia. Though they are separated by 97 years, they are connected through the blood that runs through their veins. Four generations of women, four lives, though each different, are tied together as family.
We had an amazing honor of photographing a four generation family as part of our Legacy session.

We are re-introducing our Legacy Limited Edition Session this month. This is an amazing opportunity for us to capture the relationship we share with one another before it becomes too late.
Desiree will be sharing, in an upcoming post and email, her story of why we are so passionate about these sessions. Her story comes from her regret in not taking the time to bring her grandmother into the studio to get pictures with our grandsons before it was too late.
The Medina family took advantage of the time they still had and we were able to capture their relationship and preserve that for their family forever!

a few holiday sessions

Unfortunately we don't have the time to blog every session. especially over the holidays. We did however do a number of sessions over the holidays and I thought I would at least put a few into a blog... I chose a few that kind of spanned life.

Isaac and Nicole came in for their maternity session. It was just suppose to be a half hour or so session but we spent a little more time with her and tried out some new background that we've been wanting to use!




Akash came to meet his parent this year and we had the opportunity to photograph mommy's maternity pictures and his newborns! I love his fab hair, and have decided he's a pretty good mix of both mom and dad!






We photographed David and Anita's wedding in 2006 they added to the family this year and called us to photograph the changes. Elijah was so serious the entire shoot, it made us laugh because I know we looked like idiots trying to make him laugh, and he was not having it!! Hey we tried and I love the way they turned out.










We have known the hicks family for a number of years. We have watched their kids grow, Desiree and I have even taught a few of their kids Sunday school. Desiree Just got involved in Cub Scouts and will have the opportunity to work with the kids again. This is actually one of my favorite images from 2008. We were just doing light checks and Desiree captured this Norman Rockwell-esque image.


Garilyn & Johnny met us for a location session in the bosque. Garilyn had told me they wanted to do something different, they had done the studio potrait thing and now they wanted to have some fun! Even Zero the gi-normous golden lab got to play. Thanks for letting us play!













Again, we wish we could blog about all the other folks we had the opportunity to work with. There just aren't enough hours in the day...