Families

  • Over the holidays last year, my office assistant, Rita’s, son, Ricky, built bottle cap snowmen and raised $2,300 for a wonderful local family.  You see, Shawna Huckaby’s eldest son, Ben, was diagnosed with cancer in July of last year and they have spent the best part of the last year undergoing treatments to fight it. Ben was supposed to be in Ricky’s class but has been unable to attend school due to the possibility of contracting a virus. This is a small community and when someone is in-need, people rally together. For my part, I offered the family a shoot last…

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  • My friends, Jill and Mike, had a baby! Jill has been a friend of mine for a long time and so I was honored to get to photograph her and her daughters, Piper (born on December 29) and Meadow, 8, at my home this month. It’s so wonderful to look at the images after a newborn session like this and fall in love with them. Although newborns can be some of the most fun subjects to shoot – the smell, the tiny hands, the sweet expressions – they can also be some of the most tricky. Just when you get…

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  • I’ve been taking photographs since the age of 10 starting with a 110 instamatic camera, 24 photos per roll. In my post college and San Francisco days I embarked into a career as a recording engineering for about 13 years, even built a fairly successful one, Dance Home Sound, in an empty loft in Emeryville. I remember asking my Dad if he would loan me some money for the studio- to help get it going. Certainly, if he had been open to this idea (which he wasn’t), it would have required some sort of chart and analysis on what the…

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  • The Jamali family have been friends and clients of mine now for almost a decade. Just about every year I have known them, we have worked together for an annual family shoot. I also got the honor of photographing their son, Kian’s, birth. So, you could say I know a thing or two about Kian and his family. Like most boys, Kian is a pot of boiling energy, just itching for a release and so he always challenges me to get the best out of him at every shoot. Giving him an outlet for all that energy seems to be…

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  • The Anderson Family have been clients of mine since 2006. Mom, Jess, works with another of my friends, Ross Hayashi, who also happens to be one of my photo tech-geeks (I’m confident he’ll find this a compliment, by the way.) For instance, when I needed help coming up with a more air-tight back-up solution for my business, I called Ross. All of this made it extra fun to surprise Jess and her family by bringing Ross along as my assistant for their recent session at a private home in Cameron Park. Jessica’s mom and Bret’s parents were able to join…

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  • I met the Van der Vijver family back in 2011 when I photographed a 10th anniversary vow renewal for family friends, Kate and Pete Barba, on the Van der Vijver estate. (You can see the blog post for that session here.) This time it was the Van der Vijver family’s turn! We met at 8:30am on the grounds of Robert and Missy’s home in Fairplay, California, where I got to photograph them and their gorgeous son, Sasha. Sasha was such a fun little boy to hang out with: we got to throw and run through fallen leaves and he has…

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  • Graydon is one year old and his light-up-a-room charm has only grown along with his little legs and chubby cheeks. You may remember this playful little fellow from the many other opportunities I have been lucky to capture his smile: birth | newborn | 4 months old | 8 months old I just love this family. Graydon’s parents Tom and Bethany came to me as wedding clients and I love seeing the result of their love in the way they are such caring, adoring, and kind parents to Graydon. They’re also super easy-going which makes them, and Graydon, easy and fun…

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  • Here comes Fall, with it’s golden meadows, dreamy light, and warm palettes. A great time to catch up with the Bila family, who I first photographed back in 2009 (click here to see their session.) Back then their son, Banyon, was just 6 months old but now there is a fourth member to the family, little Avila, and it was time to update the family portraits. Minda and Tyler not only have a new daughter, they also have a new home (and it’s gorgeous — who doesn’t love a turret?) and so we met up where they live in El…

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  • A stunning, private camp in the high Sierras and an amazingly warm and welcoming family – what a dream session! The Veerkamp family and I have been colliding since 2009, when I photographed Gretchen and Matt’s wedding. Since then, the happy couple have been in the wedding party for a few of the weddings I have photographed, and then I ran into Lori and Doug (Matt’s parents) at another wedding last year. Finally, when I saw Lori and her mom at the movies recently, she decided it was fated and scheduled an extended family session at their property up-country. This…

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