I did a session the other night with little 5-month-old Wil. I have to give his mother, Jennifer, props for really getting out there and doing her homework on photographers in East Tennessee. Wil has traveled a long way to get in front of my camera, half way around the world to be exact. Wil, and his parents actually live in Australia. Jennifer was raised here in East Tennessee but has been living down under for some time now. She planned on spending the summer back here with her parents and knew she wanted to get some portraits of Wil while she was here, and started her search on the internet while back home in Australia. I know a lot of my clients here in Tennessee find me on line, but the thought of someone from that far away finding my website and then choosing me is just too cool. I sometimes forget that it is the World Wide Web, so this was a neat reminder for me. Our session went well, despite Wil’s best effort to be as serious as possible. It took the effort of his mother, grandmother and me to get the few smiles we were able to pry from him. But as much as I like big smiles on cute kids, many of my favorite images are ones where the children give these deep serious looks (as you can tell from the photo of my boys in the header of my blog).  I had a great time with Wil and his family, and hope to have the opportunity to see them again before the head back home! Here are a few of my favorites.

A handful of toes usually brings out the smiles.

Wil’s grandmother designs and makes clothes, including this outfit he is modeling.

Good day mate!

Thanks for coming all this way for a great session Wil.

-Jason

Last week I had the opportunity to take portraits of two week old Bentli. She was a cutie with a head full of hair and kept giving me these sly little grins. When I arrived, she was snuggled up in her bassinet having a good little dream.

She choose to snooze through the first part of the session.

Then woke up and struck a pose or two for me.

Just have to love baby grins and giggles.

The end!

Thanks for stopping by. So much more to come in the coming days so stay tuned! - Jason

Tyler was born yesterday to our good friends Samantha and Travis. I credit Tyler’s big sister, Julia, as the baby that started me down this path of newborn photography some 4 years ago. So, I was thrilled to learn she was going to be having a baby brother, and now he is here. I stopped by the hospital this morning to see the family, and get a few photos of Tyler at just under 24 hours old. I’m looking forward to his official newborn session here in a few weeks, and will be sure to share some of those as well.  Congratulations Samantha, Travis & Julia! He is beautiful (excuse me…handsome).  - Jason

Julia and Tyler checking each other out.

The proud big sister….

Already giving mommy a hand in taking care of Tyler.

And giving Tyler a finger to hold.

Welcome to the world little guy!

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS) is a volunteer organization of more than 5,000 photographers that provides private portrait sessions for families dealing with the loss of a newborn child.

From the NILMDTS website: For families overcome by grief and pain, the idea of photographing their baby may not immediately occur to them. Offering gentle and beautiful photography services in a compassionate and sensitive manner is the heart of this organization. The soft, gentle heirloom photographs of these beautiful babies are an important part of the healing process. They allow families to honor and cherish their babies, and share the spirits of their lives.

I first heard of this organization four years ago, and had intentions of joining. Then Marcia became pregnant with Ryan, and being the overly-emotional guy that I am, I couldn’t imagine doing this type of work with a child on the way. About the time I was comfortable with the idea of doing this again, Cooper was on the way. So finally, this past spring, I joined and went through the training process. I’ve been called several times since then, but always had schedule conflicts that have prevented me from attending a session. Last night I was called again, and this time was able to go.  And it was as difficult as I imagined it would be. The little boy was only 25 weeks gestation. I don’t know all the circumstances of his birth and death, but he was alive for a while, and he was a fighter, but in the end this little angel was called home. Please pray for him and his parents as this is a long tough road they are traveling.  And while this is a tough subject, I believe this is a valuable service this organization provides and the more people that know about it, the more we can help keep the memory of these children with their parents. Take time to stop by the NILMDTS website and learn more. Thanks.

While I always look forward to every session, there are some sessions that I get excited about. And each session with Aiden is one of those. Aiden just turned a year old, and he is one of my Rockstar kids. I have so many favorite images of him from his previous sessions that I just know I’m going to come away with more each time. He always gives me lots of great looks and is just a fun kid to hang out with. His 6 month session was one of my first posts back when my blog was born, and his images were all over my Women’s Today Expo booth, including his newborn portrait on a 40×30 inch canvas. Aiden, along with his mom and dad came up to Knoxville the other day to get some portraits done to mark his first birthday, and once again, this kid didn’t disappoint.  First he hammed it up in my chair, and then took off exploring. It always amazes me how much energy a one year old has, and how much they have to explore. We chased him from one side to the other, and along the way he gave me lots of grins, and some great serious looks as well. I just love the third one down, and hope that you enjoy them all!  - Jason

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to be a second shooter at a wedding that my good friend Wes Hope was shooting. Back in May, Wes fractured both of his elbows in a fall and had a painful recovery. This wedding was his first after he was cleared by his doctor, and I was tagging along to help in case his arms were not able to hang in there for the duration. His arms did make it through the long day so we just had fun working a wedding together. It has been something we have wanted to do for a while, but our schedules never meshed. As a second shooter, it was a lot of fun not being responsible for all the main stuff, allowing me to shoot more detail images and just explore different angles that I usually don’t have time for. So, thanks for the opportunity Wes…hate it came about the way it did though! Here are a few of my favorites from Megan and Darren’s special day. You can see more wedding day photos on Wes’ blog here!

The beautiful bouquet was done by the fabulous Lisa Foster.

Darren makes last minute adjustments to his tie.

Megan during her portrait session with Wes.

A detail of Megan’s beautiful dress.

Megan is looking up a Wes during another portrait.

The view of the church from the balcony during the ceremony.

Megan’s grandmother made the very beautiful, and tasty wedding cake.

Britt Hendrix and Matt Casey of the band Nationwide Coverage. If anyone out there needs a live band for a wedding or party, these guys (and girl) really rock the house. Their music selection was wonderful and they sounded great. They had to be one of the best live bands I’ve heard at a wedding. Check them out!

Darren steals a quick kiss during a late night dance with his bride.

Darren’s parents didn’t let the kids show them up, and held their own on the dance floor.

And of course, any time you get two photographers together, at some point they are going to take a photo of the other one taking a photo of them. Here is Wes in action on the dance floor.

That is all for tonight. I have a bunch of great things to blog about this week, including some new shots of my boys, a family portrait session, and  one-year-old Aiden, so keep checking back.  - Jason

I had a fun shoot the other night that kept me close to home. I did a portrait session with my neighbors Tommy & Lindsey, and their two dogs Tiko and Lobo. Lindsey just found out that Tiko (the bigger one) has a congenital heart defect and the doctors gave her a vague prognosis on his life span. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for years rather than months. In the meantime, Lindsey wanted to get some family portraits of the four of them. Talk about uncooperative, these two really took the cake. Thankfully the dogs were well behaved though. Just kidding T&L. Everybody did great. One of the best things about this shoot for me was the fact that I was able to bring my boys with me. Of course they ran around like crazy hooligans most of the time. Ryan was a big help by constantly yelling the word “treat” which would get the dogs to look my way. Cooper even had to get in on the action at one point, getting right between Lindsey and Tommy and demanded to be picked up. And he is pretty hard to say no to, so he made it in to the photos as well. Here are a few of my favs…

Leave it to a kid to interrupt a romanitc moment….

Thanks for stopping by! - Jason

I hope everybody had a wonderful, and safe, Fourth of July. One of my sessions just before the holiday weekend was with a set of adorable twin girls, Sabrina and Elena. They are cousins to Adam, Mallory and Colby, who were featured in a post from last week. They were down from the Washington, DC area, visiting Gatlinburg over the holiday week, and made the trip up to the UT gardens for our session. It all started out with grins and giggles as the girls would put on these big cheesy smiles everytime their mom and dad would say “I’m going to take your picture!” Appearantly they had been practicing. They soon figured out our tricks and it became a bit harder to coax the smiles out. Lots of silly singing, dancing and baby cheetos helped us get through the rest of the session with a lot of great images. Thanks for making the trip down to East Tennessee girls! Hope to see you again. 

Sabrina (sitting) and Elena.

 Sabrina

I love the mirrored image the girls just fell into when we placed them on this walkway.

If this is not a mischievous look, I don’t know what is. Hopefully mom and dad don’t see this too often.

 Elena enjoying a moment in the spotlight all to herself.

Sabrina and Elena.

I realized that I have had so many other posts on here lately that I have not had any new shots of my kiddos for a couple of weeks. If I had really been thinking about it, I would have done some 4th of July themed photos for you, but alas, a lack of sleep and a ton of work prevented that from happening. So instead, I’ll just show off some really cute Cooper faces that I did one day a week or so ago. We had done a shoot similar to this with Ryan when he was 14 months old. We tried to get some of Cooper around that same age, but did not have much luck. It was from the same session that the photo at the top of the blog came from. He just was not into it that night. So I tried again, and got a lot of great expressions. I had trouble narrowing it down for this little montage. Isn’t he a cute little stinker!

The rest of these are from a day at the park we had earlier this week. This was at a park in Oak Ridge where the Secret City festival was held. When we went, we ran out of time before Ryan was able to play on the playground. Needless to say, tears ensued, followed by a promise to return another day. So we did, and the boys had a blast.

Ryan in the tunnel.

Cooper pauses to decide what obstacle he is going to conquer next.

He choose the tunnel…and kept an eye on me to see if I was following.

The following two fall under the category of “Monkey See Monkey Do”… I had asked Ryan to lay down on the playground surface so I could get a photo of him and the cool patern and colors. Cooper has reached that stage of having to do, or have, whatever Ryan is doing or getting. So as soon as he saw Ryan laying down and posing for me, he runs over and lays down next to big brother. Hey, a two for one deal works for me! I guess I would have been pushing my luck to ask him to roll over and pose like Ryan, so I’ll have to live with the “too tired to play anymore” pose he came up with.

And of course Cooper wanted to climb the wall too…

Finally, Ryan had to show off some shades he found. He is my cool little dude.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Fourth of July!  - Jason

I had a fun session with 7 month old Eden and her parents Mark and Jodi last week. At least it was fun for the adults on hand. We sang, danced and did just about everything under the sun in an effort to get the normally smile-happy Eden to crack a smile that evening.  She is a beautiful little girl, and when that smile would break out, it was the perfect compliment to her very striking eyes.  However, those smiles were few and far in between. Even the Mimi and Pop-Pop re-enforcements didn’t bring out many. Despite the lack of smiles, Miss Eden still gave us some great looks and some great portraits. Here are a few of my favorites.

Look at those eyes! They are beautiful…

Also, a big thank you to Mark, for making a run to Pals for me during the session. For those of you who don’t know what Pal’s is, it is a drive-thru burger joint  based in the Tri-Cities. Since moving to Knoxville from Johnson City, my wife and I have missed Pal’s, especially their sweet tea. I was thrilled to see a Pal’s bilboard as I headed in to Morristown for Eden’s session. After asking Mark about the location, he volunteered to make a run for me. So I enjoyed a wonderfully sweet Pal’s Big Tea on the way home, and a whole gallon to get me through the weekend. Thank you so much Mark!!!

Thanks for stopping by!  - Jason