What another amazing year of fall minis and fun families!! Since moving to Pittsburgh almost 10 years ago, I have never regretted my time in the fall leaves. Beautiful fall foliage is never something I saw in Texas so I fully appreciate this gorgeous season each year! This is why I always love offering fall mini sessions each year! This year was an interesting year for foliage. Usually, the leaves change color at peak around the third week in October, so I always schedule my mini sessions for mid to late October. But we had a late year so my first two days of mini sessions had a lot more green leaves than I anticipated, but we still had some orange and red changes. Even thought we didn't have the typical fall foliage, we had some gorgeous sunsets and amazing family portraits! Another reason I love doing fall minis is that this is a time I get to catch up with families each year who book these sessions. Over half of my sessions were repeat clients from previous years and it was so great to catch up and see how much their children and family have grown! 

This year I offered three different dates and locations for fall minis: Schenley Park, Adams Township Community Park and Succop Nature Park. All three locations offer a beautiful backdrop, but very different styles. In Schenley Park we had a gorgeous stone path, iron fencing and the outdoor garden of Phipps Conservatory. Adams Township park offers tall, full trees and an area with an open field and tall grass. This park is quickly becoming one of my favorite locations to photograph families year round! And finally, Succop Nature Park. This is another great location for year round sessions, but they are in the middle of some renovations, so we were limited in the space we could use for backdrops. But nonetheless, it's a great park that offers a variety of backdrop spots including tall trees, trails with tall grass and a couple of different ponds. 

This was another great year of fall minis and I am looking forward to photographing these awesome families again in the future!! 

I've been so lucky to get to know this family over the past few years. Dad, Charlie, works with my husband and their older son, Parker, is the same age as our daughter, so our families became friends through playdates and special events over the years. I was so excited when mom, Angela, asked me to photograph their family and baby Winston's first birthday photos! 

The morning of their session, it was dark, cold and rainy but we powered though! The boys did so well in spite of the chilly, wet weather. We started with some family photos and got some of the best smiles from sweet Parker!! He was so cute with his baby brother and I just loved watching him hug and love all over his baby brother! Mom had two outfits for Winston, one for family photos and one for his first birthday photos. So, I made sure to get some individual images of him in each of his outfits, especially his super adorable ONE tshirt, bowtie and suspenders! He was just so super cute and was so excited to try walking around, holding on to his mama's fingers. He was definitely a mover! 

The big challenge about being a natural light photographer is the ability to be flexible. Especially when planning an outdoor photo session, I feel like I am sometimes a weather meteorologist, keeping track of the forecast, watching the radar and tracking storms. But am always grateful of my families who are flexible and willing to push through to capture a session before or after a storm comes through. And this was definitely the case with baby Winston's birthday session!

What I really love about newborn sessions, is that I get to utilize both posed and lifestyle photography styles within a session. Lifestyle photography is a perfect way to showcase connection and the personal relationships within a family. Bringing a baby into the world is such a life changing event, I especially love utilizing lifestyle photography as a way to capture this new relationship and amazing addition to their family! When mom contacted me, she was originally interested in a lifestyle session, but later decided she also wanted to take some posed newborn photos with blankets and props. She really liked the idea of also having photos traditional posed photos of Blaire, using ivory, cream, blush pink and mint color accents. So, once baby Blaire arrived, we settled on the final details for her session and planned set ups for the posed photos.

Their home was beautifully decorated for the fall season, with perfect fall themed decor and accents to compliment this fall baby's newborn session. We started with family photos in their living room before moving up to the nursery. Dad worked really hard on creating a shiplap wall in the nursery. A beautiful accent wall for such a gorgeous baby nursery! They included delicate, floral designs in the nursery for a perfect room that Blaire can spend her childhood!

For her posed newborn photos, we selected delicate and feminine details to include in the set ups. Blaire preferred to be wrapped or covered, so I used wraps to accent the backdrop blanket and headband choices Mom made for the sets. We started with a mint fur blanket, then moved on to a purple wrap with floral headband and finished with a white lace backdrop, pink wrap and delicate pink floral tieback headband. 

I feel very lucky to be able to capture newborn photos for families because babies change so much, so quickly that even just weeks or months later, these sweet babes look totally different! When I follow up with parents and they look back on their newborn photos, they always comment on how little their little one was at the time of their newborn session or just how much they've changed since that time. And this is why it's so important to schedule a newborn session because they are only this tiny for such a short period of time!