Meet Kirstie and Brodie! This is my favorite shot for today. I have my favorite and an alternate too! These twins are so funny and lively. They are a joy to photograph and the parents are fantastic too. Their favorite images are the big personality ones so we get along perfectly.

One of the questions that I get most often is what equipment I use when I photograph my kids on vacation. I keep it super simple...the key thing here is "vacation". I don't want to miss the experience of the moment in an effort to document it. For this trip I brought my Lumix point-and-shoot (and never used it) and my Canon 5D Mark II with one lens (Canon's 24-70mm F2.8). I did not bring a flash. My choice of equipment (no flash and no point and shoot) did mean a few lost opportunities but I enjoyed having a little time to myself without worrying about the perfect shot. You'll have to visit my Facebook page to see the iphone shots of my Princess Leia costume though. I meant to bring the P&S but forgot (and regretted it actually because our costumes were awesome!).

A few liner notes on the shots...
1. The shot of the castle through the trees is from the top of the treehouse at the Magic Kingdom in case you were curious.
2. The dark shot with the lasers in the background is from the Buzz LIghtyear ride. That was the girl behind us.
3. There are tons of shots from our character breakfast with Winnie the Pooh. Finnian was beside himself he was so thrilled. You'll see how he was just perched on his seat waiting for them to come to him and then he would pounce and hug!
4. Finnian loves the Cinderella story so we waited in line to meet her but he was so shy he wouldn't even look at her! He told me later that she was just too pretty.
5. The last two shots are from our balcony at The Polynesian.
6. The amazing tree is called The Tree of Life and is at Disney's Animal Kingdom. It's an incredible piece of work. I asked one of the Disney employees how long it took to build it. He said "well, trees take many, many years to grow and that one was no exception".

A few words of advice...
1. It was hot, bring a backpack to haul your camera stuff in so you don't start to hate lugging it around. I carried mine in a little purse/backpack and it was easy.
2. If you plan to get on the water rides, ditch the big camera and bring a point-and-shoot and a ziploc.
3. The fireworks shows are amazing! Crank up the ISO on your camera and turn off your flash for the best shots. 

Anyway, here are some of my favorite images from our trip. Hope you enjoy them!

You know how it is, sometimes an image just speaks to you. It may not be the best technical image or the "perfect shot" but you just love it. I thought it would be fun to start a new thing on the blog where I post my favorite shot of the week. The thing that would make this even more fun would be for you guys to show me your favorite shots too!

So, who is willing to play? Here's my idea...we all post our favorite shot by including links to our image in the comments section that is underneath my post. You can include a link to your Flickr, blog, website or whatever. The shots don't have to be perfect - just a shot that you love and you tell us why.

Why play? My hope is that we can all inspire each other with different images and why we love them. Maybe it'll even get us all shooting more!

And then after we play? Well, I was also thinking that I could randomly pick a winner from the people who comment and post images and give away some fun swag. Do you guys have any thoughts on that part? I would love to hear any and all suggestions about this idea in so please comment and let me know how to make it fun for you guys. What would encourage you to participate?

I'll start things off. My favorite shot this week is this image of Milla. I have been photographing Milla since before she was born (in her Mommy's tummy for the first session). Her Mom and Dad are a joy to work with and Milla is, as you can see, just precious. I sat down today with her parents and this shot was our group favorite. I just love her little hand tucked up by her face, her tiny toes and that smile. I also love the color harmony and the simplicity.

I'm excited to hear what you all think about my idea. Let me know!

My poor blog has been ignored over the past couple of weeks. We have been busy bees at the studio. Halloween came and went in a flash and now we're working hard on holiday cards and family portraits.

Just before Halloween, Lily and her little sister Abby came in for holiday card images and Lily's 4 year old portrait. I'm going to hold back on showing you the girl's holiday images so Elizabeth's holiday card can be a fun surprise for everyone but I could not resist sharing little Miss Lily with you.

She brought her Halloween costume too, which I love! Kids in their costumes is a favorite of mine. It's just too cute. Lily had fun showing me how a fairy flies through the forest and uses her wand. She also pretended to be a flower, which meant she balled up on the floor and slowly came up, unfurled her arms leaves and bloomed. It was very sweet.

I've got a lot of images to blog from the last few weeks. We took a family vacation to Disneyworld for Halloween so that'll be up next!