I love this image. I've been photographing these girls for years and they are as sweet as they look. I don't have a big sister but I am a big sister. I was the first born and my brother and I are about 3 years apart. I never really thought about birth order until I had my second son. Even as a tiny baby, he would look at his older brother with complete love. He adored him and would smile when he saw him. For the first child there was a life without a sibling. For the little sisters and brothers, life was always shared.

Finnian is fiercely protective over all of us and especially his big brother. I'll never forget the day he raced across a playground at Disney and, with a swift one arm move, grabbed a big kid off of Sayer who was pushing him down. I wish Sayer could see what I see. The looks of admiration and the tender hurt look when Sayer is insensitive or critical. When I see that, I think back to my days as the big sister to a younger little brother and I wonder if I was sensitive or nurturing. Did I make him feel bad? I wish I knew then what I know and see so clearly now.

On this Love Thursday, I am loving my brother and appreciating him in new ways. I am loving my sons. I'm hoping that my boys will be close friends as adults and that Sayer will one day appreciate how much his little brother loves him.

Happy Love Thursday my friends!

Don't forget about the coupon code too for those of you who didn't win. The code is farrahrocks and is valid until May 31st. Her online shop is here. I know I'm going to be taking advantage of it! Many thanks to everyone who visited and commented on the post. Your feedback and energy makes The Monday Lesson so much fun for me!

As always, please post your images in our Monday Lesson Flickr pool. If you have any suggestions for future lessons please let me know!

Brittany- please contact me about your prize! (farrah@farrahbraniff.com)

To see Annie's work check out here on Flickr and here on her site. Annie also has a collection of textures that are available on her site here. I know I'll be picking myself up one of the texture sets and the action sets too. Annie has shared a discount code with us today that gives us 15% off anything in her store from now until May 31st! The code is farrahrocks.

Here is a video tutorial that Annie made for us, enjoy!

Her are some examples of how Annie incorporates texture into her images.

I can't wait to see all of their images. I started a new Flickr group for my classes and they will be posting images there over the next week or so. As for me, I had a blast just shooting for the sake of shooting. I didn't have any preconceived ideas about what I was going to shoot. I just played. I also had a great time processing the images. I made of bunch of diptychs that I think turned out pretty cool!

The skills we worked on were freezing and blurring motion. All of the fountains in downtown are perfect for that! We also worked on depth of field (making the background and foreground blurry or sharp). All of these topics are covered in my intro class. If you are interested in taking a class, the next intro one is open for registration here. The next intermediate class is online here. We'll be doing more walks too and I'll post info on that as soon as I have it.

That's all from me for now. I can't wait to see what everyone else came up with. Thanks fellow walkers for a great day!

It's a toss up this week between the close up from this session and this full body one. I think it's the full body one though. Look how sweet she is! Do you love her little headband? It's brand new and I just love it. This was the first time I used it in a session. I've also been playing around with the hand painted look. What do you think?

I'm looking forward to seeing your favorite shots form the week. Make sure and post links to them in the comments below or upload them to our Flickr Favorite Shot Friday pool. It's super easy if you have a Flickr account (go start your free one today and submit images to our pool!).

Have a great weekend my friends!