Family pictures minus the cat, I don't think she'd enjoy it....

Long before Winston was even born I knew we'd be getting pictures in the fall taken to document our new addition. Once he was born I waited a whole 2 weeks before I starting finding photographers I liked. Not an easy task for someone who is incredibly picky with photographers, but I whittled down my list. My list then turned into none when the lady I really wanted was going to charge me $700 for an hour's worth of pictures and the CD with all the pictures. What a crazy head, I didn't ask her to frame every picture in gold! Complaining my predicament with a co-worker she mentioned her friend does photography and I took a look. She hadn't done a lot of dogs, but had done a lot of children which really equal in difficulty to capture in film (or memory card) and I really liked her look so I booked her and got everything ready for the day.

I wasn't expecting the pictures for a few weeks so I was pretty excited this morning when she posted a few on my facebook wall. So you get the post a couple weeks early!

We got to our shooting location (3900 So. at Jordan River Parkway) and after setting up for our first shot I was wondering if I was absolutely crazy for wanting pictures with 3 dogs. Things got better though, each dog took their turn for solos and went off leash. Enna and Makoa were not pleased that I wasn't letting them run around and smell, but they behaved well enough.

And after my sister took two of the dogs I was holding and helped me get down an extremely steep hill in my 5" wedged high heels (bad shoe choice on my part, by I didn't want to have to roll up my pant legs and I haven't hemmed them yet) so I didn't break my neck we tried some good action shots.

Mary and I stood at the end of one lane and John and Natalie, the photographer, at the other and called the dogs back and forth. Enna and Makoa are a lot faster than Winston so we had to try to slow them down. Mary and I held Enna and Makoa back while John called Winston. After a few good "comes" Winston got bored and found a fantastic stick behind where I was crouching. John called him name again and when Winston turned to look he smacked me in the face with the stick. He gave me a pretty good welt and Mary thought it was pretty funny. After the shock wore off I gave a few chuckles about it too. I'm sure in the hundreds of pictures taken there has to be one with all 3 dogs together, but I didn't get any in the sneak peak she sent.

We also got a few group shots done, the pictures make it look like an easy task, but that's all a lie. John and I had to man handle the dogs to turn and sit in front of us facing the camera since you usually teach dogs to sit facing you. We'd literally grab the dogs rear end, turn them around and push their butts to the ground then smile big while me sister dance, shook keys and clapped behind Natalie so the dogs would look at her. It really got a lot of laughs out of the group.

Everyone came home muddy and tired, but I felt very accomplished. I'm am extremely pleased with the pictures so far. She did more of the dogs and less of us which is exactly what I wanted. I can't wait to see the rest of the pictures. She took close to 1,000 so I'm expecting that it's going to be hard to pick out my favorites to frame and for Christmas cards. Natalie doesn't have a website but once I'm able I'll put up her facebook link. She's fantastic and was laying in the mud to get some of the shots. She also didn't care when Winston remembered she was there and had to go say hello for the hundredth time and jumped on her head and slimmed her camera. She just laughed and gave him a few loving pats until one of us could pull him off.  She was very patient with all the dogs and super sweet. I'll be using her again especially since her price is so reasonable, $125 for an hour (that's more than enough time, just look how many pictures we got. Of course some of those wont be usable, but i'm sure the number will still be in the hundreds when we get our disk) and a CD with all the pictures and rights to the pictures.

P.S. I'm not sure what the deal is, maybe because I copied these from facebook or it's just the computer screen I'm looking at, but the pictures seem very washed out. They're really not...