Christmas Blessings!

Wishing you and your family a joyous Christmas! May your heart be filled with happiness and cheerfulness and your days blessed with the company of good friends and family. A special thanks to all the wonderful people who have made 2010 an amazing year for Circle of Life Photography~ I feel continually blessed by each one of you! Praying for God's continued guidance and direction in the year to come~ may I honor and glorify Him in the images of his people!

Giving Back :: Celebrating Adoption {Fall 2010}

Hello again! No, I did not drop off the face of the earth, but blogging has taken a back seat to portrait sessions, editing, ordering and family life the past month. I had no idea what I was in store for this fall! But I loved every minute. Some days I feel a little like I went back to college (I LOVED college!) ~ the late, late nights, lots of coffee to keep going, lots of work interspersed with fun times with family & friends over the holidays. Now I am SOOO ready for a winter break, but can start to resume posting some of the fabulous sessions from the fall.

The first one up is the adorable Miss A~ this was a giving back/baby portrait session to celebrate her recent adoption. I always love finding out the stories of families who are created through adoption~ her mommy & daddy, Lisa and James, were thrilled to find out they were going to be parents as they received a call saying a baby girl had been matched with them~ and she had not only arrived, but was waiting for them at the hospital! I can't imagine the scramble to get everything needed for a newborn and literally transform a room into a nursery overnight. This little sweetheart has been a blessing and a little lovebug for her family, with a smile that is so endearing. We met at a local park on a beautiful fall morning~ here are a few from her session! Enjoy!

Children's Portrait Session :: The Dinse Sisters

The end of October! How these days are just flying by. I don't know how the rest of you are doing but around here, it feels a bit chaotic this time of year with all the kids' activities, school projects, sports, church, fall parties and, well, those boring necessary things like grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning. I have been photographing some amazing kids and parents lately and I wish I could get them on the blog ten times faster!

Here are a few of my favorites from a recent session with the Dinse family. If you know this beautiful family, chances are good you love them too~ they are funny, kind, compassionate and thoughtful. Dan owns Dinse Dental Care in East Petersburg and Ling works as a personal and marriage counselor. Over the past couple of years around Christmas and Easter, Ling has organized several pajama, coat and clothing and toy drives to share with Harrisburg BIC church families and nothing stops her group from getting the items to the kids~ last year's event took place during a huge snowstorm! Thankfully for the girls' portrait session, we didn't have any weather concerns~ it turned out to be a beautiful fall day and we had fun walking around their property and the Masonic Village gardens. Enjoy the images, the girls did a fabulous job (and their parents behaved pretty well too!)

Children's Portrait Session :: Autumn in Hershey

This fall I have had fun with some of the very first families I photographed two years ago~ it's so neat to look back and see not only how the kids have grown and changed, but the improvements in my photography skills as well! This family is dear to me~ Kathy and I have been friends since grade school and we have been blessed with an amazing group of girlfriends. She was my assistant for the fall mini-portrait sessions and she was so helpful that I think I will have to hire her next year for extended family portraits!

Her husband Chris, is also special to us too, not only as a friend, but as our family's dentist! He owns Sicher Family Dentistry in Hershey, PA and he and his staff do an amazing job (slightly embarrassed to admit this, I am not a big fan of dental visits, but every six months I still hear my mother's voice in my head saying I need to go. My kids ask all the time when it's their turn to go~ the entire staff is awesome!) Kathy & Chris's two beautiful kids did an amazing job and have the sparkliest (is that a word?) blue eyes ever. Here are a few from our session together~ I had fun, and hope you did too!

Children's Portrait Session :: Sweet Sisters

When Carrie called to ask about a children's portrait session for her two young daughters, I could understand her hesitancy about whether the girls would cooperate~ her older daughter, at age 4, can be shy, and the baby is 21 months and full of *energy*... enough said! So we picked a location just minutes from their home in a beautiful gardens owned by Jim Showers of Elizabethtown~ one of my favorite locations to photograph~ to let the girls run around and have fun. It was one of those days when the older didn't nap and the younger didn't want to stop for anything, but despite the odds, there were no melt downs and I think we came away with a few special images... so I decided (with the beautiful lighting and the girls' classic look), to try something new with adding textures to some of the images. I think it gives them more of a storybook feel, and for my first try, I'm pretty happy with the results!

At these ages, it's tough to get images of them sitting in the same spot and smiling, so I think images of 'who they are right now'~ running, moving, (i.e. being kids!) are the ones their family will look back on and love in the years to come when they've grown out of these stages. The first three images of the sneak peek are traditional finish and the rest are with the artistic texture finish~ what do you think?

little charmer


sweet big sister


Tim & Carrie~ beautiful couple!

...and the images below are the ones with added texture:

Feel free to post a love note for the family below~ thanks!

Children's Portrait Session :: Definitely Unique

I love this family. I bet if you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you are probably thinking "she says that about every family!" That is probably true, but I can't help it! Our family has been truly blessed with incredible friends, and amazing people who start out as clients and become our friends. As I spend time getting to know them and learn the stories of their lives, they all just melt my heart into a big mush of goo. And as I work on their images, I am thinking 'wow, if I adore them this much, imagine how much God loves each of one of these precious people??'

The short story with this family is that Tony and Wendy graduated with my husband and we have loosely kept in touch over the years through the adoptions and births of our children. We had originally planned this portrait session for May, but changed plans once they found their dream property and rescheduled for the fall~ and am I ever glad we did! Tony is a professional chef, and mom Wendy is a nurse by day and blogger by night with her family's heart-warming blog, Relatively Unique (if you enjoy family stories, decorating and repurposing items, and/or cooking, you absolutely need to check it out!)

They have three amazing kids who were simply a dream to work with for their children's portrait session. As a family they are caring, down-to-earth, and a little bit silly. Add in a beautiful fall evening with yummy sunset lighting and, there you have it~ the perfect recipe for amazing images to fall in love with~ so much so that I had a really hard time choosing! So here are a few of my faves~ more than I normally post, but can you blame me??

Extended Family Portraits :: The Messicks'

Another amazing family on the blog! I photograph extended family sessions only two or three times each year and the Messick's is the first extended family session I have photographed involving a two year old boy. Let's just say that I typically spend an entire hour and a half chasing toddlers for a baby portrait session, and the result is mostly action shots, so I was thrilled to get a few images with this little guy holding still and looking in the direction of the camera (well, at least his head is still, but his hands are moving!)

Ken and Marian are blessed with a wonderful family including three sons, two daughters-in-law and one adorable grandson. Ken is CEO of the family-owned Messick's Farm Equipment store in Elizabethtown, and works with two of his three sons. Marian has a talent for creating a beautiful artistic piece each week with flowers and natural materials for the front of the sanctuary at Elizabethtown BIC church. I suppose I should not have favorites, but I am a little biased toward a certain member of this family~ yes, it's their grandson Garrett, since I get to hang with him in church every other week and build block towers :-) Here's a peek at some of my faves~ I especially liked the couples' images and the series with Garrett and his toy!

Ken & Marian


Neil & Kristin and...


their little-bundle-of-energy, Garrett


Kevin & Janelle


Lucas


love this one of mommy & son:



Garrett just LOVED his Curious George pop-up! lots of giggles:




In a two-year-old's world, having a couch outside was just plain funny~ and although
we had wrapped up the session, I had to get the camera out again just for this:


Thanks again for a fun day!

Baby Portrait Session :: Afternoon in the Park

It's hard to believe that a little over a year ago I photographed this sweet little girl as a newborn~ she's back for baby portraits, but, as is the case with all toddlers, this was not a laid-back and sit-around kind of session... at 15 months old, this girl stays on the move! We chased, ran (in circles, at times), climbed, slid, picked up acorns, and occasionally~ for just a moment stopped. but then~ off again!

I was especially excited about these images because Baby K's daddy & mommy, Matt and Kristy, love black and white images; as I was going through the session I realized how many of the images just lent themselves to a black & white conversion~ it doesn't work with every person or every session, but in this case, it works! I love the texture of the sweater that this little one's Nanny knit just for her (and don't worry Nanny, there will be color options :-) Here are a few of my faves:

babyGap casting call perhaps?