I Heart Faces: Wedding Bells

Have I ever mentioned my addiction to blogs? I love getting a glimpse into other people's lives through their writing and photos. As much as I love facebook, I think I almost love blogs better. They are like a good book that you just can't put down until you get the whole story, whereas facebook is like a magazine that keeps you up to date with pop culture. Hmmm, I definitely think that could be a new SAT analogy - Blogs : Novels :: Facebook : ___________. :)

While perusing my favorite blogs I ran across a photo contest being judged by Jasmine Star, who is one of my photography idols. The contest is hosted by I Heart Faces, which has now been added to my Google Reader. In normal Jenny fashion, I hesitated entering because I have fear of failure, but then decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it. The stipulations for this week's entry was a wedding photo with a face in it.

I decided to use this photo of the beautiful Shauna because I just love her and I just love this image. If you look carefully enough you can almost hear her laughing. <3

You should head over to www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com to check out the other entries. I love being inspired by so many other great photographers!

-Jenny

Not Your Average Maternity Shoot

My first year at Missouri State University I met 3 girls who became some of my closest college friends. Lindsey, Leah, Jayne and I would get together for breakfast to talk, pray, laugh and encourage each other. People began calling us the B4 girls since there were 4 of us and we always met before the day started....and usually after the day ended, too. :) I can’t express how thankful I am that God brought the 4 of us together. It’s a friendship that I will forever cherish.

As we’ve grown up, we’ve all ended up in different cities with different lives. Lindsey has gotten married and is now getting ready to have her first baby! It wasn’t that long ago that we were prank calling people or sitting together at Potter’s House chatting about what God was doing in our lives. What I love about Lindsey is how she can turn anything into an adventure, including a maternity photo shoot. We had so much fun dancing and trying out the different studio props - sorry, Thomas, I forgot to get a sword pic!

I had to get a pic of our ingenious engineering. :)

Lindsey, I can’t wait to meet Baby Girl Batson. I know you’ll have her dressed in glittery sparkles, and she’ll smell divine. :) You’ll make a great mom!

-Jenny

Drown the Gown

Amazing Girl + Beautiful Wedding Dress + Laughter + JC Nichols Fountain = An Incredible Trash the Dress shoot. Shauna and I met through the Fellows Program, a.k.a. the most grueling year of your life so you can get a Master’s degree and be totally in charge of your own classroom during your first year of teaching. You have to be certifiably insane to even get in.

Luckily, we both survived, and she even got married during the ordeal, which brings us to this shoot. She had a beautiful dress hanging in her closet never to be worn again. So we did what every certifiably insane person does with a beautiful gown and drowned it. We started with a parking garage, made a stop by a mud puddle and ended in a fountain with a lot of spectators. I think Trash the Dress shoots should be called Cherish the Dress shoots because that’s really what we did. We had fun with it and Shauna got to have one last hurrah before putting the dress back to sleep in her closet. Although we still want to hit the Crown Center fountains, so don’t get it preserved, yet!

-Jenny

Reagan

The other day I was browsing Twitter and read a tweet that said “If you get too busy, you’ll drop relationships because relationships are never efficient. They can’t be.” It made me think about how easily I let my friendships evaporate like a puddle on a steamy summer day. It seems like one day they are there and thriving, then the next thing I know it feels awkward for me to call the person to hang out. Luckily, most friendships go into the water cycle and turn into clouds, which then rain down to turn into a puddles again. (Okay, maybe I’m taking the puddle analogy too far.)

Yesterday I spent the morning/afternoon (what would you call the time from 11 o’clock to 2?) with my friend Danielle and her two babies, Eion (the Irish spelling of Owen) and Reagan. It had been far too long since I’d seen or talked to Dani, because as I stated earlier, I let my friendships evaporate. But we were able to catch up with each other today. Not only did we get to chat and have fun, I also captured some incredible images of her kids. After months of trying to conceive, God has blessed Dani with 2 babies in 2 years. Her house is a busy one full of love, laughter and hints of Ireland - did I mention that her husband, Anthony, is Irish? I could listen to him talk all day. :)

Little Miss Reagan was the main focus today. She is officially 1 month and 9 days old. She still has the new baby smell and the cashmere baby skin. I could hold her all day, while listening to Anthony talk.....we’ll plan a day of that, okay, Dani?

This is my favorite shot of the day. Eoin has plans to toughen Reagan up once Mom turns her back. :)

Thanks for letting me get a glimpse of your life!

-Jenny

Family

At the beginning of April my friend Yalena had Hudson. We've been meaning to get pictures of him and finally got around to doing it last Sunday after church. It was kind of a last minute photo shoot at my house, but I love the images we got.

-Jenny

Everybody Dance Now

Anyone that knows me knows that I love to dance. If a song comes on the radio and has any type of beat, I can’t help but “Bust a Move” as my friend Young MC says. I swear my little cousin got her love for dance from me. She is the exact same way. If she hears a dancy song she gets her groove on....come to think of it, Eva doesn’t even need music. Eva became a dancing star in her recital last week. She got to wear 2 adorable costumes and even had a hip hop solo. We couldn’t let the costumes be put away without a good photo shoot. She was more concerned about dancing than smiling, but I kind of like it that way.

-Jenny

Elijah

Elijah is 4. This is not his first appearance on the blog, and I doubt it will be his last. We had a lot of fun wandering the park and capturing some images. There was a miracle moment during our photo shoot. I was able to get him into a tree and stay there by himself. The pics didn’t come out quite like I imagined since you could kind of see the fear in his eyes, but none the less, he climbed a tree which is quite the accomplishment.

Peace Out!

-Jenny