Posts in Category: A Day In The Life
2019 highlights
If this is our 2019 Year in Review, then little Riley above has perfectly summed up how we felt at the end of the year. Contented and tired! We did it! I wanted to share the visual breadth and depth of what our year looked like, but that would be volumes… volumes of images, stories, back-stories, comedy segments, prayers and all of the rewards that come with this gig. It’s a full life.
So instead: enjoy some of the highlights. There are plenty more, but here’s a sampling of people and places we had in our lens last year!
Above: on the commercial side – we took headshots for Krusch Divorce Resolution – a wonderful firm out of Charlotte. The cozy plaid, attic bedroom was captured to promote a real estate project from Kathryn Lily of Kathryn Lily Interiors in Cornelius.
Below: Spring in the orchard, included prom portraits, the Overby family’s return to the orchard, baby Ava checking herself out in a mirror, the expecting Orozco family of 3 about-to-be-4, and finally little Miss Paisley in a fabulous tulle skirt. The blooms and trees provided the backdrop, but the people made the experience and results perfect.
Late spring, early summer is the mix we always hope it will be.
Below: senior portraits (gorgeous McKenzie on the left), several delicious babies, kids and pets, some commercial work for the Wilkesboro Town Council and, of course, Merlefest!!
Above: more commercial photo sessions for MBI Builders, Wilkes Community College’s new Culinary Building, architectural exteriors and real estate projects, the chef and owner of the elegant Craft Bistro in West Jefferson, and a special trip to the Touch-a-Truck event.
Below: more prom images of high school besties dressed “to the nines,” and the full-on summer portraits of families with new babies, those expecting babies, family reunions at mountain homes, and a couple getting married at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.
And finally, a round-up of faces we’ve known and watch grow for years, some very, very new faces, a celebration of high school and college grads and a destination wedding at The Biltmore Estate.
It seems fitting to start and end with babies. They are our symbols of hope, our reminder that life keeps moving no matter what and, let’s face it, they are cute as heck. Again, we want to thank the families and businesses we worked with last year. What a blast and a privilege and your commitment to working with professional does not go unnoticed. We’re looking forward to seeing all the highlights that 2020 is going to bring.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Day in the Life – Finley & His KeKe at the Pumpkin Patch
Day in the life portraits are where the future belongs for some professional photographers if you ask me. I love these kinds of sessions. We’ll always need formal family and baby portraits, orchestrated weddings and milestone celebrations, but the juice for me these days is found in capturing the every day little moments. I love watching a day unfold around even mundane activities and allowing families to be present in those moments while I do the work of capturing them.
I carry my smart phone with “crazy awesome high end” camera too, but for this particular adventure, I brought what I call my real camera. I’m not throwing shade, ya’ll, but sometimes you need the right tool for the job.
My almost 2 year old loves nothing more than to be outside with his grandmother KeKe (my amazing mom) and if you add tractors, the ability to run and play – this kid is living his best life. On this particular day, when we visited Howard’s Family Farm in Harmony NC, he most definitely was in heaven.
Moms out there will understand how fortunate you feel when you’ve found a group of other Moms who’ll encourage, support, and entertain each other. I am happy to have such a group. We have a bible study together and outings such as this one with our kids. I loved being able to shoot specific images of them with their kids as well.
What do you get when you have a handful of towhead babies and fields of green? A documentary photographer’s dream. This day we had great weather and the cutest subjects.
Together with our kids, we had a hay ride, picked pumpkins from the pumpkin patch, played in a ball pit and the largest sand box Finley has ever seen. They all slid down a combine slide and rode in a cow train. I was able to capture completely candid moments, a whole day of adventure, and all of us doing life together.
My Mom, Finley and myself ended the day by sitting next to a field of Zinnias sharing a picnic lunch of ham sandwiches, tomatoes, goldfish and apple slices. I don’t care if it’s PB&J or salmon en croute, everything tastes better eaten outside.
I have already printed photos of Finley with my Mom that I will treasure as well as photos of Finley just being Finley. That day is already in the history books, but I have proof of it. I have proof of three generations of us exploring, eating and laughing, images that will remind me of what Finley was like just before he turned two, and I have images of our time with friends, that carefree day when our little tribe wandered around together celebrating each other and simple pleasures.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Day in the Life Photography
The longer that I’m in this business of being a photographer, the more I’m interested in the non-posed sides of life. In fact, while I still love portraiture that is structured and more formal, documentary style photography that allows the mundane, the small moments and the realities of life to shine through has captured me.
If you follow Pixels on Instagram, you’ll know that I share our work and our lives in a kind of story mesh that feels authentic to me, and that is by choice. It’s silly, it’s real and it’s who we are as we do what we do as professionals. And, of course, it celebrates our clients and friends and our adventures too. Posting allows for more sharing of our lives and values.
A summer family picnic or images of Finley playing or asleep or dressing up are current faves. We’re just doing our thing and other families deserve this to, but with an eye to quality. So for today’s blog, I thought I’d share a few of the images I’ve taken that are favorites in this area of people just “doing life.”
Nothing would make me happier as a photographer and as a human than to be asked to do more day in the life images. I’m not talking about the stuff you get with a cell phone, or even the stuff you get with an expensive camera and an untrained eye. A professional photographer brings more to the table than her tools. I bring the experience of all my work, my trained eye and a quality that snapshot photographers cannot.
Day in life portraits have another equally important advantage: they let you be present. We’re busy and over-scheduled so being present for our kids and partners is a tall enough order. And people may sometimes resent being asked to be the designated photographer during a day out, a family reunion or holiday season. It falls to someone and that someone is missing from nearly EVERY photo. Having a photographer document the day allows you to focus on what’s happening instead of on composing images, trying to get people’s “good side” or chasing the day light.
I hope more families will consider day in the life photo shoots. You should enjoy the moment and let us capture the memories.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Andrews family in-home christmas
Documentary style, in-home portraits are a trend we’ve been working in and loving for a few years now and Christmas 2018 gave us the opportunity to be at it again. The Andrews are a crew we love and for 2018, they wanted their holiday portraits to be chill, and most especially, in their new home in Purlear, North Carolina.
We’ve had the pleasure of taking portraits for these guys several times before. The arrival of their second child, Jaxon, gave us the chance to spend time with them, get to know older brother Luke and capture several baby milestones with them – including his 6 month and first birthday.
Ryan told me that during this shoot, it felt like Christmas morning a bit. The boys were in their pjs, they baked cookies with mom, read new Christmas books with dad and dragged Ryan from room to room, showing them their new home. And of course, they talked dinosaurs – as one does on such occasions.
I find it impossible to believe that there were any cookies left when Santa made it to their address. We have some photos to prove that their were a couple of cute taste-testers.
We love these sessions for their intimacy, informality and our ability to capture the real moments of life, when posed shots just won’t do. If you’re interesting in a documentary style photo shoot (it doesn’t have to be Christmastime), contact us and we’ll work on a plan.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Spillman Family at-home christmas
While Christmas is in the rear-view mirror at this point, we’ve been busy and wanted to make sure that we shared a couple of our in-home Christmas portrait sessions from this last year.
People contact us for all sorts of reasons around the holidays; they want to have portraits made to give as gifts; they need images for their Christmas cards; they want to mark a milestone. A couple of years back, we began offering in-home Christmas portrait sessions and these more documentary in style for some, more intimate and in some cases, more casual. These have become incredibly popular. They’ve become Day in the Life sessions for the holidays.
The Spillman family (Elisabeth, Isaac, Barrett) live just outside of Winston-Salem and Ryan headed there for this session toward the end of last year.
I mentioned milestones and this particular in-home session marked son Barrett’s first Christmas and his Mom and Dad very much wanted it documented. They’re keen to capture all the firsts as a family and the traditions around their holidays.
I love the “coziness-factor” that’s shown in these images. Looking at the photos I can almost hear them cooing and soothing Barrett and feel all the comfort and love that surrounds him as they change his diaper, feed him and provide little cuddles and chin-tweaks. It’s real life and captures a still-life of life as we really know it.
We’re finding more and more that these types of honest, intimate, documentary sessions are the perfect mix of casual and professional. People want to use their phones to capture the everyday in life, but someone is usually missing from the photo and almost always some THING is missing: experience and skill. Ryan and I love to take the style of photos that don’t feel formal, like the ones that people hope to get with their phones, but we provide an understanding of lighting, composition, scene setting and comfort for our subjects that cannot be accomplished by most amateurs. And believe me when I say it’s our great pleasure.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.