bay area lifestyle family photographer
Get outstanding Fall family pictures this year || Family Photographer, Morgan Hill, CA
It’s that time of the year, can you feel it!? I can! It’s time to get your Fall family pictures done!!! Oh, yes!!! I’m so excited for this Fall.
The season is in full blast, and I’m almost completely booked in October. That makes my heart sing because it means that so many families trusted me with their family portraits again! I just want to put exclamation marks at the end of almost every single sentence in this post because I’m just that excited!!! And honestly, I don’t get excited that easily.
The location for this mini session is absolutely gorgeous. There is variety of beautiful backgrounds. All my clients who have had sessions with me there were always very happy with the images we created there.
If you’re interested in Fall mini sessions with me please follow this link and choose November 9th as your session date. After you pick your date and your time slot I’ll contact you personally to go over the details of your session.
You’re going to receive recommendations on how to prepare for your session, what to wear and simply what to expect when working with me.
If you’d like me to create for you outstanding Fall family portraits let’s connect!!!
Even better, sign up for the membership to Ewa Samples Photography, so you won’t have to miss on any photo opportunities throughout the entire year.
If membership is not for you simply get on my newsletter list so you’re always up to date about any specials, model calls and events (like workshops) I run through the year!
{San Jose Kids Photographer } Fun Kids Pictures Rain
Yesterday I was able to get some fun kids pictures in the rain. It looks like we are going to do the same today. Kids are already poking me and asking when are we going out… Some people might think that words like “fun kids pictures rain” do not go well together. Like my husband, who thinks he’s made out of sugar, and going out in the rain is deadly for him.
I think quite the opposite.
The rain wasn’t that heavy for most of the time, and there were moments when it didn’t rain at all. The kids had way more fun then in any given sunny day we’ve had so far.
We came home soaked… Well, not me, but those two little adventurers. They were dripping from all the rain, but mostly from all the puddles they decided to jump into and splash. After we came home, we had hot milk with honey and cupcakes for dinner, because why not. It all was followed by a warm bath with bubbles. Like literally plenty of them!!! 🙂 Fun! Fun! Fun!
So, off we go to have fun again again. We’ve got plenty of milk in the fridge and the bathroom is already supplied with bubbles soap.
I also recently fell in love with double exposure pictures, so there are only few out of many I took yesterday. You can see some examples in the gallery displayed below.
So YES, “fun kids pictures rain” definitely go together in this household.
How about yours!?
if you’d like to chat about your session in the rain, or in the full blast sun feel free to email me: ewasamples(at)gmail.com also, to stay on top of all kinds of specials as well as photography tips subscribe to my newsletter :
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Midpines Yosemite Falls Family Camping Trip
Before I go into any further details of our Midpines Family Camping Trip (second camping trip this year), I have to admit, the further away from tourists, the better. Period. You want to know why… Take this for example…
In this one hour of sitting in the Yosemite Falls traffic I had witnessed so much of human nastiness, I was shocked.
I’m not antisocial, I just like to enjoy my space and my peace when I want it, and Yosemite Falls are the last place to get it. Well, probably if you go there in December you’ll get it. But you’ll also freeze your butt off.
I know you can get it in Yosemite. Long time ago, I had visited this place with friends and we even went skinny dipping in a freezing cold lake with not a soul around. There are places out there that you can get some privacy and enjoy the beauty of this place in peace.
Our camping trailer is one of these that needs to be set up first before we can use it, and by “set up” I mean “a lot of arguing about what to put where and why, and even more whispered cursing, everybody around you hear, anyway”. This kind of setting up where at some point you comfortably sit at a safe distance and just watch while the other half work in peace. We were the ones that arrive to a camping site at 11pm and spent an hour or so making all kinds of noises, and shushing each other. Fun stuff. 😉
The camp site was super kid friendly. We woke up to a view of a playground, which we didn’t see the night before.
Our girls just loved it. They made all kinds of friends and cried a river when it came to packing and leaving because of the new friendships they’d made.
After we got dirty and muddy first thing in the morning, we headed to Mariposa to meet with grandparents, and from there take a short road trip to Yosemite Falls. We walked around a little the “downtown”, which seemed very cute and interesting. I wish we had more time to spend there and to visit all the old style buildings and antique stores.
This place was empty and peaceful compared to Yosemite! But we had other things planned, so we couldn’t really stay any longer than we already did.
At the end we also witnessed some police work, 3 cars pulled up to a museum we were at to a call to someone locking themselves out. Looked like busy day in Mariposa. 🙂
Living for a while in Fresno, well, seeing three sheriff’s department cars pulling to the parking I was expecting something totally different.
On the way to Yosemite Falls we even spotted the famous Mystery Spot sticker. I think, it’s pretty funny. Those are all over the Bay Area, and now I saw one in Yosemite!
The scenery along the way was amazing. At this time of the year, the hills bloom with orange poppies, and along the road there are beautiful purple trees. If we were not following the grandparents I would definitely had requested more stops to enjoy them, as well as to try shove my kids into them somehow. 🙂
Also, right now the water flows there like crazy. You can spot a waterfall almost on every mountain. The mountains glow in the sun with the reflecting water that flows down. Kids were also excited to see the snow. It was high on the mountains, so they didn’t get to touch it.
The route to get to Yosemite Falls is very scenic. Well worth the drive, and the car sickness. Although I would think twice about the Yosemite Falls itself. The place is more crowded then Campbell’s Farmers Market on Saturday. We had spent more then an hour in traffic and we got nowhere close to the parking spots. It is something worth doing once in your life, but in my opinion after that there is no point of coming back
Seeing waterfall for the first time:
I would recommend to take as many pictures as you can during your first visit there, and from there run as fast and as far as you can.
This is exactly what we did. As soon as we were able, we came back to our camping site, and spent the rest of the day hanging out there.
The next morning, we had roasted marshmallows smothered in chocolate pudding for breakfast. You’ve never tried it? Well, you don’t know what you’re missing. 😉
I added an extra twist of roosting the marshmallows with grapes. Delicious.
and some randomness:
For all interested, we camped at Yosemite West / Mariposa KOA – great place for families with kids, and very close to Mariposa downtown. Both the camp and the town seems very friendly and helpful.
Husband accidentally locked us out of the camping trailer by loosing the key, and the people that run this place were really helpful. They seemed very concerned about us and helped us made all the necessary calls to get some people to our camp site to open our trailer. Luckily, after more then half of the day, we found the darn keys. We found them where they were left in the first place.
We’re already planning our next trip. Probably somewhere close to Redding. Will see.
Have a wonderful week!!! And feel free to share your family adventures with me. I’d love to hear them.
February Family Camping, Porterville
I left for the camping trip not really in a mood for much more then to throw my own computer into a wall, and then do the same thing with my phone, and after that a few more things could follow. The technology is good, but sometimes I can’t deal with it, especially in moments when all the gadgets stop working, AT THE SAME TIME.
Anyway, we left, and we got to the camping ground in Porterville, around 3am. In the deep darkness we set up the trailer and went to sleep. Got very cold that night, but we survived, well, barely.
Got up to the sound of singing birds and people taking. It was 7am. When I opened one side of our “bed” I couldn’t believe my eyes. The view was spectacular, especially after not really knowing at 3am how the surrounding looks like.
We all got up and went to get breakfast and do some basic shopping for food and other supplies we didn’t have and couldn’t get through without, like a heater. Yeah, that’s right. We didn’t have one.
For the whole two days I did not hear once about adults or kids being bored. We explored, got stuck in mud and danced in fields of mustard flowers. However the most funny thing was, while being in a place that’s a “dream come true” to a photographer, I was not able to incorporate or make my kids interested in doing much in those fields.
The mud and mountains made out of rocks was something they couldn’t stop playing with. Flowers were out of question. They were ok for one quick picture, and then it was “mission mud”. “mission get dirty”, “mission fall down”, “mission climb up”, etc. All my tricks to make them cooperate failed, and I simply let it go after a while. There was a small heart ache while doing so, but sometimes it’s just better to let it go. I can feel, there will be more mustard fields in my future, and for those moments I’ll be prepared better.
I think, I never before had photographed a kettle so many times in one day. I took tens and tens of pictures of this darn thing. It was looking so pretty. And the light was so playful on it. It was like a magnet to my eyes, and to my camera. I won’t post all of them here, but just a few.
We also attended a field trial, and I was able to take some great photographs for their community. I think that was pretty neat.
Our dinner was pretty simple, yet delicious!
Yeah, you got me, I like mustard!
The kids’ and mine fist roasted marshmallow
During this trip the kids, as well as myself had our first ever roasted marshmallows. And as much as I don’t want to admit, they were pretty darn delicious!
Did you have any interesting adventures this past weekend, or maybe planning something for the upcoming one? Feel free to share.
Stanford Fall Family Session. {Lifestyle Family Photographer, Palo Alto, CA}
While I sit and edit last Saturday’s beautiful and colorful Fall session done at Stanford, and while getting reminders about my disc being full, I remembered I’ve never blogged about a session I had at Stanford almost exactly a year ago. The photographs are still sitting on my computer, so, it is a great opportunity to go back in time and catch up with some things.
This family was one of my very first clients back in the days, and I look at those times very fondly. Every year brings new people into my life and my business, but when I get a chance to work with those who have been with me since my very first year, I feel extremely happy. Also, each year brings new lessons and challenges, and during this particular session I had a chance to try my photography skills in a fog. I have to admit, it was exciting. But the weather did not prevent the family to have a really good time!
if you’d like to chat about your session, feel free to email to ewasamples(at)gmail.com also, to stay on top of all kinds of specials as well as photography tips subscribe to my newsletter :
Stanford Lifestyle Family Photographer, California. Fall in its amazing beauty!
For Saturday’s family session my client requested FALL in the background, and when I heard it I knew exactly where to go to look for it. Stanford!!! No brainer. And I was not mistaken.
This morning I sent one of my girls to school just to see her back after 1o minutes. Thanksgiving break. HA! That meant I had two of them to model for me during my location scouting.
This post is overblown with pictures. For the first time in my entire career I wasn’t able to pick just a few favorite shots. Normally I’m pretty good at that. I easily pick up to 15 best shots and go with them. Especially when it comes to photographing my kids, as they normally are not very fond of “posing” for me anymore. I wrote about it in one of my latest post. It’s a love-hate relationship we are dealing with. And today it was definitely on the LOVE side.
The umbrella was simply an accident, as at least one is always in our car. Kids couldn’t miss the opportunity to grab it. One umbrella also meant we are one short and a fight could emerge at any given time. Luckily the kids cared more about throwing the leaves at each other and at me then about fighting… AWESOME!
if you’d like to chat about your session, feel free to email to ewasamples(at)gmail.com also, to stay on top of all kinds of specials as well as photography tips subscribe to my newsletter :
Half Moon Bay Smash Cake Photographer. “Smash Cake on the beach”
Maybe it was the Half Moon Bay beach, because I always get overexcited for beach sessions. Or maybe it was the smash cake on the beach idea. Or maybe the fact to be working again with a family that I’ve worked with several times since the little one was born. Maybe it was all of it put together. Probably. It all came together nicely. Even the 8:30 in the morning worked out pretty good for us.
Each time I have a session with them I go home with a huge grin on my face, and this time wasn’t any different. How could I not to, look at them…
But if that wasn’t enough, after this session we’ve decided to work together again. This upcoming weekend is our Holiday Mini-Session Party at this mama’s home, and we are super excited about it.
But back to our last session… Here are the cuties:
if you’d like to chat about your session, feel free to email to ewasamples(at)gmail.com also, to stay on top of all kinds of specials as well as photography tips subscribe to my newsletter :
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Testing before really fun family session {Lifestyle Family Photographer, San Jose, CA}
It’s a love-hate relationship between my job and my kids. Sometimes they have to struggle through all kinds of posing, “weird light in their face”, particular kind of playing, or playing in a particle wardrobe, I mean, you name it. If I want to try something photography related, they are my “lab rats”. I just received a new studio lights, and I’m eager to try them, BUT I know how much my kids are going to like that, not! 😉
But, there are the sweet “sessions” when they don’t even realize I’m testing. And I think, they are the best. For me and for them. They love it, and you can simple tell it by looking at all the pictures I take during those times.
Last Saturday we did just that. I was testing a bubbles making machine for really fun family session on Sunday, and they were having the best time ever. Not to mention, we used all the bubbles making soap, and the next day I had to run to the store to get new one for the real session.
But the happiness I was able to document is priceless!
