I got to see Danielle, Trey, and their little Delia the other day at the Arboretum! This isn’t the first time I’ve worked with these guys. First, I shot their engagement session in downtown Wilmington wayyy back in 2008…

Then, there was Danielle’s hilariously fun bridal session in a truckyard near the One Tree Hill bridge in downtown…

Then, of course, their wedding at St Mary’s Catholic Church and the Coastline Convention Center…

Oh, and THEN I shot Danielle’s best friend Whitney’s engagement session and wedding in Wrightsville Beach…

…and now Danielle and Trey have little Delia.

She is ridiculously adorable. At least I’m pretty sure she is – everything from that session is a blur…

No, really – Delia doesn’t sit still. EVER. She has places to go, flowers to pick, jumps that NEED TO BE JUMPED.

I used to shoot sports, and I could barely keep up with her. This kid is FAST.

I did get lucky a couple times…

Oooh, she’s looking at me, she’s looking….oh damn. Too late.

She’s got a real thing for flowers and butterflies… and I’m still not quite sure if “butterflies” are just a type of flower, or a clever ruse that mom and dad came up with to get her attention… but it works. Sometimes.

Here’s one of those moments that I thought, “If I’m fast enough, I’ll catch a great expression on everyone…”

…but it was over, I think right around the moment that Delia realized I was THIS CLOSE to getting a great shot…

Oh well. We’re getting back together at the beach, sometime when the weather rocks and everyone’s in the mood. Since Danielle, Trey, and Delia live in Wilmington it’s easy to do a last minute session around town. Hopefully with fewer flowers and trails to explore, Delia will sit still long enough for me to focus the lens!

This is one cool kid. She’s spunky, and her expressions – when you catch them – are priceless. I can’t wait to watch her grow up!

There is simply no way to describe this session, or these two wonderful people, and illustrate properly how much I admire and adore them. Or how incredible this session was to shoot, edit, and be a part of. Or what a creative force Casey is. Or how sweet, intelligent, and mature Joseph is. Or how much I want my Ellie to meet Joseph and fall in love (um, in a few years I mean). In other words – this session was perfect, these people are perfect, and I’m indescribably lucky to have met and worked with them. And I hope to be doing much more of this in the future. (Bonus: they actually live nearby, and Casey’s a photo FIEND, so I think my wish will come true)

Enjoy these. I think these images are the best family portrait work I’ve done to date. I’m STUPID proud of this session. Like, I am still riding on the high from this edit.

You know how good it feels when another photographer – a real, working, talented photographer – calls and asks you to photograph her family? It feels good. Real good. Validating and awesome, and even after a decade of doing this I got a little nervous about this session. I mean, check out Rae’s website! She does a LOT of family and kid work. Really good stuff. It’s always hard not to compare your own work to the next guy, especially when you’re about to work FOR them!

So Rae lives up north with her family, and the rest of the family members came in from Asheville and Charlotte and I think as far north as Vermont? Somewhere in New England anyway! They were spending Labor Day weekend at Wrightsville Beach for a short family get-together and birthday celebration. They could not have inadvertently picked a worse time to visit – it was the coldest, dreariest, ugliest Labor Day weekend I’ve ever seen in Wilmington.

I arrived at their beach house before the sunrise, and I’m not sure what the temperature was on the beach but it felt like 40 degrees. With wind. And chill. And grey skies. Misery. We did what we could on the beach, and I wasn’t real confident that we could do much more, but Rae noticed some good light on the back deck of the house – and that’s where we found the best images that we made that morning.

I’m really happy she pointed out the new location to me, because I am thrilled with the images we got. I hope these folks come back to the area next year (and that we have better weather!)… they’re the kind of people I want to work with over and over again. Easygoing, witty, and HAPPY.

It’s like 8 degrees with wind in this picture. That’s a gross exaggeration, but still.

Those tears you see in her gorgeous eyes? Tears of cold. She wasn’t even crying or fussing, but her eyes gave away how miserable the weather was out there. (Note: we kept the outside stuff to a bare minimum!)

What a delightfully nutty group this was! We spent about two hours together, photographing every combination of groups and kids we could come up with.

Some of the younger kids weren’t 100% into the session, so I let them get behind the lens to see what I could see. I think they got some of the best shots of the day!