Hildebrandt Family l Mechanicsville, Va Family Photographer

I am blessed that every long trip Drew makes home to see his family, I get to see them all as well. A lot of you may know Erica of Hildebrandt Photography as we do a lot of stuff together. If you do not know Erica, let me let you into her life a little. She is an amazing, strong woman that not only runs her business, but is raising two boys while Drew works overseas. She doesn't get to see him very often, but she made her first trip out to Kuwait earlier this year to visit him where he lives about 11 months out of the year.

For this year's family session, Erica wanted to include her other baby, her 1968 Mustang that was a Mother's day gift to her last year.....Yes I know I'm jealous too. So we went all vintage for the first outfit. A little more modern for the second outfit.

I hope y'all love this sunny session as much as I do.

Working with toddlers is always an unknown on how they will act, or what mood they will be in at the time of a family session. Julian was quite content in playing with the windshield wiper, so we went with it.

 Walking on Mommy's car is cool.

 Mr. Wildman himself, trying to escape.

 FAV!

 OOOOOO LOVE this one.

 EEEKKKKK so cute!

 YUP, another FAV!! I love when my bestie is all in love and happy!!

 How can you not love this tree?!?!?!

 Kissy break :)

 LOVE this sassy attitude one.

 AAAAWWWWWW.

 I love all the little details Erica put together for this shoot.

 Just the boys.

 Love this!!

 My all time favorite picture of Julian. Him completely in the moment, laughing at something, and looking just like his Papa.

Safe travels to Drew on his way back to Kuwait today. And myself and Erica will be heading to WPPI in Vegas bright and early tomorrow morning.

New logo and branding for 2014

I personally know how hard it can be trying to design a website or choosing a host. Then you have to pick out colors and designs that reflect you.......and then a logo that says oooooo that is so and so.

Now there are a lot of templates and premade templates that you can buy to make you life easier. I myself used those when I first started out. WHY? Because it was easy, and myself and Photoshop did not get along. (honestly, I'm not that tech savy) In the past year I made myself use Photoshop more and more for design purposes only. In doing so I have learned how to make my own logos.

For 2014, I want a whole to website, because to me my website now doesn't portray myself or my work as I want it to. Looking on Etsy for a few hours at custom logos, yes I went that route again, I wanted to try my hand at making my own.

First I went to www.dafont.com and looked at some fonts, download a few. Installed them my computer, and BOOM they were automatically in CS6.

My logo took me 4 minutes to make........and yes for real I searched on Etsy for 2.5 hours trying to find one I liked.


And here it is:  (Lesson of the day, sometimes it's easier just to do it yourself)

Ashley & Ethan l Sweetheart Session l Louisa, Va Engagement

Do you remember Snowmegedon in Virginia last Thursday? Most folks stayed in and warm that day and enjoyed a day off from school and work. Myself and Ashley decided this would be perfect for their sweetheart session that they had won.

Thankful for 4 wheel drive this day, as where we live we had gotten a good 10-11 inched of snow, and our roads were never touched by vdot in any way. When arriving to the location I had to "guess" where the safe zone was to drive. It was still snowing, raining, sleeting at the time of Ashley and Ethan's session, and no doubt it was freezing. Being the amazing sports that they are, they totally rocked their session even if it was precipitating.

OKAY....now I need to go back just a little bit with their story. I met Ashley a few weeks after one of my lovely brides told me her friend was going to propose to his girlfriend. The night I met Ashley she whispered to me 'that's her.' I was so excited for her, as to what was coming for her. Such a vibrant fun loving girl, with the most amazing smile and heart, I knew she would be so excited!! That night she was telling me how she entered my half off sweetheart session, all about her email to me, and how she and Ethan hoped to win.........Her email was the sweetest and they won :) :) 

We started their session off with a little hot chocolate.

HOW AMAZING is her ring?!?!?!?

I love their height difference and how cute they are together.

FAV!

LOVE the way he looks at her.

Ashley you are GORGEOUS!!!

Another FAV!

I love with my clients get to bring their pets to their sessions :)

And they got yummy red velvet cupcakes for braving the cold with me :)