I'm a little behind on blogging my sessions from this spring but wanted to jump ahead today and share these photos before this beautiful mama has her babe any day now! What an incredible blessing it has been to get to know these two over the past few years. I cannot wait to see them enter into parenthood here in the next few weeks and meet this sweet and already very loved, baby girl!
I am so excited to feature these photographs of a family that is near and dear to our hearts tonight! They have been friends of ours for years and I am so thankful that they entered into our lives. I've learned so much from them about parenting and seeking the Lord as we raise our children and it was so much fun to put some of these memories into photographs for them.
I love that Christa, the mama to this beautiful family, shared some words with us after her session....
“It has been years since we have had the opportunity to have family pictures done, so this evening spent together and the memories that were captured are indescribably special to us. Each picture really captures the personality and essence of our individual child, and our family as a whole. Having a larger family is sometimes, as my husband says, “like a circus full of rabid squirrels,” but we wouldn’t have it any other way. The house is continually filled with laughter and crying, smiles and tears, running and crawling, peace and chaos, but we never grow tired of the faces and the presence of these Blessings the Lord has given us. And, as time will surely march on, and these Blessings grow older and march out of our lives, and into their own families, we will look at these pictures with laughter and crying. And through these pictures, these precious moments in time, the echoes of their running and crawling across the floors of our home, and the times of peace and chaos in our life will be forever etched in our minds and hearts. It is said that, ‘time waits for no one and it won’t wait for you, so use it well, and use it wisely, for who can tell when time will turn into eternity. So use the time well, teach them and instruct them in the Lord, pour into your children’s lives, love them without condition, and STOP, often, and spend time with them; fill the pages of your memories to the fullest, so when you look back on your family’s life they will be filled with tears of joy and not regret. They are the truest, purest, and most eternal Blessings the Lord has given you.”
"Some journeys are direct, some are heroic, some are fearful and muddled. But every journey, honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Parker Palmer
For years it has been a dream of mine to go to an in person photography workshop to learn from one of my favorite artists. After a few years in the business and my husbands sweet encouragement, I searched for the perfect one to meet my needs and landed on the Wildflowers Workshop led by the incredibly talented Joy Prouty. I have followed Joy's work for years and it has always resonated with me. Her ability to evoke deep emotion in her imagery is really incredible and I love her complete honesty and transparency in her personal work. I identified with her so much as a believer, mother and wife that I knew it would be a good fit. And it was. I went to this workshop really seeking insight on balance as a creative, a business owner and a mother and left challenged and stretched in all these areas. Although we had two shoots while there, this workshop wasn't very much about the technicalities of shooting but more focused on our artistry and developing that, which was exactly what I needed. I was challenged to shoot the things that make me feel alive as an artist. And although, I feel like over the past year or so I've begun to focus my work in that direction, my time at this workshop really breathed new life into this pursuit in my work.
My time with Joy made me look a bit more closely at what I love to shoot. What makes me love to pick up my camera and in turn create beautiful imagery. My photography journey has evolved quite a bit since I started my business 3 years ago. I have figured out that I am passionate about shooting families, but not always the perfectly posed traditional family portraits. Rather, I love to spend time with my clients, connecting with them, learning their stories, and photographing the season of their family, no matter what that may be. One of the things I wrote down in my journal that weekend that Joy said that I have gone over and over again to myself is that you cannot compare one persons beautiful with another person's beautiful. Sometimes life is not always golden sunlit fields and perfect smiles(sometimes it is!). Sometimes life is a sink full of dirty dishes and a tangled mess of hair and to me that is just as beautiful and equally deserving to be captured. So, as I embrace that, the joys and messes of these beautiful, imperfect lives we live, I hope you'll join me as my business grows and changes as I develop as an artist.
I am so thankful to Joy and the 16 other photographers I met for shaking up the creative in me. For encouraging me, challenging me, and giving me so many things to think about. Over a month later, I'm still mulling over all the things we discussed. I am really excited for all the wonderful things that are ahead for my work and for my clients. A few changes are already in the works and I'm excited to share them with you in the coming weeks. If you are a photographer considering Joy's workshop, DO IT. Just do it. If you aren't a photographer but love beautiful photographs, you should really follow her work. Here is her website. Go get a cup of coffee, a warm blanket to snuggle up to and enjoy. :)
Here are some pictures from my weekend in Austin....
And here are a few iPhone snaps of my weekend...
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Oh my stars. I hadn't seen little Ms. Piper since she was a bitty newborn and my goodness what a doll she is. Her mama and daddy were going on about what a sweet and precious baby she is and how she makes everyone around her smile and they were absolutely right. She lit up the room. So thankful to get to see this sweet family again. They've been with me since the very beginning and for that I am so so grateful. Enjoy these little snapshots of the love they share. <3
These are my people. My very best friend since we were 15 years old and formed a friendship at the local swimming pool when we were both singing U2's With or Without You, opera style at the top of our lungs. :) God has been so gracious to gift me with such a special friend like her. A lifelong friend. One that I've been able to walk along side through some hard times and the best of times. Last year they spent the year in Japan as a family and although I know it was an incredible experience for them and a time of growth as a family, we are SO glad they're back. I'm so glad we got to document the beauty of their little family recently. Love you guys so much! "Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other." Romans 12:9-10
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I can't say enough how much I have loved getting to know this family over the past couple of years. I first met them when we did a maternity session for their first son, then his birth and the rest is history. I've photographed them several times and I always love getting to spend time with them. I love seeing parents blossom into motherhood and fatherhood and as special as it is to see and spend time with a first time mom, I adore seeing a mother settle into motherhood with more than one child. It totally changes the dynamics of your family and stretches you in new ways. Your heart grows with even more love than you knew you had in you. It's amazing how that happens. <3 Enjoy this sweet newborn session with baby Luke and his crew. He is such a blessed little boy. Blessings to you guys and Congrats! This session was styled by Nicole Wise Styling.
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A couple of weeks ago I was honored to photograph this family's second birth. I am always amazed at the strength, determination and beauty of a woman as she brings her baby into this world and this day was no different. I have been so lucky to have been able to get to know this family over the past couple of years after I photographed the birth of their first son and it was just as much a privilege to spend the day documenting their second birth as it was the first. I am over the moon for this family, seeing them become a family of 4. Congratulations! I did things a little differently this time and put the slideshow video at the beginning of the post because I just loved the video clips and didn't want you to miss them. Then you can also scroll through the images. Enjoy this beautiful day!
https://vimeo.com/155462165
I am so excited to announce that on Saturday February 27, I am offering a very special mini session event for mamas and their children. This event will be held at The Hive near downtown Knoxville. The Hive is a beautiful indoor urban location that offers floods of natural light and a variety of cozy places for us to shoot you and your little ones cuddled up together. Seriously, it is so gorgeous in there and I am beyond excited to take my clients there!
I know that as a mother I am pretty much always the one taking our family photos and it’s difficult and rare for me to be in the frame with my children. So, that’s why I wanted to take a day out to focus on you mamas and the connections you share with your most precious treasures.
Nicole Wise Styling will also be on location offering hair and makeup services for $40. Please contact her at nicolemwise@me.com to book your appointment. Nicole will also be offering mini wardrobe styling packages for $50. Please contact her for more details.
The Details.... Sessions are $250+tax and payment is due in full to reserve your spot and is non-refundable. Sessions will last 25 minutes and will include 15 full resolution digital files delivered via download as well as an online gallery for professional print and product ordering. These sessions are suitable for all ages (including adults with your mothers, or expecting mothers) but are limited to one family per session with a maximum of 5 people.
Sessions are available at the following times.
9:00
9:30
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11:00
11:30
12:00
12:30
Please email me at bethanysamsphotography@gmail.com to reserve your spot!
Before I share this beautiful newborn session with you today, I want to share my thoughts on why I love this session so much. I have ALWAYS been drawn to lifestyle newborn photography. Even from the very beginning of my business, it's really what I wanted for my newborn work. If you aren't sure what that is, to me, lifestyle is the art of capturing more honest, natural, emotive images. For the most part, that's always what I've done. And those are always the newborn sessions I love the most. Don't get me wrong. I have so much respect for newborn photographers that can pose a baby with props in all sorts of positions. It takes mad skills! But more and more, I just know that's not me. This is me. This session right here. Just hanging out with this family for a few hours. Watching them interact and capturing all those sweet details. These are the sessions that make me excited. It's exactly the way I want to capture families. This family is so incredibly special to me because they were sweet enough to take a chance on me in the very beginning. Before I even officially had a business, they were one of my first portfolio building clients. I am so thankful for them for trusting me again to capture their family during such a special time in their lives. I can honestly say, I always have the very best time hanging out with them. These two little ones are very blessed to be in such a sweet and loving family. Congrats Levenson family!
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I was so excited to photograph this sweet family again. I photographed them about 2 years ago and absolutely loved meeting them and spending time with them. I knew I was going to love this session because when mom contacted me she wanted me to get some outdoor family photos and to get some of them in their home just documenting their everyday. Which is one of my favorite things to do! Enjoy this sweet session of this beautiful family. 
I love to photograph this family. They are the best. I think I love them so much because they remind me so much of my own family. Our sessions always consist of lots of knock knock jokes and plenty of little boy humor, aka, replicating sounds of certain bodily functions. haha! I'm always so excited to see them and catch up with them. Enjoy their sweet session from this fall.
My first session of the year was shooting this sweet little guy and his family for his first birthday party. It was perfectly done. Beautiful home with adorable decorations and lots of friends and family to celebrate this little one. Happy Birthday Nash!
Wow! What a year. Thank you all so much for being a part of it. I am so, so grateful for your support and for trusting me with these moments for you. Have a happy and blessed New Year and I hope to see you in 2016!
2015 has been a really great year for me photographically. I started the year really wanting to see more growth in my work and also really wanting to keep the business side of my passion from taking over and destroying the reason I originally fell in love with photography, which is documenting the life of my family. If you aren't a photographer, that may sound odd to you but when your passion is also your business, it's easy for the lines to get blurred doing what I love, and before I realized it, I looked back on our images from 2014 and I just didn't see "us." Don't get me wrong, I had taken lots of photos but most of them were just at events, birthdays and holidays, or me trying to wrangle us all up for a posed shot when we were all decently dressed. Ha! But I didn't feel like, when I looked back over the year, that I could see our story, the real Sams fam. So, on New Years Day, January 1st 2015, I decided to do a project 365. I decided I would document my family every day and be committed to it. I have heard photographers over and over say that they think that's one of the main contributing factors to their growth and that was another one of my goals for the year so I figured why not! I won't lie though, I was super skeptical going into it. I had attempted a project 52 before, which is ONE photo per week, and I gave up after about 4 weeks. So, I gave myself a starting goal of 100 days. Once I made it there, I had fallen in love. Fallen in love with shooting for myself again, fallen in love with the images I had captured of my children and felt truly refreshed as a creative. I was beginning to study the light in my home, seeing things in a new way, and feeling energized to shoot client work again as a result. I have had such incredible feedback throughout the year that I wanted to share some of my tips to successfully complete your own project 365.
This may seem odd to a lot of people because I know following a themed 365 or even project 52 can really push you creatively, but ultimately, it's the reason I never completed my first project 52 years ago. I have 3 small children, run a small business and homeschool our oldest so my plate is pretty full. So for me, from the get go I knew I couldn't follow a theme or place too many rules on myself. I knew if I had to follow rules for each picture I would never get it done. When I started, I had no theme for my overall project. In the end, I do think it evolved into our beautiful everyday but sometimes I included a landscape or even client work. I do think weekly themes can be really beneficial for a project 52 but for a 365, I would leave it open to whatever comes your way so you don't feel overwhelmed daily with an extra task. Sometimes it's enough to just take one photo, much less follow a theme. So for me the only real rule I had was: take a picture every day. :)
I'll admit that my goal was definitely to complete this project with my DSLR but from the beginning I told myself it wasn't against my rules to use my phone. (Again with the "no rules") After all, it's almost always with me and editing is fast and easy. Plus it's so much easier than lugging around a huge camera with you. I know lots of people who complete their 365 completely on their mobile device and they are fabulous! So that's also a great idea as well especially if you don't own a DSLR.
Like I said before, I was really skeptical that I would even make it to 100 days in the beginning, so I told myself, I wouldn't give up if I missed a day. And I did. (hangs head in shame) I missed 3 days. I didn't miss my first day until about 6 months in and the other two were during my busy season when I was also in my first trimester and very sick. But! I didn't let that stop me. I kept going and even though I missed 3 days, I still consider this 365 day project a total success. I mean don't you remember ^^^ I have THREE small children with a 4th on the way. Sometimes life is just busy and if there is anything I have learned as a mother it is to have grace upon myself and others. So, if you do miss a day, don't give up!
I really think sharing my photos with others really encouraged me to continue the project. Now, I'm not saying I place value on an image based on the amount of likes or comments it gets, in fact probably most of my favorite images got very few likes or I may not have even shared them, because I know the story behind each one, so they all have their own personal significance to me. But, the words of encouragement I've received throughout the year have really helped me to press on when I didn't feel creative or even have the energy to continue. Things like (these are direct quotes) "your children will cherish these", "When she's fully grown you will still hear her sweet voice at this very moment in time. I love all your pictures BUT these dailies they're ordained by GOD.", "Bethany my work environment is, um, oppressive. Yes. Oppressive. You have no idea how much I look forward to your pictures. The innocence of their beautiful faces brightens my day. Really." I mean seriously. These words encouraged me SO MUCH. I heard over and over that my children and I will cherish these and nothing could be more true. When I started, I thought I would share every photo on my Facebook account and instagram but life got busy and although I was shooting, I didn't always have the time to edit every day and I fell behind on sharing so I just started sharing my favorites when I had time. So, again, I didn't place a big rule over my head that made me feel like a failure (and ultimately make me quit) if I didn't get a chance to edit and share every single day. There are lots of places to share...Facebook, IG, Flickr, even emailing a loved one privately. You choose and you can make it as public or private as you want. Just share with someone so you will receive encouragement along the way to continue and complete your project.
Whether you are a professional photographer or not, when you take on the task of completing a project 365 every image is NOT going to be compelling, creative or even interesting. Ha! But just remember the ultimate goal here is to document your life and experience growth as a photographer. Well, those were my goals and if those aren't your goals just keep YOUR goals in mind and know that every day won't be perfect. In fact most days won't be. But remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. Growth takes time. But I promise that if you stick with it, you will see growth and you will be so grateful to come out on the other side and see where you came from and where you are at that point and ALL those beautiful memories you made a long the way.
So, in conclusion, I encourage you to start a project 365 this year. You won't regret it. If you do, and want some encouragement along the way use hashtag #BSP2016365 and I'll be looking for you and your images on IG. I'd love to even regram some images weekly on my account to help encourage one another. I hope this encourages you guys and you go for it this year! As a result of my 365 this year and the interest I've had from other mothers, I've also decided to teach some basic photography classes for moms who want to learn to better document their every day. The details are still in the works and I'm currently writing my teaching materials but the class will be one full day and will be focused on using a DSLR in manual mode, basic editing in Adobe Lightroom as well as lighting, composition and how to tell a story with your images. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter for details when they are available. I hope you guys have a great New Year in 2016!
I get to share a really special birth story with you tonight. It is always such an honor to photograph a birth because it's such an intimate day for a family. The days your children are born are right up there with your wedding day. It's one of the most important days. So, to be invited into that space is very special to me. And this family is so incredibly special to me. For starters, I photographed the birth of their last son and I've been able to photograph them several times in between there. I've had the incredible blessing of getting to know them and they are the real deal. Incredibly loving, generous spirits, hearts for Jesus. Spending time with them during 2 births has truly been like spending a morning with great friends. Two years ago this Spring, I photographed Ashley's brother Hunter and his beautiful bride Amber for their wedding. I had never done a wedding before and they called me the Tuesday before Easter to say Hunter and Amber were coming in town and decided to get married and they wondered if I would consider photographing it on Saturday....in 4 days. Ha! Since they promised me it would be a really small wedding and I just loved their family so much, I agreed. Let me tell you, I have never seen two people more in love. I still remember when I was photographing them after the wedding alone, I could have sworn they forgot I was there. They were just so happy to be together. It was such a special day and I am so grateful I got to document it for them. Two weeks before this birth story unfolded, Ashley's brother Hunter passed away tragically. The weeks that followed were excruciatingly painful for Ashley and her family as they mourned their incredible loss. Those two weeks, the Lord sustained Ashley's pregnancy and she was able to deliver after they had returned home from their travels.
Ashley wanted me to include..." After a minor complication, I was sent for induction on the two week anniversary of his passing. It was both a joyful and heartbreaking experience. My family, including my brother's wife and child were able to make it shortly after delivery. We changed Judah's name from Jonathan Judah to Judah Hunter, in his honor. We were so grateful that you had met him briefly and were no stranger to the full circle experience that was Judah's birth. We truly believe you were meant to be our birth photographer for this birth and that the Lord began orchestrating that years before we could even comprehend the steps."
The Lord truly was present on this day. I got to see this family experience joy through an incredibly painful circumstance. The day was filled with love and laughter and full of joy. Judah Hunter is a very blessed boy to be surrounded by such a loving family. I pray for continued peace and comfort that only our Father can bring for this family. Congratulations Williams family! Looking forward to seeing your family grow in the Lord.
*Ashley wanted me to also include a few photos from Hunter and Amber's wedding.
Now for this family's beautiful birth story..... Be sure to watch the video at the end. Enjoy!
https://vimeo.com/149233152
So, if you haven't heard me talking about how in love I am with Nicole and her styling services and how much I love offering that to clients, PLEASE let me introduce you! :) Nicole has been a wonderful friend of mine for years and I have loved that we partnered up this year to start offering these services to my clients. All of my clients that have worked with her, love her. I even had clients at my Christmas sessions that were scheduled between two other families that were styled by her, immediately contacting her after their session to book her services because they were so impressed after seeing her work. She's fabulous. Really, I can't say enough about her. If you want more deets on her styling services be sure to check that out here. BUT besides that, I just LOVE her and her family to pieces. I mean, really, she is a dear friend and am so thankful the Lord put us together as friends. This fall, I got to photograph her and her beautiful crew. And of course, she styled them. Don't they look amazing? Love you Wise family!
I'm wrapping up these Christmas tree farm mini sessions tonight and I just loved getting to meet and photograph this sweet family. They were truly a joy to work with and their kiddos were the sweetest. Merry Christmas Robinson Family!
Out of all my Christmas sessions this year I only had 2 new clients (because my previous clients snatched these sessions up so quickly :) ) and this sweet family was one of those. I am so glad I got to photograph them because they were just such a joy to be with. Their boys were so sweet and I immediately hit it off with mom. Their session was one of my favorites this year because it was just so easy to see how much they love each other. Merry Christmas Raby family! I look forward to getting to know your family more! HMUA by Nicole Wise
I love getting to photograph this sweet family. I've been photographing them since their last baby was born and I just love getting to spend time with them. Merry Christmas Parker Family! Style by Nicole Wise
