J Family Photo Shoot

I had so much fun today on my play photo shoot.  

Photography has always been something that interested me.  Back when I turned 17 my parents got me a Christmas and Birthday present.  When I opened it Christmas morning I was SO incredibly excited.  It was my own (at the time) good camera.  I opened the camera box ready to start clicking away... and there was NO camera.  There were car keys.  Yes I know I should have been more excited but I was a little disappointed.  I really wanted the camera.  

After high school graduation I went to Spain with my dad for 10 days.  When we were there he let me be in charge of his old 35.  He knew how much I loved photography.  When we were there (towards the end of the trip) he dropped it and it completely stopped working.  The last day or so I didn't know what to do with myself.  Looking at everything through my eyes was totally different than through the view finder of the camera.  When we got back from our trip he started to play around with the camera shoving pens in it, thinking, well it's already broken what's the big deal.  HE FIXED IT... and GAVE IT TO ME!!  Talk about awesome!

When I was in college I made my roommate and Hubs roommate pretend to be dating so I could do a photo shoot of them.  I took that camera everywhere with us.  

When Hubs and I got married he bought me a wedding present... NEW LENS' and other camera goodies.  

I eventually stopped using that camera because it was film and of course I wanted a new one when we could 'afford' one.  

Before the boys were born Hubs surprised me with my new limb ... I mean camera.  Ever since then I haven't stopped trying to learn how to use it correctly and become a better photographer.  I still have so much to learn and now that I am not teaching anymore I have tried do even more.  

J Family

Today I had the privilege to photograph the J family.  They are a beautiful family of 5, working on becoming a family of 6.  They are going through the process to adopt their 2nd child, making it so they have 4 beautiful kiddos.  You can find some more information about their adoption here.  They need a cover photo for their portfolio and I offered to try to capture that for them.

This is a picture of the beautiful little girl that they are adopting.  Angelica was born in Russia and is HIV-positive.  She is going to be 5 in January.

As many of you know, the adoption process is costly.  The J family has a paypal account online if anyone feels led to donate to help bring their Angelica home.