Paws and Pampers

There are few things we love more than to get a call from a wedding client who invites us back to photograph the next phase of their married lives. It's why we offer all of our past brides and grooms a lifetime discount on our portrait services!

A few weeks ago we got that call from Jill and Chris, who were married at Lakewold Gardens on a beautiful summer day in 2007. Five-week-old Finn McAllister was ready for his turn in the limelight.

As with most infant portrait sessions, we met Finn and family at their North Tacoma home, and warmed up with a few photos of the gang on the living room couch.

Of course we couldn't leave "big sister" Eleanor out of the photos! If you want to see Eleanor as a puppy, check out the pet portraits gallery of our website.

This is one of our new favorite baby foot poses: looping the parents' wedding rings around those little toes. Very cute!

Both Laura and Scott participated in this portrait session, which always results in extra photos and more variety in the same hour-long period. That's about as long as most babies can last. Plus, we can get multiple angles of a single great moment, which is illustrated well in this little trio:

For the final frames, Jill stripped the little guy down to his birthday suit, and Eleanor got back into the action for one last siblings shot.

Congrats to Jill and Chris and we look forward to seeing you in a few months for round two!

Dogs' Day Out with Mindy and Sean

If you've followed our blog, you know by now that we're definite dog lovers. So when May 2009 wedding clients Mindy and Sean mentioned bringing their two Chihuahuas along for their engagement portrait session at Point Defiance, we were all for it. These little guys didn't have much in the way of fur or fat (unlike our golden retriever, who unquestionably has an excess when it comes to hair), so Wendall and Nina first had to prepare for the chilly February day with their sweaters. Candid moments like these -- either human or canine -- are our specialty, so we weren't about to complain!

We explored the Japanese Garden with the dogs in tow, hitting our favorite spots at the Pagoda and in the lower garden, where we turned the dogs loose for a minute and lured them to the ground-level camera with some doggy bacon.

Having finished in the garden, we escorted the pups back to the warmth of the car and headed down to the Sound, where we made good use of both the driftwood-strewn beach and the concrete bulkhead for some more intimate shots of Mindy and Sean.

Last stop on this portrait tour: the rusted train cars at Camp 6. We love how it gives more variety to our Five Mile tour, adding a rugged look to the manicured gardens and nautral beach setting that we capture in the rest of the park.

Mindy and Sean's spring wedding will be right back where we started at the Point Defiance Pagoda!