| Dodson Family Portraits Backyard & Downtown Decatur |

Today’s blog post is coming to you a bit later in the day than normal but for a very good reason. This morning when I got to the office I got a sweet, kind butĀ heartbrokenĀ email from Heather about some bad news they’d gotten about one of their adorable dogs who won’t be with them much longer. This gal was just looking for some happiness in her sad day and was hoping their blog feature happened to be coming up this week…. though it wasn’t scheduled for a week or two, of course hearing such news I bumped it up a bit!

I know our dogs are a big part of our family and were included not only in our family photos before BabyB came along but were also included in her newborn portraits and hang in photos all over our home/walls. I’m SO glad we included these two in their session and am happy to be able to share them all with you today. Prayers and good thoughts to this family this week as they hug and love on this special girl for a bit longer. She may not have wanted to be in the spotlight of the images but she made her presence known especially with some amazing facial expressions (like the one below!).

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family portraits, pictures, sarah jane photography, decatur il, photographer, central illinois, couples portraits, family photos, family photographer, engagement, with dogs, outdoors, winter pictures, afterdark, after dark, street lights, avon theater, backyard photos, sjanephotography

The below image is one we all loved but I kept going back and forth on if I liked it best black and white or color and these two kept debating horizontal or vertical… what do you think they picked?!?

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I’m really excited for how dedicated Heather was to selecting images she knew she wanted to display in their home and deciding how they wanted to display them (so they don’t just end up in a box somewhere at home) which is right in line with what I love to do with clients. The following three are planned for a series collage.

family portraits, pictures, sarah jane photography, decatur il, photographer, central illinois, couples portraits, family photos, family photographer, engagement, with dogs, outdoors, winter pictures, afterdark, after dark, street lights, avon theater, backyard photos, sjanephotography

And the one on the left below we designed as a thin horizontal canvas to fit perfectly on their wall.

family portraits, pictures, sarah jane photography, decatur il, photographer, central illinois, couples portraits, family photos, family photographer, engagement, with dogs, outdoors, winter pictures, afterdark, after dark, street lights, avon theater, backyard photos, sjanephotographyYou can head over to their Facebook Album to give them some love with your likes & comments (let’s help spread some joy to them this week!)