| Alex | Warrensburg-Latham High School Class of 2016 Senior |

This time of year is always bitter sweet for me! As I get excited to say hello to a new class of seniors, I get nostalgic looking back at the previous class and as we finalize things like graduation cards and such it’s a reminder that their families are all about to send their ‘babies’ out into the world.

Alex, is one of my last few class of 2016 seniors and I’m excited to show you some of our favorite images from his session. I love that as we started Alex’s Premiere his lovely momma mentioned ‘I think I like him smiling best.’ and ‘I’ll likely only do 1-2 black and whites.’ Well as we were finishing up I pointed out that we had quite a few black and whites and many with Alex not smiling. I just wanted to be sure she noticed and was 100% pleased with her choices and she absolutely was! That’s one of the many reasons we walk through the Premiere viewings with our clients together AND take a variety of poses and expressions on the session because choosing what you like or want BEFORE seeing the images is hard and often, the images change your mind.

It’s always fun for me to see which images my clients fall in love with and I think Marianne did a great job selecting these!

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You’ll be able to see a few more from Alex’s session on our Facebook Page soon!

Dominick | Cerro Gordo Senior Class of 2016 | Senior Guys!

You might remember seeing Haylei around the SJP blog a few times, well this year it was her brother’s turn! He’s a SENIOR and is about to graduate from Cerro Gordo High School and I was thrilled when Candy called me to get him on the schedule.

I love working with this family and have never had the opportunity to photograph Dominick yet so I was excited to give him a little time in the spotlight (of course we worked Haylei in for an image or two with her big brother too!).

Here are a few favorites from his session and you can see even more on our Facebook Page here!

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| Allie | Mt. Zion Senior Portraits | Sarah Jane Photography |

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I love how creative we get to be when clients book our Couture session! This session is 5 hours long and if that sounds like a LOT it’s because it is, but it means we get to do so much without worrying about time… lots of locations, lots of outfits, even lots of people!

And we got all that in for Allie’s session. By far my favorite part of Allie’s session is the personalization she added by selecting locations like her old home that really made it about HER. Plus, including her best friends, sister, mom and dog meant we had a blast with all her favorite people!

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Her album is being hand crafted in Italy as we speak and I cannot wait to have the finished product in soon. Take a look at some of our favorite images and a few album designs too…
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| Del’s Popcorn on Merchant | Rebuilding | Decatur IL |

One of Decatur’s most beloved downtown businesses, Del’s Popcorn on Merchant, recently suffered a fire and has been on the mend. This week I was contacted by Continental Carbonic, to be a part of their rebuild, specifically the dry ice blasting that they began today.

After touring all three floors of this historic downtown building and taking a peek back into it’s history, I cannot wait to see what’s in store for it next. Kemper gave us a full tour and was getting his hands on the dry ice blasting equipment when we left saying that though they estimated 14 days for this portion of the project, they get work DONE and he hoped for it to be done in 10 (that’s my kind of work ethic right there).

I’m excited to look in on them next week for some ‘during’ images and then head back when the work is done to show off what Continental Carbonic’s dry ice blasting can do to restore life back to their building.

Here are just a couple images from my day at Del’s (just a peek outside for now!).

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| Miller Family | Annual Family Portraits | Lake Decatur |

I’m thrilled today to share with you another family who I’m honored to say has been with me for a number of years for their family portraits. We started when we were still over in our small west end home where we created family portraits when Grant was just a tiny little thing.

This year I’m excited to say we had a much better day for photos compared to last year’s very cold and extremely windy session day where it was all any of us could do to keep our teeth from chattering.

And for something a bit different this year we held our Limited Edition session date at Nelson Park / Lake Decatur and as these guys are boaters we decided to showcase the lakeside more than the park. Even though our locations are preset for Limited Edition sessions I love that our town has such variety that we can even customize these sessions in small ways by utilizing different areas of the same parks. After all, these are their family portraits and I definitely don’t want them looking just like someone else’s. (Check out Lisa & A.J.’s session just minutes before the Miller’s and the unique looks we created for them at the exact same location!)

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One of my favorite things about the Miller’s sessions is we always create a brand new Christmas card design for them, which gets a little tricky when you’ve designed them for multiple years but check out what we created for them this year.

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