My baby turned eight last week….

Eight.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for me, it is. He’s halfway on his way to being 16. He’s twice as old as 4. He’s getting big.

I can’t really explain the feelings I have for him. Sometimes I find that I am just staring at him and smiling with this expectant look on my face, like, “what awesome thing is he gonna do next?”

There was a time that he was incredibly agreeable to having his picture taken. I could go anywhere with him, pull out my camera, and the angels sang while he cooperatively played where I asked him to play and looked at me when I asked him to do so. That has changed. He’s not a fan of my camera lately, so I feel like all of these pictures are sort of extra-magical. Somehow the planets aligned perfectly for this shoot.

The night before, I had him try on some clothes that I had bought him. He put on this entire outfit, and I ooooohed and ahhhhed and then had him put them away, quietly thinking that I had to figure out a way to convince him to do an eight year old photo shoot with me. The next day, he put this whole outfit on without me even asking him to. I knew I had to strike when the iron was hot and take pictures of him THAT DAY. I didn’t think it would go well. I really didn’t. But for some reason, the stars aligned and these pictures happened.

I am smitten. I really am.

We’ll start with a picture shot the week before he turned 8. He cracks me up, and I love this because he still looks like a little boy to me.

But then a week later, I swear he just grew up.

The trees are confused here in California. We’ve had such sunny weather for January, they decided to just go ahead and bloom. Oh my.I may or may not have given him a piece of chocolate to keep him interested in taking pictures. Here he is licking the last bits off his finger.

If there’s one thing I can say about my son, he is expressive. As I was taking his picture, he saw a bee. And this is how he let me know about it. Good gracious, I love him.Mick Jagger meets Austin Powers. Lol. Love it. Did I ask him to do this? No. He just did because, well, because he’s awesome.Looking for something in his pocket.I seriously love this one. Just something about it.

I love this one…. There he is marching up to his future as….

…King of the World.

I swear, he’s such a beautiful boy. Full of adventure. Full of love. I adore this child. And if anyone was wondering, the sky was added in Photoshop. I like it better this way. He was yelling at some friends way down the hill. I hope his jugular doesn’t pop from doing that. Sheesh.And because the stars had totally aligned, I got my blue skies with clouds. Perfect.Whenever he gets hot, he starts to strip down. Luckily, I was able to convince him to just air out for a little bit. Lol.Mr. Personality.JUMP, dude. JUMP!He was getting to the end of his rope by this time. Fake smile, anyone?And, just like that, he’s DONE.Poor guy being forced to stand in the pretty light.Still can’t believe we have trees blooming in California right now. I’m sure the rain we just started having will knock these blooms away. Glad I was able to get a picture of them before that happened.

That’s all for now. Happy Birthday, my sweet baby. I love you.…

I’m so excited to be starting a new blog circle adventure with this fabulously talented group of photographers! We want to push ourselves this year with exploring light. Each month, we will pick a different type of light, and post images that we have shot using that type of light! This month, our theme is window light! We chose window light this month since for many people across the United States, the weather has been less than sunny and warm, so shooting indoors seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately for me, I was busy shooting outside since the weather has been fabulous. So, alas, I didn’t have too many window light images. Thankfully I had a cooperative cat.

Let’s get started!

These were actually shot on Christmas day, but seeing I didn’t have too many of my kids in window light, I’m including it.

I visited my sweet friend who just so happens to have a darling son and a gorgeous kitchen with lovely window light. Score.

This cat spends most nights outside all night, and then sleeps on our bed all day. Silly kitty.

And I think these count as window light? A couple of quick shots of my little dude after picking him up from school. He’s in the car with the window up. I liked the hazy look of them.

Next up is the multi-talented photographer, designer, illustrator, editing genius, Lynn Nalty of Square Balloon!

Go check it out!

And if you want to see more of my work, check me out on Facebook!

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The holidays have ended and things have simmered back down. I finally have a little time to blog some recent favorites.

First, my family. My insane, crazy, chaotic, annoying, hilarious, perfect perfect family. This Christmas the entire Morita family converged upon the same area all at once, for the first time ever. We have never gotten a family picture that included every member of our family…until now. And this was no easy task. We had to figure out a color scheme. We needed to coordinate without appearing matchy matchy. We needed a location that accommodate our big family. We needed a miracle. And um, yeah, it helped to have someone who just so happens to know how to photoshop, as multiple head swaps were in order. Go me!

The favorite family member is on the far left, in case you were wondering.

Dang, I love those people. Every single one of them. I am beyond blessed to have such an amazing (and beautiful) family. They make me whole.

Getting pictures of my kids lately has been entirely tricky. They know all my tricks, and simply aren’t interested in supporting my photographer obsession. Shame on them. So, I get what I can get, and sometimes I get lucky.

If it looks like my son is enjoying being hugged by his sister, trust me when I tell you, he does not. Lol. He’s more cringing with a smile on his face. And since I like to show off my picture editing, here’s a little before and after. The grass was a little icky, seeing that it hasn’t rained here in, oh, I don’t know, forever.

 Here’s how my son really feels about holding his sister’s hand. The pure torture I put him through.

And another before and after. This was mostly edited using Adobe Lightroom. I love how easy it is to edit one image, getting the color how I want it, and then syncing all my other images with the click of a button. Lightroom has sped up my workflow tremendously! I only brought this one into Photoshop to add the tree on the right. I just felt like it helped frame them better.

How about a couple pictures of my family? I’ll be back later to post more. But for now:

My brother and his daughter. Father and daughter. Perfection.

When he blew the bubble, I was expecting it to be much much bigger. My niece’s reaction simply didn’t seem appropriate for the size of the bubble. See what I mean? I think my Photoshop tricks payed off here, wouldn’t you say?

My beautiful nephew:

My handsome nephew:

His beautiful twin sister:

And one of my kids where for whatever reason, they just cooperated. Wait…was I begging? Threatening? Bribing? Yeah… probably.

I’m hoping to be better at blogging this year. We’ll see how that goes, seeing that my kids have ALMOST put an entire boycott on me and my camera.

If you are looking at these images and wanting to get color like I do, then you should definitely check out my SHINE workshop. You’ll learn how to better use adobe photoshop and lightroom. I promise. For more information, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE.

And just in case I don’t get better at blogging, you can always follow me on Facebook! …