“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you, please don’t take… my sunshine away.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreampt I held you in my arms.
When I awoke dear, I was mistaken, so please don’t take.. my sunshine away.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you, please don’t take… my sunshine away.”

This is the MOST requested song I sing to my girls at night before bed. They love it. They love this song SO MUCH, they requested it be played at our wedding in September. Their exact words were, “Mommy, can you and Daddy dance with us to our own special song?” … the words that bled from my heart with total and utter love, “OMG YES, YES WHAT SONG?” So, You are my Sunshine is kind of a thing in our home.

We don’t always have good days, but we don’t always have bad days. As parents, it takes patience, stength, and at times we just need to walk away.

Children don’t always want to smile, they don’t always want their photos taken. As a photographer AND a Mom. This is super hard and has always been challenging. Our children will smile for everyone else but us. It’s just like the old saying, “The Shoemakers children have no shoes”. Yep, this photographer doesn’t have that many photos of us. We don’t always have the time to set up the tripod, the timer, and hope for a good photo. So, we drive around, pull over on the side of the road for potty breaks, we find beautiful fields of flowers. We meet farmers, and we TRY our best.

It’s not always a perfect experience, and sometimes I get upset, because I really, really just want those pretty pictures of my babies. Then I get home. I unload my cards, I preview the photos. I sit here and smile, because even though my babies didn’t cooperate THAT WELL, they’re beautiful because these photos are THEM. 100% THEM. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I look at these pictures and I smile for a few reasons. Want to know why? Well, I’m going to tell you anyway…

1. Toni doesn’t like to wear dresses. Instead, she’s wearing capri’s, a white undershirt tank top, and a tunic.
2. Gianna is wearing the dress we bought her for her preschool graduation. She will be in Kindegarden this year. This makes me so proud, and so sad for her to be growing up… so fast.
3. They both chose which bow color to wear. Their favorite colors are pink and purple. This is their individuality shining through.
4. Toni did not want to smile, all she wanted was ice cream. Her saddness was pure, the kind kids have when their biggest battle is what kind of ice cream they want, and if they will get it.
5. Gianna, lifted her hand up and played with her hair like I told her to. She is always wearing a toe ring on her pointer finger, because I gave it to her to wear to feel pretty. She felt so, so very pretty.
6. And lastly, the sunflowers were $0.50 cents, the owner of this property was selling them at a stand with a metal box for the money. His phone number was listed and said something like, “call us if you have a question, we dont bite!”. I left $5.00 in the box, and grabbed 4. I spoke with him and he said I could visit any time I’d like to take pictures in front of his flowers. He is the sweetest man, ever.
7. The girls were standing in the dirt, because they were terrified of the bee’s. Honestly, they screamed bloody murder. I explained to them they just want the pollen and that they’re trying to make honey. But you know, kids don’t listen very well, and they would NOT go back into the flowers.
8. Pink flip flops, because thats just how they roll in the summer.
9. The blurry yellow and green was Toni’s flowers that she didn’t want to hold. So I held them and made this work beautifully.
10. Last but not least, this is proof that I am able to get beautiful images of my children, even if they aren’t happy about it. It works because they’re beautiful, and nothing can ever change that. Unless of course, I have ice cream with me at the time of the shoot.

I’ve decided to enter one of my images into a contest! I am a WPPI Member (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) and being a member has some perks! You can enter contests that are only available to members. That is awesome, because your images are in a contest alongside other amazing photographers! Right now, I have entered my images in the details second of the contest, which is judged by the actual judges. They also allow you to enter those images into the “People’s Choice” section which is a different contest alltogether. It’s for the people to vote on their favorite images. The prizes are not as high, but it’s so much fun and nice to see what the people think are the best images. I am really really excited because so far out of dozens of pages, one of my images is showing up on the FIRST page with 30 votes. I am coming in at 8th place so far and I am just literally blown away that I’m even on the front page. If you haven’t casted your vote yet, I would absolutley appreciate it if you did. It would mean the world to me if I could win this, but there are so many awesome images, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t win. Anyways, here is my image below and the link to follow to cast your vote. Thank you so much in advanced and best of luck to everyone competing!

Vote here: http://www.rangefinderweddingcontest.com/bin/Rate?image_id=2015200092

One of the hardest things to handle when a tragedy happens is dealing with lost memories. I wasn’t always a photographer. I was a child, who had “school class photos”, “sports photos”, and “girl scout photos”. I was a new Mom, who didn’t have time to put albums together, but took a zillion iPhone Selfies, iPhone pics (it was easy for me, and convenient). One of my best friends in this entire world collected all of my photos and created a beautiful scrapbook for me. Those things are memories and they mean more than you could ever imagine. When I heard our house was on fire, you forget those things. All you care about, all you can see or think about is family. Is everyone all right? Yes? AMAZING! What about our pets. We did lose a bunny, and to this day it haunts me. My girls LOVED Princess Buttercup. Whenever they see a bunny outside they say it may be Princess Buttercups cousin. They look up in the sky, and find the brightest star and say, “Look Mom! Princess Buttercup is up there!” It breaks your heart. It does. You don’t know how strong you are, until you need to me. Boy oh boy – the past few years I have been truly tested. I have come out strong each time, but it’s getting hard to stay strong. I need a nice cup of good luck!

One thing I felt strongly about with this fire was that I couldn’t look at what happened. It was this devastating experience that I wanted handled for me. I just couldn’t bear to do this myself. I hired a professional and his team to help us- to do what I couldn’t do. Emotionally I just couldn’t. It’s so difficult to look at what is left, and to try to make sense of it. Why us? Why did this happen right after Christmas? What did our kids do to deserve all of their Christmas toys to be taken away? I have been such a good-hearted person; this just does not make ANY sense. For my husband – it has happened as a kid. What did he do, to deserve this again? These thoughts run through our heads and its just so difficult to fathom.

We hired Thomas Lacovara & Associates to be our public adjuster. It was the BEST decision we could have EVER MADE. Tom and his team are so compassionate. They CARE. It is not everyday that you find someone who wants to help you, because you deserve it. They fight for what is right. Thanks to them, we are going to be able to rebuild our home. It’s been a long process, and it’s really only beginning; But they were there for us when we weren’t strong. We didn’t know what needed to be done, and they did it for us, and we couldn’t be more thankful to them!

One of the things that upset me the most, was our memories were gone. I kept thinking about the pictures; All of the pictures that were printed. The photos of my family before digital cameras were around, or at least before we owned one. My school photos, Girl Scout photos, sports photos… all of my iPhone photos that my best friend created the album with! Her hard work, those scrapbook pages had so many memories on them. I loved them so much and could remember how happy she was that she did this for me. How amazing the pages were put together and just how beautiful this album really was. I didn’t have time to do it, but she did, and it was my most favorite gift, ever.

John, Thomas Lacovara’s partner, found ALL of our photos in the house. He sent them away and we finally received them last week. They don’t smell. They look amazing. They were restored from a company, who I believe is called The Shoe Box. There is no email address, web address, but the presentation and care that these photos arrived in, is out of this world. The boxes are beautiful. Linen, each photo organized in packets, others wrapped in tissue paper.

This made my day, my month, and my entire year. I am so happy, so thankful, and so overcome with joy that these memories were not lost.

Here are some photos of what we received. Please excuse my iPhone-ography! What can I say, sometimes convenience rules.

Thank you for reading, and just remember, memories are so much better when preserved! There are professionals that can help you do that, even photographers need to hire the pros sometimes!

xoxo,
Lauren

Oh, Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is that one-day that we get to reflect on how amazing we are! We created LIFE! We raise these children, and never get a break. We get up, get them ready for school, feed them, feed ourselves if we are lucky, change their diapers, help them brush their teeth, drop them off at school, get to work, pick them up from school, feel them dinner, play with them, love them, talk to them, listen to them, brush their teeth, get them in bed, hope they stay in bed, then lull them to sleep when they get out of bed… and finally, we are aloud to, we try to go to sleep, just to get up and do it all over again! (Ya know, or how ever your schedule is). I love being a Mom. I love that I am able to stay home and be a Mom. I love that I am able to work from home, and be there where they need me, whenever they need me, whatever TIME they need me. I love it, and I wouldn’t and couldn’t change it, ever.

I take beautiful photos of children, all the time. I take pictures on the beach, in a park, in the woods, in people’s backyard, and even at the zoo and on playgrounds! I make these beautiful images for everyone (and trust me I LOVE doing it) but It’s so difficult to get pictures of my own kids! “The Shoemakers kids have no shoes?” Yep, that’s me. It takes so much time to get my kids ready, get them to behave, get them to stop crying, hitting each other, yelling at each other, and stand still long enough for me to snap a few photos. Well, until I learned how to use my camera of course. It’s still difficult but now, I know how to set my camera correctly, to not get a hand of blur, or a jumping child’s face in motion. It really did just one day click in my head, “oh. Duh. THATS what I’m doing wrong?” Yes. That simple. (And Yes, I shoot FULL manual, no modes for me, I control exactly how I want my pictures to turn out, because my camera is just a tool, and I am the artist that drives it).

Anyway, Today I set out to get pictures of my babies. You won’t believe the location. It’s gorgeous; it’s lush, overgrown and fun. It’s my parent’s backyard. The place I grew up. It was a lot more maintained back then, but I love that you can’t see the fence, and there is all of this earthy green everywhere. It’s really neat and makes for amazing photos! I tell everyone not to worry what the background in a photo looks like, because it’s really focused on the person IN the photo, and not the background. The background is just extra anyway. It’s for fun, and it’s just for color. So after my parent’s backyard, I went to the campground, because seriously, the campground has the BEST scenery. There is this amazing strip of dirt called the landing. It’s great, it takes you out by the river, which is fabulous for photos – and how lucky we were that it was high tide! Like, super high tide!

So, Happy Mothers Day to me! I succeeded and got AMAZING photos of my babies. Their Daddy is definitely going to be happy and I’m just so proud. By the time we got home, the baby was knocked out, and our big girl, well, she thought she deserved an Oreo, so we had some Oreo’s together before she got tucked into her warm bed.

Love these photos SO MUCH – check them out!

XOXO,
Lauren
Bokeh Love Photography

My husband is pretty amazing. He doesn’t know much about my camera; actually he know’s NOTHING at all! He does operate my SnapBooth for weddings, however everything is already setup by me ahead of time and ready to go. He just stands there, to make sure nothing goes wrong , operates the touchscreen and he gets to talk to people all night long! It’s a great gig for him and he LOVES doing it. As far as my camera, he’s clueless. I own the D4, and its a fabulous camera. But if you’ve never shot on something like that before, well, it can be pretty intimidating! So, I basically gave him a mini mentoring session. I taught him a little bit about exposure, aperture, and ISO. I also explained what to focus on and why, and what the focus boxes look like, where to stand to make your subject look good (and feel good when they see their photos) and also about light! What to avoid and what to fall in love with!

He had a great time, and I honestly couldn’t believe how beautiful his photos came out. I mean, I wasn’t surprised, because I explained everything to him. For me though, getting in front of the camera is very scary. I take pictures of people ALL THE TIME, it’s what I do and I love it! But we all have these self images of ourselves that no one sees but us. The mirror is our own enemy. I see my self in the worst ways and I shouldnt. I’m a normal female though, and we all think this way. After seeing these photos, I realized I shouldn’t.

What I see when I look at these photos, is a professional photographer, a mother, a daughter, a granddaughter, and ever-changing girl who is getting older and wiser, a wife, a friend, and an all around positive person. I don’t see the person in the mirror thinking negative things. I don’t see the girl who can’t find anything to wear, and I don’t see anyone would I wouldn’t want to be. I love who I am, who I have become, and who I am going to be. I am proud, confident, and cannot wait to get more photos taken of me. It’s a mood booster AND a game changer.

I am so happy that my husband had fun doing this, and I hope he would like to do it again. I had a blast explaining to him why to do certain things and why not to do others. He’s such a good sport, and I love him so much for being so interested in what I enjoy doing. He is such a great support system. I am so happy I married him. What a good choice! So here they are, the images he took of me! I am very proud of them!

XOXO,
Lauren
Bokeh Love Photography

He also took two of our baby, and I just have to post these! She is such a ham!