Family reunion season is in the air. Graduation celebrations, weddings, and new beginnings are in full swing, making way for good reasons for families to reunite and celebrate. I received a call from a 2010 senior portrait client asking for last minute availability to do a family session. And of course, I couldn’t turn her down! This family was absolutely a blast to work with. I had my own built in assistant, Joe, who mastered my reflector like no one else! And it ‘s never better when you get invited to hang out and enjoy in the reunion festivities after the shoot! Thanks again! Congratulations to Chris & Georgia, the newlyweds, and to Colin for your recent accomplishment of graduating from Westview! I hope you all had an opportunity to enjoy each other’s company in the short period of time you were together. You have a beautiful family! Enjoy the sneak peek! Yes, there are more but I could only post so many on the blog! Cheers for now!

I feel like all my blog posts usually center around how lucky I get on sessions with the weather. However, not only did we get lucky with the weather, we pretty much hit the jackpot on entertainment during this portrait session. I thought having two boys to ham it up in front of the camera would be enough. But, not 5 minutes into our first location, Portland Mounted Patrol came trotting down the street and stopped to say ‘hi’ to us. I think my kids were jealous when they saw some of the images! To make it even more interesting, one of the officers addresses me by my first name….”uh oh…what did I do?” Turns out we are high school classmates! What a great surprise! The boys had a blast and got a chance to pet the horses. So…we go about our merry way, proceed to our next location….and…there just parked on the side of the street was a FIRE ENGINE! I really didn’t plan any of this but was probably just as excited as the boys but for a different reason! Anyway, I had a blast and I think the boys did too! Enjoy your sneak peek Jen!

I recently had the pleasure of returning for Jack’s 6 month session. He’s another one of my lucky members of the Milestone Year Baby Plan. Somehow,  my timing of his sessions always seems to be off but he was still ready
and willing to ham it up for me even though he was ready for a nap by the time we started. He is such a cutie! I love watching how these little newbies change and grow over a year. It goes by way too fast!

Check out his newborn session photos here.

Enjoy your sneak peek!

The best thing about my past experience and my current career is that I get to keep in contact with people I used to work with and see them in a much different light….so to speak. This mom, Cheris, and I used to work together at Intel.
This family photo shoot was about capturing memories. Their oldest son is about to embark on a new and honorable experience by serving our country. I know the whole family is anxious to see these portraits before he leaves for boot camp
on Saturday, March 6th. Best of luck! I look forward to seeing you after boot camp. Enjoy your sneak peek!

This post is LONG overdue. I photographed growing Mr. Owen when he was just a wee newborn and then again just before Thanksgiving right around his 6 month mark. We are making plans for announcing our new ‘Milestones Baby Plan’ and Owen and his family are graciously participating in being the ‘samples’ for this new plan. At any rate, these images were shot just before Thanksgiving and the poor little guy had a bit of a problem with some major diaper rash. As you can see however, this apparently didn’t seem to bother him as long as mom continued to play Justin Timberlake’s, “Bringing Sexy Back”. Owen got his groove thing on and danced like a champ through the photo session.

Enjoy your sneak peek!

http://www.melissahathaway.com/blog/2009/07/meet-owen-8-weeks-portland-oregon-newborn-photography/

We have been incredibly lucky with the beautiful weather we’ve been enjoying here in the Pacific NW these past several days. Although it has been cold…it’s been dry…and it doesn’t really get much better than that around this time of the year. Unfortunately, if you like to ski or snowboard…it’s not so great because it means no new snow in the mountains!

So, speaking of good weather, I had the opportunity to photograph another family photo shoot for the holidays. I have the privilege of knowing this family’s mom after becoming regulars at Bethany Athletic Club and looked forward to being able to meet her entire family and see her out of the creature comforts of gym clothing. After a little mix up on where we should meet and having some time to catch up with dad while we waited for the rest of the family, mom and kids showed up completely decked out and ready to go! If you ever have doubt on what to wear for a photo shoot…lemme know…I’ll send you their way!

As with any photo shoot, I try to incorporate something about the person…or in this case, the family, as part of the shoot. Behind every person/family, there’s a story….the title of this post is ‘Party of 7′ and they truly are ’7′. About 6 years ago, their baby sister passed away but remains an integral part of their family & they continually feel her influence in their lives. During this time of the year as families gather to celebrate the holidays, I feel honored to have had the privilege of photographing the Newsom’s and getting a small glimpse of the strong bond and love this family has for each other. Enjoy your sneak peek!

I’m probably more than a day late and a dollar short on this shoot but I was skimming through the images tonight and couldn’t resist posting this. More to come from this session but Danielle, this one’s for you!

This post was supposed to be on the blog earlier this a.m. but for whatever reason, it got ‘hung up’ in the depths of ‘Draft’ mode and never made it to ‘Published’. At any rate, here we go. I was out to dinner with a family friend and her kids tonight and we were talking about the photo shoot I had today. The photo shoot that I ‘got lucky’ with and didn’t have to cancel because of the rain.I have to say, I have been pretty fortunate these past several weeks that, knock on wood, to date, I haven’t had to reschedule any shoots.

The day that I had the Hopson family shoot was no exception. I was worried the night before that it was going to rain. And as you may see in some of the photos, we ended up having sun. These girls were a blast to hang out with…and again, we went over time. I was just slightly jealous that the older daughter and her mom & dad was fortunate to be one of the many girls who got to see Miley Cyrus live in concert in PDX just a few weeks prior. (not really….but how cool for a little girl! My daughter would have been jealous if I told her!).

I had a blast with you guys. Enjoy your sneak peek!

It’s about that time of the year when the thought of the holidays starts to pop into our heads and we start thinking about plans for family gatherings. I’ve been getting quite a few phone calls lately asking if it’s too late to schedule an outside family portrait in Portland. Well, there’s really no ‘right’ answer for that. However, what I can tell you is this…”we’ll just have to wait and see….”. And wait and see is exactly what we did for this family shoot. Our rainy days have been VERY few and far between for fall in Oregon this year…knock on wood! We have been very lucky to have the weather we *have* been having. However, just when you think you’ve got it figured out, mother nature decides to make changes in our well thought out plans.

A week before this shoot, we decided we would shoot on Monday late afternoon, early evening because the weather had been so great. So great that just the day before, I was shooting outside on the river @ 6:00 p.m. with no problems. So, I thought Monday would be a piece of cake, no problem. Well, little did I know that rain was in store for late Monday afternoon. However, somehow we were able to shoot. It was a little cold and a little drizzly, but hey, we got some great shots! There was no way to re-schedule this shoot. With one son in town from Texas and relatives from Germany leaving in a few days, THIS day was THE day. And everyone was a trooper! Thanks again you guys! I had a blast photographing you. Enjoy your sneak peek!

With a little over 24 hours before the Oregon vs. Purdue game, it’s only fitting to start this post out with the picture below. This 3 yo, ‘D’ knows his team! We started off talking about the upcoming football game and he immediately through his hands in the air to make an ‘O’ for ‘Oregon’! When ‘D’ was 1 year old, we took his first birthday pictures at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. Now that he’s a big brother and just turned 3, there’s lots to celebrate. His little brother is now ’1′, so we’re creating some family traditions and photographing the family at the same place. These boys were so sweet and fortunately the weather held out for us and only started sprinkling just after we loaded up into our cars. I had a blast re-creating similar shots that we did for D’s first birthday with lil’ brother ‘T’.

Enjoy your sneak peak and have fun watching the game tomorrow!