My little sister Kourtnie and her friends graduated from high school last night. I can hardly believe that she’s a college girl now. (And she’s a girl after my own heart – going to my alma matter, Cazenovia.) Congratulations Kourtnie!!

I can’t believe they are seniors already! That’s incredible! For those of you who don’t know, Kourtnie is my little sister. She was born when I was 14 (actually, she was born the day before my 14th birthday if one day matters). All of a sudden in the past few years she has grown into a beautiful young woman! She’s off to college in the fall and we’ll definitely miss her! But for now she’s still in high school and as a senior she and her boyfriend Evan went to the prom together.

I had the privledge of doing a session with a wonderful senior last night. She had a great sense of humor and was up for anything! We had a great time traipsing about Hancock looking for fun places to shoot.

This first one is at the school. Both sides of the high school have these little empty alcoves that always seemed like they were missing a statue of some sort… so we put Lauren up there as one!

I’m not sure which of these 2 I like better…

And I love this one of Lauren overlooking the tennis court (she’s an amazing tennis player!) What you don’t see is the port-a-john right next to us! LOL! Gotta love those aromatics!

Thanks for being such a great sport Lauren!

When Evan scheduled his senior session, the first words out of his mouth were “Can I bring my 4 wheeler for some pictures?” I absolutely love it when seniors bring along things that are important to them because it makes the session that much more fun. So I said “Sure!” and he brought it in the back of his truck. Guys are usually harder to photograph than girls, simply because they are usually not quite as comfortable in front of the camera. But Evan did great! I hope these capture him!

I’ve been so blessed this year; not only have my clients been beautiful, but they’ve also been so sweet and a joy to work with! Melissa called me a while back to schedule her senior session and we had a blast! It was a perfect day for it and she was so much fun (and her mom had us both laughing for most of the session!) And yes, I have a lot of pictures that show Melissa’s beautiful smile, but these are a few of my personal favorites.

This one was taken at the very end of the session and is my favorite. What you don’t see is the behind the scenes work – mainly Melissa’s mom holding up a fan and both of us cracking up when M’s hair went flying everywhere!

I’ve been looking forward to this session for months! My little sister Kourtnie (who obviously isn’t so little anymore) is a senior! And of course wanted me to do her senior pictures. Kourt happens to be one of the coolest people I know – she’s up for anything and always knows how to have a good time. So for her pictures I wanted to do something different than the usual. I wanted a more urban feel to some of them, so we headed to Hancock for some cool locations. For those of you that know the town, you may be thinking “Hancock, urban?” But that’s part of the fun of scouting for a session like this – finding those little spots that you’d never guess could be cool in a photograph. I love these – we went a little rocker with a few of them.

This one is my favorite I think. It’s tied for first with the black and white I posted first.

“There is a severe thunderstorm warning in effect…”

That’s what we heard halfway through this senior session. Sure, it’s been raining a LOT this summer, but when we started shooting the sun was out and it was a beautiful day! That was the last thing I expected to hear! But at least the first part of the session had perfect weather and got some beautiful images for K and her family!

Love the warm sunlight of the sunset on this one

I can’t believe Kourtnie’s Junior Prom was last night! It seems like just yesterday that Drew and I went to my prom together, and now my little sister is that age! She looked beautiful of course, and so did all of her friends! We had so much fun yesterday helping her get ready and then taking some pictures of her and Evan (and their friends too!)  I have a LOT more to edit. I’ll post more over the next few days and once they are all finished I’ll post the link here along with details on how to access the entire gallery (it will be password protected). Here’s a few shots of my beautiful sister and her friends!

And finally, Kourt, myself and Kellie

It certainly has been a whirlwind year! I’ve been so blessed to have so many absolutely amazing clients, brides and grooms that shared their wedding day with me, families that wanted to capture a special moment and lots of beautiful children that made me laugh! I put together a little slideshow of some of my favorites from 2008 – I hope you enjoy it!

The orange bracelet is to support her niece who was born with heart and lung problems, but is doing great today!