It took her a little while to warm up to me and the idea of sitting in the wet grass, but all we needed was a complete stranger to walk by and start making faces at her and she was all giggles! (From a recent round of Xpressions, but these images have been retouched)

By far, my absolute fav session with one of my absolute fav families!

And now, a bunch of sneaky peeks for all of those beautiful families that braved the intense fog and even RAIN today for our Xpressions sessions (as always, the images below from the Xpressions sessions have not been retouched):

(I’d especially like to thank Miss J with the umbrella above…she did an INCREDIBLE job fighting the elements today!)

There is still ONE opening left for the November 22nd, round of Xpressions (again, this is the LAST round I’ll be doing in Austin for 2009).  Contact me if you want to snag it!

ETA: I don’t want to give photographers out there the wrong impression.  My Xpressions images are not SOOC…they have received edits in ACR to enhance contrast/exposure.  What I’m referring to is the fact that they have not been retouched in Photoshop to address things like blemishes, eye brightening, dodging/burning, color saturation, sharpness, cross-processing, etc. You can read more about the difference between these digital negatives (shown above) and fully retouched images here.

1. We’ve added one more (and the FINAL) Xpressions Date for 2009! Yes! The Nov 4th Xpressions booked up so fast, I had to add a new date: Sunday, November 22nd.  Reserve your space NOW and don’t miss out on having family images ready in time for the holidays! Once again, I thought I’d showcase some images from the last round of sessions so you can see the variety and quality of these UN-retouched images.  Here’s what the families had to say:

• "I thought the session was a phenominal value!"
• "The 45 minute timeslot allows enough time to get some great shots, change location/background, and also enough time for the family to get comfortable with you. And it is not TOO long where everyone gets tired and just wants to get it over with.  And we still got AMAZING photos from it.  I really do like the fact that we got them so fast and you sent a CD of the pictures. It is getting harder and harder to find people willing to do that.  I give a big thumbs up on this."
• "I think getting the images so quickly is definitely a bonus and the editing is great. I would definitely do this again so I hope you’ll keep offering these!"

2. This is for any client who had or is getting ready to have a full, premium session with me this year: I have a very special offer available for CUSTOM 2010 photo calendars that are perfect for gift-giving.  Please e-mail me for details!

3. And finally, things are getting back to normal in this house. We actually scrubbed it from top to bottom today in hopes of ridding ourselves of the germiness.  Baby girl is still pretty fussy, but I think she’s doing better.  Thank you again for your patience and kind thoughts.

All in all, I’d say the first-ever round of Pinkle Toes Xpressions sessions rocked my world. Such BEAUTIFUL families and such patience—you wouldn’t believe the kind of heat and Texas-sized mosquitoes we were dealing with here. So sorry we didn’t get to do the morning sessions this weekend (thanks to the threat of storms and a bad radar map), BUT that works in your favor because…

I’m adding a NEW Xpressions date! If you’d like me to notify you of the new date and times available, please fill out the form here.  Also, we’re going to make another exception this round…I will accept families up to 5 members (extra fee over 3 subjects), but babies still must be at least 3 months old.

To these beautiful families that had their Xpressions sessions this weekend…I’ve already got your disks burned (everyone ended up with around 70+ images!) and prints on order! It won’t be but a few more days and you’ll have everything in hand!  How about that??? And by the way, these previews have only received the basic edits for contrast/color…no additional retouching, etc., so this is exactly the kind of stuff you’ll see on your disk.