I am SO EXCITED and thrilled to announce the newest members of the LHP Street Team!! I can’t even believe its been a year since we came up with this CRAZY idea and picked out the 12 fantastic young people to represent us for the Class of 2012. As we close out their orders and prepare for graduation, its with excitement that as we say goodbye- we will be opening a NEW door to work with some pretty dynamic young people for the 2012-2013 school year.
Isaiah and I learned so much last year and have worked to make sure this year is EVEN more special then the last, creating AMAZING custom photo session and really really cool prizes that include the NEWLY added Best Friend Session and VIP Party!
After reading the 21 applications that came in for Street Team it was sooooooooo hard making the decision and narrowing it down to just 8 high school juniors , so we PICKED 9, and we are so confident in our choices and know that we will surpass our goal from last year with the help of these amazing young people.
So without further ado….. our AWESOME NINE from all over the South Puget Sound region!!!
Stay tuned because I so look forward to introducing each of these amazing seniors to you!!!
After a VERY exciting month of anticipating this moment, I could not wait for last Sunday to get here. It could not have come faster if you ask me. All the preparation , all the planning and all the excitment surrounding one of the most important annoucements of our lives our gender reveal party, girl or boy?!! It was a beautiful day. A bit cloudy, but no rain and no rain makes this girl very happy.
Our gender reveal had finally come and by the end of the day we would know whether we would be painting all blue or all pink. As guest arrived, they were encouraged to pick a pink bow or a black mustache OR pink or blue mardi gras beads to distinguish their vote for gender. It was so fun watching the room divide as people profess how they ABSOLUTELY knew one way or another what was in my belly. All of their old wives tales, their rubbing of the belly reasoning. Some even switched back and forth all night until they were forced to stick with and make a decision. Thankfully, Ike and I got to teeter in the middle because we were the MOST unsure of everyone in the room. Although I have known what I wanted for some time, I had no inclination either way whether that desire would come to be fulfilled.
guest hung out in the party booth, wrote Baby Haymes “love notes” for a baby scrapbook Isaiah and I are putting together, and signed a matte that will be the first picture. We created a cravings table that included all the junk food I have grown to love and desperately want that last 6 months, which include Garrett’s Chicago Mix popcorn, Jolly Ranchers, the taste of cinnamon among other things.
Shout out to May Wyatt of Wyatt Ink and Paula Pritchard of Paisley Petals for all of their help planning out the little aesthetic details of the party! All of the signage was designed and created by May and all of the little handmade touches were both found and created by Paula- including the party booth and the ribbon chandelier above the cupcakes! Cupcakes are yummy Salted Caramel Cheesecake and Lemon Lavendar from Yellowleaf Cupcake Company in Seattle!
When Isaiah and I had our 19 week ultrasound we had the ultrasound technician seal the results in a envelope and we immediately, unbeknowst to us the results, took them to Seattle and handed them over to the bakery. They then filled those two cupcakes that are set apart with the answer to the big question….. what are we having??! Isaiah and I planned this party to announce and find out the gender with our closest local friends.
As we prepared to find out, the room split in half… Team Blue and Team Pink!
the big moment had finally arrived……. We waited for this weekend in particular because this would be the week Ike and I would celebrate our birthdays, I would turn 30 and Isaiah 29 and what better present then a reveal like this???!
in the last minute leading up to the reveal I got scared, bit into the cupcake and closed my eyes. I turned the cupcake to the crowd and waited for their reactions….. as I heard big screams, I knew, I must have gotten my girl!
and this is how I chose to celebrate this very special and exciting moment… with a cake smash!
We were so excited and it was so fun to share this moment with 40 of our closest friends….
Team Pink celebrated with screams and laughter, while Team Blue had to admit a very tough defeat!
Isaiah and I are so blessed to have so many people in our lives who love us and who love our sweet little girl already, little Miss Wisdom Haynes who is making her AMAZING arrival into this world in the fall! To say we are thrilled is a understatetment. Thank you everyone for coming and celebrating this SPECIAL and EPIC moment with us!
All images above taken by: Chelle Nicole Photography
As promised, a giveaway for the person who votes on the blog and who guesses right …. so drumroll please……
Congratulations!!!!!
Geylar Locke!!!
You have one a 1hr complimentary session with Latasha Haynes Photography OR a gift card to a store of your choice valued at $50.00. Way to go for guessing right!!!
and a fun video recap of the MOMENT we found out we were having our sweet girl taken by my dear friend Annie of Let It Shine Photography! This is a moment I will never forget!
a few fun party booth images from people who love my girl below:
What’s a gender reveal without a story??! I knew that if I ever got pregnant everything about that first baby would be a spectacle, epic, special. I have waited 29 years and 363 days for this moment and its here. FINALLY! We are having a baby. A sweet sweet baby! We are so excited to share this moment with you and it had to be special, so we headed out with our dear friend, Chelle, who has become our “family” photographer over the last couple of months! She did a wonderful job helping us tell the story of this special moment in our life!!! Check out the storyboards to find out the gender.
We are so excited to announce that we will be bring home a BEAUTIFUL baby girl this fall, named Wisdom.
Wisdom has already brought so much joy into our lives.
We absolutely love her and can’t wait to see the kind of person she’s going to be.
There is VERY little I can say about Emma except, wow! That amazing fire red hair and those bright blue eyes….. a photographer’s dream! Emma is SO talented. A painter, a photographer, a dancer…. I am always blown away by these awesome and AMAZING seniors who find us.
We spent a very cold and ALMOST wet and rainy day shooting in DeCoursey Park in Puyallup, WA. I loved how Emma STOOD out against the muted tones and had such a blast shooting her!
Shooting Stacy was SUCH a joy for many reason. 1.) The camera loves her. 2.) She is so natural and stunningly beautiful. 3.) She’s talented, a dancer, a singer and a actress and she represents a part of my past. Stacy is the younger sister of a dear friend who I hadn’t seen since elementary school. Shooting her was like looking back in time. I so enjoyed hanging with Stacy, galivanting around Tacoma. Going to all of her hot spots and LOVEEEED her outfit choices. She is such a fashionista. So crazy to think that she’s exactly 12 years younger than me and likely wasn’t even alive when her sister and I were out playing on the playground during recess! I am so proud of her and all of her accomplishments this year!! Can’t wait to see what she does to this big ole world with her amazing heart and sweet spirit!
Why it took me so long… I will never know, but this session just makes me jump with joy! This family, these girls, these colors, these outfits… omgeeeee. After this session, which happened back in November, I desperately wanted a girl and had NO IDEA I’d be pregnant, after seeing these four sweet sisters, could you blame me?
Had so much fun doing mini-session this year at the Tacoma Glass Museum to prepare for Christmas, and NOW its almost Christmas again and I’m just getting around to sharing these images…. my excuse: I’ve been cooking a sweet baby and we are halfway there, so I am ready to go again!
I loved shooting the Massey’s! They are so full of joy and life and laughter and fun, clearly, look at these pictures!! I am so happy to finally share their session with all of you!
I love this job! I love the different people I get to meet and the different places I get to see. I met Christin a couple weeks ago in Houston, after she signed up for our mentorship, but we’ve been connecting and chatting for most of 2012 via Twitter and Skype. One day online she jokingly mentioned me going to Texas to teach my style of photography… and I quickly responded that I had always wanted to visit Houston. She got her friends together and over the course of the following two months we made this dream happen and in late March I headed south.
I got off the plane and headed straight to meet Christin for the first time and her beautiful family in Downtown. I was so nervous. Christin is actually QUITE talented herself (more of that in a later blog about my mentoring experience) and I just wanted to do a good job. She had never ever done family pictures and I couldn’t fly all the way south from Seattle and fail. The night was warm, the light was perfect and this family… scrumptious! Christin, thank you for trusting not only your business but your sweet family with my gift! I hope these images are a gift to you!
Sometimes you just need to get out and burn the film…. or in my case, the CF card. Just shoot… free shoot. Experiment with posing, with lighting, with editing- so if you see like a million different types of editing techniques here, just know that I was exploring, playing, stretching, seeing what was available to me. I got scared half way through my editing process and decided to go back to safe, because I didn’t want to try to be something that I wasn’t- but THEN I fought that and thought, if I’m attracted to it, then wouldn’t that be me too? Oh being a artist is so confusing sometimes. SO so confusing.
At any rate, I met Chantelle at Forever 21 last summer in the Tacoma Mall. She was striking then and I remember whipping out a business card and telling her I wanted to photograph her. She was down, but was moving in like 3 days from that day to California, and it wasn’t going to go down. She kept up with me and I kept up with her and she came back to town. For the last 7 months we’ve been trying to figure out concepts and ideas for a perfect shoot, but with pregnancy and burn out- I was really failing at creativity. So, I decided to just do something normal, just practice, just shoot, for no reason at all- and we had so much fun. We trapsed around Downtown Tacoma, the port, the dome and just shot. She’s stunning and we had so much fun! I love Chantelle’s smile. Her personality is so fun and we both learned so much that day. She is aspiring model and hopes to one day be signed. I pray that happens for her. She quite beautiful!
Below, a little from our scavenger hunt around Tacoma.
Please don’t judge the photo dimensions and crazy posititioning of photos. I have been working on this blog for two hours and things JUST don’t seem to be going quite right, but we roll with the punches!
Just over a week ago, I got the opportunity to attend the 2012 WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) convention. There are SO many reason I LOVE that conference, but the main one is that I get to see friends who I connect with and follow from all over the world for one week, non-stop. We get to eat, fellowship, worship, pray, and just hang together and its generally the only time we get to connect in person.
Just over two years ago, Stephanie of Celebration Portraits, participated in a online workshop called “CreativeLive” with the amazing Jasmine Star (one of the most talented, popular and sought after wedding photographers in the business). At that times, Isaiah and I were just starting out and we were glued to learning. Every FREE online workshop we could get our hands on we were there. We watched a 4-week wedding go down online, complete with final wedding day of my now dear friend Laura, who at the time was the bride. Stephanie participated and through Twitter and Facebook and Laura, we have become great friends.
Stephanie is the kind of friend that you NEVER get tired of. She is the kind of friend that you can meet once and fall in love with and be life long friends within minutes. She is the kind of friend, that when I was in Los Angeles in December with no real place to stay, she opened her home to me in the middle of the night. She loves God. She loves people and has a wonderful heart!
Prior to WPPI, Stephanie text me to ask if I was coming because she was ready for some new pictures. Its both a honor and quite intimidating to be asked by another photographer to photograph them. They know what they like, they generally have a preference for hot or cold imagery and you JUST DON’T want to get it wrong. We booked… met in the desert and below is what we came up with. Had no idea that it was the FIRST time Steph would be in front of the camera for a portrait session and HONESTLY I have no idea what took her so long. She absolutely gorgeous. She knows her angles and sooooo much fun!
You can check out Stephanie’s work at: Celebration Portraits or find her on Facebook. She is out of the Calabasas area and focuses on seniors and families and a few weddings here and there.
There is almost nothing better for a photographer than the annual WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) convention that happens in Vegas every February/March. I may be a bit bias considering I’ve only been been twice, but those two times are enough for me to co-sign. WPPI is the most incredible experience. If you ever been to a place full of the thing you love the most, then you know what I am talking about. 15,000 people who love what you love as much as you do, a trade show of every possible photography product you could imagine, available to touch and feel and play with, and people tons and tons of people, some you know, some YOU REALLY KNOW, and some you don’t but get to. Its a playground for the photographer with all day every day recess.
WPPI for me in inspiring. Its motivating. Its exciting. Its overwhelming. Its high energy, tons of laughter, smiles, its expensive meals with amazing friends that you generally only see once a year, its photo shoots in the desert and pre-arranged outfits. Its parties and fancy drinks (if you aren’t pregnant). Its the MGM food court, the Signature sleepovers, its water because your skin gets so dry, its high energy and screaming hugs, its really really hurt and tired feet, its platform classes of the most talented photographers in the game. Its a dream come true and every year that I can go, I will. I will never miss this conference. This year I didn’t get to take any classes, although I signed up for 5, the lessons I learned from the quality time I spent with other photographers who love this craft and love the LORD, no amount of money is worth.
When we first started talking about WPPI 2012 I had made the decision not to attend. I had decided it was overrated and I probably didn’t need to go every year, for what??! Not much has changed. A week and a half before the convention was to start, my dear friend Annie convinced me to go and I am so glad. Before I went to WPPI, I was tired, uninspired and a bit over photography. I imagine 70% of my feelings had to do with my pregnancy, while the other 20% is probably the natural depression that sets in along with the winter NW weather- but I truly didn’t know if shooting was my love, if I should keep going. We finished the year like chickens with no heads and I was still tired from very high intense fall season.
While at WPPI, I met so many photographers who were new to me, who I follow, who are my heroes, who encouraged me and built me up and told me that what I did mattered…. that they paid attention, that they followed me, that I inspired them- and I was reminded why I loved this thing so much, and better than that- that I make it possible for other people to press through- who wants to walk away from that??! I make a difference. The same difference that so many of my heroes make for me, I am making for someone else. When I came into that realization, I was humbled and all I wanted to do was shoot.
I am so thankful for this profession. That for the last 15 months I have been able to pay my bills (along with Isaiah) with my camera. I am so thankful that when my beautiful baby enters this world that they will be able to easily fit into my career and that I won’t have to choose between motherhood and a job I adore. I am just thankful. There is nothing more refreshing than 15,000 of your closest friends meeting up every year to keep this industry alive, a industry that I am honored to be a part of.
This is my WPPI. I hope you will join me next year!
For more information about WPPI: visit: http://www.wppionline.com/
