Share the Love 2012 ~ North Chicago Children's Photography

It's that time of year again! Time for me to give back a little of the awesome love I get from my clients throughout the year. Time for me SHARE THE LOVE!!!! Who's ready for some lovin'?!?!?

(Me! Me! Me!)

Wait before we get all lovey dovey, go check out the precious little ones with whom I SHARED THE LOVE last year. So cute, right? Okay, back to the contest....

Back for its second year, it's the

SHARE THE LOVE CONTEST

2012

This is your chance to win

- A FREE (uh yeah, FREE) custom portrait session
- One 16x20 wall print
- Two 8x10 desk prints
- A custom photo book using the photos from your session
- AND 10% off all additional prints from your session

That is a seriously sweet (or shall we say LOVELY) deal! So here's what you need to know:

HOW TO ENTER:

~Between now and February 5, 2012, e-mail a picture of a little (or big) one you love to kspShareTheLove@yahoo.com.

~ In your email, in two sentences or less, tell me how you’re going to “share the love” this Valentine’s Day.

HOW TO WIN:

~ Starting February 6, come back to the KSP blog to vote for your favorite entry (and of course, send all your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc to vote, too!). Come back every day to vote again!

~ Voting will continue through February 13.

~ The winner will be announced February 14 (you know...on Valentine's Day)

Got it? Remember: send a picture and tell me how you're going to share the love. In return, you just might get a little KSP love shared right back!

Official Rules:

1. Entries will be accepted starting January 28 and through February 5th. Siblings may be entered in a single photo. Only one entry per person.

2. The person submitting an entry must be the parent or guardian of the child in the submitted photo.

3. Please do not enter photos taken by other professional photographers. KSP photos are okay, though.

4. Anyone may enter, but the session must take place in the Chicagoland area before June 1st, 2012 OR (new this year!!!) in Pinellas County, Florida the week of July 29, 2012.

5. Voting will take place February 6th through February 13th.

6. You may vote ONCE PER DAY. Multiple votes on the same day will disqualify the contestant (so no cheating!)

7. Winner will be announced here on the blog on February 14th, 2012.

9. The winner is the photo with the most votes.

10. Does not apply to sessions already booked. Must receive at least 5 entries for the contest to run.
11. Prize value: $300.

For questions or to enter, e-mail kspShareTheLove@yahoo.com

I cannot wait to see all those LOVELY faces so get your entry in today!

Project 24: Morning

Saturday mornings are one of my very favorite things in our house. Not just because they bring the (often unrealized) opportunity to sleep in, but because they also bring the opportunity to do something truly delightful: waller. It's true. Wallering in bed for as long as I possibly can is something that makes Katie a happy girl. Of course, wallering these days is often brought to me courtesy of the Disney Channel (while I'm at it, hey Disney Channel: can we get Octonauts on Saturday morning around 8:00 CST? That would help me out a lot!). So you can imagine the effort it took for me to get out of my nice warm bed on Saturday morning to capture a little wallering in progress.

Snow, Really ~ Chicago Suburban Photographer

Is yours a family that LOVES snow? Looks like Mother Nature finally has heard your call! Why not capture your family doing what they love this winter? Sledding, snow angels, snowball fights.

In other words, schedule a snow session this winter!

Who's up for a challenge?

It's the new year again. That time when we all make resolutions, knowing we only 75% intend to keep them. Let's not address the photography goals I made for myself last year. A month or so later I went and got myself pregnant and was suddenly too tired to do much of anything. (But I did make my website! And I did try to carry my camera with me more. And I did do some maternity, i.e. my own.)

The new year is also the time when a lot of photographers begin challenges. 365 challenges. 52 week challenges. More power to them, I say. Anyone who successfully completes a 365 (366 this year) challenge gets a major "You Rock" award from me. I know better than to start that type of challenge. I don't like to set myself up for failure. When Cooper was born my goal was to take a portrait a day for 30 days. I think I got to day 14, but I'm going to blame exhaustion for that one. Still, it would be nice to try to give my creative muscles a stretch in a completely "no-pressure, failure-proof, I-work-full-time-and-have-two-kids-and-am-writing-this-blogpost-on-the-train-because-I-have-a-killer-commute-but-I'm-not-complaining" kind of way.

So I saw the Project 24 challenge on the Florabella Facebook page the other day, and thought this might be the kind of challenge for me. Here's the challenge:

Sounds good, right? No deadlines, no rules. What could possibly go wrong? So here goes nothing. I'm jumping on the challenge bandwagon. Of course, I wouldn't mind some help. You know, the occasional comment, like: "Hey Katie. You haven't posted a challenge photo in a whole. Stop being such a slouch and get on it already." And I'd definitely welcome some company. You know, comments like: "Hey Katie. I'm doing the Project 24 challenge, too. Here's a link to my latest photo." Who's with me? You don't even have to post it to the Florabella page necessarily. Just do it for fun and post to your own blog or flickr or whatever. No really. Think about it.

In the mean time, here's my first attempt, No. 19-Light and Dark. And in the spirit of "truly anyone can play along," I'll tell you that this was taken with my iPhone camera on the train (did I mention about my commute?) and processed with photoshop express on my phone.

Happy New Year!

p.s. The book is called Let the Great World Spin, and it's by Colum McCann, and yes, I would definitely recommend it!

Favorite Images of 2011

I started to put together a blog post of my favorite images from 2011, but it quickly became apparent that I had too many favorites to make a single blog post practical since, in general, I'm not a fan of freezing up people's computers as they try to load a post with 30+ pictures.

So instead, I put together a short slideshow of my favorites. What an amazing year! I hope you enjoy these images as much as I do:

p.s. This beautiful version of "You Are My Sunshine" is sung by Elizabeth Mitchell.

Testing, Testing, 1..2...3..

Is anyone out there? You know what happens when you have a baby and don't update your blog for two months? People stop reading! NOOOOOO!!!!! Come back, come back!

Isn't this reason enough to come back?

Cooper James Shores was born October 21, 2011, and he has already brought us such joy. We are just getting back into the swing of things, but I didn't want anyone to miss out on seeing Cooper's newborn pictures. I am already starting to think about his three month pictures. Where does the time go?

I'll be back soon with a special Favorites of 2011 post, so keep checking in!