Personal

Follow your heart and make dreams happen!

Apr 05

Happy Friday!

Friday’s make everyone feel good. The moment at work when you realize that your weekend is just about to begin. Weekends are refreshing, a time to yourself (well.. for some of us). It’s usually a time to do things that you love most or maybe it’s just a time where you relax because you’ve had a long and exhausting week at work. Whatever you do, most of us look forward to them! I look forward to them because we get to do what we love. We get to do what we are most comfortable doing, and that is making pictures. We are fortunate enough to do what we love for a living.

So, the reason for this post is to give you some feel good vibes this weekend. One thing I’m becoming more and more aware of, is that your time and your love are the most precious things you have. To us, it’s more precious than money, it’s more precious than fancy material THINGS. Time will run out for us all. Start making this weekend and every weekend count. Start making every moment of your life count. I think most of us do not want to be on our death beds regretting and wishing we would have done things differently. Love…love with all your heart. Show those that matter to you most the love you have for them. Because they too will run out of time.

Take time this weekend to really enjoy your life. Do something for yourself. Do something you love to do. Think about your future and what your goals are. Start making steps to reach those goals. Start doing what you love doing and making most of out of your life! Why do something you do not enjoy? Sometimes that requires a few scary steps to be taken. In the end, it will all be worth it!

Not many people know our story and how we got started. Some people think we had lots of money to start and to buy all of our equipment. Not the case. We started with nothing. Investing every last cent we had to buy a second camera, was considered by most, stupid and dumb. People laughed when we told them we wanted to start a photography company. We were told (by some family members) that photography is not a “real job” and that it’s silly because we have 2 small babies to feed and take care of. We knew in our hearts that if we followed our passion, we would be doing what we loved and enjoy working and we’d also be able to provide for our family. And that’s what we did. And here we are, five years later, doing what we love, our kids are still a live and well fed! Investing the $2,000 dollars that we had received with our tax return 5 years ago on a second camera for us to start doing what we love doing, has been one of the best, if not the best decision we made for ourselves and for our family. While to others, it was stupid because we needed that money desperately to pay our rent and buy food, and it may have been a scary decision to make, ended up being the very best decision at the time! Don’t listen to others that think they know you better than you. You know you best. Follow your heart!

Enjoy the weekend and make it amazing!

Much love!

Melissa.

puerto-rico-view

{A shot taken in Puerto Rico. The view of El Yunque National Rainforest….more pictures to follow soon}

Our Road trip: Niagara Falls, Canada

Nov 21

You’ll understand why I split this into two posts. It would have been overkill if I didn’t. This post is just as long as a wedding post. Seriously!

Anyway, after being in the car driving for 9 hours, we finally made it to Canada. We stopped at a few small towns both to and from Canada, all of which were located in New York. hmm?. You’ll notice quite a few pictures of the girls posing with random animal figures. That wasn’t Michael or my doing, that was totally them. See, they’re going through this thing, where they think posing with things is cool. They don’t realize that it’s so touristy. Luckily for them, they are so cute, it doesn’t really matter what they do, haha.

What else can I say, but I love Canada. It’s unbelievably pretty and I think Canadians rock. I may be a little biased, we know some really amazing people from Canada.

When I was a little girl, I thought the North Pole was located at the tippy top of Canada (Santa’s home). I was like 5!! But seriously, I find Canada to be so fascinating. What fascinates me most is North Canada, . I imagine it’s pretty spectacular. I also imagine dog sleds and igloos, but then again I imagine dog sleds when I think of Alaska (that’s next on my list).

So, this was Ava & Bella’s first time visiting Canada and Niagara Falls, and it was also my first time. The girls, being 5 years old, had more fun swimming in the hotel pool, I however, found the falls breathtaking.

;

The trip from Boston to Canada was about 500 miles. Even seeing 250 miles on our GPS..was torture. It seemed never ending.

The view from our hotel room.

I love early morning sun!

Canadian bacon? Yes!

Haha.

Ava does such a good job of looking innocent I’m kidding, she’s a great kid.

I don’t think we were expecting to get as wet as we did. BTW, these are our friends to the left. Not some random family I was stalking, haha. They lived in Canada for a couple years and they came to meet us

There was no way we were buying this print. It was out of focus and the lady taking the picture was a little upset that we didn’t take it seriously. So….we took a picture of the picture

Now, we were testing Bella’s skills. We’ll need to work a little on composition ;0)

Are squirrels usually this tame? I thought for sure it was going to jump at Michael and maybe bite his neck or something?..But nope, he just kept munching on that little squirrely nut.

Once one does it, the other must follow. You know how it goes.

The 7 hour drive back, wasn’t as bad as the drive there. But it still seemed to never end! Clearly the girls felt the same way.

It was a great first road trip and definitely not our last! We’re hoping to make another road trip to Michigan soon and who knows where else we’ll end up. I’ve always loved the idea of just driving and not really having a plan. If my mother is reading this, I’m sure her stress level has just increased. I said, I loved the idea, not that we are actually just going to drive without a plan ;0) Love you mom xoxo.

That’s our trip. Thanks for reading!

;

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Melissa.

Our Road trip: part one

Nov 21

This has been a long time in the making. I probably should have blogged about this months ago, but it took a backseat during wedding season. As most of you know, we took a little road trip back in June. It was really fun and I’d love to take another. This time, it will need to be longer than 1 week and probably shouldn’t be during wedding season! haha.

One thing we want to give our kids is experience. As much as I’m sure they’d love the fanciest new toy on the shelf, we do not want to spoil our kids with materialistic things. Instead we want to give them experience. They are emotionally over their toys about 2 weeks after they get them. So, we would much rather prefer taking a trip and doing something they can remember. Having 2 parents that are photographers, you can imagine that every single trip we take is documented. I’m not sure about you, but I know for me…when I look at these pictures years from now, I’ll remember this trip is such detail. This is the beauty of lifestyle documenting. If we had it our way, we would do every family shoot like this. We will not necessarily follow them around on their family trips (unless of course they wanted that ;0), but document them as a family in that particular time in their lives vs. the traditional look at the camera and now smile. Don’t get me wrong, that’s nice and all, but it doesn’t pull the strings of my heart the way documenting a family would do.

That being said, we are also grateful and most importantly grateful, for our family. We are thankful for our kids and the light that they bring to our lives. Over the last few years, they’ve put so much into perspective for us. They’ve changed us and in the grand scheme of things, they helped us see what is really important in life. Not fancy new things, not a million pairs of shoes (although I do love me some nice boots), and not the biggest house on the block. That stuff doesn’t matter to us. What matters is that we have each other and we get to live this life with each other vs. alone. We do not have super powers, but we do have the gift of documenting life and just like so many other photographers, we feel blessed that we are able to do this.

So this brings us to part one of our road trip. Part one documented our first stop at six flags, our New York visit, a quick stop in Connecticut and lastly our weekend in Boston. Part two, which documented our Niagara falls stop, will be up later this evening

These pictures were taken with both our phones as well as our camera. Sorry for any quality differences ;0)

Excited and ready to do this. I don’t think they realized how much we’d be in the car, lol. We were prepared though…we had a dvd player for the car with dual screens. We also had a backup portable Dvd player and about a million movies. They also had our phones and tablets, etc. They even had their own headphones….their momma loves to drive, but also loves to sing while driving.

It seems that whenever we take a trip, it’s always record breaking temperatures. Seriously, story of our lives!

Hot and humid = not so happy kids!

We stayed here for most of the day, haha.

Day one almost over! Well, for them, it sure looks that way!

I booked a room with only 1 bed…my bad! So the girls and I shared this bed, and Michael slept on the couch. I’m such a terrible wife! ;0)

Day 2-3 we ventured into New York. There was traffic going into NY..no surprise. The girls were not a fan of the long, dark, and smelly tunnel.

A bed must always be tested!

We were on the 32nd floor, so you can imagine they loved looking out the window.

Our first stop! Surprisingly we walked out of their empty handed…almost didn’t happen that way, but it did.

Day 2…we found some fountains..

imagine…wet, sticky, dirty…so gross!

Not another drive! See the enthusiasm? lol.

We met up with some clients to personally delivery their dvd! I told you we have a high respect for customer service, haha.

We had Ava take a shot of us…sadly, we had little faith in that she would get us all in the frame {hence us all leaning over}. Who are the fools now?! She has photographer in her blood!

On our way to Boston and hit some traffic

It’s been too long since I’ve seen a good friend of mine. She was my first friend when I moved to Philadelphia and she holds a special place in my heart. Thanks for being such a great tour guide Jess!

Boston is one of my favorite cities…ever! We saw it, fell in love with it, and could live here. Honestly, I’m dying to shoot a wedding here {any takers?}.

Yum!

This city is so clean!

Meet Paris!

Haha…This sign cracks me up!

I’m terrified of snakes and none of us knew which one we were picking…of course, I would pick the snake!

This looks like a sweet family portrait, meet my fill in mom and wife. haha

Somehow Michael tore a hole in his shorts (at his butt cheeks). Thankfully, Jess knows how to sew, lol.

The first time Uggs meets Paris. I had so much fun on this trip, but I did miss Mr. Ugglesworth. Just look at that cute little face!

There is something comforting about being able to see your feet in the ocean. I’m not a fan of cloudy, dirty, stinky water. The waters off New England are perfect (and a little cold).