First Birthday Portraits | Cloud 9 Studios

Then and Now

2013

Wesley Chapel and Tampa’s Premier Children’s Portrait Studio

There a million aspects of owning a studio that I love. One of those million reasons is watching children grow right in front of my lens! The years go by so fast and I feel the speed of which time flies every time I photograph a One Year Birthday Session. This week I had 3 First Birthday Sessions. 3 children who I once held in my arms to try and get to fall asleep for their newborn portraits. 3 children whose parents have allowed me to be apart of their family while enjoying this journey with them. And 3 children who are now on the verge of walking and will be full blown toddlers in a few months.

I am addicted to what I do and I am addicted to these kids! The 80+ hours I spend working is all worth it when I see these smiles on both the children during their session and the parents when they see the final product!

Enjoy a few Then and Nows!

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Filed Under: Then and Now Tagged With: Baby Portraits, Baby Steps, Baby's First Year Pictures, First Birthday Portraits, Newborn Portraits, tampa children's portraits

A Twin First Birthday – Behind the Scenes Video

2011

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Wesley Chapel and Tampa’s Premier Children’s Portrait Studio – A Twin First Birthday Session

Last fall I photographed the first birthday session for twin sisters. Their mom was awesome and completely open to my crazy suggestion of taking the girls outside despite the heat. I had this vision of doing a tea party for the birthday cake and thought that if we set up in a grassy field that we could end up with some unique, fun and girly-like photographs.

As many of you know I am completely obsessed with photographing multiples. Maybe it is my secret wish that I was a twin, or maybe it is wishful thinking that if I had twins there would have only been one pregnancy to deal with. Ha! Either way, I love coming up with unique session ideas for the twins and triplets that come to the studio. After talking with the moms, I know how important these First Birthday sessions are to them. As parents we get to experience all of the firsts with our children. For multiples these firsts are very special because they are experiencing them together. As they grow up and develop their own personalities and their own lives these precious moments of “firsts” will become even more important memories for the parents to have. Besides, honestly, how long with the children tolerate being dressed alike? LOL, so we must take advantage of that as long as we can!

Check out the Behind the Scenes Video we created from the session.

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Filed Under: Behind the Scenes Videos, Recent Sessions Tagged With: First Birthday Portraits, Tampa Twins Photography, Twin Portraits

More from our Birthday Twins

2010

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Wesley Chapel and Tampa Child Photographer – Twin Birthday Portraits

Last Saturday I blogged an image from a Funtabulous Twin Birthday Session. I promised the mom I would post a few more sneak peeks before she comes in this weekend to view and order her images. How can I refuse when her daughters are so cute! I think photographing twins are my new favorite thing. I love getting the interactions between the siblings and being that they are the same age, they are doing the same sort of things, so it is really cute. It makes me want to have twins … well not quite, but close. LOL

As I had mentioned in the last post, I knew we wanted to do the cake portion of the session out doors. However, wind and heat would be our big challenges. Linda and I went to Publix to buy bags of rice to weight down the backdrop stands. (The background stands held up the pieces of flowing fabric you see in the background). Nothing would end a session quicker than if that fell over on the babies! Great thing about rice bags … you can eat them later and they are really cheap I also tried to weigh down the fabric so it wouldn’t blow so much in the wind … well that didn’t work as the fabric was flying throughout most of the session …. The wind outsmarted me. Luckily we were able to reset the fabric periodically and the flowy-ness added to the whimsical nature of the session.

It was hotter than you know what outside too. Mom and Dad kept the girls in the air conditioned car while we set everything up. I am sure it was quite amusing to watch us out there with a pair of scissors cutting down the really tall weeds Once we were ready to go, they brought the girls to the set. My biggest fear from the heat was either the balloons popping or the cake icing melting. I said a prayer to the guy upstairs before the session and lucky for me he answered and all went well!

I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out. The images in the studio were a lot of fun too! I love the onsies that Heidi had made for the girls. Who can pass up a cute image of the diaper butts?

Thank you Heidi for bringing your girls to the studio for their birthday session. It was a true pleasure photographing them and meeting your family! I can’t wait to watch them grow. Enjoy your sneak peeks!

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Filed Under: Recent Sessions, Uncategorized Tagged With: First Birthday Portraits, Twin Portraits, Wesley Chapel Children's Portraits

Twin Sisters – Happy Labor Day

2010

Twins are Twice as Fun at Birthday Time!

2010

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Wesley Chapel and Tampa’s Baby and Children’s Photography – Twins First Birthday Portraits

This post is for all you mothers of twins! Although I think everyone will enjoy reading and viewing these adorable images.

I have been talking with Sabrina back and forth on Facebook since the middle of the summer. We hit it off from our very first post when I realized we bought the same dress for our daughters at Christmas. Kindred spirits for sure Or at least two women that share the same dress obsession!

Her twin daughters are a little past a year old (we won’t confess how far past) and she really wanted to capture the memory of their first birthday. Online we have tossed back and forth a few ideas and then she came in to chat further about clothing ideas, tutus (my favorite of course) and birthday themed items. Since they are older than 1 year and definitely walking, the cakes were going to be tough, so we decided to go for lollipops and balloons instead.

She went home and started to do some online shopping for tutu dresses and then to make unique shirts for their birthday images. Her shirts were very clever. She bought plain t-shirts and then material from JoAnnes that had the iron-on transfer stuff on the back to create the “1″ on the shirt. This way she could customize it to her color scheme. VERY SMART IDEA!!!

As a wise mom, she also listened to my advice that the ONLY way to get 2 babies that are walking to stay in one place for a portrait is to occupy them. They are not going to just sit there and smile for us. Therefore she brought some of their favorite books to read to each other. I took care of the lollipops and balloons. Now all we had to do was make our planning a success Please God … let the twins be happy today! LOL

God smiled on us that day and we were able to capture a wide variety of images. I kept the pace pretty quick so that the twins wouldn’t get bored. So we started inside, then went outside, then came back inside to sugar them up at the end with the giant lollipops. (I am not stupid … I sugar them up at the end of the session, then send them home! HAHA)

Here are some of the favorites from the day. You can see our well laid out plan worked. Well there were a few “outtakes” in there too. LOL

Lets start with a little pleasure reading.

Then if we are lucky we can get them to look all sweet and “innocent”. Yep! Check that off the list

Now if we stick them in a giant flower pot, they can’t go anywhere. Right? Well maybe …
Can’t you just see the one sister saying “wait a second, this isn’t the sugary substance my mommy promised me today!”

Beware, babies are getting bored with us, time to go outside.

Another good rule of thumb, never let the babies out number the adults! Thankfully grandma came and was able to help lead the twin parade over the bridge. Aren’t these tutus adorable!

I always think it is important to recognize that while they are twins, they are still individuals. So in every twin session we try to get images of the baby by themselves.