Looking through my galleries and blog one may notice a common factor that is almost always lacking from my photos…sky!  I love the pretty soft backlighting that I get near dusk, but this leads to ugly blown out skies (it other words…bright white!).  I purposely fill my pictures with trees and other foliage, as to draw your eyes to the subject,  not the stark white sky.  I was thrilled to wake up Saturday morning for our early morning session to the perfect amount of cloud coverage filtering what would have been harsh sun.  With the cloud covered sun at my back, and blue skies in front of me I was able to get just the right balance of light.  In the middle image you can see the clouds creeping in.  I was blessed with a marathon weekend of fantastic families with these four kicking it off!

The sweet sister in these photos go to school with my boys.  Their family won the gift certificate I donated to the school’s auction last spring.  I had never met her brother, and it was so fun seeing them out of the school environment.  🙂