As many of my current and past clients know, I hope that I can get you comfortable enough to open up with me and be yourself. When you are yourself around Mike and I… and our cameras? Well…. it just works. We get you, as you truly are. Comfortable, happy.

On the flip side, I understand the importance of showing who I really am. How can I expect you to bare all and then not know anything about me? And so… I blog about, well, everything in my life. Photography, my family, the struggles of being a working Mom, my cat dying, my relationships that I foster with the people that I work with everyday… Since my studio has grown I am now expecting that the people who work with me are also as open as I. 

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Well, how can you all get to know the people that work with me?  By blogging, of course!

Meet Mr. Graham Scobey. He was introduced a ways back but now he will be the first in a series of weekly guest blog posts (hoping to be posted every Friday) by my team- on a topic that they chose for you all to know more about. I am so happy and excited about this and hope that you all will enjoy reading along and getting to know more about these awesome people that I call friends!

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This shot was taken during Ashley and Graham’s maternity shoot I did for them a week ago, this will have it’s own post, as their are TONS of shots that I just love… they are so freaking adorable I could just wrap them up and give them to myself as a present! Or something. You get me.

OK. Enough of me. Oh and to clarify: when I talk, it’s in italics. When it’s Graham’s post, he is not in italics. This is also true in real life. I literally talk in italics. I also have a love of abusing ‘air quotes’ 

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This time last year being a dad wasn’t even on my horizon.  My wife, Ashley, and I were about to move from Los Angeles and we both had a lot on our plates.  We were both so focused on figuring out what we were going to do with our lives that having a baby was not even a long-term consideration.

Fast forward six months and imagine our surprise when the fourth at home pregnancy test confirmed what the first three had tried to tell us: we were going to be parents.  I’m not going to lie: my immediate reaction was to run screaming.  I don’t know how to be a dad!  I barely even know how to function as an adult. 

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If it weren’t for the fact that I love my wife more than anything on this entire planet, I probably would have sprinted westward Forest Gump style until my legs gave out or I grew an awesome beard that I could hide behind.

But alas, I do love my wife, so instead of running to California I ran to Wal-Mart to buy prenatal vitamins and a copy of “Being a Dad (For Dummies)”. 

After the first couple of weeks of living with the knowledge that in less than a year I would be a father, my fear started to morph into excitement. Ashley and I started noticing babies and children everywhere we would go.  We would imagine ourselves as parents, and wonder what we were having and what they would be like.  Ashley got all sentimental and would cry whenever she saw an episode of “A Baby Story” or a Gerber commercial, and I would make fun of her and step out of the room so she wouldn’t see that I, too, had a lump in my throat (don’t tell her that, though).

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Then we had our 20 week ultrasound and found out we were having a girl.  I told Ashley as we were leaving that if I had known how amazing that moment would be, I would have never doubted whether or not I wanted to be a dad. 

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Words cannot explain how amazing it was for me to see my little girl for the first time. 

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She wouldn’t stop moving, and hasn’t since.  She is a little wiggle worm.

It’s funny, because this time last year I wouldn’t have even dreamt about being a dad.  Today, meeting my little girl is all I can think about.

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