Mothers Day Lake Maria hike

This photo is just a few matching shirts away from Awkardfamilyphotos.com, but there is something about it I love. Maybe it's the look on Joe's face. Maybe it's my hair in Truman's hand or my half-face. Somehow that combo really reflects our life right now.


It didn't happen on Mother's Day, but we headed to Lake Maria State Park in celebration of motherhood. It gave us the chance to try out our new hiking pack (Joe gave it a good review) and gave me chance to photograph the forest while risking life and limb to a bunch of starving ground mosquitoes.


The reason I'm a mother:

Climbing trees, scaling rocks, taking pictures

That's what I did today with Nick, who celebrated his last day of high school today. This was the most adventurous portrait session I have done yet. Thanks for all your effort, Nick, I think it was worth it.

















More from this Coon Rapid's Dam portrait session.



It really is the perfect time of year to take senior portraits. The weather is great, the light is beautiful and the bugs haven't joined the party everywhere yet. If you're interested in booking a senior portrait session, call me at (763) 389 • 8733 or email me at brooke [at] spellboundjungle.com.

Morning on the farm

I snapped these on our way back from our weekend trip to the Walsh farm as the morning sun began burning away an evening dew.

Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow

So, we got another storm at the end of this week. It hit, lovingly, on Wednesday night and grew to Blizzard-like conditions by 3:30 Thursday, as I headed home. The CR-V:



The roads:



Other than an on-ramp that I had to literally coast down because it was full of snow, I didn't have too much trouble on the way home. Though I had to drive slow, it didn't take as long as I feared it would.

After both storms, the snow outside our apartment has accumulated to this:





We're not blanketed like that everywhere, but there is a lot of snow.

Warmth

As we head into the freezing weekend (I've heard talk of never reaching zero for the next three days, with windchill as low as 25 below) I wanted to remember last Friday, when temps hit 44. I took the opportunity to try out my new polarizing filter.

There was a drip, drip, drip overshadowing my adventure as water poured off our apartment building:






I'm enjoying the way the filter accents the sky. Other than the boarder, these two came out of the camera exactly like this:









While taking pictures of the tree, I got attacked by that lovely weed.









Me and my shadow: