You may remember Justin & Sam from my “Bare Bellies” party a few months ago.  After they’d looked at all their photos, they decided they’d like to have an album to represent Sam’s pregnancy with baby Jackson.  Well, I finally got around to designing it, ordering it, and just mailed it off to Justin & Sam.  I thought you might like to see what it looks like as well.  Albums are a great way of getting the majority of your images at a more cost-effective price.  Although each image isn’t as large as a print may be, they are displayed beautifully in this keepsake book.  And for people like me who wish they could scrapbook, but never get around to it, it’s a single place to hold all the images from a certain event or time-period (aka: the lazy man’s scrapbook).

For Justin & Sam’s album I decided to go with my old favorite, White House Custom Colour (WHCC).  They are fabulous and have always been good to me in the past and I would recommend them to any professional photographer.  Sam chose the 8×8-inch album with a fabric cover in tan.  It has 20 spreads, or 10 pages front & back, and the pages are the “magazine style,” meaning they don’t lay flat.    And as I do with each album, I let Sam & Justin have as much input as they wanted.  Sam told me some photos that she did not want, and ones she couldn’t live with out.  After I designed the book,  I sent Sam & Justin a preview via Facebook, and they approved it.  It’s that easy.  Here are some pictures to better explain myself.

The front of the album.  It’s hardcover, with tan fabric wrapped around it.

Here’s a view from the top.  You can see the pages inside.  The first and last pages are a black.

Here is the binding.

The front and back inside cover come with black paper like this.

This is how the book looks laying open.

And finally, a view of the book from the top, opened.

Enjoy your album, Justin, Sam & baby Jackson!

I decided to take some of Rob & Sharon’s recent maternity photos and create a mini 5×5 album design.  Hopefully I’ll have something concrete to show you sometime today.  In the meantime, here is their album, set to the lovely music of “Beautiful Day” on the ablum Rockabye Baby!  Lullaby Renditions of U2.

Maternity Album from joshsroka on Vimeo.

I shot this one photo of Sam during her maternity session last weekend and really, really liked it!  I mean the lighting was off, the angle is waaaay past 11 & 1 (I’ll explain that later, if you like), and the cropping could be better.  But I just loved her expression.  So I decided to see what I could do to it in Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom 2.  Here are some of the results.  Let me know which one is your favorite!

The above photo is done in Photoshop with The Pioneer Woman’s “Seventies” action.

This photo was also done in Photoshop with The Pioneer Woman’s “Dim the Lights” and “Boutwell’s Magic Glasses” from the Totally Rad Actions group.

This is a Lightroom 2 creation called “Aged Photo.”

This is “Antique Grayscale” from Lightroom 2.

Here we have “Black & White Low Contrast” from Lightroom 2.

This one’s different for me.  It’s called “Cold Tone” from LR2.

And lastly from Lightroom 2 is “Sepia.”

So, take a look, think hard, and go with your gut.  Which is your favorite?

WHEW!  This weekend has been a whirlwind!  I now understand the expression, “When it rains, it pours!”  I had been kinda down in the dumps about not having many photo sessions for this winter season and had resigned myself to organizing/cleaning my house & just playing with my girls.  And so it went for a few weeks, and now all of the sudden, I have a total of 5 clients in 3 days!  Well, three of them were on the same day for my first ever photo party that I dubbed the Bare Bellies Party.  In restrospect I should have added a tag line that bare bellies were optional.

After much anticipation, and multiple applications of deoderant, I took my nervous self to Baltimore to photograph some glowing, gorgeous moms-to-be!  Laura (my sis-in-law) & her friends Sharon & Samantha invited me into their homes to witness their growing families, their little cuter-than-cute nurseries, and their collection of sonograms & baby paraphanelia for their children.

Now I know, from experience, the love you have for a child is immense.  You never think you can have enough love for your husband, but then add a baby to that, and wow…how are you gonna do it?  But these ladies are all very much in love with their husbands and at the same time so much in love with the little lives that are growing inside of them.  I hope you can sense, as I did, their excitement, anticipation, and pure joy!

Welcome to your debut baby Delaney, baby Jackson, and baby “Roblet!”

Proud Papa!