Fall!

I can tell fall has arrived - not only from the back to school craziness in my house and the yellow leaved backdrops in my latest sessions - but mostly from the insane number of emails and phone calls I receive at this time of year. :)

I appreciate all of your support and the fact that you trust me to take your family's portraits - it means the world to me to watch your families grow and interact together - I truly love every moment of my job!

I am a huge family person at heart - I love everything from cheesy inside family jokes, to group hugs - and that is the main reason I have to limit the amount of sessions I do in a month - because I am a mom who has a family who needs (and wants?!) her around. As much as I would really love to spend every week-end and most week-end evenings with other lovely families I just can't. It doesn't just stop with physically going out to do the sessions, there is the hours upon hours of editing, emailing, proofing, phoning, photo ordering, book keeping, card creating, facebook updating, blogging, client meeting and camera upkeeping.

Not that I'm complaining! But there is only so much of "me" to go around and I try incredibly hard to keep my life balanced when possible. The fall is the only time in the year where I will take on more (I actually more than double my workload at this time of year) - we honestly have MAYBE 6 weeks of useable weather, where the leaves are still looking picturesque and not just brown, dead and crunchy on the ground - and without snow or incredibly "ugh" wind and weather.

The key time in the past few years for those awesome fall colours has been around Sept. 22 - the difference a week makes past that is incredible - especially if we end up with wind, then the trees are bare in a snap!

I generally don't schedule sessions much past the first week-end in October for many reasons - a lot of them weather dependent. The further past September we get, the more our chances increase for unusable weather and finding make-up session time gets very hard as our daylight hours are incredibly limited!

I love where I live.....except for this very short shooting period. :)

I've been receiving a lot of emails asking for fall photos in late October or November - which I think we all get a very idealic picture in our mind of what fall looks like at that point in the year. Does anyone remember going trick or treating in snow? I sure do! The weather is COLD at that point - and taking small children out and convincing them it's fun doesn't usually go over so well. ;)

Not that I haven't gone out before - I've done several sessions in the past where the cold and snow was exactly what they had in mind and it was terrific! But if you're thinking red and orange cute sweaters with leaves on the trees - this week is THE time - but the bad news is this week has been booked since May and June. The rest of September pretty much filled in by the end of July.

No, I'm not booking fall of 2011 - I have no clue what I'm making for supper tomorrow let alone what things are like next year - but if fall photos are your thing I strongly urge you to keep up with this blog as I'll announce the new year's bookings on here. (or if you're a past client you'll be receiving an email!) At this very moment I am booking until the end of March - the rest of 2011 is not open for sessions at this time - I will open the rest of the year up in February.

And if you've read this far you deserve a Pumpkin Spice Latte!