This set was all photographed within about an hour. It is representative of a typical afternoon at the Shoemake household. Huntley loves to play. He loves his toy camera, guns, skateboards and mischief in general. I love coming home from the studio and just hanging out with him. At times I’m Huntley’s personal jungle gym and other times we’re skating buddies, it is pretty awesome. I can’t wait until he gets a little bigger and I can take him skiing with me like his big sister.
On a whim (which is usually the case) I bought a 30 year old Zeiss 50 1.4 lens for my Canon cameras. It is a fully manual focus lens and super small/lightweight. The image quality is incredible and the colors are fantastic. The photos you see posted below are jpegs directly from my camera (yes, I shoot black and white in camera a lot). You heard me right, no Photoshop, no Lightroom, no Aperture, no gimmicks and all of this with a 30 year old lens. So take a minute to leave a note for Huntley and say hi.
If you’re thinking about a fall portrait session for your family or children, I’m going to be offering a few “Mini-session” days in the Valley and the Bay Area (and possibly SoCal) and I also have limited availability for full-length sessions. Email, leave your info in the comment section or call for more details. Enjoy.

I’m a huge fan of freedom. I believe that freedom leads to creativity. I’m thankful for freedom and I never want to forget the reason why we celebrate this weekend. Make sure and talk about freedom to your family and friends this weekend. Think about those that don’t have it. What can you do to spread freedom? Enjoy.

So, we had an awesome “partial” family session on saturday morning with my new friends: Aimee (mom), the beautiful Mia, and the ever-energetic Baker! The location was the McHenry Mansion in downtown Modesto. This was a beautiful family to photograph and I don’t know who had more fun, me or the kids! The reason I used the word “partial” is because dad is away working right now. So as a surprise Aimee wanted to get some pictures to help him pass the days! I just love what an image can do! I was glad to be a part of such a cool idea. Enjoy the images and book a family session today. Here’s a little slideshow to kick things off.