This week one of my favorite DOSKOFOTO families is moving across the country from SoCal to their new home in North Carolina.  This isn’t the first time I’ve had clients move away, but this news has had me feeling blue for a few weeks now.  The Lawrence family are hands-down my biggest supporters and some of my absolute favorite people to work with.  Aside from my own siblings, I don’t have any other clients that have been with me for as long as they have been, and at this point I’m starting to lose track of how many photo shoots we’ve done (since there have been so many!).  Seeing their family evolve and grow, like I do with several other families, has been one of the single best perks of this job.  It’s crazy to see how much we have all changed, and it’s also interesting to watch my photography style morph as I learned and improved and honed my craft.  I love being the family historian and documenting these milestones, though it makes goodbyes like this so much harder.

Krysten used to be my boss when I worked at Jamba Juice during my early college years and I’m so thankful we kept in touch through social media, giving us the opportunity to work together again years later.  I wasn’t doing photography when her and her husband Mike got married, but I was getting my feet wet and starting my business when she contacted me about a pregnancy announcement shoot for their first daughter, Emma.  In the next year I moved from San Diego to Long Beach, and I strongly suspected they would find another local photographer to take over.  To my surprise they never did, and every year since we’ve coordinated my SD trips and visits to make it work and continue documenting their lives.   For all the non-photographers reading this, let me say this is the highest compliment I could ever receive and is what quickly solidified their special place in my heart!

Here we are, four years later, and their second daughter, Quinn, just celebrated her first birthday.  We did a cake smash shoot just a few weeks ago to memorialize the end of her first year, and ironically we took the photos at the same place we did their first photo shoot back in 2014 (totally unintentionally!).  Maybe it’s just a bad time of the month, or all the sleep deprivation I’ve been experiencing lately, but looking back over these photos has me feeling all sorts of emotional.  As I uploaded the photos to share with you, I felt an overwhelming urge to also share a small recap from the last four years worth of sessions, and to bring back some of my favorite images.  I hope you enjoy this small trip down memory lane, and that you keep scrolling to get to the best cake smash of all time.

Lawrence family, no one can ever take your place in my heart (or in the story of my business growth).  While I’m sad, I’m also so excited for the life you will build on the east coast, and I am so thankful social media will continue to allow me to peep in on you. 😉 It’s not goodbye, just ‘see you later’, and I can only look forward to the next time I will see you and your beautiful girls again!

And here’s to the birthday girl~