Meet the Davis family, who we connected with out of our relationship with Carrollwood Day School. (We do the school photos and senior portraits for CDS) They live up in Odessa on a couple of acres, and they wanted to use their gorgeous country spread as a backdrop for some rich family portraits. As will happen with families with dogs or pets, they wanted to know if I would be willing to add their dogs to one of the poses, and of course the answer was yes. To brag, I’ve had tremendous success integrating pets into family portraits, and we managed to get a great shot with both dogs and the family. My record continues unblemished!

One of the things I enjoy most about what I do is the intimate relationship building that comes with being in a photo session. Come to find out that Mr. Davis is in the Navy, and in an intelligence field not too different than the one that Kim and I were in while we were in the Air Force. A little more conversation and we find out that we all used to live in the same area of Germany. Wow!! Now we’ve got some great material for nostalgic conversation.

The portraits are gorgeous, as we were fortunate to have literally perfect light outside. Can you believe that it was storming only 2 hours prior to shoot time? The Davis’ made some beatiful portraits, and afterward, seeing that I was sweating it up pretty majorly out there, invited me in and offered me a cold one, where we continued our getting to know each other.

Thanks to the Davis family for their hospitality, great conversation, and oh yeah, some great location portraits!!