2015 was wonderfully busy and creative. My photography, posing and editing skills improved so much because of all the opportunities that arose! Thanks to all my customers for supporting my business and my friends and family for your ongoing cheers and encouragement. I feel extremely blesses to be immersed full time in my passion. It was only when I refused to compromise, created a vision and followed up on it while setting my fears aside that life allowed me to thrive from my passion. While many seek out prosperity, they do not believe that it is possible to feel fulfilled by what you do at the same time. But isn't it better the accumulate what nurtures your heart and soul and live simply? I believe if you do this and focus on happiness and believe in your powers of attraction, then eventually, prosperity can not escape from you. I wish you the courage to embrace all of your craziest dreams for 2016! Love, Lili. Here are some of 2015's best! Talk about magical! I just love this shot! Here is one of my last newborn outdoors session of the year...It is true we have been blessed with gorgeous September weather and I may be able to stretch my luck a little further... I don't own a cat, but I would probably own a couple if I could. Having a severely asthmatic and allergic partner and running a newborn photography business from home, does not exactly allow for that...So, I get my fix by making friends with neighborhood cats. I don't exactly know this cat's name but my 4 year daughter has nicknamed her ''Rosie''. Rosie is my favorite neighborhood cat. She's the sweet kind that rolls on her belly as soon as she sees you and starts purring right away. She is one of the only cats around that will let my daughter do just about anything to her. So when Rosie came for a visit during the shoot, I knew baby Penny would be in safe hands (paws) and that the 3 of us would make magic together. Can you spot another magical visitor in the image above? Also, did I mention that I built this little bed myself!? What a wonderful family I was blessed to photograph. We captured so many great shots in this session, it made it nearly impossible to narrow it down to a selection. Well I could have greater problems in life, but capturing 8 days old Penny, 2 year old Reese and 5 year old Caleb was not one of them. It often gets chaotic and exhausting getting children to cooperate. I wouldn't say this shoot was easy but it was far from hard. The key is working fast in blocks and to try to keep it as light and fun as possible and if all fails offer a series of bribes. Having chill parents like Tania and Justin also helps more than all the other stuff I mentioned...So thanks for binging peace to your family and harmony in this world guys and creating such delightful children!
My beautiful daughter is 4 years old. One of her favorite things to do in the world is to scream: ''Mommy, mommy look at me''... and perform some stunt women act...Flying off the couch being at the top of the list. Honestly I couldn't stop her if I wanted. She will do it when I'm not looking anyways. I've tried to stop her out of fear she may hurt herself, but she's never hurt herself once. Knock on wood...Then I talked to parents around me and realized most kids to this. We're lucky that we have a very large and wide plushy couch so it does reassure me somewhat. But I assure you right now that if jumping off the couch was an Olympic sport, my daughter would surely win the gold medal! These pictures give you an idea of how the picture came together. I narrowed it down to these 2 shots and took another picture of only the couch. The wall behind isn't that big so I had to photoshop it in, then I centered my subject on top of the couch, enlarged the floor and went to black and white. I painted clouds with cloud brushes, tweaked with contrast, levels and exposure and finally sharpened. Et voilà! Angela had so much fun actually being encouraged into her stunts and it was fun seeing how amazed she was at the result.
Olive is the newborn baby of very dear friends of our family. It was such an honor that they have asked me to photograph their angel! Olive was already 3 weeks old when I photographed her so I was a bit unsure about how she would perform but she was still so tiny and went along sweetly with the process giving us the most delightful smiles and curling up like a 5 day old newborn. We had to somewhat bribe her older brother, James for his cooperation to pose in a few shots with her and we found Popsicle promises was our ticket to a great (but short) photo ride. We discovered something in my garden that looked like an olive branch (in the first top picture) but I'm actually not even sure what it is. Do you? I arranged white flowers on the side of her head. We smiled a the Princess Lea resemblance. We were blessed with Olive's peace & charm.
So this is day two of my outdoors adventures! Thanks to my wonderful backyard, transformed into an instant studio & my lovely front yard, shooting outdoors is fast becoming the favorite part of my work! Here is little Arthur at 11 days. Meet his wonderful family: Laure, Paul & their young daughter, Clémence. Arthur was a breath of fresh air, a real breeze to work with, easing into my requests with trust. When I start a session, baby most often greets me with open eyes. It's time to shoot quickly these few ''open eyes'' moments and they are often my favorite pictures because the eyes speak so much as you know. The first picture in the gallery says everything about my style. I try to capture the essence of your precious angel without drowning him/her in cutesy props. Less is more, as it speaks more about one's essence & journey and less about the superfluous. My other favorite shot is the top one. I love the contrast I'm getting with the concrete wall in my backyard, the fluffy carpet & the perfection of a newborn. It was a beautiful warm day so Arthur being in his birthday suit, suited him just fine! Thanks to this wonderful family for their outstanding patience and kindness all through the session, I could only dream all session were as such. I always say chill parents: chill kid= amazing pictures.
Photographing 6 months olds can be extremely challenging. As they don't always sit on their own for long yet, they spend most of their time putting their fingers in their mouth and do not enjoy standing still much. Mackenzie did all of that but,
she never once cried or made it clear she wanted out of the session. Her wonderful parents knew we would work as a team propping Mackenzie back in position dozens of times and making funny faces behind me while I snapped away. And Dave and Kristin were wonderfully involved with the whole process. I'm so grateful for their patience and cooperation. I would not have gotten such great shots without them. Mackenzie was a happy baby, a delicious chunk of heaven, with a humorous pout and was such a good sport of going through all her bows, clothes & set-up changes. After the session, we were all exhausted but Mackenzie could've kept going! What an incredible kid! These are to of my favorite shots and here are a couple more with mom and dad: If any of you know me well, then you'll know I am obsessed with Pinterest, and that I'm just enthralled by recycling things into crafts. I handcraft most of my skin care & household products and I'm always looking for a fun diy project to dive into. That's when I am not swamped with photo editing work which is the case most of the time....All this to say it only made sense that I started to handcraft my own baby headbands and flowers. So here are my latest creations. I've been wondering for a while how to display them in the studio and yesterday I came across this antique silver bread basket at a garage sale and it all clicked! Here is the result complete with a photo framed in the middle of beautiful princesses: Lee-Ann and baby Anabeth. What do you think? I like crafting flowers so much I think I might eventually open an Etsy store to sell them. :) The flowers are mounted on 3cm alligator clips which can be clipped on to any headband. I'm also making headbands with much smaller flowers that are permanently attached to the headbands. The clipped flowers are fun because they can be attached to different knit hats or just clipped to hair or clothing and they don't have to be tied down to same headband. I'll be giving felt flowers a try soon and also would like to make baby crows and diaper covers. |
Lili Sweet
Lili Sweet is a newborn, maternity & family photographer with over 20 years experience from Montreal, Canada. To book a session or to get a quote please write to [email protected] or phone 514-272-7119 & visit my main website HERE Archives
July 2016
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