The year before a baby is born and the first year after a baby is born are two years full of changes. Soon-to-be moms are super busy preparing their lives for the arrival of baby, purchasing furniture and decorating a nursery, reading books and researching, taking classes and attending showers, and then here comes baby. And the next year is another whirlwind of excitement with the baby changing from a little sleeping (or waking up all night) bundle to a cooing, giggling little one crawling on all fours, to a walking, talking little toddler.

With cell phones camera never outside of arm's reach, I'm sure there are thousands of snapshots taken within those first couple years from belly to baby. Those snapshots are great to email to grandma, share with friends on Facebook or keep on your phone to get a good smile going when you're away. But what about photos to hang on your wall or have printed in a beautiful coffee table album to preserve for many years? Are those kind-of dark, a little blurry cell phone photos what you'll pass down from generation to generation? When your kids grow up and want to see photos of themselves as a baby, will you have those cell phone photos backup up and accessible somewhere? And where are you in the photos? You're probably always the one with the phone taking the photo, instead of having a photo taken of you and your new family.

Let me take care of making beautiful portraits of your baby's first year of life...clear, crisp, beautifully lit portraits that you can hang in your home, that you can frame and give to grandma for Christmas, that you can have made into an album to show off when your friends and family come to visit. These are the portraits that can be pulled off the shelf and shown to baby who is now grown and has his/her own baby.

Snapshots and portraits both hold their importance in life. You take care of the everyday snapshots and let me create the portraits...let me capture the milestones.

After revamping my business over the summer, I decided to include a series of portrait sessions that would capture all of the milestones that happen on the way to a baby's first birthday. With that, I present the Milestones collection.

The Milestone collection is a series of four portrait sessions that can either start with maternity portraits or newborn portraits. You pay per session, either $445 for a weekday session or $545 for a weekend session. With that price, you get a pre-session consultation, one of five different types of sessions, a minimum of 20 professionally edited image previews that will be presented at your custom in-person ordering session, and an 11X14 Modern Art piece (print on canvas) and 3 5X7 gift portraits from each session. At the end of the year, once you've had all four of your portrait sessions, you get a custom 10X10 Portrait Book with your choice of 20-45 images from any of the previous sessions. You can always pay to add extra pages if you'd like to include more photos. And, for every photo in the album, you get a 4X6-inch sized digital copy of that image. These digital images can be printed as a 4X6 or used on your social media pages or blog.

Your session choices for the Milestone collection are maternity (6-8 months pregnant), newborn (1-2 weeks old), belly baby (3-5 months old), sitting pretty (6-9 months old), standing tall (9-11 months old) and birthday baby (one year).

With these sessions, you have quite a bit of flexibility. The photos can be all of baby or some photos of just the baby and some of the baby with mom and dad. These can't be full-fledged family sessions though. Siblings can be included for a few poses, but if you want multiple locations and clothing changes with siblings, a family session should be booked instead. The photos can be taken in my in-home studio (for small groups, not full families), outdoors or for the newborn portraits only, in your home (if lighting and space are fit for the session). The sessions allow for multiple clothing changes, as long as everything fits within a two hour time frame. I don't provide many props, other than backdrops or baskets, because I want the photos to be unique to you and your family. But you're welcome to bring a few of your own props for the portraits. As you can tell in the previous photos, a set of cowboy boots was used in three of the four sessions to go along with little Joey's cowboys themed nursery.

Because of the way this collection is built, you must start booking portrait sessions by the middle of your pregnancy or just before the baby is born. You don't have to book all of the portrait sessions up front, but you can't start taking advantage of this package with a six month old baby.

Are you expecting a baby? Now is the time to get your first portrait session of the Milestones collection on the books. Please call me (Nicki) at 409-267-1032 or email me at [email protected] to book your first session.

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