Princess Kailia!

Oh my goodness!  This little one has the biggest personality and is so sweet and funny!  Kailia is my friend Leah's daughter and I have known Leah and her family since maybe I was 6 or 7.  At least that's as far back as I can remember.  I remember that I loved going to their house a little girl because I got to play their piano!  And then, one day, they gave us their piano!!!  Talk about exciting!  :)  There are too many memories to mention in this blog post.  But fast forward twenty years or so and here were are.... Leah and I are all grown up, we both ended up in the Bay Area and have reconnected and become friends as adults and we have a lot of fun when we're together.  When Leah asked me to take photographs of her daughter for Christmas, I was thrilled!  We drove to a Christmas tree lot in Vacaville and had a lot of fun with the really cool and realistic snow flocked trees.  Leah and I both couldn't believe how real the flocked trees looked!  Kailia had so much fun running through the flocked trees, sipping on her steamer from Starbucks and decorating the Christmas trees with Candy Canes, which later were a treat.  I love you little Kailia and love you too Leah!  I'm so excited for all that is in store for both of your lives!  :)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your beautiful family Leah!

Thanks for reading my blog today.  Please visit my website at:  www.jaimelee-photography.com

Jennalise's visit

Jennalise and I have been friends for maybe 4 or 5 years.  Our lives seem to parallel quite a bit.  They are not identical, but they are quite similar!  We both went through divorces at a young age, we both moved away from our hometowns to be with the one we love and will be sharing the rest of our lives with, and we both have recently started a photography business.  I had the pleasure of being in Jennalise's wedding in early 2009 in London. Matt and I got to visit her and her husband Toby in London last summer for a day.  Well, this time, Jennalise came to America to visit her family and friends, and she also got to attend the WPPI Roadshow in Seattle.

During the last segment of her visit to America, Jennalise and her mom, Jenine, came to visit me in San Francisco for a few days!  We went to the Ferry Building and walked through and tasted all the fun things in there, took lots of pictures, had lunch at Asha at the Embarcadero and then hopped on a trolly!  We then walked down to Union Square and something said to look down, so I did and there was $10 cash in an envelope laying on the ground.  So, I picked it up!  We went to Union Square, took more pictures and went for Starbucks with the $10. What a treat!  Matt picked us up and then we to Lombard Street for our engagement shoot.  Jennalise took beautiful photos of us.  Locations were Lombard Street, Crissy Fields, and the Cannery near Fisherman's Wharf, oh... and In N Out!  Matt and I refuse to spend lots of money on fancy restaurants.  We both love In N Out, and so we go there for all of our special occasion dates.  Well, at least we went there the night we got engaged and Valentine's Day this year and we decided we're going to make it our little tradition!

The next day, Jennalise, Jenine and I drove out to Sonoma and Napa and visited Viansa Winery, V. Sattui, and Castello di Amorosa.  Our only wine tasting occurred at Viansa Winery.  The Pinot Grigio was YUMMY!  It's funny, because I love wine tasting, but I don't actually like to drink wine.  Is that weird?  Then we had a yummy lunch at V. Sattui.  We went across the street to Dean and Delucca's for coffee and dessert (I had a lemon bar!), and then we decided to go up to Castello di Amorosa.  We were so happy to have driven up to Calistoga.  It was gorgeous!  And, this was the same winery that the Bachelor Jake stayed at with Vienna and Gia.  Ahh!  I'm somewhat of a closet reality tv junkie!  Anyways, here are many images from Jennalise and Jenine's visit!   It's in a slide show.  It goes in chronological order as I described in this blog.  There are just too many images to post!

Portrait Session with Vic

Vic is new to San Francisco.  He used to be an opera singer.  I still think he's an opera singer, in fact, I asked him to sing a song and he did!  Vic, I think you should still be an opera singer, but that's my opinion!  Vic is creating a website for online lessons and e-learning for opera singing and he asked me to take a few head shots and portraits for his website.   So, here are some of the portraits I took of him.  We met down at the Ferry Building earlier this week.  Enjoy!

Thanks for reading and viewing this blog post.  Comments are welcomed.  Please visit my website if you're interested in a portrait session!  www.jaimelee-photography.com

Ziada

I can't believe that I never did a blog posting on Ziada!  I know I uploaded some pictures of her on Facebook, but I forgot to do a blog post!  Well... let me tell you, Ziada is a new friend of mine since moving to San Francisco.  A few months ago, we got together one afternoon in downtown San Francisco at Starbucks and we ended up spending the whole afternoon together talking about life.  We had pizza for lunch and went shoe shopping, but in the end, discovered I had a pair of cute heels for her to wear.  Funny how that worked out!  

About a month ago, Ziada and I got together over in the East Bay this time, and went to Alameda and did a photo shoot.  We shot each other!  It was a whole new experience being on the other side of the camera lens.  It was so windy and sunny and we were trying to figure out what to do in these conditions.   At the beach, there is all this tall beach grass and little sand dune type areas.  I had Ziada kinda squat down in it to get a cool shot.  I looked to my left and my right and in almost all the tall beach grass sand dune areas, were couples making out!  I thought I was the only one who noticed and wanting to respect there special moments, I didn't say anything to Ziada and then realized she saw the same thing!  We thought it was kind of funny that there were a handful of couples on the beach making out in the grass.  I guess it's the thing to do in Alameda on a nice sunny afternoon!

So, here are some photos of Ziada.  She is stunning!  Oh, and here a link to her website!   www.zftphoto.wordpress.com.

The tall beach grass and the harsh direct sunlight.

Ahhh!!!  These next few pics, are some of my most favorite pictures of all time!

Such beauty!

Ziada the photographer!  

Thanks for reading and viewing this blog post.  

Feel free to visit my website at:  www.jaimelee-photography.com!

The Peanut Shell Product Shoot

Today, I traveled to Hayward to do a product shoot for a company called The Peanut Shell.  They make fashionable baby slings, nursing covers and other mother/baby products.  The model was an actual mom and she brought along her one month old and her year and a half old toddler.  It was a good shoot and both kids were fantastic!  So was the mommy model!  My photos will go on their website, as well as the boxes that the products are packaged in.  I can't wait to see them!  Here is a link to The Peanut Shell:  www.thepeanutshell.com.