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Happy Birthday {SE MN Senior Portrait Photographer}

Wishing my cousins a happy 18th birthday, today. You came into this world early as fighters each weighing 2 lbs and under, spending the first few months in the hospital and now you are turning 18 and are continuing to show your strength and your resilience graduating from high school during a global pandemic. Such great stories and life lessons that you will be able to tell to your grand-kids, and you’re just getting started!

Behind you, all the memories. Before you, all your dreams, Around you, all who love you. Within you, all you need. Your strength is truly inspiring. Be proud and stand tall as you take this next step in your journey of life.

Happy Birthday, Casey, Brandt, and Jacob, and congratulations on your graduation!

Triplet Sibling outdoors on blue shirts
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Re-Opening {SE MN Portrait Photographer}

As I work on rescheduling postponed sessions today, I wanted to take a moment to layout how our new normal for doing a session will look. We have come up with the following guidelines and safety precautions to keep our clients and ourselves safe and healthy. A lot of it is the same as our normal practice beyond us wearing masks when needed and not being able to give hugs and high fives to the children. Please be patient with us as we try to navigate this new normal. Thank you all so much for your continued support! Stay safe!

Sessions: All sessions will be outdoor for the time being. We will only be accepting groups of no more than 8 people at one time. Only those being photographed and parent/guardian will be allowed during sessions. No bystanders. Extra people means extra risk.

Health Check: We will check in with the client before the session to be sure they or nobody in their family is or has been sick. If you, your children, or anyone in your house feels sick (or has been sick in the last 14 days), PLEASE reschedule your session. Likewise, I will postpone all sessions if I, my assistant or my family don’t feel well. Kari and the assistant will fill out a health check the day of the session as well. Please don’t put myself, my assistants, our families, and my other clients at risk.

Social Distancing: We will follow all guidelines for social distancing by keeping at least 6 feet between us and and our clients. I will be using a telephoto (zoom) lens to accomplish this when taking photos as well, we will still get a variety of closeups and full body shots.

Posing: Photography sessions will be no-contact, which means my assistant and I will guide you from a safe distance on how to pose, adjust clothing and adjust hair. With children, parents may have to move them into place or adjust the pose if needed.

Props: Props will be limited to keep the potential germ threat to a minimum. We will wipe down and sanitize before and after every session.You are welcome to bring any personal props of your own to use! This makes the images more personal and unique, as well as giving you more peace of mind.

Face masks: At all shoots, we will wear a face mask if guidelines from the State of Minnesota or the CDC recommend we do this. We will also ask that anyone not being photographed does so as well, but nobody has to. If we happen to scare children with our masks, we will be sure to remove our mask but maintain more than 6ft away.

Sanitizing gear: I will clean my gear before and after each session . I will use cleaners appropriate and safe for my gear.

Hand washing: We will continue to use the best hand washing practices as recommended by the CDC. We will also have hand sanitizer available.

Ordering: Ordering as normal will be an online gallery and if you need additional help, we will do so by phone or by video calling.

Payment: We prefer payments be made online, but can still take cash or check.

Order pick up: We will continue to have pick up at my house to be able to maintain curbside, no contact pick up. Or you can opt to have your order shipped to you as well.

P.S. I hate posting without photos, so here’s a few photos of Maverick from yesterday. The tulips are so pretty right now.

Black english lab with red collar and yellow tulips behind
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Happy Mother’s Day {SE MN Mother Daughter Portrait Photographer}

It was really hard to choose the images for this post. I truly loved everything about this mother daughter photo session in the studio from the end of February.

Right away it was obvious to me the special bond between this mother and daughter, and we set out to capture the love.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the ladies who nurture, love and mentor others, whether you are a Mom, bonus Mom, fur Mom, Grandma, waiting to become a Mom, an Aunt or a Godmother, etc… all the ladies.

Mother and daughter looking and smiling at each other
Daughter with arms around mother portrait
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Quarantine Newborn Session {SE MN Newborn Portrait Photographer}

When this entire quarantine thing started, I immediately thought of all the Watch Me Grow sessions we had coming up and the newborns who would be born, and NOT get pictures. I brought me to tears to have cancel sessions, but it had to be done to keep everyone safe. Our last session was March 14th and this little guy was born about a week later. At the time, I had told his Mom not to worry as we have done newborn sessions with 6 week olds before. However, when Governor Walz extended the stay at home order, I had to do something to help capture these memories for their family.

I contacted his Mom to see if she would be willing to give it a try. She was up for the challenge. So she got a hold of her Mom’s camera and on Saturday we face-timed and I was on the phone with them during the entire process, making sure to tell them some things to make this work and create images that they would be proud of. I helped with finding the light and changing camera settings and with how too pose or get the blankets set to help with with posing. I will say these poses are simple, there would be no way to actually tell them how to do the harder ones. It takes a lot of experience to get those.

I then made a Dropbox folder for her to upload the photos to for me edit and also do a little extra Photoshop magic to. Also, the editing of these took a little while longer, but was so worth it.

I would never suggest these should replace a professional actually taking your newborn images when it is again safe to do so, but they are pretty priceless in this quarantined world.

Before and after quarantine newborn
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Easter Bunny Photos {SE MN Children’s Photographer}

Easter Bunny Photos! I hate that all of our traditions are being interrupted but this is the next best thing!! I saw these and thought it would be an adorable option for parents and support a small business during this crazy time if you usually take the littles to see the bunny for those yearly pics. You will simply take a picture of your child/children and email it to me to add for your yearly keepsake picture. Photos must be personal photos.

They will be $10 per image. Please send good quality images for best results, making sure the image is in focus. I would suggest to be close to your subject and that you get an image outdoors against some greenery but any image will work. If were supposed to have a session and we have had to reschedule due to Covid-19, I will be doing your images complimentary as a gift.

Please click here to order: https://photographybykari.com/store/index.php…
Once you have ordered, email me your image to kari@photographybykari.com.

Lastly this is for digital download you will not receive it printed. I will be working on these today and will get them sent to you right away.

If you have an account with the store, you will need to log in, if you don’t know your password there is a link to reset it or you can message us. If you do not have an account, you will need to create an account in order to place an order.

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Photography by Kari specializes in custom portraiture of newborn, family, children sports team banners, dog, and high school seniors in Spring Valley, MN, and surrounding Southeast Minnesota areas.

Areas, including, but not limited to, Rochester, Preston, Chatfield, Stewartville, Grand Meadow, LeRoy, Ostrander, Kasson, Hayfield, Plainview, St. Charles and Pine Island.

Southeast Minnesota based photographer.

specializing in newborn, family, children, and senior photography.

located in sPRING vALLEY, mn

TELEPHONE :: 507.951.0640

E-MAil :: kari@photographybykari.com