Boys being boys!!

As most of you know, I don't have any children of my own. Of course I consider and treat my Chihuahua Ren like a child but that's a whole different post there!! ;-)  Anyhow, many of the joyful interactions and examples of a child's pure innocence and love for me comes from the time I get to spend with my 2 nephews Morgan & Jackson. I only have one sister, her name is Christine and we have become the best of friends in the past 10 years! When I worked as a sports photographer and then at the newspaper it was easy to let years slip away without spending time with my family except for on the required holidays. When I left the newspaper last year my life really started to change and family suddenly became a top priority for me. I was blessed to travel to Disney World last June with my Mom, Dad, Sister, her husband Tim & of course Jackson & Morgan to celebrate Morgan's 5th Birthday!! That week spent with family celebrating in such a magical incredible place was priceless to me and the memories that I made and captured with my camera will be in my mind with fondness for eternity!

The point of all this is that I have really gotten to know my nephews and all of my family a lot better in the last 16 months. We have shared so many great times together and now I really feel like a proper "Aunt Mandi". I went to spend Mother's Day with my awesome mom and at her request we worked the Elks Club Bingo Concession Stand for the afternoon together to fulfil her responsibilities as a member of the Elks Women's Auxiliary. Fun afternoon that definitely opened my eyes to a whole new world of the Bingo Culture!! I took some photos at Bingo for my tasra365 project so I will share some of the Bingo awesomesauce with you someday soon. He He!!

After returning back to my parent's house my Dad arrived with Jackson & Morgan and I took the boys outside to play and decided to take some photos as a Mother's Day gift for my sister Christine. You CAN NOT pose these kids, or anyone else in my family for that matter. I see why they say that the "Cobblers kids have no shoes". It has really only been in the last 18 months that I feel like I have captured any really great photos of my family. I have one shot that I love when Morgan was a baby of the two boys together, but there was a huge gap where I just felt like I could not get any good pictures out of my own family members. Now that I have embraced that photojournalistic lifestyle photography is my true passion and calling I am getting GREAT photos of everyone!! Just letting my family be themselves, in all their glory, has enabled me to create images this year that I am proud of and will be part of MY familiy history!! These are a few of the images that I created that afternoon just letting the boys play and be boys!! I put the photos together in a album for Christine's birthday which was on May 14th!! She really appreciated the gift and I just love to see all my photos from a session in 5'x7" prints. Something about a tangible print in a nice album feels so warm and fuzzy to me and makes me swoon even more over the beauty and blessings of my nephews. Enjoy the images and I'm sure you will be able to tell how much fun we had making them. :-)

Here is a video slide show of the photos, Enjoy!! -Mandi :-)

Comments

[Nicole Rushin]

Great photographs Mandi. Keep up the great work!