We recently announced on our blog and started spreading the word that we wanted to offer free photography to any families who were effected by the Tea Fire here in Santa Barbara. This is still something we are continuing to offer and hope we can help more families to start to build their photographic memories again with.

Gerry and Marian Groff contacted us shortly about the first post on our blog about this and asked if we could do a portrait session for them. Their home burned down during the Tea Fire and Marian’s memories from attending Westmont college led us to the campus for their photos.

The Groffs had lived in their beautiful home for 46 years… when we asked them what they grabbed on their way out the door, Marian told us she grabbed her sewing machine, she said it was sort of an instinct because of a fire many years back in the area had hit and at the time her sewing machine was brand new and it was the first thing she grabbed then, so she naturally grabbed it this time as well.

We had an absolute blast photographing these two and it was amazing how much joy they still have in their marriage. I often wonder what it will be like when I get older and am married, and these two truly gave Cheryl and I a TON of hope for the future and growing older together. I can only hope we smile around each other half as much as these two do!

If you know of anyone from Santa Barbara who was effected by the Tea Fire please let them know that we would love to bless them with a FREE portrait session. This free session includes free prints, a free album donated by our friends at KISS Wedding Books, and all of the images on disk. We truly would love to bless as many of these families as possible with the ability to start a new photography collection for their family memories.

I recently took some portraits for the Hartman’s, an adorable family who won last years El Montecito School auction for the session that we donated. They wanted to do portraits at the beach, so I took them to Henry’s, I love shooting there because of all the various backgrounds available. Check out my favorite pictures below and their slideshow as well.

Oh, and El Montecito’s 2008 annual silent auction fundraser is comming up soon… November 8th. If you would like more info you can contact the school at 805.969.1482. We’ll be donating again because we love this school and what they have to offer to their students.

It’s been such a long time since I’ve blogged here, TIm is so much better at that then me. He seriously rocks when it comes to blogging!

Anyway, I wanted to share some of these images I took last Saturday for the Cummings family portraits. They are such an adorable family. I just love the emotion in this first one, and the girls are so cute in the next two pictures.

Here is a link to their slideshow if you’d like to see more