Jeff & Nicole Maternity

Jeff is my best friend's big brother, so I have known Jeff since I was five.  He and his adorable wife Nicole are only weeks from meeting their little boy (who's name remains a mystery).  I was very excited to photograph them during such a special time in their lives and I can't wait to meet the little guy!  These are my favorite from their session this weekend.

Since they are having a little boy and we were at Cantigny (named after the battle), they wanted a portion of their photos to be Army themed, which was super cute.

Changes

I am really excited because there have been some changes with my photography.  Starting with the fact that I got a logo made =)  I think have all the kinks worked out (it was grey at first but it didn't really show up, so I got it updated to be white).  But I can't figure out quite how to size the logo to make it the title of the blog all together, so I'm gonna keep working on it.  In the mean time I wanted to put it up because I think it's adorable! ... and *I* like to look at it because I had the logo made with what will be my married name even thought it's not really mine until May ;)

Payton's One

As a surprise to Payton's parents, Payton's Aunt Sara and Uncle Travis had me take some photos for her first birthday.  She was surpsingly much more interested in the little "1" candle than the cake itself, but she still managed to get pretty messy.

On a side note, I got a logo and corresponding water mark so I tried it out on Payton's photos.  As you will see, there are some kinks I still need to work out regarding it's size and why it seems to change - even though it's a preset function ... =\  Either way, I'm pretty excited about it!  The name change means that the url for this site will soon be jillprebolaphotography.blogspot.com  =)

Here's Payton:

Emma Lynn

On July 25th I got another niece, and when she was the ripe old age of 4 days, I got to document her adorable little face.  (Yes, it's been almost a month since then but it's a long story about the death of our computer the day after I took the photos - of course).  This was my first attempt at newborn photos and I am pretty darn proud of the photos I got.

Supposedly, at 4 days old, babies are super tired and sleep through anything ... not this baby.  I was at my sister's house for about 4 hours and Emma was not in a sleep-through-anything state for ANY part of that time really.  If you thought about moving her, she was awake.  We worked with it though and she's super cute just the same.  Here she is ....

This one is probably my favorite

One of the times she was really asleep she wouldn't close her mouth so save my life ... but she's a cute little cod fish (haha did I really just make a Mary Poppins reference??)

This last one is for her dad.  I think I like it better in black and white because the icky logo in the left corner doesn't stand out as much ;)

Sunshine

So long story short, I didn't read a post that I should have telling everyone that the weekly challenge I had started in the beginning of the year was being moved and someone else was going to run it.  Since I couldn't be bothered to read a long post, I thought the challenge was just cancelled.  I finally read the post and I will do my best to continue following the weekly challenges.  

This week is sunshine, and I loved driving past these farm fields and seeing that - apparently - a field is used for a different crop than last year but a few corn stalks are peeking through this year anyways.  This might be a little bit of a stretch for "sunshine", but sun makes things grow ... like I said, kind of a stretch.  I wanted to take the photo anyways.

Maternity

I decided to try a maternity session.  This is my older sister, Stephanie.  These are my favorites ...

Promontory Point

The other day I was at Promontory Point on the south side of Chicago and I got this photo that I really like right around dusk.  I only wish I were there like 15 minutes later because it would have been a little darker and more of the lights would have been on, but I like it anyway.

Rori's One

I totally fell off the blogging wagon =(  But I am going to do my best to hop back on!  My niece, Rori, turned one not too long ago, and I took some photos of her recently.  These are my favorites

It's safe to say that she enjoyed her cake =)

Things that Grow

It wouldn't have mattered what the theme of this week was, the photo would have been the same.  However, I got lucky and if spun the right way, I think it legitimately fits this week's "things that grow" theme.

I have previously (on more than one occasion), mentioned my wonderful boyfriend.  But that is currently an incorrect statement, as he is now my fiance =D  Our love has "grown" to the point that we are getting married!  We met at our gym, so this is my absolutely gorgeous ring (that he created himself) on a kettlebell.  This kettlebell is from our home gym ... and we thought they'd look cooler if we painted faces on them =) 

Lesson learned??  Diamonds are incredibly hard to photograph.  They pick up and reflect other colors around them and my camera did not want to focus on it.  

Sacrifice

Last weekend was crazy busy and my week nights are always chock-full of things to do.  I did take the photo last week, just didn't get around to posting it.  This photo is kind of the sacrifice of things left outdoors.  It is part of a train station railing.  This steel has clearly seen it's share of different weather.  There's even a little something growing on the metal ...

"Foolin' Around"

Yesterday was my friend Sara's wedding shower.  She and her mother gave all the women involved in throwing the shower little hats, which is apparently a tradition in the UK.  Here, Sara is helping Ashleigh, her niece, get her hat situated.

Ashleigh in her hat.

Later, we split everyone into teams and they had to designate a "bride" and design a wedding gown out of toilet paper.  This is the real bride in her toilet paper dress.

Michigan

Steve and I went with some friends to the wineries in Michigan this weekend, and even though there weren't any grapes on the vines I took some photos.

All the trees seemed to have flowers on them

Some beer bottles at Round Barn and some of the wine at Karma Vista

This was the wonderful view outside of our hotel room.  There obviously weren't very many boats in the harbor yet, but I still think it was beautiful.

Details

I had to really mess around with the white balance in these photos, but that's what I get for attempting to take them at night in the house.  Steve and I are going out of town for the weekend and hopefully I'll get something good to use from our get away to use as a mulligan ... until then, these are TOMS wedges that we gave to my little sister for her birthday on Thursday. (happy birthday kid, love you)

Hunger, Part II

While at the gym, I gave one of the kids a cookie for my attempt at another "hunger" photo.  I didn't even do anything to the saturation of this image, this half blond Oreo just really pops.

Even though he made it pretty clear that he wanted to just keep playing with the other kids instead of eating a cookie for me, he managed to show me just how photogenic he is because these are the other images I got while coaxing him to eat the cookie.  This is Matt ... he's pretty adorable.

Hunger

A few months ago I picked up the book The Hunger Games while looking for something to read on vacation and after reading the back decided that it could either be really good or really terrible, so I went with a different book.  About a week and a half ago my friend let me borrow the books (it's a trilogy), because I like to read a book before I see it's movie counterpart and the movie The Hunger Games comes out today.  I enjoy reading but was convinced that I didn't have much time to read and was just hoping to finish the first one before the movie came out.  Long story short, all the books are about 400 pages and I finished all three in about a week.  These books are amazingly written.  It made me feel much more like I was watching a movie than reading a book.  I would SO highly recommend them.  I am going to try another photo later tonight, but for now, here is the inspiration for this week's theme in it's most obvious form.

I am incredibly excited to see this movie this weekend, real or not real?  Real.

"Be Still" & "Eyes of March"

Two weeks ago, the theme was "be still" ... of course it was a week of only windy days so a lot of my ideas were out the window.  Then I was sick that weekend, so I didn't have much time to figure out a photo.  I eventually settled on the rope at my gym; completely still, just dangling and waiting for someone to climb it.

Last week's weeks theme was the "Eyes of March."  I wanted to take it a step into the abstract and decided to photograph the tree in my front yard.  It is just barely starting to bloom and I saw it as kind of the eyes of the month of March opening.  Kinda weird, but I like the photo just the same  =)  Hope you do too

A Great Leap

This is the owner of my gym, John, and a 42" box jump.  These are the types of things that qualify as great leaps in my life.

Cabin Fever

My lovely boyfriend has, once again, given me perfect inspiration for this week's theme.  A couple weeks ago he decided to get a new motorcycle.  What displays "cabin fever" more than buying a motorcycle in January in Chicago??  

I like this photo a lot too, but instead of it saying Buell (the brand of motorcycle), it is just the logo on the engine.

True Love

So this post is a little late, but strangely enough, I couldn't figure out what to do for this week's theme of "True Love."  There are a lot of things in life I love, but I finally decided on a photo of the flowers that my lovely boyfriend not only bought me, but MADE me.  They are made from light weight paper.  I couldn't get the light in our house to work out exactly like I wanted, but here's what I got.