Smith Mountain Lake Covered Porches : FAVORITE PHOTO FRIDAY : 6

Last summer my sister, Emily, graduated from Liberty University.  My family went down for all of graduation festivities and we stayed at Covered Porches, Smith Mountain Lake Va. My next few Favorite Photo Friday posts will be from this trip.  I can't speak highly enough about the place we stayed.  Smith Mountain Lake is definitely a place everyone should visit once in their life.  This is a view of the sunset from the dock!

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OBX Beach Chairs : FAVORITE PHOTO FRIDAY : 3

Happy Friday!! Here is this week's FAVORITE PHOTO FRIDAY picture.  I took this on vacation in Outer Banks North Carolina.  I absolutely love the vibrancy of the chairs and the softness of the beach (as you should know by now, this girl LOVES contrast).  I also LOVE that the chairs are empty.  They are facing the beach and not the ocean, so maybe someone was doing some people watching?  Maybe they were watching the sunrise.  Maybe they were left that way from the night before.  I love an unknown story in a photo :).

Laurel Maryland Couples Session : Anne & Ryan 2013

Last year, my sister, Anne, asked me if I would like to take her boyfriend’s senior pictures.  Of course I said I would love to.  Well, a “senior” session basically turned into a “couples” session.  We managed to get a few of Ryan by himself, but most of our time was spent taking pictures of them both.  We had so much fun last time; we decided to do it again.  

We met last Saturday at one of my favorite places to shoot and spent about an hour together.   

Anne is my youngest sister.  I love her to death.  She is an incredible individual and speaks her mind whether or not it is the popular thing to say.  She stands up for what is right and befriends everyone.  The world should have more people like her! 

I know Ryan a lot more now than I did for our last shoot and I think he is awesome.  He treats my sister like a queen.  Ladies, you would be incredibly lucky to have a guy that treats you like this.  For example, he brings her flowers because it is Saturday, takes her to her favorite sushi place about once a week, brings my mom flowers and is there for every single one of our family events (which in my family – there are a lot of ).  Ryan, thank you for being an awesome guy and treating my sister with the respect she deserves.   

Here are my favorites from our time together.

FAMILY : Harvey 2011

 I never got around to showing these pictures on my blog last year, but better late than never!

Most of you probably know that I married someone from New York so the way I spend the holidays is a little out of the norm (from how I grew up anyways).  Since I have been married, I have spent every Thanksgiving in NY and my family was awesome enough to change the way they celebrated Thanksgiving so Derek and I could be a part of it every year.  Now, instead of Thanksgiving being celebrated on a Thursday, we celebrate on the Saturday before. 

Two years ago we got together early on our Saturday Thanksgiving and had a photo shoot with just us girls while the boys went to the shooting range.  We spent the morning at the Savage Mill and had an absolute blast!  We were having so much fun in fact, I had a family stop and book a session with me for the next day.  How fun!

We had so much fun doing this we decided to make this a new Harvey family tradition.   I adore these images we got; they are something I will treasure for years to come.  Sessions like this are why I LOVE photography.  A photograph captures a memory.  Even if you forget the moment you can look back on the picture and remember how life was that day. I hope you enjoy these pictures!!

Click here to see our 2012 Thanksgiving!