What an honor it is to photograph clients repeatedly through the years.

It's so much fun to"grow up" with a family. Years ago, we had an amazing time creating a portrait of Natalie Slate and her family in Santa Barbara. Since then, we have created some of our most innovative images with Natalie. We did the one below when she was pregnant with her daughter, Tatiana...and that's obviously Tatiana in the portraits above. Natalie is a clothing visionary, and always brings me plenty of things to choose from. So when I saw the clothing she brought for Tatiana , I knew we'd have an opportunity to capture another very special image.

What's the story of your family that we should capture?

And she's another artist as well!

When the Markham family came into the studio to pick out the frames for the beach portraits that we did of their family at Leo Carrillo Beach, their young daughter Erin presented me with her own work of art. We thought you might want to see it as well.

Currently it's hanging on the bulletin board by my desk, but I might even frame it.

Our studio is blessed to have so many clients we can call our friends. Thats one of the real joys of what we do. And it's also fun to see our young clients grow up. I have a story about a local client who hit the big time this year...but it will have to wait until next time...I've gotta find her images first. They're in the archives on something called film.

Any guesses? Stay tuned...

Back at Christmas, Marianne Mosko asked me to meet her and her young daughter at the ice skating rink here in Westlake. Her daughter is an accomplished ice skater and we wanted to make an image that would be an amazing work of art for their home. I loved the color and the lights - it made the experience just magical. I'm continually thankful that I have such a great life, creating the kind of portraits I love, with enthusiastic people who come back to the studio again and again through the years.

Most of my beach portraits have been made along the Malibu coast, so it was really fun to create several in Laguna Beach recently. April and I had a great time with Gunnar and Lindsay Williams and their children. We all loved how this painted portrait captures Laguna's stunning beauty. Even more, it shows the happy intimacy of their young family.