Jen Madigan Photography

Thankful

I just wanted to take a minute to give thanks today. I hope you are enjoying your day off with your family and friends & eating delicious food!

Thanks to my wonderful clients who trust me to document their lives and important events. I will forever be grateful for your support, I truly have the best clients and am thankful every single day.

Thanks to my husband, family, and friends who support me no matter what. Thank you for helping me fulfill my dreams.

Thanks to Einstein for making me smile every day, just by being such a cute, furry mammal.

I am so grateful for every opportunity and experience that comes my way, and I hope that many great things come your way too. Happy Thanksgiving.

Party Time, Excellent...

A little Wayne's World reference for you on this Wednesday! Anyways, I apologize for the lack in posting recently. I have been battling a bit of a cold, so took last week off and am just now getting back into the swing of things. I hope you all are staying healthy as this weather keeps switching from beautiful to frigid (can you believe it snowed last week?) and back again!

I took these photos at Myelle's 1st birthday party the last weekend in October. Lindsay (her mom) and I became good friends after we met when I did Myelle's 6 month session back in the spring. I was invited as a guest to the party, and brought along my camera to take a few snapshots. I mainly wanted to share the decor photos, as Lindsay and her mom Marita are pretty much AMAZING. I wish they would plan parties for me! :) All of the Halloween decorations were so cute, classy, and perfect for the occasion. I especially love the little banner that Lindsay made, featuring a photo from each month of Myelle's first year of life.

New Look

You may have noticed the new look around here lately, and I wanted to take a minute to say a huge thanks to the team at Braizen - Ashley, Alicja, and Tyrie were just some of the individuals I had personal contact with and they were amazing.

Branding was a new experience for me, as the original Jen Madigan Photography logo was one I came up with by myself one afternoon (and clearly I'm no graphic designer!!). I wanted something that people would remember, and that was truly unique to me. So, after filling out a very long questionnaire and speaking with Ashley on the phone, they came up with 4 wonderful concepts. We ended up merging two of them to come up with the gorgeous branding that you see before you (also thanks to Penny Lane Designs for helping me by implementing the branding into my blog design!).

One thing I wanted to incorporate, as you all know, is my spoiled little sidekick Einstein. Turns out that it was fate that Mr. Ein would end up being a part of my branding because my last name, Madigan just so happens to mean "little dog". (Cue Twilight Zone music now...)

Anyways, I hope you all love this new branding as much as I do - I was so excited for it all to be implemented (and my new business cards should arrive soon I hope!) from the moment that I saw the finished product. Honestly I can't thank the Braizen team enough for doing such a wonderful job.

Hope you all are having a fantastic week!!

Emersyn [Newborn]

I'm sure most of you remember Chelsea and Richard, my first wedding couple from last October. Chelsea contacted me this summer to get on the schedule for newborn photos and I was ecstatic! It's one of the best parts of my job, getting to see my clients' families grow, and I was so thrilled for Chelsea and Richard. The lovely Miss Emersyn Belle was born on October 23rd, and so this past Sunday I traveled up to their home in Independence to take her newborn photos.

Truly this baby is one of the most gorgeous I've ever seen, and she was such a good little model!! I can't say enough good things about this baby girl (or her parents), so I should just let the photos speak for themselves. Chelsea and Richard - I hope you like the preview! It was wonderful seeing you again, I'm so happy for you both. Josh and I feel lucky to have met you, and we hope to be able to document many more milestones in your lives.

*Special thanks to Andrea from ForeverHandmade for loaning me some of the headbands and a blanket used in this session. Credit is given above the photos in which these items were used. You can visit her store HERE.

I don't normally take detail photos like this but I couldn't resist this time - those lips!!

The cream headband in the following photo is courtesy of Andrea from ForeverHandmade on Etsy. You can visit her store HERE.

Chelsea crocheted this sweet pink hat, I just love it.

The brown flower headband, red headband, and cream blanket in the following photos are courtesy of Andrea from ForeverHandmade on Etsy. You can visit her store HERE.

Little Red Riding Hood & the [Not So] Big Bad Wolf

Happy Halloween everyone! This weekend I had an impromtu photo session with my favorite subject (Einstein, of course) and his friend Avery from down the street. When I heard Avery's Halloween costume was Little Red Riding Hood, a lightbulb went off and I thought it would make an adorable Halloween post. So, without further ado, let's begin.

Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little riding hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called 'Little Red Riding Hood.'

One day her mother said to her: 'Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don't forget to say, "Good morning", and don't peep into every corner before you do it.'

'I will take great care,' said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.

The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

'Good day, Little Red Riding Hood,' said he.

'Thank you kindly, wolf.'

Let's just stop right there. As you all know, the story continues with the wiley wolf befriending Red Riding Hood and accompanying her on her visit to Grandmother's house. He eventually ditches her as she looks for flowers in the woods and rushes to Grandmother's house where he gobbles her up, and then impersonates her so he can eat Little Red when she arrives.

Have you ever thought maybe the Brothers Grimm got it wrong? What if the Big Bad Wolf wasn't so big at all? (Maybe he just had a really good PR person like Tom Cruise, who is much shorter than he seems.) What if Red Riding Hood was the wiley one, capturing the (not so) Big Bad Wolf and turning him into her pet? Well that's how this story goes...

The wolf resisted at first...showing Red Riding Hood his large, pointy teeth in a snarl. She found it quite amusing.

The wolf thought he hit it big when Red invited him into her basket, but there were no goodies to be found. Foiled again!

The wolf looked for any way in which to escape, but this made Little Red Riding Hood very sad...

After awhile the wolf decided that maybe he would gobble Little Red right up, so he helped himself to a taste.

Finally the wolf determined that Little Red Riding Hood did not taste quite right, and he was kind of tired of trying to escape (and always getting caught), so he figured he might as well relax for awhile.

This made Red very happy...

Eventually the wolf gave in to Little Red...

and they lived happily ever after!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Under Construction

You may or may not have noticed the new look on my website (www.jenmadigan.com), but ta-da! I'm so excited about my new branding and I hope you guys like it too. You also may have noticed that the blog is still the old look, but that will also be changing soon. It's a little bit of a process, getting new branding implemented, but once it's all done it will all be worth it!

I hope you guys are having a great weekend so far! I'm looking forward to a newborn session that I'm doing tomorrow, I can't wait to share it with you all.

The C Family

On Sunday afternoon, I met up with the C family to take some family photos at Kent Park. First, it must be said that Vicki and Jason are superheroes. Truly. I know this because I am from a large family and I saw how hard my mom and dad worked to raise us. So my hat goes off to the two of them. Not only are these 5 kids (Ben, Matthew, Abby, Emily, and Jenna) absolutely adorable, but they are so sweet and fun, the time flew by. I think we got some great photos, I hope you like them as well.

When taking family pics, I like to try and get a mix of "everyone look here" and more candid moments (which you'll see near the end of the post).

I love all of these individual shots of the kids (and Kaia, their golden doodle in the photo with Ben). I took a bunch of these and there are a lot of good ones, it was incredibly hard to narrow it down for the post.

The kids made a huge leaf pile and took turns jumping in it, it looked like they were having so much fun!

It ended with everyone piling on Ben, I love Jenna's expression in this one.

On the walk back, Jason spotted a frog and the kids were fascinated (particularly Matthew, Emily, and Ben) - I didn't go over because I'm terrified of frogs (sad, but true). Josh took the photo below.