the primary fiddle: beautiful photos

Way back at the beginning of November we had the opportunity to have some photos taken by the wonderful Alyssa of Alyssa Alig Photography here in Athens. Nick and I are lovers of great photography and really enjoy having professional shots done when we can so when Alyssa offered holiday mini-sessions for an amazingly affordable price, we jumped at the chance.

She did a great shoot with us a couple of years ago for our anniversary...

so we were already comfortable with her and knew that she would get us some beautiful photos!

We decided a while ago that we didn't want to do a traditional maternity photo session while I was pregnant so we were prepared to just MacGyver some shots at home with our SLR and wait for the awesome professional newborn photos to happen in February. (for three reasons: 1. we knew we wanted to splurge on newborn/infant photos so we decided that we would rather save the $ now 2. we knew we would only print 1 or 2 shots for the house/nursery and paying for an hour and a couple hundred photos seemed excessive and 3. I was afraid that I would get caught in an hour long session with a photographer that either only wanted to/only knew how to do the typical/expected maternity photos, which I didn't want) disclaimer: I am definitely not insulting these types of photos! I think they can be really beautiful and cute, they're just not for me!

Long story short- and if you know me, you know that making a long story short is a feat of amazing proportions for me- Mom, Dad, I'm looking at you ;), Alyssa's set-up for a half-hour mini sessions with a DVD of less than 50 photos sounded perfect! We were able to get some great shots together for holiday cards/family frames and were able to document the pregnancy while avoiding all of the typical maternity photos that I didn't want.

Without further ado, here are some of my favorites...