Gift Contest!!!!

It certainly seems like it has been an awfully long time since we had an exciting contest here, huh? It has been!! Below you can find all the details on the Gift Contest!!

We are going to be gifting a session to one of our fans slash clients and anyone can enter to win!! Here's what you do, submit via email, tell us who you are nominating to receive the session, it can be anyone, even yourself. But, you have to tell us why you feel this person deserves to win.
Photography is all about story telling and we want to hear your stories, maybe you are nominating someone who is always there for everyone in bad times or a single mom or dad that has worked hard for their family, or perhaps someone who has just over come extenuating circumstances.
Please make sure to include all their information. Submit all entries to cynthia@unobstructedstudios.com and in the email subject, put Gift, so we can easily sort through all the submissions!!
Everyone knows someone that they could tell us about and we are ready to hear about them!!!
We will only be accepting entries until the end of the week, so get to typing!!!

I see a boat!! I see Daddy!!

Okay, I am not sure where to start.....but let start with this little disclaimer....I am a photographer, not a writer, and though I did excel in English in college, I am still not a writer. I am the worst speller on the face of the planet. You will never meet a speller worse than me. So, while reading and enjoying my blog, please understand that I will spell check it once and then call it day. Good images speak for themselves. 

On to the good stuff, I had the pleasure of shooting my very first military homecoming!! This has somewhat been in the planning works since January when me and my client, Debbie were talking about her husband Nicks upcoming deployment and how she was going to basically be a single mom for seven months and I asked her if she had ever thought of doing a military homecoming. 

She had thought about it alot, in fact, so much so that she had an outfit picked out and purchased for her baby girl, Lillian, before she was born. So, we have been keeping this under wraps since January. This has been keep a tighter secret than my Christmas sessions! 

So I had set the date aside in September, and I set aside the whole day because I knew I had to go through the security process and all and being it was my first shoot of this kind I had no idea how long it would be, I thought I would be there all day. And then the date kept changing!! Thank you to hurricanes, tropical whatevers and the government the date changed I think three or four times. 

So the night before the 'big day' I am going through the details with Debbie and where to meet etc....here is the plan I was given lol

Set the alarm for 6:00, shower, get ready, here is where it gets funny. Debbie says to me, if I am doing okay in the morning lets meet at my moms house (closer to Mayport than her house) and I will come get you and her from there.

If I am freaking out in the morning you go to my moms and ride with her and I will pick yall up from the park and ride near Mayport. But I think I will be okay. 

Morning off comes and I am ready to go!!! I call Mary, Debbies mom, and say I am a little behind due to traffic and I am freaking out that I am going to be late for this once in a lifetime event. So I will meet you all at the park and ride, she agrees and gives me directions to park and ride. Then Debbie calls me and she is freaking out! She will meet us all at park and ride, now that we are all riding separately lol she then gives me different directions to the park and ride. So I start to sweat and freak out more. I stopped on Mayport road to get a third opinion on directions to the park and ride from the nice gentlemen at the Kangaroo, he was right by the way. I get to the park and ride and I am the first one there. Uh oh. Mary is turned around, not lost, turned around. Debbie is close but not there yet. 

Once Debbie gets there it is now time for us to be standing in front of the ship on base and Mary is not there yet, so she is contemplating leaving anyways and having Mary find us on base. So, after a few phone calls, we are doing just that, leaving the park and ride and going on base and Mary is meeting us there. 

Once we get on base Debbie is so excited to see Nick, she is not the worlds best navigator, and I am in the backseat with her two kiddos, Logan nad Lillian and Debbies brother Dalton is in the very back of the SUV thingy we are in. And no one is in the seat up front, that was Marys seat. I am reading directions from the back seat while Logan is yelling, "I see the boat I see Daddy! I want to get out!!" 

Side note, Logan thinks that his Dad is on Noahs Arc and he is expecting to see animals. LOL. 

So, being that we see no road signs we are lost and Dalton and I are trying to help Debbie from the deep depths of the SUV thing over Logan yelling. I did offer to drive, several times. And I did also point out officials that we could ask for directions. We found the boat and couldnt actually get to it, so we had to drive all the way around and ask an officer who directed us to park in a certain lot and we were all good from there. From the back seat I am scouring the lot for open parking spots, I totally offered to pay the ticket for her and park in handicap, I know its wrong but I don't care at this point, I want to see this reunion. 

I find the first spot that is so small I cannot open my door to get out. So I have to (THANK GOD FOR DALTON) hand over my equipment and climb over the seats and out the back of the vehicle. Meanwhile, Nick who is on the deck of the ship, can see us pulling in when we got there. 

Once we got there and got out of the car, the military homecoming stars aligned, we immediately found Mary and we found Nick on the boat and he was one of the first sailors off the boat!! So, all this being said, I hope you all enjoy this little preview from my very first (and hopefully not last) military homecoming!! 

If you or anyone you know are interested in scheduling a military homecoming or any other type of session with Unobstructed Studios please feel free to contact us at any time and we will be glad to work with anyone to get them the images they want from their special event. Our contact number is 904.657.0867 and email is contact@unobstructedstudios.com. We are always accepting new clients and welcome new faces :)

And this is where Debbie just went ahead and went under the ropes to great her husband and it was so touching to be there for that moment. I actually pushed a grown man out of my way to get this shot, I did apologize afterwards, but come on, who steps in front of a lens like that!! Jeez!

Someone clearly takes after their mother with going under ropes LOL!!!

This was so cute after everyone started clapping, and stopped clapping actually, Lillian started clapping too!! 

I don't think that Logan is going to let Nick out of his sight for a while! 

I have never, in more shoots together than I can count, seen this boy this happy, it was amazing! He had the hugest smiles as soon as he saw his Dads boat! 

Omggggg....are you ready for the cutest little family! Let me tell ya!! This little boy, Amari, is so stinkin cute!  I have done his pictures a few times in his little lifetime and every time, he just gets cuter and cuter! He has been in 2 cutest kid contests with Unobstructed Studios and I did his baby pictures when he was just a little guy. Well, Amari is about to welcome in December another little one into this adorable family. And he is such a good a sweet big brother already! It was so cute to see him kissing his mama's belly at this shoot!

And this is an example of another amazing client, one who was such a trooper, waking up and getting ready to be at the beach at 6:30 in the morning to dodge a series of afternoon rainstorms that have effected every session after one clock for a month! Rebecca actually got to the beach earlier than that to watch the sunrise with her family! 

And can I say how lucky we are to have beat the weather because just a few short days after this session, Rebecca tripped and broke her hand!! So, we are wishing her a speedy recovery! So please enjoy the images from Rebecca, Jaylen, Amari and Aiden's session at the beach, especially the most adorable image ever of Amari holding the sonogram image of his little brother, which at first he was holding upside down! 

I just can't say enough how sweet this little boy is! And he has a huge bright amazing smile! 

I have the prettiest clients! Rebecca has some amazing genetics, she barely looks like there's a baby in there from certain angles. And the back lighting on this image!

Amari had this much energy throughout the whole entire shoot too! Goodness can we bottle that stuff?

This picture of Rebecca and Jaylen just makes me so happy that she has an amazing boyfriend who is also a great Dad too! And as a photographer I love that they fit well together with their height! 

Hey Ladies!!!!

Aww! Look at how cute and happy this family is! 

It was an uphill battle to keep this kid out of the water during their shoot, so once we were finished the first thing Amari wanted to do was run into the water. A good boy should be rewarded, and he was. He is like a fish too and that water, to me, was freezing. 

Should anyone want to receive information on booking a session with Unobstructed Studios, its simple! Just email us at contact@unobstructedstudios.com at any time to book a session!