I met Alaina and Matthew a few years ago when I attended the On Purpose Workshop hosted by Courtney Smith Photography and Jessica Lauren Photography. Alaina and Matthew were one of Jessica’s wedding couples, and had just gotten married about 3 months before the workshop. The two graciously agreed to be our models for the workshop! During our sessions, I also found out that Alaina is also a photographer in the Mt. Vernon, IL area and we quickly became friends. We started following each other on social media and ended up in a lot of the same groups online.  At one point, I even got assigned her name as a my Secret Santa recipient for an online exchange! Long story short, I love Alaina and her work. Recently, I put out a model call to do some couples sessions and Alaina and Matthew volunteered for me! It was so fun to reconnect with her again for these portraits, and to meet their little boy!

We met on Main Street St. Charles, which is one of my all-time favorite places to shoot. I love this spot because there is just such a wide variety of locations. It’s got a historic feel with its cobble stone streets and 100+ year old buildings and it’s situated directly next to a park that runs along the Katy Trail, too! This part of town is pretty busy and when I arrived, I realized I had scheduled our session on the day of a big bike race… whoops! The entire park was covered in orange tents, and the location of where I wanted to shoot was occupied. Not to be dissuaded,  I drove around and found this fantastic little path near the end of Main St. that turned out to be perfect for us. The sunlight was coming through the trees… and while it was so unexpected, it really was just perfect!