The Shafer Family — Santa Monica-Ventura Family Portraits

It takes a special kind of person to be cool with a stranger crashing at her pad for four nights. Erin and her hubby, Jeff, are indeed special kind of people. I stayed with them in their apartment during my visit to L.A. this fall and loved getting to know the pair of them. They were warm, inviting, and a heck of a lot of fun. (I’ll mention here I think Erin and I could spend an afternoon together watching a marathon session of trashtacular Tivoed television that would include many episodes of Good Day L.A. and TMZ. Erin raises the excellent point that, when you live in L.A., these shows are like research of your surroundings. See, this is why she’s awesome )

Of course, Erin, Jeff and I have a bit of a connection. I’m superclose with Stacey, Erin’s sister, whose own sweet family made an appearance earlier this year on my old blog. When Stacey shared with me that her sister was moving westward, the two of us soon began planning a trip out there (an effort supplanted only by our failed plottings to track down our favorite celebrities). (Ahem…Ryan… ahem…Gosling…).

Photographing Erin, Jeff and their precious little Maya was the least I could do as a thank you to these wonderful hosts. Jeff and Erin, thank you for welcoming me into that apartment of yours with its incredible jealousy-inducing views of the ocean. Thank you for letting me drink all your coffee. And for letting me take over your couch. And for letting me elbow in as the third wheel to your L.A. adventures with your sister.

And thank you, most of all, for being the linchpin to one of the best trips in recent memory. If it wasn’t for your relocation to L.A., well, Stace and I wouldn’t have had weeks to count down to our visit. And it may have taken me years to make the trek out to — and promptly fall in love with — southern California.

I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed editing them. They were my last images of L.A. I had left to tackle (sniff, sniff) and I love how they capture this new time in your lives. And of course there’s a SLIDESHOW. This song came on during one of our many trips with Maya in the car, and it just made me smile and I knew right there it’d accompany the images from this show. If you ask me, it’s pretty perfect for the occasion

We shot most of this session at the pier in Santa Monica. This photo is one of my favorites from our time there.

To me, this image is just all sorts of wonderful.

Jeff loves his little girl and will do what it takes to try to get a laugh out of her.

What a perfect little family of three.

Well helllooooo there Maya

I used to think SoCal photogs had it SO easy. I mean, come on, it’s CALIFORNIA they’re shooting in. There’s the sun. And the surf. And that perfect golden light. But I realized they have their own points of contention. The crowds (oooh but there was a crowd at this pier on a Saturday night!), the same quickly sinking sun (we had to book it from the pier down to the beach .. it’s a haul with a baby and a stroller in tow and I was cursing that we didn’t start the session earlier) and SAND. (My God the sand… I think I can still hear its grit in my camera body!) But I guess it’s pretty worth it when the result are images like these:

With the sun having set, it didn’t take long for all of us to get cranky, hungry and ready to head home. I told Jeff and Erin we’d aim to get a few more shots of them on our last morning there because we HAD to get a few with their first “baby”, Cooper, in the photos. And seriously folks, these next two images? I think they are my two favorite photos I took during my whole time in Cali. LOVE THESE SO MUCH

With a full belly, we laid a happy Maya on a white blanket next to the open sliding door and you wanna know what happened next? Magic, that’s what happened. HOW BEAUTIFUL IS THIS BABY GIRL?

Oh. my. goodness.

Jeff and Erin, if you like what you see in this session, you know, I’m ALWAYS down for another trip to L.A. (wink wink )

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