Cove Portraiture

Vintage Angels Sessions

$249+tax
Fee includes
15 Minute Angel Session (photographed between now and December 7th)
24-tri-fold 5x5 Holiday cards (design shown above)
2-5x7 gift prints (1-pose)
1-sheet of wallets (1-pose)
Book your session online at www.artistcove.net

 

Natalie Chillin'

Natalie chillin' on the White Christmas set. 

   

The Parent Family

Brian and Wendy Parent own Parent Builders, Inc.  In addition to all of the incredible homes they have built in the northern suburbs, they have also built a beautiful family of 5 lovely children!  They are currently working on a custom built model home in Blaine, MN that will be featured in this fall's Parade of Homes.  We are delighted to be decorating the new model with our portraiture and will be updating you all soon with more information on this very special project - we are so excited!  Thank you Wendy and Brian...we loved photographing your family! Visit their website at www.builtforliving.com.  

Baby Jack

Jack Lucjan Will

April 29th, 2008

8 lbs. 10 oz.

20.5 inches

Proud parents, Scott and Megan Will!

 

Spring's little sprouts

From Feb-May, there are numerous birthdays to celebrate on the Hora side of our family!  All of the  grandchildren were born in the spring.  Including the newest grandchild, baby Jack (born to Megan & Scott just last week).  While Jack is to little for photographs at the studio (he's just come home from the hospital), some of the other Hora cousins were in town this past weekend.   I took the girl cousins up to the studio for play time...and a few photographs.  It was a great chance for me to photograph them each at a milestone - the year passes by so quickly.  Alison just turned 8 on Sunday, Ashlee is 6, Madison is 4, and Natalie just turned 1.  Whew...spring must feel like Christmas for Grandma and Grandpa Hora...so many birthday presents to buy! Amy

 

Natalie - 10 Month Portraits

This is my Natalie.  I had been doing so well about keeping up with her first year milestone portraits - until now.  This year is just flying by.  Before you can blink, they are all grown up.  I can see how our clients are always late with scheduling their baby's 9 month portrait session.  For one thing, they become so busy from 6 to 9 months!  Moving and grooving...that's what best describes this fun (but very exhausting) age.  Just today Natalie climbed up the stairs for the first time, then before I even noticed, she fell down them (just a couple-but boy did it scared me to death)!  As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, I took her up to the studio to take her portrait.  The hat covers her little bruise pretty well.  Poor girl.  I guess my point of this post is to remind all of you moms and dads to take the time to capture every milestone before it's too late.  They change in the blink of an eye, and our busy lives are no excuse for not capturing a little bit of the magic of each stage.   

I am always drawn to capturing Natalie's eyes.  I guess I am proud of them (along with every other part of her).  Like pools of dark chocolate with a little caramel swirl - I could eat them up. Yum!  Both my girls have inherited my brown eyes.  It's funny because I always hated my "boring" brown eyes as a child.  I was envious of girls with blue eyes.  I guess I have gotten over my jealousy of blue-eyed girls because I could stare into these big brown eyes all day and never get bored.  Amy

   

Avalanche Pictures!

Avalache famlies...click here to view and order the session images! 

http://web.sendtoprint.net/proofbook/galleries.asp?CouponID=amyhora@msn.com

©2008 The Artist Cove

So what is Cystic Fibrosis?

That is what I asked when I photographed little Mikayla for the Cystic Fibrosis Stair Climb.  The Stair Climb is happening this Saturday, February 9th at the IDS Tower in Minneapolis. I have heard about it, but never really knew what it was all about.

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disease which affects 30,000 children and adults in the United States.  CF causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky substance in the lungs and digestive systems leading to life-threatening infections."-cystic fibrosis foundation.

Let me share with you a little bit about Mikayla and how I came about photographing her for this event.

Some of you may know that my husband (this is Christine writing) Mike is a Minneapolis Police officer. A few years ago the police department was contacted by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation with an idea.  They wanted to get the officers involved and thought it would be fun to have the Minneapolis police and Minneapolis fire "race" up the stairs. My husband thought this was a great challenge and took on the job of getting it all set up.  Every year he has planned it and every year it has grown with more local police and fire departments participating. This year, besides the Police and Fire dept, there is a Secret Service team,  The HCMC Paramedics team, State Patrol and Bloomington Fire. Some of the Honorary captains are Frank Vascelaro,, Shjon Podin (Colorado Avalanche hockey player), Tom Chorske (New York Devils Hockey Player). Every person on the team has raise $75 or more each to be in the event. They are also competing to see who can bring in the most money:)

So how does Mikayla fit into all this?  A few years ago, my husband Mike contacted the St. Paul police and found out there was a police officer with a daughter suffering from Cystic Fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis then had a face and a story for the Stair Climb.

This year, I offered to take the images of Mikayla for the t-shirts they would be wearing for the climb.  How wonderful is that?  Mikayla, and her parents Mike and Donna, were so WONDERFUL to work with.  They wanted to have a t-shirt with Mikayla representing both the St. Paul Police and the Minneapolis Police to wear at the event. We took those images first, but Mikayla was so fun that I wanted to do something fun and girlie with her.  So I put our pretty pink wings on her and captured her sweet personality. I really enjoyed taking these images for them.  I hope to be involved with this event every year. Here are a few of my favorite images from the session.

To find out more about Cystic Fibrosis log on to www.cycsticfibrosis.com. If you want to get a team together to challenge the Police and Fire teams (actually If you can beat Mpls Fire...you would be the bomb) e-mail me at christine@artistcove.net and I can have Mike contact you next year.  It is a great event!  The more people we can get involved the better!  - Christine

The Schmalz Family Portraits

A good old-fashioned family Christmas?

Isn't that what Clark Griswald wanted in the movie Christmas Vacation?  Well you've seen the movie...it didn't quite work out the way he planned.  It seems like we always have grand ideas of how we would love memorable, meaningful family events.  Then reality happens.  Nap times, coordinated clothing, and the stubborn child who doesn't want to do what you tell them to do.  Well...we all know that ultimately leads to crabby adults and completely disorganized chaos ensues.  So that's what I expected this year when we decided to tackle family portraits of my husband's immediate family...the Hora's.  Complete stress, and utter chaos - just like the Griswald's.  Much to my surprise, things just fell into place.  We all wore black...no rouge family members with their own fashion agenda (no dickies or blue polyester).  The kids were calm and agreeable...let me repeat that...calm and agreeable?  The adults were like "whatever" this is actually FUN!  Boy am I relieved.  But above all, I am glad we took the time to document our family at this moment - no matter what the outcome might have been.  The sweet grandchildren...from the growing tots to the eagerly anticipated (a new baby next spring).  The siblings, each with a loving spouse.  All of us striving to model the incredible love their parents have modeled in their 30+ year marriage. 

So here are a few of the images...surprisingly and thankfully more Norman Rockwell than the Griswald family.