Tina & Gina

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Today I feel honored and joyful to share a photo shoot with you capturing two best friends and their love for each other.

Awhile ago, Gina (on the right) told me her best friend was coming to visit from out of town, and she wanted to do something very special for her. You see, Gina and her best friend Tina (on the left), have been friends since middle school. They are now grown women with their own families living in two different states, and through distance and time they have remained very close.

What makes this story of friendship go deeper is that Tina was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer back in February 2010, and Tina has worked very hard against this illness by going through all of the hoops of surgery, chemo and radiation (click here to read more of her story). So when Tina decided to come to visit, Gina did what any awesome friend would do - packed a weekend full of girl time, and this photo shoot was a part of her plan.

So, obviously, I said I would love to help, and I asked one of MY best friends, Jessica Williams of Session Nine Photography, to make some awesome memories for these amazing ladies.

How cool that I got to capture two bff's with one of my bff's?! People - we need to start getting pictures taken with our friends more. I have NO idea why I have not done much of this when friendship is something that is SO important to all of us.

We chose to photograph the gals at Gina's house, and really capture what girls to do best - sitting and talking. I picked a bright red shirt for Tina with a crisp white jacket, and added a pop of turquoise for fun. Gina was already wearing a really cute tunic top and jeans, so we decided to keep her in that. These ladies are already drop dead gorgeous, so it was easy impromptu styling.

I even found two coffee mugs with their two states on them! Perfect prop!

Tina gave Gina a beautiful friendship bracelet  (heck yes, we need to bring those back), and got that on film.

Later, I had them change into dressier outfits, and we went "cool wall" hunting. We found some great ones.

These ladies are SO much fun. I think we just laughed the entire time.

Take some time today to tell your best friends how much you love them. My friends are my family in many ways. I don't know what I would do without them.

Also, I know many of us want to be able to help when we learn of people's life struggles. You can absolutely  help support Tina as she goes through this battle by sharing encouraging words on her blog and/or offering a donation to help her family with this expensive process.

Part 2: Mod-ified Shoot

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Groovy baby! Groovy!

This 60's mod shoot was so much fun! Working with good friends, Session Nine Photography and Heather Nyhart, made it even better.

Just looking at Heather, you can obviously tell that she's a dead ringer for the famous model, Twiggy. From there everything came together.

For her makeup, I did pale blue eye shadow, which was popular at that time, as well as black liner, false lashes and pale lips. I didn't want exactly copy Twiggy, so we did ours with a modern day vibe. Just a touch of blush and...voila! MOD!

For her outfits, we used clothes from her closet and her roommates' closets. I really want to incorporate bright tights in every look. Of course, short shift dresses were popular then as well, so we include those. For shoes, she had a killer pair of modern-day black shooties, 70's style white boots and some cute flats. I played off of the color blocking trend that was popular then and has come back this year making the shoot VERY colorful.

To enhance the 'groovy vibe' we photographed against some wild walls in downtown Phoenix close to my house.

We also focused a lot on using Heather's body to create fun shapes just like they did in the 60's.

I hope you guys love it. We all worked really hard. Check out Session Nine's website to see more photos, as well as yesterday's post sharing the inspiration from the shoot.

Peace and love! ;)

Part 1: Mod-ified Shoot Inspiration

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I recently got to collaborate with my dear friends Jessica and Jason Williams of Session Nine Photography to create a late 60's mod photo shoot. I had been itching to do this concept, and it was SOOO much fun finally making it happen! Their friend, Heather Nyhart, was the perfect model. I knew of Heather through church a ways back, but never really got the chance to know her personally. She is SUCH a cool girl!

We used Miss Twiggy as our muse since Heather is a dead ringer for her. You'll see what I mean in the photo reveal.

Some things that I personally got inspired by from the era was the color blocking concept, tights with short dresses and the 60's makeup.