Mark Leonard Imaging | Redlands Photographer

Anna and Maria

August 16th, 2009

It’s cliche, I know. Family and friends, God’s greatest blessing. But I know people who are not close to their family, and do not have deep relationships with friends. So I don’t like to take that blessing for granted. Jill and I are truly blessed with families that we love and friends that love us deeply and unconditionally. We have a long list of people who have done things for us that we’ll never be able to repay. This family is on our list. We hang out with them whenever we go back to Minnesota, and on this last trip we were able to give them something in return for everything they’ve given us – a portrait session of their two daughters.

After spending much of their married life without kids, they decided to adopt two girls from Latin America. They came from different towns, from different families, and different situations. Now they are sisters. These two are hilarious. It was fun to catch them at their quirkiest.

Tags: children's photography, children's portraits, Mark Leonard, Mark Leonard Imaging, Mark Leonard photography, Redlands photographer, Redlands photographers
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Evangelisto Family

August 10th, 2009

Jill and I were very excited to have something cool to donate to the Holland Festival auction this year. Not that a free weekend of babysitting isn’t cool (this has been our standard auction donation for the past few years), but we were looking forward to being able to donate something unique. The Holland Festival benefits Redlands Christian School, a K-8 school and community that has been indescribably good to us over the last 8 years. So good to us that what started out as a 2-3 year adventure away from Minnesota has turned into… well, we bought a house in December. So we were pumped to offer family portrait sessions as a small way to contribute to a community that has shown us so much love.

We really didn’t know how successful the portrait sessions would be, so we were flabbergasted (If I stare at that word for more than 15 seconds I start to hear Bill Cosby in my head doing the dentist bit), anyway – flabbergasted when one session turned into two and then into three for a price that made RCS a good bit of money.

The Evangelistos were one of the families that got a portrait session from the auction and it was great to hang out with them. Although, it was a bit of an adventure. We chose a secret location that is so tucked away, we didn’t even find each other until more than an hour after our scheduled session time. But it was worth it. This is such a cool place for photography!