Mark Leonard Imaging | Redlands Photographer » mark

‘Tis the season… to book your Christmas card portrait session

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:25:08 +0000

Now is the time to book a session for family portraits (or air-guitar rockstar portraits) for this year’s Christmas cards. Dates are already filling up, so please book now if you’re thinking of getting a session in for your Christmas cards. Email Jill to schedule a date. Or call Jill at 951-769-0331.

Beautiful Run for Africa in Redlands

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:24:00 +0000

From my vantage point, the morning could not have gone better. The weather was perfect, the volunteers were cheerful, and the runners were excited to be doing something they love for something they believe in. The Beautiful Run in Redlands on Saturday was a lot of fun to be part of. As you can see by the photos, everyone had a great time. Great job Brenda and all of the other folks who worked hard to put together a first class event for Beautiful Africa.

Be sure to check out the rest of the photos in the gallery.

The run brought out the inner-comedian in many of the participants.

The Jeff Mercer Band rocked the early morning hours for everyone.

Johnny and Kim: Married – part 2

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:11:25 +0000

When weddings are awesome, a photographer ends up with A LOT of great photos. And this wedding was AWESOME!

When dudes in kilts start rolling kegs into the reception area, you know things could get nuts.

Kim’s dad was fun to watch on his little girl’s wedding day.

Sometimes life is better with your pants down.

Johnny’s a stud.

I’ve never seen this at a wedding. It must have something to do with those guys haulin’ in the kegs earlier.

Thanks, Kim and Johnny! May your marriage be forever blessed with patience, humility, and trust.

And thanks again to Michele for shooting with me, and to Heidi for the referral.

Johnny and Kim: Forever Plaid

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:25:21 +0000

What a great wedding. What a great weekend. More to come.

Beautiful Run for Africa!

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:54:38 +0000

Several years ago, our church sent a group of people to a tiny country inside the borders of South Africa called Lesotho. I had never heard of Lesotho. It turns out that it’s one of the poorest countries in Africa. If you’re born there, you can expect to live a measly 42 years. Our little church group went there to visit an orphanage called Beautiful Gate, and we haven’t looked back since.

Since that first trip, we’ve sent more groups to Africa, and raised a lot of money for Beautiful Gate. It’s a ministry that God has given us to grow, and it has made its way into the hearts of just about everyone in our community. You may recall my portrait session with Brenda. She spent almost a year living at Beautiful Gate. Now Brenda is part of a team of people organizing the Beautiful Run in Redlands on Saturday, Sept. 12.

The Beautiful Run is part of a larger Beautiful Africa campaign designed to raise money to pay for food and supplies for the Beautiful Gate orphanage. Mark Leonard Imaging is proud to be the official photographer for the event. If you have an itch to walk or run for children in Africa, check out the Beautiful Run in Redlands.

Madalyn and Hannah

admin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:00:07 +0000

On our trip to Minnesota last month, I was reminded about just how much I love working with people through photography. These beautiful girls are the daughters of a high school classmate of mine. I remember spending summer days hanging out with her brother fishing at the lake, riding our bikes, and skateboarding (ok, I watched him skateboard because baby giraffes are better on a skateboard than I ever was).

She found out about our trip back to East Grand Forks through Facebook and we scheduled a time to photograph her two gorgeous daughters. We did the shoot in her mom’s unbelievable garden. Hummingbirds fall asleep dreaming about gardens like this; it is awesome.

Evangelisto Family

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:43:20 +0000

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!

Thanks, Evangelisto Family!