Sign-up for Mommy & Me April Mini Sessions 2021

MOMMY & ME SESSIONS ARE HERE!!!!!!!!

Sunday April 18th in Fellsmere with The Green Vintage Truck (& flowers!)

and

Saturday April 24th on the beach in Vero Beach - no props

These are 15 minute Mini Sessions, and five edited high resolution digital files are included. You can purchase additional images or prints afterward, if you’d like.

• To sign up for the April 18th Mini Sessions, reserve your desired spot with the scheduling tool below. If you’d like one of the April 24th Beach Mini Sessions, please send us a message with your desired time spot here.
  
  We’ll have these times available:
  
  BOOKED 6:15-6:30 pm
  PENDING 6:30-6:45pm
  PENDING 6:45-7:00pm
  BOOKED 7:00-7:15pm
  

PS. Daddy can jump in some of the photos too!

Gift Cards and Thank You!!!

HOLIDAY GIFT CARDS

Purchase a $175 Stories of Joy Photography Gift Card for $150! Physical Gift Cards are available until 12/8, electronic Gift Cards until 12/23.

This Gift Card is priced for a Mini Session with five downloadable edited high resolution digital files, but can also be used toward a regular session or Day In The Life/Year In The Life Session.

A perfect gift for your parent, grandparent, child or friend! Or buy for it yourself!

Message me with your email address for an invoice.


And a Huge Thank You to all my families who have supported me and my business this crazy year of 2020. I am all booked now until January 7th. Some of you I’ll see this weekend at our Mini Sessions, but if not - see you next year, and stay healthy!

Year In The Life Program by Stories of Joy Photography

If you’ve followed along my photography in any length of time, you know my heart is in documenting ordinary family life. My specialty sessions have been Day In The Life Sessions (all day sessions to tell the story of your family’s day), but my new program called Year In The Life is starting to become my favorite. They are kind of the same type of a session, just structured differently.

I am an older mom. My kids are now 21, 14 and almost 7, and looking back at our family life, the special moments in my heart are not the celebration days (even though those are meaningful too). I want to remember the ordinary days in between celebrations. I want to remember the crazy or quiet days when we forgot about school and obligations and spent time together on the beach. And the quiet evenings playing a game, having dinner with everyone still home, being silly at bath time and watching tv shows together.

Even the days when we didn’t get everything done, dinner got burnt on the stove, and I dried tears from my kids’ cheeks - I want to remember all that. I wish I had pictures from the ordinary days, and I wish I had more pictures of me in them. Oh, how I always felt like I needed to lose a few pounds, and I deleted so many pictures with me in them because there was always something in the pictures of me I was critical of. I still do this too often, but I’m learning to give myself more grace, as these pictures are not just for me, they are for my kids and future grandchildren. There is so much beauty in us and our mundane days, in all our messiness and imperfections.

That all is at the core of documentary family photography. It is telling our stories with us as we are. There is no need to dress up or put on cheesy smiles - our families are so beautiful just the way we are, everyday. Sometimes it’s fun to dress up and get special pictures of that too (and I do offer these types of portrait sessions as well), but the heart of documentary sessions are the real, honest, raw moments and feelings of parenthood and childhood. The highs and the lows. Both Day In The Life Sessions and Year In The Life are perfect for documenting the real and honest life you live.

A Day In The Life Session is typically twelve hours long, telling the story of one day. A Year In The Life Session is also twelve hours, but spread over twelve months. Most Year In The Life families will have 2-6 sessions within 12 months that add up to twelve hours, but families with newborns can have more than six sessions.

I love the flexibility of the Year In The Life Program! It is so tailored for each family. My first Year In The Life family had me come for five hours the first day, to document a homeschool morning - including dropping off and picking up a preschooler at a school where Grandma teaches. They still have seven hours to use up (they are thinking a birthday preparation and a session right before Christmas when their house is all decorated for the holidays. The second family had me start with one hour of horseback riding lessons, and then had me come for three hours to document a typical evening in their family’s life. My third family were expecting a baby, so we are doing more shorter sessions to document his growth. And yet another family to sign up for a Year In The Life Session is an extended family gifting Grandma with lots of professional pictures of her children and grandchildren.

Year In The Life Program can be a calendar year, a school year, baby’s first year - or have no special agenda. It doesn’t even have to be twelve months, it can be completed in a couple of months, if that’s what works best for your family. The way I have structured the program is with no hidden fees. You can pay all at once, or we can set up automatic payments. After each session I’ll upload a few sneak peeks (usually the next day), and within 3-4 weeks you’ll see your full gallery from that session. After we have completed twelve hours of coverage, you’ll have an online gallery of all the edited images from the year, and you can heart your favorites - or I can choose the best images, and I’ll make a professional quality photo book for you (like this one).

I have three collections to choose from, and all of them include the book, because I believe that is what has most value for you and your family for years to come. If you’d like to purchase an additional book to gift to a family member, it will be discounted for you.

Because I believe in having family portraits too, we can take more formal portraits at each session, if you’d like. Just make sure to let me know beforehand. It is possible I will include an image of your son licking his little baby brother - after all, I do specialize in the real and honest moments :-)

PS. This program really is designed for my local Florida families, but since we travel so much, please do reach out to me if you’re interested in it in a different part of the world. Let’s chat to see if we can make it work!

As always, stay well, and send me a message with any questions!

xoxo

Sennu

1/2 Day in the Life Session at the Hospital

“The pictures are beautiful! We are both just in awe of what you captured! We are going to treasure these forever. Thank you so, so much! ”

— Brittany H

Last week I spent a half day at Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital in Orlando documenting a sweet family from Vero Beach whose both young children have serious health issues. Ezra has a rare childhood cancer Neuroblastoma, and little Eleanor is recovering from stroke after her heart surgery. Eleanor is doing really well at the moment, but Ezra continues to fight cancer and struggle through side effects of the medications he is on.

If you’d like to follow their journey, please like their Facebook page, and consider how you could help them.

Here’s a link to their Go Fund Me page, your support and prayers are so appreciated!

American Cancer Society has information on childhood cancers, and you can read more about Neuroblastoma here.

Despite our setting being the children’s hospital, this was a normal day for the Hengst family. They are spending a lot of time at Arnold Palmer’s. Brittany and Jethro are amazing parents, who continue to love and parent their children through challenging health issues. Having a two year old and a one year old bring on many moments of love and joy, as well as stinky diapers and temper tantrums.

I am so grateful the Hengst family realized the importance of documenting their day even in the midst of the struggles they are having.

“Last week we were gifted with a half “day in the life” photo session from Sennu Maria Keith of Stories of Joy photography. Words can not express our gratitude for this priceless gift that will be ours to cherish for years to come. Sennu, you are so talented and also so amazing to be around. Thank you for blessing our family!”

— Brittany H

If you would like to document your day, please message me here. Half and Full Day in the Life Sessions are available in Florida, and for travel as well.

Happy Mother's Day 2019!!!

Moms and Grandmothers - we love you and honor you. Thank you for all you do!

Happy Mother's Day from Stories of Joy Photography! Moms and grandmas are a big reason why I (and we) do what I do. If you have had a session with me this past year, you might show up in this video, so enjoy, and have a wonderful day!

I have been blessed with wonderful examples, my own mom and my mother-in-law, my sisters, and my many friends who inspire me in so many ways and love on my kids too.

Mother’s Day always gives me many mixed feelings, and I just want to reach out to every person who is hurting today. I see you, I hear you, I remember the pain so well. For me it was because of our infertility years and loss, but I know there are many reasons for grieving today.

Know that it is okay to be sad. Give yourself grace and space. Look up to the One who can give you peace and comfort beyond understanding. (((Hugs))) to you.

And to the moms who might feel disappointed today - I give you permission to do something for you! (I may or may not have picked up a key lime pie yesterday and stuck it in the fridge 😜) This day can be a bit intimidating to dads and kids - it can be pretty tough to show appreciation for ALL we do!

Happy Mother’s Day!

PS. It’s not too late to gift Mom and Grandma with a photo session! Contact me. I am running a Mother’s Day Special for the month of May.

Sennu