Booking: high school senior portraits

Graduation may not be until June, but the time for high school senior portraits is now! Give yourself ample time to create those heirloom grad announcements and to send them out to family and friends near and far. Fill out this interest form to book your date.

Session details:

Cost: $300 (payments accepted: Venmo, Zelle, cash, or check)

Duration: 45 minutes

Location: your preferred location in Southern Orange County. Additional fees for other areas. Happy to recommend a location based on your preference

What’s included: all edited photos are delivered via an online gallery, where you can print or download your photos.

Tips: bring a few outfit changes. Most seniors like to rep their future college, and parents like some more formal photos to include in the grad announcement. Check them all off!

Add on service available: need help creating your graduation announcement? We can help, just let us know!

Interested? Fill out this interest form to book your date.

The Best Christmas Gift: Multi-Generation Family Photos!

This year we have several multi-generation sessions booked right after Christmas, and we’re SO excited! I also think this is such a great idea, and a great way to take advantage of family being in town for the holidays. Not to mention, a great gift idea!

We have a couple spots available still for Wednesday, December 28th at Rancho Las Lomas for morning sessions, and a morning session at San Juan Capistrano. Email us soon if you’d like to jump on the bandwagon! photography.jarmstrong@gmail.com

Booking: holiday family sessions 2022

If you’re looking to book your session for holiday photos, now is the time! We have some dates left for full family sessions (45-minutes) at your preferred location in South OC, as well as a limited number of mini-sessions at Rancho Las Lomas in Trabuco Canyon on November 21 and 22.

For full family sessions, please fill out our Google form to select your preferred date and location. Sessions are 45-minutes long and cost $245.

For Rancho Las Lomas mini-sessions, please email us at photography.jarmstrong@gmail.com with your preferred date and time. These sessions are 20-minutes long and cost $150. We currently (as of 10/12) have three sessions still available:

  • Monday, November 21st at 3:00 p.m.
  • Tuesday, November 22nd at 3:00 p.m.
  • Tuesday, November 22nd at 3:30 p.m.

What does each session include? Whether a mini-session or a full session, all photos are delivered via online gallery. Through that gallery you can easily share your link and password with family and friends, order prints, or download the full gallery or select specific photos to download so you can incorporate into your holiday cards.

How many photos will I get? We do not have a maximum number of edited photos provided – any photo that is worth editing will be edited and included in your online gallery. There are no additional fees to receive your photos or any specific quantity of photos. For mini sessions, the average number of photos is between 15-25. For full sessions, the average is between 20-45 photos. Could be more, could be less, just depends on the session.

How does booking a session work? Once you confirm your interest, we will send a contract with the specifics of your session and payment instructions. A $100 deposit is required for full sessions with the remainder of the payment due by your photo date. Payment in full is required to book a mini-session.

What kind of payments do you accept? We accept payment via Venmo, Zelle, cash or check.

Need help designing your holiday cards? If the online templates are not cutting it for you, feel free to reach out for a custom designed card. I can never find one online that has the right format for the photos I want to use, so inevitably Jeff ends up designing our card. He can design yours too! Email us for details.

Custom themed portraits available!

For the past few years I have been making these themed portraits for my kids’ birthday invites and it has been really fun to set up backdrops and lights and figure out how to make the photo look as cool as possible. With my wife nudging me and the response I have gotten I think I should probably open this concept up to others and see if anyone else would be interested in having them done as well. Here are the photos I’ve done and some of the original set photos to see what we start with.

This was the first time I did something like this for Josh’s third birthday. (music themed) Thankfully he was totally game for posing!
Spider Man! He was so obsessed with this costume he totally wore it out. Really glad we got to use it for this shot and I even printed it out as a poster and its still hanging in his room!
The set up shot. Pulled my closet door off and laid it in the front yard. Probably should have cleaned the mirror first but oh well!

The Jedi! He had a broken arm in a cast for this one hence the awkward saber hold. With an Obi-wan costume and moms sweater draped over his head I really love how this one turned out.
Older brother finally got his chance! With Covid and his choice to go to Lego Land instead of a party he missed out on photo edits for a few years. This one was tricky with his desire to be a very specific character from Star Wars. A character that has only been seen in cartoons and is usually wearing a helmet how was I gonna pull this off!? Well I figured the best I could do was photoshop his head onto an existing photo. Thankfully I found this perfect image that’s actually a 3D render of the character. Contacted the creator and he was kind enough to let me use the photo! Once again used a mom sweater for the neck and it worked perfectly!

Looking forward to the future years of making these and hopefully I can get to do some for people other than my own kids!

Palm Springs to LA: The Two Part Engagement Session

Not only did I get to shoot a close friend’s engagement session, I also got to do it at two very cool locations. And even got a semi date night with my lovely assistant/wife (In-n Out, in the hatch back, in the parking lot).

Part 1: Palm Springs Windmills.

After some serious Instagram research and “driving” up and down roads in Google Earth street view, I knew where I wanted to shoot in Palm Springs in theory, but still wasn’t quite sure EXACTLY where it was. I mean those windmills cover a gigantic area. That one spot could be anywhere! But once I saw it in a couple photos online, I knew that’s where we needed to go. The sand had to be the right sand! There are tons of photos at the windmills in Palm Springs but only a few are in this area that’s not just rocks and bushes, aka Typical Southern California desert. No, no, no, I needed the flowy soft sand with the little fence! But where the hell is it!? Well we drove out early with the plan to do some recon. Alex was looking at the map and she had an idea. It was opposite of where I was told to go from various websites but that didn’t pan out in street view earlier so what the hell. We exit the freeway and after a few turns off in the distance I spot it! The little fence and the flowy sand! And it was perfect! (Don’t ask where, I’ll never tell)

Part 2: Nights of Neon

They say it’s not what you know but who you know. So true in this situation. I never would have been able to shoot at such an awesome location if the man of the hour didn’t have a very talented aunt with a very cool neon studio in LA: Nights of Neon (as seen on Huell Howser’s California’s Gold). I can attest it really is California’s Gold. When I was told we could shoot in his aunt’s neon shop, I expected a small corner shop in the city with a bunch or “open” signs and zero room to have much of an engagement shoot. I was so wrong. This place was amazing! Multiple warehouses with tons of space and just oozing style and options. The only bad part was the complete lack of sleep I got the night prior to the shoot. Thank you Jon, my one-year old who wakes up all night begging mom for “boobie,” Dad still loves you. So needless to say it was a low energy shoot and my creative juices were frustratingly left somewhere on my pillow at home. Thankful for understanding friends. I could have spent an entire day shooting here. AMAZING.

Taking the Plunge

Written by Alex

To say 2020 has been a year of change and demanding flexibility for almost everyone is an understatement. In our little home we’ve had to adjust to distance learning schedules and losing our primary caretaker for our three boys (among all the other COVID stuff). 

It was pretty clear from the outset that we wouldn’t be able to manage long term to both work full time and give our boys the time and attention they need. As a couple, we’ve often discussed the idea of Jeff working for himself, doing photography, carpentry, and art. Sitting in a cubicle every day has never been his goal, but it gave our family the stability we’ve needed for the last few years. 

Given our current need for someone to be home with our boys, we decided now was the time to take the leap. It’s been a stressful couple months (mostly for Jeff who has had to manage still working and kids full time) while we talked through our options and made sure we could do it without putting our family under a big financial strain. 

As scary as it is to leave something familiar and stable (Jeff was with his company for almost ten years!), we’re so excited for this adventure. We hope you’ll join our adventure by thinking of us for all your photography needs (or custom wood/art work!), referring us to your friends or family, or simply by liking/sharing/commenting on our social media posts. 

Looking forward to whatever the future holds!

COVID Mother’s Day

Oak Canyon Engagement Shoot

Sometimes you have all the time in the world to shoot and sometimes there’s a full wedding going on and you have to park a mile away and race against the dying light.  This photo shoot was the latter.

With the sun quickly setting on the valley, we had to keep running up the hill to catch the last bits of light.  Thankfully, it worked out! Glad I had a great couple that would let me put them in uncomfortable spots and risk getting poison oak (or who knows what else!) while trudging through the weeds…in sandals.  Can’t wait to shoot the wedding!

Price Family 2019

Had a great evening at the San Clemente pier dodging other family photo shoots and enjoying the sunset. Seriously its not surprising there are so many photographers in the area with locations like this. I feel so lucky to say that this is one of my regular photo spots.