It was truly a pleasure to watch Tricia, William, and their three lovely daughters receive their new home built by ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - and such a beautiful home, too! Here's an excellent walkthrough: Some of you have reached out to say that you're disappointed to have missed the show (or you were watching the Grammys ;) Fear not, you can watch it in its entirety at abc.com - here's a direct link to the full episode. If you haven't seen it, you should. It really is quite beautiful. For those who did watch, here are photographs of the family and some more behind-the-scenes images from working on the set (this time around it was only super cold & rainy, unlike last time when it was crazy freezing cold & rainy ;) So, without further ado, I present The Creasey Family...

I just LOVE Tricia's laugh here :) :) :)

A big thank you to our very own Kaitlin Rogers who headed down with me for the day of the shoot & got some really cute images of how I was shooting the so-so-adorable girls:

After the shoot, we stepped through the images to make selections for the various rooms in the house...

Then, met with more of the design team and the awesome design producers to get everything sorted out and edited - I uploaded several batches of images to Buckeye Color Lab so that they could turn them around immediately (and go on to donate all those prints). A few days later, I got some hilarious shots of Jewel and Ty blow-torching wood to create the gorgeous rustic frames that they used to showcase the photographs - was a really cute skit with the fire getting out of control and the fire marshall stepping in to save the day (but, alas, it didn't make it through final edits :)

Volunteers were backing and framing pieces up until the very last minute in "Art World".

Then it was on to hanging the pieces and getting all the furniture moved in fast!

The lovely finished rooms (ahhhh) .... and the super friendly Tracy & Alex in designer heaven: *Paris*.

Out to greet the cheering crowd, the media - and, of course, the family returning to their brand new home...

Love the extreme "home is done" huddle...

(from both angles)

Finally ... such genuine joy as the family pulls up in their limo. You can see the full episode for the rest of the story! :) Whew.

(And they do this every week, people.)

~~~~~~ ...oh, and post script - couldn't help but grab a shot of the credits!

I had a wonderful opportunity to photograph The Creasey Family a couple of months ago, when ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition built them a brand new (gorgeous) house. The entire experience was quite something, and I have some lovely images of the family to share - but not until after the show airs. ...AND the show will air this Sunday, January 31st at 8pm EST/7pm CST on ABC. I look forward to sharing some beautiful photographs of The Creasey Family, a couple with adorable 5 year-old twins and a lovely 13 year-old daughter. The family also includes William, a dad who has been trying to keep the decaying house liveable while also trying to meet mounting healthcare bills and care for his 37 year-old wife, Tricia, an impressive mom and middle school teacher battling aggressive stage IV cancer while continuing to teach .. and to prepare the entire family for what comes next. Tune in this Sunday to see how this family's story, the gorgeous home they received and, also, the 50+ images I photographed that are placed throughout the home (and were generously donated by Buckeye Color Lab), to beautiful effect.

Available now on DVD! After nearly one year of storyboarding, filming, editing, animating, audio mixing and more editing, I am thrilled to announce the release of Inside Contemporary Children's Photography, a collaboration between our studio and Ballard Productions (available now on DVD).

When we first started thinking about putting something like this together, we had no idea what it would turn into ... and what it became was due, in huge part, to the direction of Rex Ballard, who oversaw production of the entire project. We first met Rex through Charlie Engle ~ they had remained friends after working together on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. We'd heard from Charlie that Rex was "the guy", a genuinely kind person with some amazing experience in the industry ~ if he could find time for a meeting, he could give us some great ideas as to who could help us out, possibly even give us some idea of how to even get started. After our initial talk, though, we were surprised to learn that Rex, himself, was interested in the project ~ due to his genuine love for visual arts, I suspect. And his passion for production. He read through a lot of my materials, put together pages and pages of notes and came up with the entire idea for what we would be filming. We all agreed right out of the gate that it was vital that everything about the creation of this product be authentic ~ no scripting, no glossing over real challenges, we'd go out on "real" shoots, not hire models, and deal with the everyday issues we encounter on shoots, such as lighting concerns, personality issues, technical questions, all the stuff that you have to think about when you're photographing children. The initial challenge was schedules. Everyone's calendar is full enough with work and family and life. In addition, Rex is on the road 274 days a year filming Extreme. The show is split up into two teams, but he and host Ty Pennington are the two guys who travel to each and every location. But he worked around his schedule, and often through it, going over footage in the evenings at hotels around America. And, over time, the project grew in scale, scope and depth ... evolving to its current state right now, an educational product that I am thrilled to be any part of, a product that actually blew my growing expectations out of the water. Because the truth is that Rex, his exceptionally talented wife, Susan Ballard, and Lisa Walter, our wonderful Studio Director, all saw something in this that I hadn't seen when it was first being conceptualized. I knew it'd be pretty cool, but ... wow. I love being sooo pleasantly surprised.

Inside Contemporary Children's Photography retails for $199.00. You can purchase it directly here!