This has to be one of our top favorite family me2 portrait sessions of 2009!!!  Really…it is…(click HERE to check out their sneak peek).  Eric & I were able to capture AH-mazing architecture, crazy sick details and super hilarious moments.  The Puddy family totally brought it!  We couldn’t have asked for a better day too.  Normally we do our sessions in the later afternoon but decided to do theirs in the morning and so happy we did. It literally started raining minutes after the last frame.  The weather gods were looking after us!  I love it when that happens.  Especially here in Arizona where rain is abnormal and tends to just happen on a dime.  The storm clouds roll in literally as fast as they roll out.  And this day was exactly that. But the early cloud cover did play in our favor creating a lovely soft box of light.  Perfect!

The location was also perfect.  Since the Puddy family lives smack dab in the middle of Phoenix we knew we would have a hand full of sites to choose from…the next question was…which was most their style and ours?  We have tons of favorite spots in Tucson where we shoot at constantly but when it comes to Phoenix it’s honestly overwhelming.  So we decided to ask our Phx photographer buddy Josh Snyder since he totally gets our simplistic MOD vibe.  All the places he recommended were fabulous…Thank you Josh!  After much comparison Eric and I decided to take the family to the Tempe Center for the Arts!  We only got to scout the location from internet land but immediately fell in love.  It was sooooooooo the right decision.  Then come to find out as we were photographing the family Don Puddy (Dad) told us how fitting the site choice was since his company managed the construction of the site.  CRAZY HUH?!!!  I guess we know how to select a fabulous location…don’t we?!  It was really cool to find out all the concepts about the building’s shape, sound barriers (airplanes fly over about every 5 minutes) and it’s massive curved concrete walls.  Which we couldn’t get enough of…shocker!

Ok so just to prepare yourselves this is a HUGE blog post but I promise you it’s soooooo worth the scrolling!  Hope you enjoy our last session that wrapped up our bitchin 2009! Yep…I just said it.

I had to get this up while editing…Introducing the Puddy Family!!! Well really only Lexie. She’s the cutest of the bunch. Can’t believe we got her to make eye contact with us let alone the camera. LOVE IT! She’s kind of a diva though when it comes to new faces and takes some time warming up to you. But we didn’t mind the challenge…in fact we welcome it. We just ignored her until she was ready…really that’s what we did…creates a funny story! Almost like a movie star who’s ready for their close up when they say so. Ha. Good thing it only takes her about 20 minutes.

Speaking of stories…When Joan first emailed us we knew immediately that this family was going to be AWESOME. Here are her words exactly… ‘Our 2nd family portrait in 28 years … it’s been too long! Sons are 28 and 26 … we live next to the Heard Museum in a mid-century co-op. Saw the article in Desert Living … feel like you two are the photographers for us!.’ ~Joan Puddy

Woohoo what a great way to start an experience!!!  And we’re all about creating one.  So of course we started their’s one afternoon during lunch @ Postino’s…the most yummiest place for bruschetta, proscuitto and wine.  Some of you may already know this but for those of you that don’t getting to know our clients (*soon to be friends*) before a photo shoot is soooooo important to us.  It helps us get a sense of everyone’s personality, style and character.  We gain so much knowledge.  It’s truly incredible.  To hear that the whole family gets exactly what we’re all about just rocks our world.  Purple Nickel Studio strives on creating a fun laid back experience filled with silliness, rad details, and over all goodness.  Who wouldn’t want that?. Well the Puddy Family surely brought it and we can’t wait to show you the rest of their session. One word…’HILARIOUS!’. Oh just you wait!!!

This is the Rasmussen’s second time around with Purple Nickel Studio and we couldn’t be more HAPPY. I can remember the first day that Michelle and I were introduced by our good friend Dave Harvey (another fabulous photog who is CrAzY good with architectural shots). The two of them planned a ‘just for fun’ shoot with a few model/friends and Dave invited me to tag along. I accepted of course. DUH! But I would have never ever met these two artists without having attended a PHX children’s workshop back in 2007. I <3 WORKSHOPS…they’re the bestest!!! Michelle forced…yes forced Dave (her business partner at the time) to attend so he could broaden his photography horizons. Once him and I both started chattin’ it up we soon realized we were the only photographers there from Tucson. We clicked (no pun intended)! From that point on our friendships strenghtened, our photography knowledge exploded and weekly advice was accepted graciously. LOVE IT!!!

So when Michelle asked us to photograph her family again we of course said YES! Their first session took place almost a year and a half ago and her boys sure have changed. It’s Ah-mazing how they have grown. Now they asked us quirky questions, set up their own poses, and eagierly wanting to hold our hands as we crossed the streets. Awwwwwwww. It’s was incredible.  Since Michelle knows first hand how important it is to give an artist creative freedom…she did just that.  I think her exact words were ‘we want our session purple nickel style!’.  Sounds kinda naughty doesn’t it?. MEOW*  Ha!!!  We LOVE you guys so much and are so honored to have you in our lives! Thanks for such an awesome session and so glad the weather gods had our backs…it stormed I mean STOOORMED just hours before our morning session.



















































“Casia and Eric…Thank you SO much for doing such an awesome job on our me2 session- we had so much fun getting all decked out 80’s-Purple Nickel style for our shoot! Being a professional photographer myself, I am SO grateful to be on the other side of the camera with my family each year- being able to enjoy the experience together is priceless and we look forward to enjoying these images and memories of our time together. So awesome that we were able to do it while Farmor (grandma) was here again too from Sweden! Thanks again- you guys rock! And roll! YaY!.”

-The R Fam

*Here’s some behind the scenes goodness…plus I believe my brown plaid ‘rocketdog’ shoes have retired. I’ve done every shoot in them since purple nickel was born. They have brought me AMAZING LUCK! Now I just need to find some funky new bold hip comfortable cute fashionable non-squeaky puddle-stompin sidewalkin urban chic jean-lovin SHOES! Help…

We’ve been M.I.A. in the blog world lately…lots and lots of projects going on. Eric and I can’t wait to share all the goodie designs with you. He’s been designing MOD cards for our clients like a mad man and YUMMY canvas galleries for their lonely walls. I’ll be posting some concepts in the next few weeks…stay tuned. In the meantime here is one of our FABULOUS me2 family portrait sessions we did in October of the Yousey family. We simply adore them. Not only do they live across the street from us but the dad is also an architect and runs his own firm. They are currently remodeling their home so we BOTH get to share our funny and frustrating stories, plans, and cool fixtures we find. LOVE IT!!!

Some of you might know but this is the Yousey’s third me2 family session with Purple Nickel Studio…and we can’t wait to photograph many many more! Maybe our next session will be a maternity one???!!! Hey…I’m just sayin’. You can check out their sneak peek I posted a few weeks ago…HERE. Again I can’t tell you how much we enjoy hanging out with this family.  Two seconds with their daughter Mia and you’re ready to eat her up.  She has the cutest laugh, most GORGEOUS eyes (as if you couldn’t tell) and is soooo silly.  Ummmmm…can I order one just like her? Pllllleeease?!  Ok ok ok…so on to the photographs cause I know you’re just dying to see em’.

Sooooo FINALLY…the Montoyo’s me2 session is up on the blog!!! And boy do we have a story to tell you! As some of you might know we love to choose locations that are unique and a little unexpected. SHOCKER…right?! For the Montoyo family we took aim on downtown Tucson. You see they wanted something a bit more urban this time around. Well…after photographing there for only a few minutes we made the decision to switch locations. Normally we welcome the crowd and busy traffic, but for this particular family session it just wasn’t right. So we hopped in the car and took a quick drive to one of our favorite industrial locations nearby. During the car ride over…we decided to change it up and shoot over at this awesome run down structure right adjacent to the railroad tracks. SCORE!!! So we thought After about 20 minutes of shooting we were ‘cordially’ (<---sarcasm alert) greeted...more like yelled at by a man quickly walking towards us. To all our surprise he was a cop. Yeah...come to find out we were trespassing on railroad property. The really funny part of the story is he thought all of us were taggers tagging the building. Come on dude...with two kiddos in tow?!!! He explained that there were 'NO TRESPASSING' signs all over the place. When we asked 'where' (cause we didn't see any signs) he replied 'oh...yeah people keep stealing them!.' HA! All in all he was pretty nice...since WE were nice. Now we have the distinct honor of being in their 'trespassing' database and if we get caught doing it again...big fine or the slammer.

BTW – we didn’t take one shot on the railroad tracks…









































A few weeks later we hosted the Montoyo’s MOD viewing session at their fabulous-ly cute COZY home. You’d think after the whole train cop run-in we were done with things going wrong! NOPE. After setting up all our gear we soon realized the internet was not going to be on our side that night. Our portable card couldn’t pick up any signal and we couldn’t tap into their WiFi (Eric even talked with AppleCare). We went ‘old school’ and just hand wrote their favorites and concept ideas. As with most MOD viewing sessions we had to move a few pieces of furniture around in order to set up the ji-normous screen. Well…when we moved their dinner room table back into place we all heard a ‘POP’ and just thought it was the wood shifting. Come to find out that large ‘POP’ was the table leg cracking all the way down. Ekkkk. We are so glad to hear they are getting a brand new table exchanged. Phewww…what a story.

Thanks Montoyo family for being so patient and hanging on during our crazy lil adventure!!!