New Blog

We have a new blog!  The site is www.sbphotoblog.com and this one will no longer be updated!  Check out the new digs!

Happy Birthday G Man

3 years ago Grant Stephen Bender entered our lives…and rocked our world!  Yes, he’s our sweet little Valentine but he’s also a little wild man that is always full of energy and excitement…this little kiddo lights up every room he enters.  We are blessed to have him be part of our lives…I never knew my heart could love someone so much, without reservation, until I met him.

And here’s Mason…just a quick shot from his 9 month photos:

Giving back

We have been blessed to have the opportunity to photograph a little girl named Chloe Jean.  Chloe was born with a rare heart defect and lived until she was two years old…she was an angel and we are so thankful we had the opportunity to meet her.
Chloe inspired us to extend our services to other children diagnosed with a terminal illness.  We now offer a “Chloe Jean” session.
The Chloe Jean session is complimentary.  We also will give the parents the photo files on CD as well as a mini book of some of our favorite portraits from the session.  Because of our busy schedules we plan to offer this session to 10 children per year.  If your child has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, please contact us for more details, we would be honored to meet you.

Lovebirds: Dan & Emily

Ok, back to real blogging! We did Dan and Emily’s engagement photos a few weeks ago and had a blast. Dan is Stephen’s cousin and it’s always fun working with people we know! These two make such a cute couple….whenever I work with engaged couples they’re always so in love and adorable. I come home from the shoot wanting Stephen and I to go on a romantic date! 🙂
Anyway, check out some fav’s!

My favorite:

All Booked Up!

You might have noticed on our new weddings site that it says we’re all booked for ’08.  The year just started and we’re already booked up – how exciting!  We’re so super excited to work with the wonderful couples who have chosen us to be part of their big day!

If you happen to be looking at us to photograph your wedding this year, please don’t be bummed…if it’s on a weekday or Friday we might still be available!  So, just contact us.  Otherwise, feel free to still drop us a line and we’d be happy to refer you to one of our other fantastic photographer friends!

Finally, we’ve just started booking for ’09!  Drop us a line or give us a call if you like what you see!

Woo Hoo!

You may have noticed that our new websites are live!  We’re so excited.  Lots of new things right now with us!

First of all, the sites….we now have a site devoted to weddings and one devoted to seniors as well as one more devoted to families and kids (the last one is still under a little bit of renovation but it’ll get there!)

Weddings and seniors really are our specialties and we felt like we needed separate websites to fully show off our work in those areas.  Enjoy!

Also, did you notice the new logo?  We’ve changed our logo to be Sb Photography.  Stephen is fully part of the business now and we wanted to show that he’s here too!  He handles all of our finances and organization (and boy I needed help in this department!)

The nice thing about this logo is it can be short for Samantha Bender Photography…so we aren’t completely departing from our past identity…we’re even keeping http://www.samanthabender.com as our web address!

Finally, we’ve added a little tagline to our logo – fresh . modern . real.  We want people to know right away by seeing our logo the type of work we do!  Woo hoo!  I can barely sit still…so excited!  Ok – back to work!

Sam & Stephen

Just for fun…

Here are some photos of Grant and Mason from yesterday morning. These two little guys are so much fun – they light up my life! Here’s “G” right after breakfast…he ate bread with jelly and milk and as you can see he was savin’ some for later…

Mason’s just a little pumpkin. He army crawls all over the place and is into all kinds of mischief!

Here Mason was chewing on a sock and G was trying to get it away from him. Check out the look in Mason’s eyes…he did not want to give it up!

Army crawling race:

Megan & Tim

What a fun opportunity for us to photograph Megan & Tim’s wedding – Tim and I went to high school together in MN years ago! We both attended United South Central High School in Wells, MN. USC is a tiny little school in a tiny little town so it was pretty crazy for me to hear that Tim was marrying a girl from Solon (15 minutes from West Branch) and they wanted me to photograph their wedding! Sweetness!

The wedding was the Saturday after Christmas so it was snowy and beautiful outside (not to mention more than just a little chilly!) But, Megan and Tim were troopers and they ran outside a few times for some awesome photos, at my request!

Here are a bunch of my favorites:

Once again, I can’t pick my favorite ring shot…here’s my shot

and here’s Stephen’s shot (by the way, check out the groom’s ring…it has some crazy Japanese metal in the middle and it looks like no other ring I’ve ever seen!)

They got married in this gorgeous church…with real wood floors…so pretty!

Once again, here’s another shot Stephen rocked!

Added some sweet textures to some of the photos…love the feel it gives!

The gorgeous girls!

The crazy guys.

OK, gotta give Stephen credit for one more…this might be my favorite wedding party shot he’s ever taken! Lovin’ the flare!

All the little kiddos in this wedding were adorable…but there was one in particular that just captured my heart. His name is Wayne and he’s about 2 years old. Here’s a photo of him with one of the flowergirls…I think they were getting their gameplan together before walking down the asile!

Here’s Tim hugging his mom…I love this shot!

Here’s a crazy first dance one! For you photographers out there, I had shutter of 1/5th, f10, ISO 320, used flash and gave the camera a twirl! Love the result!

Lovebirds!

Jenae & Alan are planning a June wedding and we are so excited we get to photograph them! These two are such a fun couple. They’re relaxed and fun and I just know their wedding is going to be a blast!

Check out a few of my favorite shots from their engagement session a few weeks ago. We ended up sort of getting a snowstorm during their session but they were up for anything…I’m so glad because the snowy shots are awesome!
Sam

Last one is my FAVORITE!

Calling All Models!

The search is on for our senior spokesmodels for the ’08 – ’09 school year! This past year we had some wonderful girls represent us at local schools and now we’re looking for more.

The girls we’re looking for must be:

1.  Seniors during the ’08 – ’09 school year

2. Outgoing (so they can tell all their friends about their photos!)

3. Comfortable in front of the camera.

4. Willing to pass out some cards to friends with their photos on them that give their friends some great deals!

We’d like to have spokesmodels from all of the local area high schools. The schools we’re specifically looking for are: West, City, Regina, West Branch and any other local area schools that have some fun outgoing girls in them!

We also have some awesome bonuses for our spokesmodels!!! If you’re interested in this opportunity, send me an email at info@samanthabender.com and I’ll send some more details your way!

Thanks!
Sam