We ALL can make a difference. Endale’s Story | Personal

• July 29th, 2016 •

Most of you all know that a huge part of my heart is connected to Ethiopia. This country gave me my son Messay and I will forever be grateful.

It is a country filled with beauty, joy, culture and love. It is also filled with poverty and need. I am on the board of directors for an amazing non-for-profit, Habesha Momma, that works to help better lives of women and children in Ethiopia. I have been going back to Ethiopia for the past two years with Habesha Momma and am so proud of the work we do there.

I began to sponsor this young man, Endale, after our first trip. I want to share his story.

He lives on Entoto Mountain, where there live a very large population of homeless and sick people. My friend Mesfin, runs a feeding program and has worked for years to help the people of Entoto. After participating in his feeding program last year, I met little Endale and his mother. This was a picture of his family from that first year (2015), Endale is in his mothers arms.

There is a sponsorship program that provides basic needs for families that are living on the mountain, run by Ordinary Hero. Endale and his mother had been waiting on a sponsor for a very long time, possibly because Endale has severe mental and physical disabilities. For some reason, I was drawn to Endale and I asked his mother to hold him… I will never forget those first moments. He screamed and laughed, pulled my hair and hit me in excitement! As I have a degree in special education, I was well aware he wasn’t upset but just happy and showing his excitement any way he could! He gave me lots of kisses and love and we laughed and laughed. By the time I handed him back I was covered in spit, had red marks on my face and my heart had been stolen!

As soon as I returned home from Ethiopia, I contacted Ordinary Hero and asked them to allow me to sponsor Endale and his family. My sponsoring them allowed them food, a place to live and medical care. His mother could finally breathe easier as Endale’s disability wouldn’t allow her to work outside the home. Finally, she could rest at night knowing his basic needs were provided for.

This year, I returned to Ethiopia with Habesha Momma and we were able to visit Entoto Mountain on the last day of our trip. I was so excited to see my Endale again. It is a day I will never forget.

This is me as I finally get to see Endale with his mother. I am sure I was saying something nice but I think I look a little crazy as I am taking him from his momma! I was just so excited to hold him again!

From the moment Endale was in my arms he was laughing. He laughed and laughed! He gave me kisses. He squeezed my cheeks with his little chubby fingers (I think I had red marks again from his fingernails lol!) Did I mention his laugh? It was infectious! He brought our team so much joy… just watching him laugh, smile and squeal in excitement.

This morning I received a message from my friend Mesfin. Endale passed away yesterday. I don’t know how, all I know is he got sick two days ago and passed away in the hospital. My heart is breaking for this family. My heart is breaking that I will never hear that precious laugh again. My heart is breaking knowing the pain his mother must be feeling.

I think back on the life of Endale… the two short visits I had with him. I will never forget his laugh. He might not have been able to talk to me or run around with the other kids, but he showed me love. He shared happiness. He radiated joy. No matter how you were feeling, how sad, upset or angry you were, just being around little Endale would fix that, even if just for a moment! I share these pictures with you to show you his love… his contribution to this world. He might not have been able to tell you his name but he should share the simple joy of being alive with you.

I am not sure if his mom will know how much he meant to me… how much I cherished the moments I was able to spend with him. I hope you take this time to enjoy Endale’s joy. I hope you allow it to lift your spirits. It was what I believe he was put on earth to do… to share pure joy. So please take a moment and allow his joy to fill your heart. Look at that beautiful smile, the glee in his eyes! When you think you don’t have anything to offer the world, think of Endale. He couldn’t do so much… but he could do the very best thing of all… love. He could brighten your day and bring a smile to those around him. He did his job and he did it well. God called him home and now he is running around and that beautiful laugh is filling the heavens!

I am so very very thankful to have met Endale. I thank God he allowed me to hold him just two weeks ago and share his joy. I am thankful he had a mother, a brother and a community who loved him. I am thankful God introduced me to my friend Andrea (president of Habesha Momma), who introduced me to Mesfin, who introduced me to Ordinary hero. I am thankful that for the last year of his life, he wasn’t hungry or unsheltered. I am thankful God allowed me to provide for them.

Not all of the kids in Ethiopia are so lucky. Our project in Debre Markos is working to help children living on the streets, without family, shelter or food. (Watch Video Here.) Please consider going to Habesha Momma and donating. Would you donate a $1, $5, or even $50 in memory of Endale? Help us share his joy by bringing joy and love to more children so desperately in need of it.

Saying I DO all over again | Hampton Roads Photographer

• July 27th, 2016 •

If you follow my blog you will know this family. I have been photographing them for years, ever since they were pregnant with their beautiful little Elliegh. So when Steven called me and asked me to photograph a surprise wedding renewal for them, how could I say no? I LOVE surprises and I love Jenna, so I was super excited to photograph them saying “I Do” again!

Family and friends from all over came to Virginia Beach to surprise them. Not sure it was a complete surprise (I guess someone said something about someone coming to town in front of her) but it was a night to remember none-the-less! I loved watching these two recommit themselves to each other and to their marriage. Jenna and Elliegh were stunningly beautiful and Steven cleans up well too! Blessings and love to you guys, thanks for always trusting me with your precious family memories!<3 <3

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Cupcakes by the amazing Amy and Daniel with Apothecary Cupcakes. http://apothecarycupcakes.weebly.com/

When the Last leaves the Nest | Family Portrait Photographer Hampton Roads

• July 21st, 2016 •

I met Latrice when she attended my open house in May. Her youngest son was graduating from high school and she talked to me about senior portraits. Her son, Emmanuel was not super excited about Senior portraits, so I talked with her about combining a family session with his Senior portraits. That way the focus wouldn’t be on him the whole time and we’d get those family portraits she’d been putting off for way too long. It’s important to capture the family when the last graduates, especially if there haven’t been any marriages yet. Capture the family unit as it has been for so long… because before you know it it will be growing again!

Once I met her stunningly handsome sons, (Devonta, Marquis and Emmanuel) I realized my job was going to be very easy. They could easily model, each one of them! I had such a great time meeting them and getting to know as little about each one of them. Handsome, talented, kind and compassionate… Latrice- you’ve done a great job raising these young men!

We did our shoot in the neon district in Norfolk and it was the perfect background for this family! We got some great brothers shots, some senior portraits for Emmanuel and some beautiful family portraits for mom! I can’t wait to see this family grow in the future… I see a few future daughter- in- laws someday!

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Whitfield | Family Photographer Hampton Roads

• June 21st, 2016 •

Can this family GET any cuter?!?! I had so much photographing CJ’s first birthday portraits as well as their family portraits. They haven’t done family portraits yet AND mom and dad hadn’t done any portraits together ever, so this was an extra special shoot for them. And when I say they ROCKED this session, I meant it! Denise and Christopher are a stunning couple and made my job so easy! The light was perfect and CJ was such a little model and his adorable smile melted my heart! I would have shot for another hour if it hadn’t gotten dark and chilly.

The images that resulted from this shoot are STUNNING! Denise cried when she saw them and honestly, that is one of the favorite parts of my job. I know it sounds terrible, “I like making my clients cry” but when they are crying tears of joy because they have never had such beautiful images of themselves… well, I might have shed a tear or two myself!

Denise and Christopher, thank you so much for allowing me to capture your family. It truly was an honor and I can’t wait for our next session!

Welcome Emmanuel | Newborn Photographer Virginia Beach

• June 20th, 2016 •

What can be better than three amazing boys? FOUR amazing boys! Welcome baby Emmanuel to the beautiful Lopez family. I was so very excited to photograph this adorable, chubby little guy! He was such a trooper during our session and was a great little model! His big brothers can’t wait for him to grow up a little more… I see lots of backyard wrestling matches and football games in their future! Thank you Orlyn and and Alejandro for allowing me to spend time with your little guy and photograph your family. It is such an honor too capture these moments and I hope we lots of years of family portraits in our future!

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Spring Adventures 2016 | Children Photographer Hampton Raods

• June 13th, 2016 •

My annual Spring Adventures sessions are always so much fun! This year was our fourth year and the cuteness was on overload! I love all my little woodland fairies and adventuresome boys.

During this session, you might see my beautiful little clients with singing with birds, jumping with frogs, smelling the flowers and going on adventures and even fishing!

We do this session every year so if you missed it this year, send me your e-mail and I will make sure you aren’t left out next year!

FourEver Family Program | Hampton Roads Photographer

• June 7th, 2016 •

Join the Club!

Everyone whom I photograph is special to me, I adore all the people, families, children and couples I am blessed to photograph, but there are SOME clients who have become family to me. Clients whom have been in front of my camera time and time again.

I adore the high school senior who gets engaged and asks me to photograph the engagement and wedding and then a year or two later become Baby’s First Year clients. I love the family portraits that begin with the kids in middle school whom I am now capturing as they graduate from high school. The heart of my business is with those clients who stay with me year after year, milestone after milestone. It truly is what I have founded my business on. I WANT to develop relationships that last a lifetime. I WANT to be your lifeographer… the photographer whom you call during every big milestone in your life.

Therefore, I am so excited to be offering a new program inside Devon Shanor Photography, called the FourEver Family Program. You are automatically welcomed into this program after you have booked and held four sessions with me. Then, forever after that session, you will be eligible for discounts, specials, inside information and more!

There is no additional cost to be added into this program, you are added once you have had four sessions with me!

I’ll be reaching out to the families that are automatically enrolled and I can’t wait to add more as the years go on. I love my job and I LOVE my clients who have truly become like family. It is my honor, joy and pure pleasure to be able to capture memories for you that last a lifetime. Seeing your family grow up before my lens is truly a blessing!

Ring Dance Morgan | High School Portraits Virginia Beach

• May 24th, 2016 •

It is ALWAYS an honor to photograph the Myers family. Recently, I was honored to photograph the beautiful Morgan for her Junior Ring Dance, with her handsome date Brandon.

I have been photographing Morgan for years, I think she was in elementary school when we began, and this summer we will be scheduling her SENIOR PORTRAITS!

I have been so blessed by the Myers family and to see Morgan all grown up and so beautiful, well it’s like seeing my own daughter growing up. Once so insecure and camera shy, it is so nice to see her, not just comfortable in her own skin, but ROCKING who she is becoming!

I love my job and people like the Myers family are a big reason why! Check out Morgan and Brandon’s pictures and then read below a testimony from Morgan’s mom Christy.

SENIOR PICTURES are coming up for Morgan and I can’t believe its already time to plan for this moment! Wow, so thankful one more of my kids making moves towards her dreams.
With that said I need to brag about our family photographer Devon who owns Devon Shanor Photography.
She has been there for our family’s every move; family pictures when we started over from divorce, back to school pictures, becoming sessions, ring dance, Prom, Senior pictures, Santa pictures on the beach every year, and we are currently working a cake bash for my 40th birthday… you name it she can do it and make it happen. We would be lost without Devon.
She knows my kids inside and out when it comes to pictures, she know my divas, my shy kid, my I don’t want to do this kid and she works with them all and makes it fun every time.
If you have a senior coming up Devon should be your FIRST Choice. I get this question a lot “Is she expensive?” Well I’m gonna answer that “NO SHE ISNT!” Some may think so, BUT I will say this the people that do are used to places like Olan Mills, Walmart, Portrait Innovations, etc where you have to go to a studio, get a few pre-made backdrops, set poses and prices. With Devon we get to pick location (and even poses if we want to do something crazy!) we’ve had so many differnt nature locations; just when I think we’ve done them all we find somewhere new! We’ve done the beach, Norfolk Pagoda, fields, and state parks… the possibilities are endless.
My other reason for choosing Devon, and only her, is I’ve personally have two very bad experiences with going to another photographer. one of them being for senior pictures for my daughter Katie. We hired a cheaper person for her senior pictures, thinking maybe we would get some amazing portraits art a cheaper price. Well, let me just say um…. it was awful! The pictures were blurry, the poses were horrible, she was a mom with a camera nothing more! Needless to say, we begged Devon to fit Katie in and we had them done right. Devon was wonderful about the whole thing. She did an amazing job and while I spent more than I wanted, I learned that I will never again trust anyone with my families memories except Devon.
*Side note: We had a house fire in 2014, the year my daughter graduated and we lost all of our flash drives (digital images) from every one of our sessions. Yes all of them, including those senior pictures. When I called Devon Shanor Photography crying she reminded me all my images were safe she had them all. I lost nothing and wasn’t out all the money for pictures that I could never replace. Well, I was out all of the images I had taken BEFORE Devon, the ones from Walmart and Portrait innovations, they were burned up in the fire and I had no way to replace them. But I didn’t lose the last 10 years of my family growing.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY THANK YOU MY FRIEND WE LOVE YOU!!!!! SENIORS THIS IS THE LIFE PHOTOGRAPHER YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR MEMORIES!

Stretching Myself as a Photographer | Personal

• May 18th, 2016 •

I just returned from The Mid-Atlantic Regional School of Professional Photography (MARS) in New Jersey. It is a school I have been attending for the last seven years to stretch and grow myself as a family and portrait photographer. I love spending time with other professional photographers. Often, we will talk about WHY we became photographers and I have found that my story into becoming a professional photographer is often different than others. Most of my peers fell in love with the ART of photography. They began taking pictures at a young age and learned to develop film in a darkroom, excited by the process of photography. They often began by taking pictures of flowers, sunsets, landscapes, etc. Often that love of photography transferred into taking pictures of people. They seem to all have a deep appreciation and love for art of all kinds. They love visiting museums and often are skilled as artists with a pen, paper or paintbrush as well as behind a camera. They are passionate about art.

My story is different. I didn’t have a camera in my hand growing up and I’ve never developed film in a darkroom. I don’t often visit museums and I never did very well in art class. If you ask me to draw a dog, it might end up looking more like a horse… or a bunny. I fell in love with photography as a TOOL to capture love. I LOVE people. I am passionate about people and the connections between them. I began photography because I wanted to capture the love of family, the strength and passion in a marriage, the love of parents for their children, the connections between siblings, the transition of a young man or woman as they graduate high school and the beauty of new life in a newborn. THAT for me is the art I am passionate about. Photography for me is so exciting because it allows to to take those moments and preserve them forever.

That being said, I don’t shoot landscapes, flowers, trees, inanimate objects very often. I often will see a beautiful landscape and think “That is beautiful, I wish I had a family or couple here so I could create a beautiful portrait.” I notice the beauty, but to me, it would be made more beautiful if I could incorporate the love and connection of people into the scene.

Recently, I reconnected with an old friend who is an amazing artist in multiple different mediums. We had some long discussions about art and the definition of an “artist.” He inspired me to stretch myself and try to expand my view of art through my own photography. Don’t get me wrong, I see so much beauty and talent in landscape photographers, I have some friends who are incredibly talented in that field! I am in awe of what they capture! I just have a hard time myself bringing that same beauty to life behind my own camera.

Like I said, my friend encouraged me to try and stretch myself, and see beauty, vision and perspective in way that DON’T include people. Since I was going to be at MARS in Cape May NJ, a gorgeous place to photograph landscapes, old Victorian homes, animals, boats, etc, I decided to take him up on the challenge.

IT WAS HARD! I am so used to having a vision of what I want to photograph before I start, a vision that ALWAYS includes people. To just walk around and try to find inspiration in the objects around me… that was hard! I only really had one day to work on this personal project, and that day, it was raining and foggy. So my go-to sunrise or sunset pictures were out.

I’m definitely not ready to start selling postcards, but thought I’d share a little piece of myself with you. I feel like a brand new photographer again, as I definitely have a lot of room to grow here, but it’s important to stretch yourself and grow. Here’s me growing…

My New Office | Hampton Roads Photographer

• May 13th, 2016 •

What a year this has been. Last year was a pretty terrible year for me personally and I was so ready for 2016. I was expecting a much better year, but I didn’t expect this!!!

Less than two weeks ago, I signed a lease on my new office space. It has been dream of mine, to get out of my home office, for such a long time but I have been so afraid to take the leap. With a HUGE nudge from my husband, I finally took jumped off the ledge and did it!

My space is located at 1642 Pleasure House Rd. Suite 108, Virginia Beach. The downstairs space is Synergy Space, an amazing multi-use space that can be rented for multiple different uses (parties, classes, networking, meetings, etc) and the upstairs space is ALL MINE!

It’s not a huge space, I’ll shoot newborns and professional portraits/headshots here, but I’ll still rent my other studio space for larger studio work. It is an AMAZING space though to work, edit, meet with clients and have my viewing sessions!

It’s been a long two weeks getting it ready and I am SO THANKFUL to everyone who helped me. Jeris at Smartgiraffe (www.smartgiraffecs.com) was amazing at helping me get my computer up and running and a new screen projector installed and working. My friends were amazing and stepped up helping me paint, decorate, rewrite and organize. My husband Brett did a majority of the work while I was out of town and did all the heavy lifting! I may run this business alone, but I am SO VERY thankful to those who lift me up and surround me with support.

Here is a progression of our before and after images!!

My Olivia helping put up my curtains and touch up all the paint!

My handsome bandyman. I wouldn’t be here without his support and encouragement!

ALL DONE!!! A few little tweaks here and there BUT I’m officially open for business!!!

Soon, I’ll be announcing my open house date and I can’t wait to celebrate with you as I embark on this new adventure… but don’t feel you need to wait. I’d love it if you’d stop by and say hello. I love visitors!

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