Rhonell, my favorite sister-in-law, is the subject of this blog. She just turned 58 years old, can you believe it?! Me neither. She’s amazing!

Beautiful on the inside and out, she is also kind, smart and always up for an adventure. I’d photographed her with the family several times over the years, but rarely just by herself. This time was different though - we were going to create pictures that were just of her.

She wanted to surprise her husband of 26 years with portraits of herself - pictures that were feminine and a bit glamorous and sexy. This was also a time to celebrate herself, at this age and stage and in her current high level of achieved fitness.

We were able to plan the shoot down to a “T” over texting, the phone and happy hour - chatting like the old friends we are. By the day of the photoshoot, the excitement was high!

Nikki Reign, my hair and makeup artist, joined us for the first part of the shoot. We had such a blast as we were able to spend a few hours treating Rhonell like a model for a day.

There was one photo concept that I wanted to pull off in particular. Rhonell wanted to incorporate her old wedding gown into the shoot somehow. The fine art photo that I came up with is pictured above. She was able to wear her old wedding gown and use flowers from her garden. She ended up making it into a piece of framed wall art and displayed it in their bedroom.

Here are some more of the pictures and how she decided to use them…

Rhonell’s husband, my brother-in-law, is a wine aficionado. Two of these were printed out and framed for their dedicated wine room.

The red wine version

The rose wine version

The red wine version - she thought it might be too sultry for the family wine room? ;-)

I suggested a white sheet look too...

Some of her pictures I labeled “Private”, so I can’t show them here! They will probably go into an album for the "husbie", as she likes to call my brother in-law.

We threw in a bit of fun casual glam...