Shannon Montez Photography Blog » San Jose's Family and Child Photographer, Shannon Montez, captures all aspects of family life: Families, newborns, children, babies, high school seniors, and weddings.

Funny thing… Katie was checking out wedding photographers and was set to book me, showed her fiancee John my website. He realized my last name was familiar… because he works with my husband. Weird, huh? Small world!

Katie and John are beautiful people and theirs was a beautiful day. This is going to be a long post, but I just have lots of favorites!

Father and son getting-ready time… awww…. precious…

Mission San Jose is SOOO cool. (actually, it was kind of hot, but you know what I mean!)

What’s up with the random jumpers here? Cracks me up.

This may be my favorite reception shot ever…

It ends well, though.

A tilt-shift lens. SO fun! Here’s one shot:

Just in case you’re not a photography geek and are wondering what a tilt-shift lens is, it’s is one crazy wacky lens that can change the plane of focus. It’s really meant to straighten converging lines in architectural shots, but portrait photographers are having lots of fun making things go blurry in random places. See the top of this image? Blurrier that it would normally be. Maybe not the best example, but I plan to have a lot of fun with this in the future.

My models… some of the few people I know with my same last name! (Dave’s brother and his adorable family)

By the way, the previous two are not tilt-shifty images. Just regular ones. I had 15 minutes in the rain on the day after Christmas to grab these shots. Good times.

(What’s this? An image less than two weeks old? Not to fear, I’ll be back to the posting of old images tomorrow, ha ha.)

So, today I had my first session of the new year, a delightful sweet newborn.  And while I wish I had same-day turnaround, I do not. Instead, I’ll post images of a newborn that, due to my former slacking in blogging, is no longer new, but probably on the verge of sitting up. They change so unbelievably quickly those first few months! So, as a reminder to sleep-deprived new mothers… they DO sleep sometimes. And isn’t it wonderful when they do? All passed out with milk breath? MMmmmm….

I’m soooo behind on blogging! This session was from last July. I’m really want to share (and show that I really do work!) so I’m really going to try my best to catch up. I think part of my problem is wanting to post too many pictures, so blogging takes more time than I can spare. So to remedy the situation, I’m going to limit myself to 1-3 images per session for the time being.

Today, I want to stare at a cute baby, so I’m going to share this one. She was a serious little sweetheart with the most amazing eyes.

That little furrowed brow killllls me. I really want to grab her out of that picture and give her a big squeeze!

I’m pretty sure she’s getting her fair share of squeezes, though.

And a pretty family shot, even with the dogs.

Ok, breaking my new rule already… just one more shot of those gorgeous eyes (with a bonus of sweet wrist and fingers).

Words can’t describe how much I love these guys. Hopefully pictures can.

Their wedding was amazing. So emotional, so beautiful, so genuine. I felt so honored to be a part. The wedding took place at a historic farm called Ardenwood Park. It was the *perfect* location… rustic and majestic. I was DYING over the beautiful light and towering trees. Still am, actually, when I look at the images! Ok… here goes… (it was so hard to narrow this down)

Alyssa and Albert decided to do a “first look” and see each other before the ceremony. I can not recommend doing this enough!! It was so touching and special for them to have that first moment privately and be able to connect before the ceremony. The stress melted away. I was tearing up behind the camera watching them.

We also had time to get a bunch of the portraits done so that they were able to spend more time with their guests and enjoy the day…

A couple from the beautiful, emotional ceremony…

Laughter to tears…

Love this look from her mother and father.

A few minutes after becoming man and wife.

Have you ever seen a more beautiful wedding dinner? With a mariachi band? Are you KIDDING me? So fun.

Even SUPERMAN made an appearance! (ok… it was actually Alyssa’s nephew)

First dance.

The dance with Dad was touching…

Ok… enough for the blog. But here’s the slideshow if you’d like to see more!

I first met this little guy just a few days after his birth. (apparently it never got blogged, slacker!) He was tiny… for comparison, here’s a storyboard from that session…

Crrraaaazzzy how fast they grow. This session was shot at this little park across the street from where my husband works. The dad in this session also works across the street, but not in the same building… funny coincidence. Anyway, I’ve driven past this park a bazillion times, and never thought “perfect for a session.” But it was convenient, and I know I can make anything work, so we decided to meet here.

Surprise! It was one of my favorite places I’d shot in a long time… I’m still amazed that I’d overlooked such a gem for so long…

Man, I love this age…

A stream? Seriously? Where did that come from?

I love this family shot…

Tear your eyes from the sparkly eyes if you can, and see that Mr. Man is getting a new tooth on the bottom… so CUTE!

Katie and Kevin got married. (in May!) They had such a fun, unique, personal wedding. It was small and intimate, with a vintage feel. You may notice a lot of my images have a vintage look to them for this wedding, I think it was just inspired by the feel of the day… classic, timeless, sentimental, beautiful.

Her dress was so cool. I loved all the ruffles and the shorter length. SO fun!

Cool flowers. Cooool hair.

She got ready at the Old Monterey Inn… the historic building was the perfect backdrop. As was the seaside park for the ceremony. Complete with an accordian player!

Katie’s dad was the officiant. I loved that.

The first kiss…

Officially hitched!

And an impromptu kiss at the end of the aisle…

Same spot, not sure which composition I prefer… This?

or this?

The lovely couple.

The reception was held in a cool historic home that was small and intimate for dinner and socializing. The reception was fun and relaxed, just their closest friends and family enjoying each others’ company. Perfect.

Awesome day.  If you’d like to view the entire slideshow, here’s the link!

I had just written a post about sweet baby Jack, but it got eaten by the interwebcyberspace-whatever-it- is that all this information goes! Out of time now, but I’ll just say… Fun session, adorable snuggly sleepy baby, proud parents. All good ingredients for a great newborn session!

Summer! How is yours going? Mine has been good. BUSY, but great. My awesome mom came out last week and helped me organize nearly my entire house. It was SO nice. So needed, too. I was drowning in to-do’s, the house was getting farther beyond my control, and the kids needed my attention as much as the house did. So mom came to the rescue! I’m feeling a ton better about life.

I know I promised Hearst Castle, but it’s going to have to wait a little bit. The blog looks like I never work, which is absolutely not true! So I’m going to catch up. I plan post a session every other day for as long as I can. (which could end up being just today,  ha ha)

So, anyway, I *love* this family. Shot mid-day on a sunny afternoon. We had lots of fun, I wanted to adopt these kids, but their parents really wanted to keep them…

That shot of him just cracks me up. It’s the “cheese” face he gave me when they first showed up. And this next shot warms my heart. It was a total spontaneous moment during a family shot.