My Baby Mamma

A lot of friends have been asking about Anna. It’s sweet really; that so many people care about how the pregnancy is going and how Anna is holding up. Well, when anyone asks me I always say she is doing AWESOME! As far as pregnant women go, she is a rock star. Other than some expected pain, a little heartburn, and the occasional sleepless night, she is counting down the days until she gets to hold our sweet baby, Asher.

It has been so fun to watch my wife fall head-over-heels in love with our son as he has been slowly growing inside of her. Many days I will catch her sitting in the rocking chair in Asher’s room daydreaming about the days when he is here filling our home with baby smells and sounds. Anna will say to me, “I just love him soooo much! I can’t wait to hold him!”

For me this process has been different; as is normal with new fathers. It’s more of a detached process for us because we aren’t feeling the effects of a human growing within us 24/7. However, as I have spent time watching Anna’s belly grow it has become more real to me. And I still remember feeling him kick for the first time; it was like witnessing a shooting star! Now his kicks and spins are so strong I can not only feel her stomach move, I can see it! I like to talk to him and sing him silly songs through her belly button. Often times he kicks back and makes us laugh out loud.

Anna is 8 months along and we hope that Asher will make his grand entrance into this world somewhere around November 15th. Right now he is all developed and about 4 pounds. He should gain a half pound each week and will hopefully top out at about 7.5 pounds before he delivers. Hopefully!!!

I just love watching how beautiful Anna has become through this whole process. She is already a wonderful mother and I just know that Asher will adore her! It will be awesome to watch her embrace all that God has made her to be through each new stage of parenthood. I’m her biggest fan!





The last 2 images you just viewed were taken by my lovely and talented 9 year old niece, Kate. She spent the night last night and helped out with our mini-maternity shoot.

Happy 7 Year Anniversary -Jessie, Darren + Ingalls Photography!

Today, 7 years ago, Jessie and Darren got married! It was an outdoor garden wedding not unlike many others, except for one thing; it was the wedding that started my photography career.

This journey of life is a wonderfully chaotic swirl of happenstance, coincidence, and the divine. Most days we do our best to survive and to find fleeting pleasures in our activities and relationships. Every so often there are those moments, hidden in the midst of the mundane, that confirm there is something eternal written in our hearts.

7 Years ago I photographed Jessie and Darren’s wedding, going about life as usual, happy to help out some lovely friends… Well before the ceremony was underway I started to realize I was having one of those moments. Rush of adrenaline. Deep Breath. Thankful prayer. And then I hear it. A small whisper in my heart that I can only believe was God’s voice, "I want you to do this."

Short story goes: 7 years later Jessie and Darren are still married, a little older, a lot wiser, still-in-love and proud parents! Rueben was born into their world about 5 months ago. My lovely wife photographed him the day after his birth. To tie everything together I felt like a 7-year-celebratory-family-photo-shoot was in order. So early this morning we hiked a small hill on the outskirts of San Luis Obispo. I wanted to thank them for choosing me, long before I was Cameron Ingalls, Inc. Long before I was anybody in this crazy world of wedding photography. I also wanted to finally shoot them with something better than my film Canon Rebel; complete with stock lens and pop-up flash. {Long, long, very long story}

Happy anniversary my friends! Thanks for loving me and believing in me all of these years. Thanks for trusting me to photograph your love story again and again. Anna and I are both proud and excited to share the rest of life’s journey as your American family and friends.

Falling in Love... Again!

Being pregnant I’m learning is like falling in love all over again.

Anna especially has become infatuated with this little person that she is slowly getting to know growing inside of her. There is so much mystery and suspense that she says it feels like when she fell in love with me and then like when we were engaged planning our wedding. Such anticipation and excitement!

It is so fun to watch Anna feel such a connectedness to our boy Asher. As a dude it’s more difficult to connect because my body isn’t growing a man-child. However, I have been recently able to feel him kick when I put my hand on her belly late at night. It is pretty incredible to feel our little babie’s shape and to catch his occasional kicks or punches. I told Anna the other night that feeling my baby kick is like glimpsing a shooting star.

I took these pictures when we walked Morro Bay last week during our date night. We are really trying to do a date night each week to keep our romance alive and kicking. The real challenge will come when Asher does. But we are committed to pursuing each other’s heart through the years and the continual busy-ness.

Well, I just wanted to keep everyone updated on our baby-making progress. Anna is glowing with a womanly beauty that is evident to anyone who comes in contact with her. I am thrilled to watch my new wife become all that she was created to be as she enters this new stage of motherhood and I can’t wait to very soon meet Asher Ingalls!

Havyn {Anna Ingalls -Babies}

I really love being a photography team with my wife, Anna! I shoot the weddings and she shoots the babies. This special little guy is Havyn. I photographed his parents wedding 5 years ago before I even had a blog. I remember their engagement session so clearly because we shot for hours while I was trying out my brand new digital camera. I must have shot 500 images, which was a crazy deal for someone who was used to shooting only 64 images (2 rolls) at a portrait session. This picture of Havyn reminds me of a similar shot I took of Jeremy + Sarah in BooBoos Records. Hold on… I have to find it!

Alright, I’m back and I found their engagement session on an old dusty harddrive from 2004! (which feels like eons ago!) How amazing is this parallel?! I shot part of their engagement session in BooBoos because that is where they met when Jeremy worked there. Anna photographed Havyn on his one year birthday and took the record player shot independent of me. Wow, this whole partnership thing can be wonderfully creepy at times. ;)

Oh yeah, check out Anna’s blog to see the rest of Hayvn’s first year photographs!

I know that couples getting married don’t think too much about having kids right away, but it is inevitable so tuck away the idea of hiring Anna to photograph your growing family some months or years down the road. We recently created a new ‘Ingalls Family Discount’ for anyone who has hired me to photograph their wedding so that we can document all of the stages of your love, marriage, and family. Contact me for details!

Sweet little Pepper!

Meet Pepper! She is the beautiful baby of some of our friends and recent wedding clients, Shayne + Ashleigh. Anna did an amazing job photographing her sweet little smiling face as a father’s day present from Ashleigh to Shayne. It’s really fun to see our couple’s grow families and continue to document the various stages that unfold. What joy a new baby adds to a marriage! Check out more of Pepper’s pictures on Anna’s Blog.

Marisa + Pelt {Fall in Love… Workshop!}

My first one day workshop was a success! We had 7 photographers with one of them being a husband and wife team, so we had a total of 8 students. It was wonderful to have the group small so that we had ample time for discussion and questions. All of the photographers that came were amazing people full of love for weddings, photography and people. My aim was to inspire, encourage, enrich and teach. I talked a lot about what it takes to run a business for the long haul. How to find your voice as a photographer, and how to work with ‘ordinary’ people to capture both real and extraordinary images. I really tried my best to make the workshop about the students journey rather than about my own. As I shared my story we took breaks for them to reflect on the gifts they have been given, what their dreams are and how they define success and failure. My hope was to challenge and encourage them to overcome any obstacles that blocked the road to their success and to give them some tools to grow their gifts.

Discussion time was held in the beautiful offices of the 805 Collective. Cana VP + Samuel Potter Photography were generous enough to lend us their meeting space. While we had lunch on the back deck of Novo, Sunnie Brooke Jones was doing hair and makeup for our afternoon engagement shoot. Instead of hiring models we used Marisa + Pelt, a real couple who’s wedding I am shooting this summer. I wanted to demonstrate how to take an actual nervous couple, who claims not to be photogenic, and get the most real and beautiful images possible. It turned out to be easier than I expected because Marisa just lit up in front of the cameras; all 9 of them! Because of this, I had greater difficulty explaining to the class how I help my clients overcome awkwardness and insecurity. Thanks Marisa! ;) Pelt said during the shoot that she has been studying my work for so long that it was no wonder she knew exactly what to do.












Jen Slot working it; nice form!
Ellie Grover getting up-close and personal.
I unleashed the wolves…
We had lots of incredible support from some great friends and vendors to make this workshop all that it was. These people offered their time, resources and products to the students and to me. A big fat THANK YOU is in order. You guys rock!

Models: Marisa + Pelt
Hair + Makeup: Sunnie Brooke Jones
Print Lab: Pro DPI
Web + Design: 805 Collective
Mobile Websites: Mobile Digs
Meeting Space: Cana VP + Samuel Potter Photography
Wedding Photography Unveiled: Jose Villa
Flowers: Adornments
Engagement Session Venue: Holland Ranch
Operations Coordinator (A.K.A. Hot Assistant!): Anna Ingalls

The class from left to right. Click on their links to see their shots from the workshop. Jen Slot (+ husband Antoine), Samantha Gardner, Me, Pelt + Marisa, Katie Scott, Terilee Dawn, Ellie Grover, (bottom row) Emily Perello, and Lori Chambless.

What an amazing group of photographers you all are. Thanks so much for sharing your day, your hearts and your lives with me. I hope that you were as challenged and encouraged as I was. May you continue to fall deeper in love with people, photography and weddings and may your business be blessed for many years to come!

Meet Baby Reuben!

So excited to introduce this precious little guy. This is the first born son of the first wedding couple that started my wonderful photography career. His parent’s Darren and Jessie were married almost 7 years ago. They have been dear friends ever since! It has been such a pleasure to watch them grow in love, marriage, build a successful guitar school together and finally create a new life.

These pictures are so precious because Darren and Jessie’s family all live in England; so these are some of their first views of their newest little family member. I have a soft spot for these guys because they helped me launch my photography career by inviting me to shoot their wedding. We are now their photographers for life. I was excited to send my wife Anna out on assignment to capture Reuben sweet looks. To view some more pictures and hear all of the stats go to www.annaingalls.com! (feel free to leave a lovely little comment for my amazing wifey)

My Wife is InStyle!

How amazing is this?!

If you pick up a current copy of InStyle Weddings and flip to around page 90 you will find an ad for mywedding.com that features a stunningly beautiful picture of my lovely wife! The magazine has been on stands for a couple of weeks now. I was waiting for either Jeff or Anna to blog about it, but I guess they are both a little humble. Therefore, I will have to be the proud husband and friend to say just how awesome it is to have had one of the most amazing wedding photographers, Jeff Newsom, document our day and to have such a stunning bride!

Mywedding.com asked Jeff for a picture of Anna from our wedding because they said that she was just sooo beautiful. It is true. So many people that have seen our images comment about just how beautiful she looked that day. I think it really came down to the fact that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was loved. A woman who knows love is a woman of stunning and endless beauty.

Mywedding.com said that they have already had tremendous feedback from this image and so many brides are inquiring about where Anna got her dress. She picked it up at Down The Aisle and it was made by a Canadian designer called Selena. Anna really just wanted something simple and elegant that worked perfectly with her body type. It was also important to her to find a dress that didnt look like every other brides dress that I have photographed. She wanted to be the most beautiful bride that I have ever laid my eyes upon. She was and she still is.

My Wifes Blog!

My wonderfuly talented wife, Anna, recently posted some amazing pictures on her blog. Sveva is the newest addition to Joe and Cyndis lives. I shot their wedding a couple of summers ago. When they called me to photograph their baby I passed them onto Anna. It was fun to see her get excited and start planning the shoot. We have this beautiful overgrown backyard and she knew right away that she wanted to photograph Sveva in the clovers. Anna did such an amazing job getting Sveva to light up in front of her lens. She really has some magical gift with children. It takes seconds for her to earn their trust and to get them giggling. I am so blessed and amazed that Anna has found my passion for photography as her own and that she is blazing a new trail for herself. Check out more pictures on her {BLOG} and if you want to stay up to date then subscribe.