Avengers Assemble!//Gilbert Child & Dance Photographer

I joined Tik Tok this spring.

Tik Tok is a dangerous place. The problem with it is there’s a lot of random, wonderful and weird content on it and it kind of sucks you in. As a creative person I love seeing what other creatives are up to just a little too much. But that’s also the bright side of Tik Tok. Is discovering before unknown talents in the people around you,

I only knew about 5 people on tik tok at the time so I didn’t have to wander too far down the rabbit hole before I discovered the page of one of young dancers I knew. On there I saw just how deep her passion for makeup went, beyond the every day makeup and into these MARVELous creations.

As soon as I saw what she could do, I could picture the entire thing in my head.

THIS. We had to do THIS.

I knew I didn’t want to do actual super hero costumes for the session because I wanted Makenzie’s Makeup artistry to be the piece that really pulled together the looks for the girls. It was a natural choice to use dancers for the session because I knew the clothing would be easy to source and I love the strength they display and the precision with which they can move. As an added bonus, I knew all of these talented dancers would come in character with every fiber of their being, from facial expressions to the way they moved, it was incredible.

I’m blown away by how perfectly the entire vision came together. This was a lot of moving pieces, parents helping to select costumes that fit the vision + find the right props (probably the easiest part of it all), Makenzie nailing the makeup artistry for each character, the dancers individually showing up with in character dance poses and lastly the sky, just being the perfect apocalyptical shade for the evening’s session.

I was blown away by how perfectly the entire thing came together and it left me immediately wanting to create in this way MORE. So I’m putting together a Dance Squad for the 2021-2022 year and I already have about 100 things I want to do (even though I know a shoot every 3 days isn’t realistic!)

If you love what we did here, have a dancer and want to be a part of the fun this next year please fill out an application here. I cannot wait to spend more time creating this year!!

Rainbows and Retro//Gilbert Child Photographer

I think it was a dress called “Unicorn Barf” that started the whole thing during the summer shutdowns of 2020. It went up for rent on a Child Dress Designer’s website and I thought.

“Woah, look at all that color”

and her mom thought

“Woah, look at all that color”

But if you can imagine, we had slightly different reactions to it, with mine being the less than enthused one and struggling to picture how that would all come together well.

Her mom had no problem envisioning it and the messages started rolling in.

“We could do it with a unicorn. Imagine, something over the top and colorfully and vibrant and Magic!”
”What if we did a candyland theme? Know anywhere we could do that? Giant lollipops and and a colorful walkway!”

“Katie, what about skates and knee high socks?”

And as I mulled over the idea of a colorful rainbow princess riding a candy laden unicorn down a rainbow road, we started looking for the EXACT RIGHT rainbow dress for Bella.

I had just started working with Jeanne’s Designs and she caught mom’s vision right away and got to work on the most colorful sparkly rainbow dress that mom could dream of.

Sadly her wonderful dress was lost in the mail and our session continued to be pushed back.

Happily the dress was found again and finally delivered but we continued to struggle to find the right pieces to pull it all together. In the end mom ordered not 1, not 2 but 3 hairpieces before we landed on this glorious candy piece created by The Headmistress.

Our location was picked, our date was finally set, excitement was mounting and after a year of dreaming our TWO different looks were selected for this session.

Then it happened. I was scrolling through my favorite location rental website ONE WEEK before the session when I stumbled across THE HOUSE. I knew it was the missing piece to the year-long puzzle we had been building. I booked it immediately.

And finally, finally, on June 10th, 2021, one FULL year of planning later. We did it.