After a busy fall and December in 2016, the Love Life Images Team gathered in snowy Ocean City, Maryland to recap the year and connect with each other. We spend so much of our time together shooting events that it's nice to take the time to look back at our work and review with each other. We treat this time together as precious- each of us juggling time away from our families and responsibilities at home. Typically we only have one day, but this year we took a whole weekend and were forced by the snow to stay tucked away in a house near the snowy beach. There is so much to learn from each other- always. We shared challenges and triumphs of 2016 and set goals for 2017. One major goal for Love Life Images in 2017 is giving back. We do give in small ways, but as a group we would like to tackle a larger project that could be useful to our community and it's something we are hoping to do more of in 2017. Our photography can be powerful, we recognize this and are searching for opportunities.

We fed our creative souls. We worked on a photo exercise from The Photographer's Playbook and gave ourselves a set of rules to photograph within- some worked in just one color, others worked in just one physical space, some worked in only one f-stop. It was challenging and good for us.

We also take this time to have a little fun and practice with couples who are willing to join us. This year, we invited two couples to pose for us as we worked through how to make our portraits continue to feel candid and not too staged. They were troopers- coming in through a snowstorm to meet us and then standing outside in bitter cold for more than they probably expected!

I think we've officially invented the first-ever photo editing storytelling competition. Much laughing and hysteria ensued!

The crew braved the snow for one group shot. Must have the great light, right? 

We were COLD!