Engaged ♥ Pete and Lyzeth - McAllen, Texas

Have I mentioned engagement sessions are pretty much my favorite to photograph?! 

I met Lyzeth and Pete via telephone calls a few weeks ago and looked forward to meeting them in person. I live in a small itty-bitty town called Donna and if you blink as you drive through the expressway you may miss it, literally. To my pleasant surprise, Lyzeth and Pete are from my hometown!

They recently became engaged and I am delighted to have captured their love with the following images. Lyzeth is sweet and very kind. She is also completely in love with her fiance Pete. Pete, Pete was quiet at first but probably because he really didn't know me. As our session progressed through Rancho El Charco in La Joya, the three of us learned a little more about one another.

Pete and Lyzeth were such troopers willing to try new ideas for their session. It had been a while since I photographed at Rancho El Charco so I was looking forward to seeing the landscape since we are back to warm weather and the location did not disappoint.

I definitely need to pull out my cowboy boots for the upcoming summer since I spend a lot of my time shooting outdoors, and in ranches. The perks of my job - I love it!!!

Lyzeth and Pete, thank you for allowing me to spend a lovely afternoon with you. Congratulations on your engagement!!! I wish you lots of happiness and every blessing on your path towards marriage and life as a married couple.


I hope you're having an amazing week!! Be blessed :)

Please Note: Clients free to use these watermarked images on your social networking sites. Please refrain from altering the photo in any shape or form. Re-editing of images is strictly prohibited and infringes upon copyright law. Otherwise, please don't steal my images :) Thank you! 

Wedding ♥ Anna and Salvador - McAllen, Texas

Half of my job is to interact and photograph couples engaged to be married. They are beaming with love and so excited to get to spend the rest of their lives together. In a society where marriage longevity is no longer the norm, I am delighted to meet and interact many couples who are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. Within all the couples I have met over the past year, I have also come across many couples looking for me to photograph their 25th and 50th wedding celebrations. 

I absolutely love it!!! I love seeing couples gaze at one another in what I can only imagine is minimally the way they looked when they first fell in love. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting one of those couples. Ana and Salvador will be celebrating their 25th Wedding Anniversary later on this month and I am honored to have captured some bride and groom portraits for them.

When Ana and Salvador where first married years ago, they did not have a photographer. They have no wedding portraits to reflect back on - to pass on to their children as heirlooms. This time around, Ana was determined to have images to look back on as they near their 50th anniversary in the distant future. Spending the afternoon with them was truly a pleasure. I had so much fun getting to know them and their wonderful  children.

Salvador is completely smitten by his beautiful wife. Ana is head over heels still in love with her husband. The two of them together evoke what I hope to one day after many, many years of marriage. Love. Ana and Salvador are completely in love and my camera captured that for them. 

Ana and Salvador, thank you for allowing me to catch a little glimpse of your love. I hope you truly cherish your photos and can look back many years later at the love you two share. Congratulations on your 25th wedding anniversary. You are truly blessed! May the Lord bless you with many more years of love!

Again, congratulations!!!


 Stay tuned for their family session...
Have a great day friends :)

Website ♥ Marisol Izaguirre Photography

Okay, so last month I decided I finally had the time to update my website. I imagined the project would take me a week at the most to completely redesign it.

Umm... I was wrong. It has taken me a little over a month to (finally!) complete it...

With moving, sessions, and life in general, getting the site finished became an itty bitty stressful. I knew what I wanted it to look like, sort of. I had a general idea with a few specific details but for about three weeks something was missing. After I sat there and stared at the computer screen without any distractions my vision began to come together, on screen.

Slowly, the design began to make sense to me and I managed to get myself back on track. After three weeks of designing and then deleting, I am finally proud to unveil my newly re-designed website.

Thank you, yes you, for waiting patiently. And thank you to my family for previewing oh-so-many times non-stop and to Chris for helping me tie it all together.

Ladies and gentlemen, here's a preview of the new site. Please feel free to head on over to http://marisolizaguirre.com for a complete look :)

Thank you and have an amazing day!!!

I use Showit to build my site, with the help of Photoshop. I think I may need another round of lasik after staring at the computer screen for so long, aghh! But well worth it, I hope :) What do you think?

Portraits ♥ Baby Nathaniel - McAllen, Texas

Babies are the cutest subjects to photograph.

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of baby Nathanial for a few months now. Two weeks ago, he made his debut here on earth... Congratulations to the Islas family!

I met Yolanda, Nathaniel's mom, back in January and photographed her towards the end of the month for a maternity and family session. Sebastian, Nathaniel's big brother, was so fun, spunky and. a sweetheart. I enjoyed getting to talk with him about lollipops and cartoons. He was excited to have a little brother or little sister; the Islas family did not know what they were having at the time so it made the waiting way more exciting. Can you believe that?!

If I was anxious, imagine being an expecting parent - gasp! It must be a beautiful journey awaiting the birth of your child. Nathaniel was the quietest newborn I have photographed to date. He was completely asleep for the entire session. Photographing him was so easy. At a mere five days old, Nathaniel was effortlessly one of the cutest babies I have met.

Yolanda, I congratulate you on the addition to your family. You are completely blessed. I wish you and your family a blessed life full of love and health. Baby Nathaniel, you are adorable :)

Now for some cute baby pictures...

 On his daddy's hand...

Have a great day!

Praise and Worship.

I have been meaning to write new blog posts and catch you up on some of my most recent sessions. Earlier today I knew which session I wanted to share with you, my faithful reader, but on the way home this evening from a trip to the local ice cream shop something else came to mind. 

God. 

Not in the usual ways in which I think about our father nor in the form of thanking him for the parking space, the exact quarters I needed for a Coca Cola or for placing an extra memory card in my camera bag at just the right moment. This time it was a little different. I drove home with the ice cream in my hand and the spoon in my mouth munching away while feeling for a mere minute and a half like my blood was boiling. I felt angry, betrayed and helpless.

As I drove into my drive way and failed at parking correctly because I was much more concentrated on eating my ice cream, a great song came on the radio, the christian radio. During the drive from getting ice cream to my drive way I prayed for peace - peace of mind and peace of heart. When I finally reversed correctly I sat there in my car smiling, praising and worshiping. 

I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe he died on the cross for our sins and that he is seated at the right hand of God. One day he will come again and I pray that I am saved. But I have not been to church on a regular basis in a very long time. I don't know why, I really don't. A few people have reminded me that I need to go back. I need to hear the word. 

And I do. And for a few months now I have felt like such a bad child for neglecting to attend church regularly. I often tell myself that Christ lives in me. I thank him daily, continuously and pray to God very often. God is with me in or out of church. That's my rationality. 

But I don't hear the word. I can read it but I don't hear it from someone else. But today, just literally a few minutes ago, I realized that I do. I do hear the word. I do worship. As I sat there in my car, I thought about all the times I sit at the wheel and drive listening to the word on the radio, in form of songs. I sing out loud, very loud, and I cry. If I feel the spirit, I cry. During my drives around the valley is when I talk the most to God .

It's when I ask him, with tears in my eyes, to take my hand and guide me. I worship. I realized that the same feeling I get when I'm in church is what I feel when I devote my time to him - completely. So today, singing along to Francesca Battistelli one of part of her lyrics stuck with me.. 

"In the middle of my little mess I forget how big I'm blessed..."

Now matter how I am feeling at any given moment, I am blessed. The struggles I endure are only to make me stronger. It is because God created me to sufficiently handle every good and bad thing that comes my way. It is because he made me to withstand losing people I love and meeting people I have to fight for. Because God made me, I can cry for my dad. I can miss him. I can cry for him. But I can also remember him, in my life.

I choose to no longer feel overwhelmed, depressed, anxious nor fearful for anything in my life. I am blessed. I am blessed. I am blessed!

Now, I don't have a photo to go along with this post as I had other plans to blog. But because I felt I just needed to write this down, for myself, I will let you in on a little, itty bitty secret...

I HAVE AN OFFICE SPACE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whew. It's been hard to spilling the beans for almost a month now. This is a big deal for me... more on this soon - promise!

Oh, and yes... my website should be back up tomorrow evening ;)

Promises.

I promise to succeed.
I promise to believe.
I promise to myself that I will never be naive. 


I have major news to announce at some point within the next few days!!!! I have not neglected this blog intentionally but I have lots of catch-up-blogging to do, gasp!

I'll leave you now but I'll be back soon...

:) Be blessed!