Y'all I'm participating in the Keepin' It Real Blog Circle TWO months in a row....who am I?!?!  I mean I only went all of 2014 (and some of 2015) not participating even though I had signed up!!!  This month's theme was "Real Necessity" which is absolutely perfect for me as it goes along with why I am pushing myself to participate in this monthly blog circle.  Before I get on to my take on this month's theme don't forget that this is a blog circle after all so please read all the way to the bottom to find the link to the next photographers post to see how she interpreted this month's theme.

This year I am trying to focus editing on my own images in as close to real time as possible.  Getting my personal images off of my hard drive and in to a book or on the wall is a "real necessity."  It is a necessity for me to remind myself why I fell in love with photography (documenting my kids!), it is a necessity for my children to see themselves and our love for them in photos, and it is a necessity for our family to relive our fondest memories by looking at the images we have to document them.

Our recent trip to Disney World in January really pushed me to see if I could stay on top of our family's images and do something with them fairly quickly.  But before I get in to all of that let's take a step back in to my picture prep for Disney World.  You see as a photographer I know that I can take better pictures with my "big" camera and I can do fantastic things to those images with editing.  The problem with my big camera though is that it is quite literally big and I am the only one in my family who knows how to properly use it, and to be quite honest taking a picture with the best equipment available to me wasn't the point of documenting this trip.  The point was to simply have photographs of our family's first trip Disney.  So before we even left for Florida I decided that I would only take my big camera to a couple events and never in to the theme parks.  I decided I would document most of our trip with my iphone, GoPro, and Samsung NX300.  Additionally, we bought the Disney Photo Pass which I can not recommend enough (its a service that allows you to get all the digital files the Disney photographers take).

Looking back on the trip and the images from the trip I can tell you that I do not regret for a second leaving my big camera at the hotel the majority of the time!  I so enjoyed being in the moment with my family and simply snapping photos with my phone, a point and shoot, or even asking the Disney photographers to take a picture for us using their camera since we would get the digital files.  Even with simplifying what I would be shooting with I still ended up 1500 pictures!!!! That number of images is daunting.  I knew I needed to push through and get these images together and in an album as I felt it was a real *necessity* to relive the week with my girls' via images and discuss all the memories we made before time took the memories away.  So, back to those 1500+ images....what to do WHAT TO DO!!!!  I quickly went through the images and selected the best of the best just like I do after my sessions, but then I decided I would only lightly edit the images.  This meant no headswapping to make sure all my girls' were looking at the camera, no skin smoothing, no extensive editing, no tricks!  I tweaked exposure, saturation, and white balance here and there and was able to get down to a few hundred images for our book.  Our book arrived this week and we have loved re-living our trip with the girls.  Being able to have the book so close to the trip has been amazing as I can see then remember more things from the trip as they flip through the pages :)

I hope you all enjoy looking through these images from our Disney vacation.  Please remember the look of these images isn't reflective of my typical professional photographic style as the camera used and editing (or lack there of) are very different, but that is the point for this post.  It is a "real necessity" for me to occasionally push photographic perfection aside and simply document my family's life and do something with the resulting images!

Enjoy!

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This image sums up why we took our trip at this particular time.  Our oldest was just shy of 5 during the trip, and so full of imagination.  Our first day at Disney was started with a breakfast with the Princesses and at the end she was asked to raise her wand and make a wish.  As you can see she raised her wand high and closed her eyes as hard as she could to carefully make a wish.  I am so glad we were able to make this trip while she is in this stage where all the Disney magic is real.

I made the girls' these dresses for our first day.  I like to think they were proud to wear something their mama made for them :)  This is also a perfect example of me not headswapping to ensure everyone was looking at the camera and had a perfect smile ;)

After we finished up breakfast with the princesses it was finally time to head to Magic Kingdom!

Randal Jean LOVED the Mine Train!

This is one of the images taken by a Disney photographer...so glad to have this!

Our second day was spent at Hollywood Studios.  The girls particularly liked the Beauty and the Beast show as well as Fantasmic.

On day 3 we started at Downtown Disney so the big girls could have an Elsa makeover and then we headed back to Magic Kingdom.

This is my favorite image of Clara Jo from the trip.  She was absolutely giddy on the carousel :)

Day 4 was our "rest" day.  We still had a busy morning eating with Goofy and friends at the Four Seasons (I highly recommend this character breakfast, HIGHLY!!!) then we spent the day exploring Downtown Disney.

Tilley singing "Let It Go" on the back steps of the Four Seasons :)

This is my Uncle Randy and Aunt Peggy who our Disney trip would not have happened without.  Thank you all so much for gifting us the hotel stay.  We are so very appreciative!

Our final day was spent at Animal Kingdom!

After a through the night drive back to NC we all had a bit of a Disney hangover and spent much of our first day back in Wilmington like this :)

You still with me?!?!  I hope you enjoyed re-living some of our Disney memories with me.

Now, don't forget to head on over to Kami's blog to see what her take on this month's theme, Real Necessity, is.  I hope you all enjoy Kami's work as much as I do....it is stunning!

Kami Friday Photography, New Hampshire Beach Lifestyle Family Photographer
http://www.kamifridayphotography.com/?p=4329

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

I am so excited to be participating in a the Keepin' It Real blog series with some very talented photographers.  This month's theme was "Real Love" and I have chosen to share some Valentine inspired pictures with you all.  At the bottom of this post there is a link to the next photographer's blog in the circle.  Please go check her out and see how she was inspired this month and you may just be inspired too!

These three little loves of mine have my whole heart I tell ya and we had so much fun putting together a photo Valentine's Day card this year!  It all started because I wanted to recreate this image from 2014 :)

Although the 2015 image is bit more chaotic with a very mobile 13.5 month old I am still loving what we got and think we will need to make red wax lips our go-to for our annual Valentine's Day pics.  Here's the digital version of our card that went out to the girls' classmates and our family.

I've been wanting to do a photo card for Valentine's Day FOREVER! and I'm so glad this year it worked out and the girls cooperated long enough to make it happen!  Plus, how perfect are their shirts from The Measure for the occassion?!?! They have an adapted version of my favorite EE Cummings poem printed on them.

Ofcourse, we ended up with more pictures than we needed for the card and because I am just so in love with these girlies I have to share!  Also, we had a super fun time getting to paint outside as their reward for cooperating for the pics (its one of their favorite activities!) so I kept the camera out long enough to capture that too since it was actually Clara Jo's first time getting to paint with her big sisters.  As you will soon see she didn't quite know what to make of the paint, but had fun regardless :)

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day and celebrate all those you hold near and dear to your heart on Valentine's and every other day!

Tilley thought she didn't make enough of a mess while painting so as soon as I said it was time to quit she two handfuls of paint and smeared it on her face....yep, that's our middle child for ya!

Don't forget to hop on over to the Kami Friday Photography's blog to see how she was inspired for this month's theme of "Real Love."

Kami Friday Photography, Nashua Portrait Photographer
http://www.kamifridayphotography.com/?p=4273

Yesterday I wrapped another iphone 365 project that I posted daily to on Instagram using #365daysoftheborkfamily .  As much as it can be a pain to take a picture every.single.day I am so glad to have made it through another year successfully documenting each day in my family's life and I plan to do it again in 2015!!!  If you would like to follow along find me on Instagram @ktborkphoto

Last year when I re-capped I mentioned some of my worries about being a photographer yet doing an iphone 365 project and also some tips of which I think are all still valid so I wont list them out again, but you can check out last year's post by clicking here.

The biggest change to my 365 project in 2014 was that I only did one picture for our family versus a picture for each child as we went in to 2014 with THREE kids and I knew there was no way I could handle that!  Additionally, I am now using an app called VSCO cam to edit the majority of my pictures.

I loved going back through all of my iphone pictures from 2014 to put together this post for you all.  I selected my favorite image for each month (selected because of the memory or moment certainly not photographic perfection ha!) and then a collage of some other favorites by month to share.

Before we get to my monthly favorites here is my favorite iphone pic of my girls from 2014....technically not the best photo but gosh how I loved being able to quickly capture this true moment of happiness and giggles with my girls by simply pulling out my phone :)

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

I  am so excited to share our 2014 Halloween costumes with you all!!!!  Just like last year (you can see those pics, here) I did our official costume pictures early so that I don't have to worry about the stress of taking pictures during all the hustle, bustle, and FUN that is Halloween!!!

Randal Jean has been obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so I loved finding these great girly costumes for characters that are traditionally geared more towards boys.  For the second year in a row Socktopus Creations (found on Etsy, here) made the girls' costumes.  Since there are 4 Turtles I wanted to join in on the fun too!  I had Danielle with Socktopus Creations make me some iron-on shell pieces as well as a sash, mask, and arm pieces.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE how the costumes turned out.  I can not speak highly enough of Danielle and the quality product she delivers!  I sure hope we can work with her again next year!!!!

Matt *may* Splinter (or Superman...well see!) tonight, but wasn't able to join us for the fun of our pre-Halloween pictures.  I think he might prefer it that way, ha!  We will be sure to grab a pic of all 5 of us this evening!

I hope you all enjoy our 2014 Halloween costume pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them!!!

And I must give a huge THANK YOU to Miss Emily and Miss Carlie for being more amazing friends than I have ever deserved and helping me successfully get our Halloween pictures complete.  I love you ladies so so much...THANK YOU!!!

My two oldest girls started back to preschool this week!  We were all so excited for them to start back to school, but probably for different reasons ;)  Both girls did great at their first week of school...no tears or clinging to mom whatsoever!!!

I hope you all enjoy these back to school pictures of my girls :)

PS- The baby didn't start school, but getting out the big camera for my own kids is a big deal so she got thrown in to the mix too!

And just to keep it real this is what 95% of the pictures I take of my kids are like!