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Casual family pictures at the beach, no matter where you call home! Brian, Branson, and Luna had planned a short two-day trip to Wilmington. ZCC wanted to help them capture their first-ever professional family photos, so we watched the weather (since this time of year, North Carolina chooses winter or spring willy-nilly each day!) and picked the warmer afternoon for a short & sweet photo sesh. Favorite Spot on Earth When deciding on location, we offered up Katie's favorite sp

Families come in all shapes & sizes! Check out this photo session one family had done as a Christmas gift for their parents. Zen Coast Collective LOVES celebrating families, especially extended families who have been together through thick and thin! Lindsay and Megan are cousins who grew up together in the same small town and moved to the Wilmington area during their college days. Though they're cousins, they are really more like sisters. So when they told us at ZCC that th

Small Children Are Most Comfortable in Familiar Spaces... And You Are, Too! This sweet family is getting comfortable in front of ZCC cameras! Family photos are extremely important to Vanessa, and Mark is super supportive of that fact. He's also amazing at getting little Allie to laugh! Take a peak at their front yard holiday photo shoot. A warm-up family portrait, easily snagged when dad was talking nature with Allie, and I told mom to pop in line behind them. All the cutene

Two Friends + Fancy Clothes + Chill Vibe = The Perfect Day When one of my lifelong friends, Lindsay, told me that her eldest daughter was going to the Homecoming dance with a friend, my first thought was, "Surely we're not old enough for this to be happening.... didn't Lindsay and I JUST go to our OWN prom with all of our friends?!" (We're going to move past the part where that was, in fact, more than twenty years ago...) Ahh, the days of printed photos in scrapbooks! This w

A family photo session featuring the cutest pup and her parents Jess & John have been together for ages, but with the addition of their sweet rescue, Winnie, earlier this year they thought it was time for some updated family pics. We were overjoyed to help them with this process! The Setting Since Winnie is only about six months old and still learning to socialize outside of her little family, Jess was a little nervous about taking pictures with her out in public. So we helpe

Though we've loved photography for decades, this is the inaugural photoshoot for Zen Coast Collective! And we couldn't have asked for a sweeter family to help us make our debut. The Setting Vanessa chose a sweet little park in the heart of Wilmington because little miss Allie loves to explore outdoors. Their family loves taking long walks and bike rides together to discover new and beautiful places. The Family Portrait Life with a toddler guarantees that there's never a dull

A reflection on recognizing what's going right in life A Shift in Terminology If there's one positive thing that came out of the pandemic...

How we decided what's most important and what that means for our daily lives   Katie's First Act It's pretty unusual for a fourteen year...

There are very few real life fairy tales, but we believe that phrase actually applies to us! When we were kids (as in, I was literally a toddler), our moms became dear friends when they went to night school to become nurses. Our families grew close... Aaron and my brother, Jay, spent hours playing video games together, and I idolized Mandy, Aaron's sister who is seven years his senior because she was that quintessential older, cooler nineties teenager. Fast forward to 2016 wh