I have done some pretty cool things in my 27 years of life so far (see some photos below). I traveled to Thailand with my husband and went sky diving (always a bucket list item), taught my self how to play guitar when I was a young teenager, saw the Colosseum in Italy and walked on the black sand beach in Hawaii. On my free time I enjoy shooting as a sport, hiking and playing soccer for fun!
Hi everyone, my name is Nicky Byington! I wanted to introduce myself to you all on a blog post so you can get an idea of who I am and why I love taking photos! I live in Modesto California but travel outside the county for photo sessions. I grew up in San Jose so I do travel that far back home to SJ. I am a portrait photographer who specialized in Special Needs Photography. Click HERE to learn more about how I fell in love with photographing Special Needs kids. Currently as of January 2020, I am working full time and pursuing school to become an OTA (Occupational Therapy Assistance). I have done some pretty cool things in my 27 years of life so far (see some photos below). I traveled to Thailand with my husband and went sky diving (always a bucket list item), taught my self how to play guitar when I was a young teenager, saw the Colosseum in Italy and walked on the black sand beach in Hawaii. On my free time I enjoy shooting as a sport, hiking and playing soccer for fun! I also got married in April 2019 to my amazing husband! We eloped to beautiful Santa Barbara, California. We got married shortly after he proposed (about 2 months) and it was perfect. The day went smoothly and the weather was perfect for our photoshoot after! Here are a few pictures of my husband and I. The first two pictures of us in Thailand sky diving and touring several temples. Our lives right now revolve around our pups, Roxy and Rustin. The hubby is very handy and does alot of projects around the house to improve our home, he has an online business and he loves BEER! We likes to take Roxy and Rustin on hikes and then usually we go to a Brewery after especially if we go out of town for the hike, we treat our selfs (I don't drink so as long as he buys me food, we are all good). On a day to day basis during the week we like to stay home and relax, then on weekends be a little more active so like hikes or day trips somewhere fun and new. We also have two crazy and very hyper Boston Terriers, of course here are some pictures of the dogs! O boyyyy do these dogs corky hyper energetic and loving dogs! The one-eyed brown Boston is Roxy. The black one (technically a Blue Boston) is Rustin. You would think they would be cuddly and playful with each other...Roxy tolerates Rustin. lol . Roxy loves to be under blankets when it is cold or hot, hits a desk bell when she needs to go outside, she sings (howls), she loves sticks and has an obsession with kong balls. Rustin loves to be on top of blankets, he barks at horses on the TV, his favorite game is chase, he loves to bark at Roxy and he doesn't like to be left out of any fun actions/games!
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This is the Goatcher family and they are such an awesome family with so much love! I met the family at Knights Ferry in California (Stanislaus County) for the family pictures! Knights Ferry is about 45 minutes from Modesto, CA. It took a few jokes especially from his dad (Roger) to get Jacob a few genuine smiles from him. Knights Ferry is a very popular place for photos. Every time I am there, I usually see 203 photographers there taking photos!
A few weekends ago, I traveled to Davis with Steph and Andrew for to take there engagement photos. It was so much fun to explore the campus and get a variety of locations for our photos :) . Steph and Andrew got engaged in November 2019, I was lucky to be a part of that day as well. I was asked to do the video of the proposal as well. Scroll down to enjoy some pictures :)
Hello everyone :) Here is a quick look behind my photo session with Sara this evening in Manteca, California. I am a portrait photographer who specializes in photographing Special needs Children, navigate to my SPECIAL NEEDS page to see where my love for the Special Needs Community began! I live in Modesto but travel throughout San Joaquin and Stanislaus County. This is Sara, she is 11 years old and has the most contagious smile around. How could you not want to smile when you see her face. Sara loves fake sneezes, Mulan, Tarzan and the TV show Peg + Cat. Keep scrolling to see more photo's from today. Hello everyone!!!! Thank you for stopping by my blog. My name is Nicky Byington. I am a portrait photographer who specializes in photographing Special Needs Children in the Central Valley (This includes Manteca, Ripon, Salida, Modesto, Turlock, Ceres, and Oakdale)! Please navigate to my SPECIAL NEEDS page to learn where my passion for the special needs community began! You can also go to my Behind The Scenes page to check out some videos from a few different types of sessions :) In the meantime, please enjoy this video my photographing Angelina! I met Angelina through Manteca Parks and Rec's Challenger League, where I volunteered as a coach! The Challenger league is a fun, non-compeltive sports league for special needs children. As you will see in the video, Angelina is fisty and super fun to be around. She already knew most of her poses that she wanted to do and was ready for every single photo! ,Last weekend I took photos of Parker, who is a 2 week old newborn. His mother was so kind to let me take a few videos with my phone so I could make a small behind the scenes video for everyone to see! Everyone photo session is different but you can see a small glimpse of one of my sessions. Please for forgive my boring angles and timelapse clips in the video, I set my cell phone on a tripod and just let it recorded for a few minutes in different spots in the house. I am a portrait photographer in Modesto California, who specializes in photographing Special Needs Children!! This includes Manteca, Ripon, Modesto, Ceres, Oakdale and Turlock...yes I travel for my sessions! Check out my Behind The Scenes tab under "Galleries" to check out a few more videos on different photo sessions :) Also check out how my passion began with photographing Special Needs Children! Click SPECIAL NEEDS or navigate to the main website! Here are a few behind the scene photos :) iOn April 27th 2018, I was honored and so happy to be invited to photographs the children in Annie's classroom! Please navigate to my Special Needs page to learn how I became involved with photographing Special Needs Children in the Central Valley! A few months before April, Neil Halfey asked me if I could come take photos of the kids in Annie's class so they could use those photos to surprise her at her retirement party. Without hesitation, I said OF COURSE! A few years ago, I was actually a paraprofessional who worked in the Severely Handicapped classroom right next to Anne's classroom, so I knew her and most of her children. I worked as a paraprofessional for about two years and provided respite care for children with a wide range of special needs also! When I arrived in the morning around 9am, all the kids were having breakfast. I visited with the kids and talked to Anne where she would like photos taken. She wanted to do a mix of outside and inside in different areas of the school. We went to the playground, library, the swings and the wall ball area! As you can see in the photos below, every single child adores and loves Anne! We had so much fun with the kids! This is the collage made for her retirement party below.
So August 11th was a magical surprise for Cindy! Her fiance (boyfriend before the photoshoot) and I cooked up a plan to add a surprise proposal into her what she thought was just "anniversary pictures". Cindy and Ray had been together for 9 years and Cindy wanted Anniversary picture done, little did she know she got a little surprise with that. I remember when Ray texted me a picture of the ring. I was floating down the Stanislaus river in Knights Ferry and he said "Do you want to see the ring"? Of course, I said YESSSS. I could barley see my phone screen because it was in a plastic protective sleeve since I was floating down the river. As soon as I got a text back, I looked and could see the ring even through the plastic screen with water drops all over it! I was so happy because now it was becoming real that he was really going to propose during our photoshoot. At the same time, Cindy would ask me what she should wear for her "anniversary pictures" because she wanted to look nice but not look like she was going to the prom. She was stressing because she had never had any professional photos taken with Ray since they have been together (9 yearsss!). While I was helping Cindy figure out what she wanted to wear and prepare for pictures, Ray and I were talking about code words for the proposal. We planned a day trip so we could get several different locations and varieties in pictures. Cindy wanted trees and nature in the photos so we planned to go to a National Park along the coast and than to a beach! I asked Ray when he wanted to propose and he said that I am the professional and whenever works. We figured out a code word or code phrase so he knew that I was ready when he proposed (because I didn't want to be adjusted camera settings or changing lens when he actually proposed).
After getting a few sunrise photos in the small sketchy parking lot, we kept going along the coast. Again I spotted another spot I liked...we were driving on a windy road through the mountains! I was getting nacuous so I wanted to stop, but I saw this HUGE private property and had to stop! The National Park idea did not go as we planned, so we moved on from that idea. We got several awesome shots here, but this was not the place for a proposal. Soooooo we kept driving until we hit the BEACH! We took some fun photos close to the parking lot at the beach before the actual proposal and beach! Ray and I secretly convinced CIndy to change outfits to a pretty dark dress with a jean jacket because these were going to be the photos and the dress was Ray's favorite outfit that she brought (Cindy brought several outfits to change into for different places we did photos at). Cindy really enjoyed the pictures we did on the bridge. NOW IT WAS TIME FOR THE BEACH and the PROPOSAL! She was sooooo surprised and had no idea! Now enjoy engagement photos. We traveled to San Fran and finished out pictures throughout San Fran :) ![]() Parker Boling was born on October 15th around 4pm, weighing 7lb 12oz and 21inches long! I was fortunate to be invited by the Boling family to come to the hospital and take photos of Parker. Parker is only a couple hours of old in the photos!
I loved that only though he was just a few hours old, he was already soooooo loved. He had family (sister, brothers, grandma, aunts and uncles) and friends present for his arrival! I have to share photos from my session last week with Natalie! She is the cutest little girl in the world. At first she was shy and did her own thing so taking photos was more challenging but about 30 minutes singing from her mom was just what she needed. Believe me I had a mini workout in after this session because I was running around chasing Natalie everywhere getting photos, she was on the move!
When we put the white chair in the orchard and her mom starting singing to her...we had a smiley and happy little girl. After that she was still on the move but I was able to capture some sweet moments between mother and daughter! Hello everyone! I am excited to share this post with everyone! The first reason simply is because I had a great time photographing Angelina. The second reason is because I also was able to create a short video of our session! Angelina was so great, fun and full of poses ready for our session! Below is the Behind The Scenes Video from yesterday's session with Angelina. I hope you all enjoy! A little back story...Angelina and I actually met a few years ago through the Challanger League in Manteca! The Challenger League is a non competitive sports league for children with mild to severe disabilities. The Challenger League is mostly about having fun but also learning new skills, being active and making long life friends. I have had a huge smile on my face since the day I met her because of her contagious laugh, sassy attitude, honesty, happiness and love! Angelina is a teenager who speaks her mind and knows what she wants! I know you are going to do something big one day! Thank you for being your energetic and funny self :) Here are some of the photos from our session, enjoy! Yesterday I had the opportunity to photograph two beautiful horses in a orchard field. I have photographed animals (mostly dogs) before so photographing horses was definitely something different but I was ready and excited for the new experience. At first it took a while to round the horses up (they kept galloping away) so that we were able to actually go into the orchards and start photographing. My fantasy dream was to have the horses free (what was I thinking) in the orchard, but I soon realized that was not going to happen. We did one horse at a time and then we tried and brought both of them out. The horses were great...the tricky part for me was to try and make sure to get the horses ears facing forward. Life is not perfect but I think I got a good amount of photos with there ears facing forward. I was throwing the can of corn and the empty can in the air which worked only a few times. I then discovered that moving my feet on the ground back and forth fast and clicking my boots together was enough noise for them to move their ears also. It took some work but the horses were so beautiful and did such a great job! I hope you enjoy some of the photographs from our photoshoot :) On July 25, 2014 I was honored to be on the front page of the MANTECA BULLETIN to share my love for photographing children with special needs. I was later even more honored to be featured in a short segment with Good Day Sacramento as well (I unfortunately do not have a video link for that segment). It was a great opportunity of exposure for my photography but more importantly to shed light on the special needs community. Navigate to SPECIAL NEEDS page to learn more... Being on Good Day Sacramento was a nerve wracking experience but also amazing feeling. I am usually the one behind the camera taking photographs but this time I was the one being photographed/videoed. It was definitely a unfamiliar situation but the crew made everything easier and fun.
Click SPECIAL KIDS PHOTOGRAPHY OF AMERICA :) This is where I received my accreditation in July 2014! With this accreditation hundreds of other photographers from around the United States have been trained in unique understanding of working with various disabilities that are common in our society. If you navigate to the "Photographers" tab on the website and click "CA" you will be able to find my information - or you can click CALIFORNIA SKPA LISTING to find me also! This is why you will see the "Special Needs Photography of America" logo throughout my website to represent the knowledge that I have gained through the accreditation of photographing children with Special Needs.
Welcome to my blog. Here I will try to update on things that are happening in my photography. Click ABOUT ME to get to know me. You can also click Special Needs to learn how I started photographing Special Needs Children. I am a portrait photographer located in Bay Area all the way to Manteca, California. I currently live in Manteca (Near Stockton) but I grew up in San Jose :) .
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