Summer is Fleeting

The summer is quickly coming to a close. Pretty soon the children that were constantly under foot are going to be gone all day long. It is a hard balance, especially this particular summer being cramped in a small apartment, trying to keep the older kids happy and the younger ones entertained. When I remember this summer I am afraid the apartment life will overshadow the fun times we had earlier in the summer.

It seems to have gone by a little too fast, yet a little too slow all at the same time. Everyone has grown so much this summer, especially Evelyn who everyday seems to be maturing faster and faster. She is caught between the pretend play and the grown up older girls. It is hard to see my little E.V. forgoing games of the past calling them "baby games." I once thought I would love the extra help as she got older but instead of enjoying the help, I find myself really missing the times when I got to watch her play.

I love this picture of her in one of her carefree moments, lost to everything around her, wrapped up in her imagination. I have found myself wondering lately what happened to the little girl who wore dress up clothes until they fell apart, who refused to take off her butterfly wings even to sleep, whose imagination was so viivid anyone could be pulled into her games. I want to hold this memory of the playful little girl close to me forever. Enjoy the final carefree days of summer!

Red Hair

Allison again. I converted the first picture of her into a black and white for the timeless feel, but her hair. Well her hair has to be seen in color.

I love red hair, I may have mentioned that before. I think it is so pretty. Growing up I really wanted red hair, in fact in high school I saved up my hard earned babysitting money to have red highlights put in my hair. I was going to have it done by a professional so it would look really good. Babysitting doesn't really pay that much, so my choices were of stylists were limited to say the least. The first batch of color the stylist painted on was not quite dark enough to be seen in my very dark brown hair. The stronger, second application, well I don't know what went wrong. The result was a head full of long dark brown hair with purple highlights. She was very thorough too so there was no hiding those highlights. Funny, now I just admire the redheads and leave my hair color alone.

Ed

"Ed- Daddy I love playing with Edddddd...." you would have to hear the way Tessa pronounced his name drawing out the last part. And you can imagine the amusement of hearing a three year old telling her Daddy how much fun it was to play with Ed. Coming home from the hospital she was greeted by numerous cousins who were meeting her for the very first time. She immediately took to Ed (everyone else referred to her 4 year old cousin as Eddie), and they had so much fun together. They were so much alike, it was interesting to watch them play.

Tessa still talks about Ed and wonders when she can go play with him again. Like I wrote yesterday it is hard being so far away from such a fun family.

Thanks to my friends on Facebook

I have found the babies I need for my portfolio. Thank you to everyone who spread the word! I am very excited to begin the newborn phase of my photography.

I am still in need of a large stump. If you know of one that is close to Kennewick, I will haul it myself (okay I will probably have Stephen pick it up). If it is not within driving distance I probably can't get it, unless someone wants to deliver a stump from Alaska. In that case I would buy them dinner for their efforts.

Once again thank you everyone, I really appreciate it!

Little Miss Allison

Michigan. It was such a fun summer for my kids. We spent 4 weeks playing, visiting relatives, playing, having fun, and playing. Most everything went well; the weather was perfect (cool but not too cold), having family around was a big help and we enjoyed endless afternoons of playing. Henry and Tessa got to meet cousins they have never seen before and the rest of us got reacquainted with relatives not seen for years. It was really hard to say goodbye knowing that we don't get to visit as often as we would like.

I love this picture of my niece Allison playing at "Aunt Dangle's" house. I had a hard time deciding whether or not to keep it in color. She has the most beautiful hair. I love red hair, every shade of it! Anyway I decided on black and white because I like the timeless feel of it. Kind of trying to capture that perfect summer vacation.

Enjoy!

Exciting Post

Baby as Art has posted a blog entry about the workshop that I attended. I will have to say that picture shows how I look after an entire weekend of so much good information that my head feels like it may explode! Anyway not a great picture of me but it was very exciting to see what they said about one of my shots!

I am still looking for a newborn to work with so if you know anybody please email me!

Still Having Fun

Here I am a week after the workshop and I am still having a blast with the images I took. We had the cutest little models to work with. Here are a few more images.


Enjoy!




I love the tree stump, love it so much I am currently looking for a large stump, bark or no bark. Let me know if you know anyone who wants to get rid of a tree stump!

Oh Baby!!

This past weekend I had the exciting opportunity to attend a workshop in San Diego, put on by the photographers at Baby as Art. I have been drooling over/stalking their website for the past year. What they do as photographers is inspirational to say the least. I really admire their work because it is clean and simple and the baby is clearly the focus of their art.

The workshop was great, Carrie and Britt were excellent instructors. They were both so patient with the babies and with the questions we asked. Carrie also opened up her home to us, allowing us to spend the night (and ask more questions). I learned so much from how they interact with babies and families to photoshop conversions. I really didn't want the weekend to end.

I took the following image which was styled by Carrie and Britt. I came home with the raw image and applied what I learned at the workshop. I am so excited to begin photographing newborns and using what I learned this weekend.





Right now I am looking for a newborn (5-14 days old) to work with. In exchange for letting me practice I will give the parents a CD with hopefully 10 edited files and one free 8x10 of their favorite pose. So if anyone knows of anybody who is expecting or has a newborn (5-14 days old), have them send me an email! After this final practice session I will begin charging my regular setting fee and cd's will only be available for purchase with a minimum order.

Enjoy!

Henry Walks!!

Henry has choosen to spend the majority of his life being carried around by people. Does this mean my son is {gulp} lazy? No I like to think of him as cuddly. He loves to be close to his parents and sisters, who did their fair share of carrying/dragging him around. A while back he toyed with the idea of crawling. He got pretty good and started to choose to crawl many different places. After weeks of his knees being worn on the cement and carpet, he has decided to try the walking thing out. I must say for walking all of two days he is getting pretty good, well good enough for me to miss holding him close all day long.


Henry's poor knees worn down by crawling.