Today my boys and I spent about 3 hours on a mountain of dirt. There’s a construction site near our house where a new subdivision has been built over the past year and a half. At the entrance to the subdivision, there is the big mountain of dirt that seems to come with all new subdivisions. Behind the mountain of dirt, is the place where they wash off all of the cement mixers. It’s an amazing place. The cement mixer washing area is sort of like walking on the moon– or at least that’s what we pretend. There are small hills of concrete surrounded by smooth surfaces that look like wet flows of concrete. Once when we walked there, it was actually wet and Isaac and I wrote our names in the surface to claim the space as our own. The past two trips to the site, we have focused our attentions on the big mountain of dirt. Climbing it, attacking it, throwing dirt clods at it or down it. There is a big puddle close to the base and it’s fun to see if you can get throw a clod far enough to land in it.

Today when we arrived, the boys went to the top of one section and I sat off at a distance on another part. It felt like the kind of place where I should be invisible and they should get to do anything they want, imagine anything they want without me being there to interfere. I was bummed because I had forgotten my camera on this excursion. So instead of taking pictures, I watched and listened. I absorbed the experience and tried to understand it at its core… so that when I did have a camera with me next time, I might be able to tell the story in one frame.

As luck would have it, it was a warm day today and we were getting hot and the boys wished they had brought along their shovel. We agreed to walk back home, get camera, water, shovel and change into short sleeves and drive back. What followed was 2 full hours of dirt digging, throwing, attacking, imagination fun. They worked hard. I did my best to capture it.

I love it when I get to work with a family year after year.  We build a relationship over time that makes the sessions more and more meaningful. I’ve shared a lot of special moments and experiences with this particular family including the birth of their third child and the baptisms of all three children.  This year we accomplished quite a lot within one short hour!  One cool thing about Orr Street Studios is there is so much space.  I was able to set out a tub of legos and giant coloring paper with a box of crayons and stickers to keep everyone occupied while we did individual images of everyone.  Every year we do our headstands to get everyone to smile, but invariably, it’s the serious images that I come back to over and over.

So, I recently just stopped blogging (again). I know exactly what happened, and so today I’m hoping that by just putting this little ditty together for you, I will get over that hump and get back into blogging regularly (again). Recently I had the opportunity to do a session in my studio with a woman who is 101 years old. She was willing to sit nude for me for an hour and tell me stories while I photographed her. The experience had such an impact on me, I haven’t been able to really talk about it here or show any of the work here on my blog… yet.

Soon. I hope.

I think for me, blogging is such a practice of self expression and the willingness to put everything out there for the world to read just hasn’t been there for me since my session with the 101 year old. I know some of the pieces are strong, and I plan to exhibit more of them. (You can see one of them on display in the members’ show up right now at Orr Street Studios)

On Monday I met again with my mentor, Gloria Baker Feinstein) in Kansas City. This time I wasn’t nearly as scared and we got straight to work looking at images. I learned a lot and I’d like to just share three of the best pieces from the day.

It’s not every day I get to hold an actual-honest-to-goodness EMMY Award. In fact, I’ve never held one before today. Every Wednesday, my friend, Kim Wade, (1/2 of the fabulous Silverbox Photographers duo. If you or someone you like even a little bit is getting married, you really must have them photograph your wedding. I insist) and I process and edit images together at Sven’s Kafe. (Oh dear, Sven’s doesn’t have a website??!! If you’re downtown and looking for simply the yummiest food - breakfast, lunch, treat - you must come over to Orr St. and give Sven’s a try) Okay, I’m obviously very distractible this evening! Anyway, every Wednesday morning and often into the afternoon, you can find Kim and I huddled together at a table with our computers going, sharing power cords and photoshop techniques. We even call it - get this, we’re so clever - ‘Sven’sday’.

Today, Kim was meeting her friend and my aquaintence, Beth Pike, for lunch. Before Beth arrived, Kim told me that she had recently won an EMMY Award (yes, a real EMMY) for her documentary about the 200 year history of newspapers in Missouri. Immediately I asked her to have Beth bring it along. Kim called, Beth obliged and within a few hours there I was holding an EMMY. It was shiny and heavy and just oozed cool. Beth was amazingly patient with my multiple announcements of — ‘hey, she just won an EMMY’ and happily came up to my studio after having lunch with Kim so I could photograph her with the statuette. I could not be happier for Beth. Congratulations! You and EMMY look fabulous together! (Read a little bit more about Beth here.)

Every fall I look forward to chasing the O’brien family around someplace lovely. It’s fun to see how the girls grow and change every year. This year, Archer is sporting a jack-o-lantern smile just in time for Halloween.

The weather has been so up and down this early fall, it’s hard to know what you might get from one weekend to the next. As you will see, these guys were ready for cool fall…. what we got was hot summer! It was nearly 90 degrees outside as I drove to Stephen’s Lake Park last Sunday evening. The best part about that? We got to play in the fountain after the shoot! I just love girls in dresses splashing through the sprayground!

And in the course of our adventure, we got some great family photos and even a few of mom and dad.

And then there are the days that maybe don’t go so great. (If you’re confused by this sentence, you’ll need to read my last post) Sometimes babies (and young children) can be unpredictable.  We do our best to schedule sessions at the child’s very best time of day… and then they go and change their schedule on us!  I have found that 3 months might be the hardest age to predict.  One very cool thing about being a fairly small operation is, if something goes awry I am always happy to try again until we get it right!  I think it’s only happened a handful of times that I have been unsatisfied enough with a session that we schedule a do-over.

It just happens that Forrest’s 3 month shoot was one of those times. Truly my only directive (I just finished watching WALL.E with my kids) was to get a shot of him smiling. “He’s such a smiley guy” mom kept telling me over the phone.

Well mom, I think we got it! I hope you’ll agree it was worth the wait!

Can’t get enough of those rolls.

Sometimes everything just works out. A session will just fall together in a way that I couldn’t have planned. I still surprise myself by how much FUN we can have in the studio. I don’t think any of us was expecting to have such a great time… I don’t know why we expected it to be such a chore, but all of us keep saying what an amazingly FUN time we had - so it makes me wonder what exactly were we expecting? I’ve had the pleasure of photographing the Muno boys a few times before; but always out on their farm. Their parents own and operate Goatsbeard Farm. If you haven’t had the pleasure of eating their amazing goat’s milk cheeses you are missing out. (They can ship cheese to those of you who are outside of the mid-missouri area) Anyway, I digress. (easy to do when I’m thinking about their cheese!)

The boys and mom came over last Friday afternoon. Peter (eight) had been told he could go to the comic book store around the corner when we were finished. Perhaps that’s why everything went so well! This is a great example of my short studio session and how effective it can be. I had a hard time narrowing it down to a few choices, but here they are:

My family has a special journal we keep. It’s a beautiful little book hand crafted and stitched paper with a piece of leather that wraps around it to keep it shut. It’s our, “I’ve never seen anything like that before in all my life” journal. Linda and I are constantly amazed at the cool things we see when we’re paying attention. We often comment, “wow, I’m x number of years old and I’ve never seen anything like that. Boys! you are only x number of years old and you get to see it today!” It kept happening and we began to wonder if maybe we had seen some of this stuff but just didn’t remember. So we started to write about it. One thing I remember vividly hurrying to write down was when we saw a cardinal get hit by a car. (I know, it’s really terrible) But, it’s not something you see everyday. I think they must be smarter or faster than other birds. Or something. Anyway, it must have been hit by the car that was about 50 ft in front of us. Just before our eyes, there was this amazing explosion of red feathers. As I’m writing this, I know I’m not doing the moment justice. It was beautiful. It was really something to see. It was like a firework of red feathers. Truly, never was the death of something living quite so beautiful.

So this morning, I was feeling a little down. I’d recently lost a long term client to someone charging a ridiculously low sum. I was sad on many levels. When I work with a family from pregnancy through the birthdays every year… it is just plain a bummer knowing I won’t see them again. Anyway, on with the story! I looked out our front door and into our garden and was stopped in my tracks. There was the most beautiful complete orb spider web attached to our crabapple tree. The morning was heavy with dew and it was cool outside creating the breathtaking affect of steam coming off of everything that was alive. The tree appeared to be breathing. I don’t know if I’ve done the scene justice, but I’ve given it my best shot. Enjoy!

As I was reading through photo blogs this morning, I came across this one concerning fathers and sons.  If you’ve followed me for some time, you know I have a fondness for this subject as I had a solo exhibition in November of 2006 featuring fathers.  The images from Fraction magazine are wonderful.  They are intimate and beautiful and they tell a story.  Typically, in a portrait session, my clients want a beautiful portrait of their child.  I often struggle with myself because I also want to tell a story.  Here’s an image from a recent session that didn’t make the final cut for the client, but oh what a story it tells!

And because pictures that tell a story can also be beautiful.

Thursday was a big day for me.  I was to have my first meeting with my new photography mentor, Gloria Baker Feinstein.  I was nervous in about a million ways.  How should we start this relationship?  What should I ask?  What should I bring to show her?  Would there be long lulls in the conversation?  Would I act like a moron?  I admire her work so much I was partially afraid I’d just sit there panting at her feet and averting my eyes.

So, after getting my kids ready for school, my hair all piled up just right, make up on and- oh gosh, I’m embarrassed to say- at the last moment applying pink toe nail polish to match my shirt, I was ready to go. Every time I looked at those lovely pink toes poking out the end of my sandals, I thought, “you can do this.” and “you are such a moron for painting your toenails.”

I survived. In fact, I had an amazing day. I left with a lightness in my pink toe nailed step I hadn’t had in awhile and the knowledge I’d be back to meet with Gloria again in a few months. I had three ‘assignments’: 1. shoot more. go out once a week and shoot for myself. Walk around, work on my own projects. I have become so consumed with trying to make a living, I have lost touch with other things. This doesn’t mean I don’t absolutely love my job–I do! I love working with children, with families. 2. shoot less. Try to be more thoughtful in my photo sessions with clients. 3. read photo blogs. I came home with a folder full of links to great photo blogs and an intention to spend an hour a day reading different ones. I started yesterday. It was a wonderful way to start my day!

I hope to bring you the fruits of some of this thoughtfulness in the days and weeks to come. We’ll start here, at home. I had a shoot scheduled for this morning, but it had to be rescheduled. Instead we’ve had a totally lazy morning here at the VandePot (my new little nickname for our family) house. Isaac loves to snuggle in when reading stories so this is a regular moment here. He’s making a face to match that of Mrs. Biddlebox’s I left the image in color so you can see his toenails. They’re painted pink.

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