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.

My only instructions were:  ”goofy.  we want it to be goofy.  definitely not the {big box store name here} family photo.”

ok. I can do that.

out came the instruments and a song and we were on our way. we (any Orr St. artist who was working last saturday) were treated to a fun concert along the way.

outside, it stopped raining long enough for a few fun ones. I love the red window and the bird poop on the wall.

we also made time to grab a few photos for Brodie’s senior pictures. here’s my favorite with a little flourish using one of my cool new photoshop design brushes.

If you follow my blog at all, you know I love my job.  I just feel so utterly lucky to get to spend my days doing the thing I love the most.  Monday was no exception.  It was a beautiful day, weather-wise.  (What’s with this lovely, coolish weather in late July??!!)  I got to go for a drive in the country and meet up with a really wonderful family.  I hadn’t seen them sense their second child, Mae, was 2 months old.  Baby number three, Sophia, was just 10 days old and ready to go for her first photo shoot.  I hate to tell you, Sophia, but you were totally upstaged by your big brother, Henry, and big sister!  Those two stole my hearts.  Henry could have talked to me all day, I think.  Well, we headed outside for some family photos and the first thing I saw was a cute little snake slithering up the tree!  After we all examined it, we took some fun family photos and then the two big kids got on the ground (because I was on the ground) and came slithering over to me.  I captured them the whole way and then they jumped on me and wrestled me to the ground.  Luckily, the whole family - including grandparents and children- seemed to have a camera going so someone captured this great image of us on the ground:

Sometimes (well, actually… lots of the time) I get to meet some extraordinary people. Last week I had the opportunity to meet a woman who turned 101 years old today. My mom helps take care of her so she brought her down to the studio to be a part of my SnapRAGEous event. (more images to see from that coming soon!) I was so impressed with Ms. Lucy. To be 101 and so active and full of spice! She was so full of stories to tell. I wish I had all day to listen to them! I was mostly excited she was willing (and happy to) don a funny hat and be a part of the SnapRAGEous experience!

Recently a family came to one of the events here at Orr St. and fell in love with this photograph I have on display.  Evidently, their family doctor has a collection of photos and paintings depicting Harley Davidson motorcycles with babies and children.  Wondering if he might like to add it to his collection, I was asked to display it so they could check it out.  I hope everyone enjoys it!  I sure have for years.  This was one of my great families I worked with early on.  This ‘tough’ guy teaches high school english.  The baby was a premie and if I remember correctly, was actually 5 weeks old at the time of this session.

So, just as I say I’m going to post every day, my life gets really crazy for a few weeks.  Boy, those robo spammers were on to me!  It’s uncanny the amount of spam an idle blog will attract!  

While I’ve been away, I have been working hard on my graphic design skills! I’ve become committed to removing the cd purchasing option of my package and have worked very hard to design a good system for viewing proofs and ordering prints. Over the holiday season I designed several greeting cards, I’ve designed several collages and even one huge mural that I’ll show you soon.

Here is an example of the new proof book cover. Each client gets a personally designed cover for their proof book full of images. And YES! you get to keep the proof book! It’s all a part of the package.

Okay, I hear you.  I know.  I am a terrible blogger!  I’m sure anyone who was reading this has given up on me by now!  SO, in an effort to stop the spam comments from coming in (the robospammers like it when I don’t blog regularly) I am going to post something today… and hopefully every day or at least more regularly.  The “pre-Christmas-we-need-our-family-pictures-now” rush hit me hard (yay!) this year and I finally feel like I’m mostly caught up.  I’ll try to post some of those fun images for everyone to see in the next few days.  For today: I opened my photo editing software to get caught up on some images I made of friends’ children (these always end up at the bottom of the stack of things to do… sorry friends!) I opened to this image.  I just love it.  In fact, I love it so much it inspired me to get onto this blog and post!

Wow!  What a morning!  I was so excited to get to my job today.  I had the opportunity to handle and photograph sheets of money printed in the early 1900’s.  I had no idea that before the Great Depression, banks printed their own money.  It was signed by the president of the bank and the cashier.

Check out these scissors! They were used to cut the money. They were at least 18 inches long!

Check this out: the piece of paper on the top is a check from 1890…and that’s a stamp in the top right corner. They just put a stamp on the check and put it in the mail!

I have never been more proud to be a photographer as I was last Sunday.  I was honored to be a part of Hold That Hug a drop in family photo/play-date at the park in honor of Sarah E.M. Becking Six local photographers (and about a dozen other supporters!) donated time and energy to create this amazing event.  To see All of the AMAZING photos (and photos by Sarah that are for sale) go to www.becking.zenfolio.com  A slideshow of the event should be up soon at the Hold that Hug blog.

I think this photo of Ashley Turner and Kim Wade is a great example of what the day was like. (Thanks to Abbie Brown for taking pictures of the whole event for us!)

As I’m re-reading this…I’m just seeing that this doesn’t really express what I want it to. The day was so big, the event so big and so important. I met some amazing people who told me their personal stories and reasons for being there. It was so much bigger than me. It was so much bigger than what I can say here. Isaac (my 4 year old) called it a miracle…and in a way, it really was. I photographed a family with a teenage son who had never had a family picture made, I photographed a family who had lost their dad just 2 months ago, I photographed two little boys with their sticks that “gave them power”. Kim Wade took my family picture (look under hold that hug, silverbox photographers: kim wade–we’re the first one in her folder) and we LOVE it…you know, photographers are pretty hard to photograph.

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