I’ve been away from my little blog for too long! Like so many of you with children attending schools in the area, we have been busy with last minute summer vacationing, back-to-school shopping, and finally…..our first days of seventh grade! How in the world did this happen? My sweet little baby girl has grown into a sweet, beautiful preteen. I look at her sometimes and the thought of how quickly it is happening……the growing up thing……it makes my head spin. And I am so guilty of not documenting it enough! Now, I am not sure what is enough……..maybe there would never be an “enough” for me. But nonetheless, I think we are due for a daughter’s photo shoot this weekend:)

Fall will be here before you know it and I can’t wait for all the outdoor sessions I have lined up! And I will be SUPER excited about the cooling temperatures. This summer seemed particularly brutal in that area. I can’t wait to meet the babies I will be photographing too. I am so happy to have quite a few new mommies and daddies that I will be working with around the holidays this year. I don’t know why my December and January newborn calendar always seems to fill so quickly, but it does!

More blogging is coming next week so check back iin to see the latest sessions!
And here are just a couple of last minute, quick snaps taken on the first day back to school at my house. This is one of my daughter’s best friends and I cannot tell you how proud I am of the smart, sweet, lovely young ladies they are becoming:)

Well, she makes photographs, of course!!! It’s been some time since my last post. April showers and waiting for the first steps of some of my little subjects have pushed back 4 appointments since my NYC vacation. Looks like next week I am going to be a VERY busy newborn and family photographer, so I guess I’d better share now if I am every going to do it:)

So, this post is about the trip my dear daughter and I took to New York City recently to visit my sister. It was my daughter’s very first trip and my first in way longer than it should be. I can’t begin to express to you how exciting this trip was for me. My daughter is a preteen (gulp!) and truly is one incredible kid. She was so full of wonder and totally threw herself into the total NYC experience. She didn’t want to miss a thing. And listen……my sister was not fooling around when she planned the itinerary! We crammed a ton of “experiences” in during our just over a week trip. Here is the quick 411 on what we did while there, as copied from her Facebook stream:

Empire State Building
Times square (wax museum)
Walked brooklyn bridge
Katz deli
Tomkins square park (dog park and squatters)
Washington square park (watched those dudes that flip over people)
Dinner at Cowgirl Hall of Fame
Shopping and walking
More Shopping and walking
And shopping and walking
Pedi cab ride in central park
Tea at the plaza hotel
Fao swartz
American Girl Store
John’s Pizza
Pearl River
China town (lunch)
Little italy (cannolis)
Grand central station (Juniors Cheescake)
Saw “Wicked” on Broadway
Mood fabrics
Museum of Natural History
NBC Studio Tour
Late Night With JImmy Fallon Taping (with backstage perks and picture with JF)

OK yall, that’s not even all of it. Because of course the shopping and walking and shopping and walking and shopping and walking……well, it covers a lot of stuff. Watching my daughter’s joy with each new experience and sight was just priceless. I was so proud of how positive and agreeable and grateful she was during the whole trip. Sigh…….makes a mommy so proud and so happy. That’s the stuff, yall. That’s it. The best life has to offer:)

OK, sorry for the mush! If you know me at all, you know I am a big ole sap:) So, anyway, as we were planning this trip I was wondering how I was going to handle the “photographer” side of me. To be honest, my own personal photographs have declined since starting my photography business years ago. My newborn photography and child and family photography have kept me busy. I find it hard to look at pictures I took where I wasn’t focused on the art, but rather it was secondary to experiencing the moment myself. I want to pick it apart afterwards and say, “oh now why didn’t I use a higher shutter speed” or “what a boring composition!” Ha! I wonder if any of you other photographers can relate to this? Anyway, I wanted to capture some of this trip and had to decide to make peace with my inner perfectionist. I had to tell myself that if I studied every photograph I took on my vacation, while taking it and later while processing and then enjoying it, I would drive myself crazy and MISS MY VACATION. And miss this joy that I was able to witness in my daughter! I told myself that it was fine to stop long enough to really focus on making an image occasionally, but I would also need to be OK with the fact that some of my images are just snapshots! And that’s OK! I love my old snapshots and I should love these too:) It was liberating. There was no stress about the photos. I occasionally took a little more time…..like when crossing the Brooklyn Bridge or at the top of the Empire State Building. But most of the time I just happily snapped away, and felt more a part of what was going on around me than just an observer. I even set up some shots and put my gear in my sister’s hands every now and then so I could have some more images of me with my daughter. Sadly I do not have enough snaps of us together. This year that has to change.

Anyway, this is getting rambly:) Just to say that not every image here is portfolio worthy…….it wasn’t the intention while I was shooting either. But I think they are fun and exciting just the same and I hope you like looking:) I would love to tell all the details of our trip but I think it would probably be enough info for at least 5 blog posts. We are already getting pretty long here. How about I just stick to the highlights?

First subway ride for my daughter. She grew to love it and blended in and looked like a real New Yorker by her second ride. No joke! This was the first image I took in NY.

And here are a few more:

And by the end of the trip, you couldn’t tell her from the other New Yorkers. Here she is looking very “pippencoop”! That is a word borrowed from my sis which basically means stylishly and creatively mismatched in a fabulous way…haha!

The first day we rode into the heart of the city and here is what we saw when we came up from the subway:

We quickly made our way over to the Empire State Building……something my sister had not done even after almost 20 years in the city:

That is one beautiful building. I kind of fell in love with it. I am a sucker for art deco and I wonder how many people actually look at and appreciate the details of the building itself. Even the store fronts on that block on the backside of the building had an impressive art deco style and I imagined how grand they were back then:)

Wow am I glad it wasn’t the busy season. You take the elevator up 80 floors and then you have a choice…..wait 20 minutes for another elevator to take you another 6 flights or hoof it up the stairs. Hey, no problem, right? That’s what we thought. No big deal. Only I still don’t think that was only 6 flights of stairs, yall! And also, after that speedy trip up 80 stories, I think something happens to you. It’s the altitude or something, I swear! Well, that’s my story and I am sticking to it. That was a S-L-O-W walk up 6 (yeah, right!) flights. But we made it! And I did take just a few minutes to take some images that I like. A couple are looking up from the observation deck to the needle, and then a couple are looking out at the city. Can you pick out the Chrysler building?

We ate some awesome NY pizza for lunch and made our way down to one of my daughter’s favorites for shopping, Sanrio. Hello Kitty heaven!!

So my daughter had money she had been gifted by grandparents and her auntie that she had been saving for the trip and I told her it was completely up to her how she spent it. She did so well! She found something she really wanted here but it was a little more than she expected it to be so I told her to just think on it while we traveled across the street to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. We love this kind of touristy stuff. It did not disappoint! So much fun!

My daughter decided that she did want the metallic blue, large HK bag so we went back to the store and picked it up and then headed to Sephora for some girly make-up fun before a delicious dinner at Ruby Foo’s! Amy’s hubbie Mike met us for dinner and it was Oh so delicious! Here is my sister and the dear daughter all made up and ready for dinner. Note the awesome new bag:)

That was a really big first day! I promise not to bore you with the details of the whole next week……let’s try to just hit some of the hightlights with pics:) The Brooklyn Bridge was definitely a highlight. Walking it’s length from Brooklyn to Manhattan and the view of the city was awesome. A wedding was even taking place on the bridge as we crossed! Regrettably I could not get close enough to get any decent images and only had a standard and wide angle lens along. But the bridge itself was fantastic and definitely satisfied my urge to take a few photos I could focus on. Here we are crossing the bridge:

And yeah, the sky could not have been more amazing than it was this day. I so rarely shoot inanimate objects at this time of day. It was pretty exciting to break out and do something completely different with the camera……..just for fun.
This day we basically walked all through Manhattan’s east and west village. We did lunch at Katz’s Delicatessen. Have you seen “When Harry Met Sally”? The scene where Meg Ryan impresses Billy Crystal with her, uhem, “acting” was shot here. I’m told it’s a very famous place that has been around for a long time. It was my first encounter with matzo ball soup. Yummy!

Lots of walking this day! But we did stop and sit for a while in Washington Square Park and watched these unbelievably flexible and strong guys do some pretty incredible things. One of the guys jumped over a girl standing up…….flipped right over her. Then he lined up 6 girls and one very lucky little boy and flipped over all of them!! He was a real showman. I wish I had been using a little faster shutter speed for these images…….Oooops! There I go! Eh, I still love looking at these!!!




Can you see what is happening in that last group?! The guy ran 20 feet and jumped – the first image catches him just as he is bending his knees to jump, then flipped over the group and as you see in the second pic he just barely touched the side of the kid’s head, then came down on the other side without touching anyone else!! Amazing what people can do!!!!

My sister and daughter and I laughed so hard when we saw these images too because we had an encounter with the large man with the bright red cap who appears in the background of the flipping images. As we were walking down the street, not far from the park, we passed this man and as we did he said to us, in a very large bellowing (but not threatening in any way) voice, “Stop looking for husbands!”. We laughed so hard. Really? What does that mean? It’s just me and my sister and my daughter walking through Manhattan exploring and talking and enjoying the adventure. We decided to take it as a compliment. We must have looked awfully pretty that day!

Wow this is the longest post in history. Ok, faster……
We took a pedicab ride in Central Park. It was only an hour and we didn’t see even half of the park. But it was a new experience and we had such a wonderful time, despite the dreary weather.

Another highlight for little/big girls (because my sister and I loved it just as much as Riley), we had tea at the Plaza, just like Eloise! We visited the Eloise gift shop, which is just incredible, and my daughter picked up a game of French Bingo here, to help her with her French classes next year:)

I have the itinerary above so I won’t detail anymore. Let’s just say everyday was perfectly full and wonderful. I wish I had some images from our night out to see Wicked, which was spectacular. If you care about musicals/theatre at all, DO NOT miss the opportunity to see it!! I loved it sooooo much…….we all did.

I met three friends I have known online from my business and that was very special to me. They are all awesome peeps and I was so glad to have time to visit with them: Joel Meisels of Adorama Camera, Zoe Berkovic of Zoe Berkovic Photography, and Carolina Nicasio of Carolina Nicasio Photography. Zoe was even kind enough to snap two quick images of me and my daughter at Grand Central Station. Certainly not the kind of lighting we are used to and no time for set up. But I can’t tell you how much I love having these, Zoe! Thank you!

But let’s skip on to the last day because I have some pictures to share……even though some are quite pitiful. We passed by beautiful Saint Patrick’s Cathedral:

on our way to the NBC studios at Rockefeller Plaza. My sister, who is a talented singer/songwriter, has some wonderful connections and signed us up for a small tour. We saw the Saturday Night Live cast in rehearsal – although we couldn’t hear them. Helen Mirren was the guest host that was in rehearsal with them and they all graciously waved hello to our little group. Then we were special guests at a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon! My daughter was so excited to be able to be a part of the audience that day. She was so cute and was an excellent audience member. After the show was done, my sister took us backstage and we were introduced to Jimmy’s warm-up comic, Seth Herzog, who was SO funny and very nice. We were introduced to Ahmir “Questlove” and bassist Owen Biddle. And then we met Jimmy! This was actually my second time to meet Jimmy and he is such a nice guy. When we met with him, they had already covered up the set where he talks with his guests, but he was so kind to uncover it all and have my daughter sit in his guest chair and talk to her as if she were a guest on the show and let my sister snap away with the camera. Look at that grin!

One more thing before I sign off on the novel this evening! While I was there, I took just a few minutes to do some “child” photography. My sister and her husband have three fur babies that they love dearly. I hope they love the images too:)

Meet Nosferatu. And don’t let the name fool you…..he’s a lover, not a biter:)

This is LeRoy – pronounced as le ROY, not leroy. He was at the door every morning when we woke, ready for a morning cuddle.

And this is the ever elusive, Pearl. You can only get so close with a camera before she starts to look petrified!

I hope you enjoyed the post! I had a few clients and friends who really wanted to see and hear about the trip so I thought this could be fun. Let me know if you enjoyed the post and if you would like to see a personal post like this every once in a very great while. And thank you so much for visiting my blog! I hope you’ll be back:)

So, it may seem very quiet here if you visit the blog often, but I assure you I have been very busy indeed. The first few months of this year have seen a lot of changes for me personally as well as professionally. I have been to another fabulous workshop with some amazing photographers and cannot wait to put what I have learned into action. My April calendar is full and May and June are filling fast as well. I will be extremely busy before I know it and so I am trying to prepare for that and enjoy the other behind the scenes work I am doing right now. I did take a break last week to meet with the most adorable little baby boy who was so excellent and slept almost the whole session! He totally spoiled me and I loved photographing him. I cannot wait to share his newborn photo session images and hope to do that later this week.

Our home and my business have moved and we couldn’t be happier. Well…….there is still quite a bit of work to be done. But I am really just trying to slow down and enjoy the process of making my home and my business feel just the way I want. I want my business to be warm and welcoming to my clients and reflect me and my work. The goal for my new client room is to make it a space that is classic and modern with a good dose of whimsy. So you can let me know how I am doing by checking out these quick image I took yesterday, shortly after my first visit by a client to the new space!! The TV wall looks barren right now but will soon be filled with a wonderful new product that I am ecstatic about offering my clients! OK, on with the images…….and I’ll see you later this week!

Just a short and sweet little post this evening. I have been hard at work on so many things and have neglected this little blog the past couple of weeks. Forgive me. I should have posted earlier to announce I would be taking a bit of a break to wrap up all of winter’s orders and start working on my new client space, where I will be able to meet with my clients, hold my proofing sessions, and hold orders for pick up. The space is coming along wonderfully! I am almost done with it and will be posting images soon! The temptation to post some now is really hard to overcome sometimes! But I know you’ll appreciate it so much more if you can see it completed:)

So next week I start shooting again and have a couple of spots still open in late March. April, however, only has one spot available. I’m so excited about all the family sessions I have coming up. The break from outdoor sessions has been long enough…..I am ready to start shooting in the fresh air again!

I got just a little taste of shooting outdoors again recently and wanted to share an image I worked on this evening. There is a magnificent tulip tree in our neighbors back yard and it comes over the fence and right up on our second story deck. It is truly gorgeous and fills the air with an intoxicating aroma. It brought me such joy for the short time that it was in bloom but lost its leaves rather quickly. I begged my daughter to let me take some pictures of her among the flowers and petals. She was wonderful. Here is what we captured that day.

I’ll be back next week!

Just a very quick post this evening to let you know I will be appearing on WLTX channel 19′s Friends at 5 tomorrow (Wednesday, December 22 5:00pmEST). I will be a participant in their 12 days of Christmas promotion….so if you are a fan, you might want to follow along for an opportunity to win a little something:) Have a computer close by to participate! I’ll also be showing some of my images and sharing a few photography tips.

I am so excited to have been asked to contribute to the promotion! I believe you can visit www.wltx.com and click on the “Friends @ Five watch and chat box” at the top left of the screen. This box will appear just prior to the show airing at 5pmEST. If you want to actually enter the contest, you must sign up on the website in advance and use the chat feature during the show. Good luck!!

And just because no post feels adequate without images, here are just a few from a session I will be blogging soon!

I’m warning you now…..if you don’t want to read a blog post by a proud mommy declaring how amazing her beloved daughter is, just move along……this post isn’t for you:) But I have been told that some of my readers, blog stalkers, friends, and family members like the personal blogging, so here it goes!

Yes, my daughter is exceptional. She makes me proud and I love her like I never knew I could love anyone. I want so many wonderful things for her in life. And one of the things I have always wanted for her is to have a voice…..a strong and confident voice. I was painfully shy and often socially awkward growing up. Well, I joke that I still am socially awkward…only I’m not really joking. I still find it difficult to speak up in groups of new people, when I am out of my element. And I find it so difficult to open up and let my own light shine sometimes. Ok, wait! This is about her and not me!!! So, enough of the history. Just know that having my daughter feel confident enough to speak up, be herself, let her light shine, have a voice that not only speaks kindly and confidently to others, but to herself as well is really important to me.

Some days ago my daughter had a writing assignment in school. She is a 6th grader and new to middle school and the assignment was to write about middle school fears. She gave it to me to read over before turning it in. As I read this paper, my eyes welled up with tears and my heart swelled with pride. This paper was so clever and funny. She had this amazing tongue-in-cheek, dramatic flair to the paper that seemed so well developed for a child of her age. My daughter is quite dramatic at times – and who in the world knows where she got THAT from (snicker) – but this was more complex than the usual drama. I was so moved by reading it that I had my husband come in the office to read it too. Immediately my husband said, “You should blog this”. I was unsure my daughter would appreciate that.

Earlier this week when picking my daughter up from school she excitedly told me about her Language Arts teacher reading her paper to the class and giving her a 100 grade on it. She said, “She told me I had a great voice”! I was thinking, “Yeah! I knew that!” Oh man……proud moment.

So with my lovely daughter’s permission, I am putting her piece here on the blog:)

Middle School Fears

After spending a few weeks at middle school, you realize it’s not that bad at all. People don’t think you’re weird, at least not that you know of. Your locker is near and organized and the dog finally learned not to eat paper! And you haven’t been late to class once! None of your fears have come true, and you’re surviving middle school!

Just throwing a couple of snaps from our adventures in Texas this summer up here since it doesn’t seem like a real post with an image or two:)

So it’s been a little slow on the blog again because the family has been on vacation. We were so happy to travel to Texas to see family, friends, and have a few new adventures too! This is a super short post as I am preparing some new client sessions for their posts. The calendar is promising many more in the weeks ahead so check back for more professional work.

But tonight I just wanted to do a little personal post about one of our adventures on our recent vacation. We visited a great place called Fossil Rim Wildlife Center right outside of Glen Rose Tx. It is 1700 acres with 1100 animals that are allowed to roam free in near natural conditions. There are many different kinds of exotic deer, zebras, ostriches, giraffes, and so many others. You stop at a little store at the gate and pay your admission ( which is totally reasonable for this experience ) and can also purchase feed bags to feed to the animals you encounter as you drive through the park. We were instructed to drop the pellets out the window of the car and NOT feed the animals by hand…..EXCEPT the giraffes. We could feed the giraffes by hand!!! Oh my! I can’t tell you how this thrilled me. I LOVE giraffes and occasionally try to feed the ones on exhibit at our own Riverbanks Zoo, which usually leaves me feeling disapppointed as there are always such a large number of people clammering to feed them and the giraffes never linger in one spot for long. This was NOTHING like that experience!

Our vehicle approached the giraffes and we tried to lure them to us. As the giraffes layed about or hung back in the shade, it seemed like it was going to be another disappointing experience. We pulled forward again and I stood up in the front seat of the car hanging out the sunroof with my hands holding the pellets we had been given and calling sweetly to this giraffe, as if he were our beloved family pooch, and thinking to myself what a fool I must look like and how these gentle giants were probably getting a good chuckle. The largest giraffe started eyeing me and I suddenly got a little nervous as he slowly approached me. I called down to my husband through the sunroof – did he really think this was ok? He wouldn’t be aggressive, would he? I was nervous because this guy was HUGE! I have never seen such a giant giraffe before. But he was so gentle and trusting and I was so thrilled to be there at that moment, sharing this experience with my family, watching my daughter’s face as she also fed him from the car window. It was just incredible!

My husband – who wasn’t a giggling ball of goo like I was – was smart enough to hand me the iPhone and tell me to try and record it. So that’s what I am sharing tonight. I hope it makes you smile too;)

This is the follow-up post with images from my work with other photographers a couple of weeks ago. I have been so busy preparing for and wrapping up loose ends and finishing up work before my workshop in just over a week in Salt Lake City! I am really looking forward to studying with one of my favorite photographers! But I’ll tell you all about that a little later. I’m also preparing for my sister’s wedding the week after that. I hope to have some gorgeous images to share with you about that:) And I hope you will forgive me for being short on words tonight. I should have been asleep long ago but knew if I didn’t post this before the weekend, these images might not ever see my blog!

The really cool thing about checking out the images from the different photographers who were at this get-together is seeing how differently we all saw the same scene……each artist with their own voice!

This past weekend I had a wonderful opportunity to meet up with a group of photographers from across the United States. We met in North Carolina for a “workshop” of sorts. I learned so much and can’t believe what a fantastic group of ladies these were. Although I haven’t known this group for a long time, they treated me as if we had always known each other. Everyone was willing to share openly and contribute in any way they thought might benefit the group. We photographed teens in a downtown, urban setting, children and families in a fabulous decorators paradise of a loft in trendy Highpoint, and children again in a garden and amazing field of high grass and wild flowers. We had meals together and a late night of editing madness and pizza. We observed a couple of newborn sessions. I’m culling through all my images now and am loving them! I am going to post just a few right now and post some more after the weekend:)

Next week I will have plenty of opportunity to put what I have learned to good use with three sessions lined up! I love my job:)
Have a great weekend!!!!