The days are long. The years are short.
Capturing the unique beauty of your life.
In the moments that define you, and every day in between.
Births are my very favorite thing to shoot. I love the struggle, the drama, the highs and lows and tension that builds until this incredible moment of joy. I recently had the pleasure of photographing a dear friend and fellow photographer's birth at Tampa General Hospital. It was such a privilege to be there and to capture this beautiful day for her and her family. Here are a few of my favorites from this very large gallery.
Due to a career change (because yes, I have a separate day job), I paused in taking photography clients from February until October. But this fall, I had the privilege of photographing this lovely family that I met through church. They are a delightful group, all of them have such a heart for family and investing in people and caring for their community, so it was my pleasure to spend a Saturday morning with them behind my camera.
Now that we are settled in the Tampa Bay area, I'm ready to launch my photography business in January 2017. It's time to move beyond the stock photography work I've been doing, and time to start taking clients. In preparation, I've been putting together a few shoots to beef up my web portfolio (which will be coming SOON), and last weekend I had the pleasure of photographing the Walker family. The Walkers live in our neighborhood, our kids play together and along the way, the grown ups forged a friendship as well. We adore this family, and it was such an honor to get to take their family portraits.
I won't spoil the entire gallery, since the Walkers may have some grand plans for these images, but here are a few of my favorites from the session.
Each year, Click Magazine and the associated women's photography forum, Clickin Moms, sponsor a weekend of regional photography walks all over the world. This year, I attended the Tampa/St. Petersburg Clickin Walk, which coincided with the St. Pete Art Walk. 9 other photographers and I set out to walk the town, take in the sights, and photograph whatever inspired us along the way. We visited a glass blower's studio, a ceramics/clay sculpture studio, and several other locations, and these are some of the images I grabbed that evening. It was a fun way to meet some local artists and photographers and get the creative juices flowing once again!
It's been so long since we've had a chance to chat! Let me catch you up!
In February, our family received orders to move to Tampa, Florida. We were to arrive in Tampa by the 15th of May, so in mid-April, movers arrived to pack up all of our worldly belongings into crates and load them onto trucks, that would put them in a container that would be stacked on a ship destined for Florida. It's mid-May, and our household goods are still on a boat somewhere, but our family is here in Florida, "glamping" in our new home. We're living with bean bags, lawn chairs, a card table and air mattresses, but hey, we're together and it's home.
In the interim, I've begun a new photo-a-day project, which I will be updating here on a monthly-ish basis. The kids spent two weeks with their grandparents in Texas while Brad and I bought a car, secured a home, and then drank and shopped and ate our way through central Florida. We spent a week in Orlando visiting Mickey and the gang (since we HAD to stay in a hotel before we could move into our home, we figured we might as well make a vacation out of it). And we've had several fun outings to explore our new home town. In typical fashion, I've taken lots of pictures, which I will slowly dole out in the weeks to come.
Keep checking back--lots of new images and updates to come!
The third boutique shooting class I took at Click Away was focused on family photojournalism. Capturing my children's childhood in an authentic way is something that is very important to me, so I was really looking forward to this class. Jessica Thomason is a master at capturing the everyday moment in a beautiful and authentic way, so shooting alongside her and learning from her was a great treat. Here are a few of the images I was able to capture in our session. Keep in mind, there were about 20 or 30 photographers crammed into one long, skinny room--so not a lot of room to work or change shooting positions.
And my favorite: Jessica's daughter looking full of mischief while her mother cleaned up the room of toys at the end of the session. It's not the most technically sound photo, but I love the sense of movement and the glimpse of her spunky personality I captured here.
When I discovered Caroline Jensen was offering a Lensbaby Portraiture class, I knew I had to sign up. Caroline Jensen is a fantastic artist and instructor, and I appreciate the work she does using the Lensbaby lenses. Lensbaby lenses allow a photographer to selectively blur parts of an image for artistic effect. The look is very different, and the lenses are manual focus and can be tricky to use, but the effect is gorgeous when done correctly. Here are a few images from the on-location shoot we did at the Alamo.
This past week, I visited San Antonio, Texas to attend the 2015 Click Away Conference, a photography conference sponsored by Clickin' Moms. The conference was three days of classes, shooting demonstrations, hands-on workshops and field trips around the area to practice what we were learning. I have been looking forward to this conference for months. For years, I've been a part of the online Clickin' Moms community, forming friendships on the forum with women I'd never met in real life. But this past week, I was able to change that: I had the opportunity to meet with and get to know the women behind the avatars, and it was such an amazing experience. During the conference, I was able to take a few courses that involved shooting models. The first of these was with Mae Burke, a photographer in Texas specializing in motherhood photography. I really enjoy Mae's work and it was such a pleasure meeting her and seeing her in action. Toward the end of class, we were separated into groups of 5 and allowed to shoot the model. Although it was crowded (5 women with cameras crowded around a mom and her baby) I managed to get a couple of shots during my 1-2 minute window.
I really enjoyed photographing this lovely model and her adorable munchkin. I would love to have had more time to work with them, but I was content to listen to Mae explain the ins and outs of breastfeeding and motherhood photography, a niche area of photography that holds great interest for me, as I am interested in eventually shooting birth and breastfeeding photography.
That's all I'll share for today--keep an eye out for additional shares over the next few days (as I catch up on editing--and laundry-- from a week away).
I was thrilled to have my 'Contemplation' image chosen by the CMPro Project as the 'Daily of the Week.' They also featured my image of the cliff diver on the CMPro Facebook page. Although I shoot my photos for my own need to create art, it is nice to have my work featured by photography communities I respect.
I recently had the privilege of photographing my dear friend Jamee's birth of her daughter, Madelyn. I got the call in the wee hours of the morning that Jamee's water had broken, so I met her at the hospital at about 5 AM. Things progressed at a slow-but-steady rate for many hours, with Jamee handling her contractions like a champ. Once labor was firmly established, she decided to get her epidural, and once she had relief from her contractions, she took a nap to rest before the upcoming delivery. After an hour of napping, her nurse came in to check on her, and as she was turning to leave the room, Baby Maddie moved in the womb--and suddenly her heart rate dropped and then became impossible to find. The nurse reacted immediately, and within minutes, an entire team had descended on the room. Baby was delivered emergently, with great drama , fear and anxiety, and after several tense moments with the neonatal team, we were relieved to hear her first plaintive cry. Maddie was whisked off to the NICU, leaving a storm of emotions in her wake. After several anxious hours, Jamee was finally wheeled down to NICU to finally hold her baby and meet her lovely daughter. Being with Jamee that day and being allowed to witness and capture the day was an honor. As her friend, I was also so glad to be there to support her through one of the roughest days of her life. Although the dramatic delivery meant no cameras in the delivery room during the moments surrounding the birth, the nurses tried to accommodate me in capturing the essence of the day. As a photographer, I see some missed focus, some chopped limbs and close compositions that were a product of being shoved into a corner during the action and the aftermath, but I know that despite the technical shortcomings, these photos will be treasured by the ones that matter most.
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