March 10, 2010

This is What I Saw

These were taken the afternoon I came back from Foundation and picked up the boys at school after not having seen them for five days.

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Henry Take Two | Austin Newborn Photographer

Finally here are the rest of the shots of baby Henry and his entourage, who are most likely overworked, underpaid and exhausted about now.

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March 9, 2010

Happy 5th Birthday Ben!

When Ben was just one month old I took the photo below of him and it is one of my all time favorites. So at my behest, Ben and I recreated that photo this morning on the event of his fifth birthday. I am not a perfect mother, but in my favor, I did remember your birthday on the right day this year. I love you baby.

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March 8, 2010

Polaroid

I just bought an old Polaroid 600SE and I LOVE it. I was inspired by the family polaroids taken by Jonathan Canlas. I am having such a good time with this camera. Having trouble nailing the exposures, but working on it.

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March 5, 2010

How I Went to a Truck Stop and Got Bit by a Donkey / aka FW8

It is hard to write about things that are meaningful to me. And the Foundation Workshop was very meaningful. It was hard and fun and exhausting and exhilarating. It changed the way I see and nothing is more valuable for my photography than that.

I had an amazing team led by the extraordinary Amy Deputy, who not only does amazing work, but has a heart bigger than the state of Texas. Our mentors were: Huy Nguyen, Rachel LaCour Nieson and Jay Premack. One thing I loved about the team leaders was that they all had skills and personalities that complemented each other. But the most important gift to me was their total generosity with their time, their skills and their energy. We had the only all female team, which I thought was pretty cool. My amazing team members were: Britt Bailey, Gulnara Samoilova, Emmy Sherman, Tak Yi Young and Tina Wilson. We made such a great team--I love them all. And a shout out to Matt Mendelsohn, who is nothing short of splendid. He is not only a great photographer, but a darn good writer to boot.

We were each given an assignment to shoot. Mine was to photograph the opening of a new yoga studio called Get Yogafied and in particular the story of Shana, who is an attorney looking to change her life by helping to open a yoga studio. After reviewing my photos from the first day of shooting, the team leaders decided that that story was complete even without the lawyer angle and that I needed to find something that would challenge me a bit more. So Huy, in his infinite wisdom, thought I should just head up 75 north and find a truck stop to shoot at. So I did. I had never been to a truck stop before and I was pleasantly surprised by how friendly everyone was. Only two people did not want me to take their photo. Mostly people just wanted me to listen to their story. Among the many people I met was JR, who works at the adjoining mini mart. He invited me to come to his 280 acre place where he has 40 DONKEYS. So of course I couldn't pass that one up. And Amy came along for the ride.

The final night everyone showed slides of their work and I WAS BLOWN AWAY! If you want to go to a workshop that doesn't talk about marketing, gear or posing, but gets to the heart of photography--the art of telling a story, then this is the one for you. The first day I got there and found out that many people had been before I was confused. I thought "why would you attend the same workshop more than once?" Now I am mentally saving my pennies to go back next year.

Below are three slideshows that show what I shot while I was there. You should definitely check out Anna Kuperberg's amazing photos of the week here and Vlad's fabulous video here.

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Sneak Peek | Austin Family Photographer

I LOVED this family. Not only were they lovable, but they had chickens and a dog. What's not to love about chickens and dogs? More to come.

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March 1, 2010

Settling In

I am still playing catch up from being out of town last week. So for now. here are some more from the other night.

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February 27, 2010

Home

I am back home with so much to say about what transpired last week. But for now I am just happy to be reunited with these two.

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February 19, 2010

Foundation

This will probably be my last blog entry for the next week. I leave on Sunday for the Foundation Workshop near Dallas and don't return until next Friday. I am really excited, and for some reason nervous, about this workshop. I have been wanting to do it for ages and in all honesty I cannot even articulate why. I just have this feeling it is going to change things for me. I have no idea what form that will take either. I know almost nothing about what we are going to do there and that is intentional. I want to go in with no preconceived idea of what to expect.

I feel like I have been stuck in some kind of rut since Ben was born almost five years ago. But if I was really honest it has been even longer than that. I struggle so much to find my own path and to not feel pressured to do things a certain way. My parents were all about the 'certain way' in life. I think that they felt success lay in keeping up with the joneses and dotting your Is and crossing your Ts. And when I fell short of that, which I inevitably always did, I didn't know where to turn. I had no model of what else life could look like.

I apologize if I have told this story on the blog before, but one of my favorite anecdotes is the first time I met my birth mother. My parents are neat freaks. You could eat off their floors. Every time we kids put something on a counter my dad would say "Put this back where it goes". Everything was spotless. I was not good at spotless. For years I would have fits of neatness followed by spurts of slovenly living and then back again. The day I met my birth mother I went in to her house in Eureka and when I walked in I thought, "This explains a lot". There was stuff EVERYWHERE and I mean EVERYWHERE. Stuff made up additional furniture. There was a pile of used diet coke cans that almost filled a room. It was INSANE. My mother would have broken out into hives if she had seen that. And suddenly the 'chaos followed by order' cycle seemed a little less crazy. It was nature/nurture in action.

I carry this perfect ideal in my head and as soon as I fall short of it, I let everything go. I am all or nothing. I exercise every day or not at all; if I eat one Haagen Dazs bar, I eat them all. I desperately need some moderation in my life, but seem unable to find it. My life has spun out of control lately. My head and my house are so full of STUFF that I cannot see anything. But sorting it all out seems like an overwhelming task. There is the very famous saying about "a journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step," but I am unable to take that step. All I see is the enormous mountain top in front of me and I decide to take a nap instead.

My dear friend Mollie is superficially the opposite of me. Her house is perfect, her clothes are perfect, she is beautiful and always looks so put together. I have had periods in my life like that, but never able to sustain them very long. I know that Mollie is not perfect. In personality I think we are more similar than different. I could use a little more of Mollie's togetherness and she could probably use a little more of my laid back ways. When I met my friend Tara for the first time I felt this crazy kinship with her because she was as laid back as I was. She didn't care what she wore or that every hair was in place and yet she exuded a strong sense of confidence that I also share. I KNOW my value, but I want to feel as outwardly confident as I can be on the inside.

And really this is mostly a problem of perception, isn't it? I always have people say to me, "You seem so together" and I almost spurt my Diet Pepsi out my nose. Or they come over and say how neat my house is (in that case I think they are just being polite). And then I wonder what matters more--the fact that I read three novels a week or the fact that my house is a disaster zone? I think it all comes down to the fact that I need to stop thinking life is an either/or proposition. Anyone who has any advice gets a chocolate bar sent to them. I would send a cocktail, but that would be messy.

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February 18, 2010

Sometimes I Forget What it is All About and Then I Remember

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Susie and Sadie | Austin Family Photographer

I still have yet to finish proofing baby Henry's newborn shoot, but I thought I would share one I got back from the lab of Susie and Sadie.

Our little family has been struck by sick kids and pink eye and sick mommy. It has been a whirlwind of disease and disruption of the routine around here. I suppose that is par for the course in February. And then to top it off some crazy guy rams his plane into an office building a half mile from here. Luckily no one was hurt. Normality, like Susie and Sadie snuggling in a chair, never looked so seductive.

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February 16, 2010

iphone iphone iphone

The iphone is the obsession at our house these days. The boys want to be playing on it constantly--especially Sam. He loves doing puzzles on it. I let him play on it, but I try to limit him, which is a tough proposition. It has gotten so bad that I cannot even use my phone in front of him because he starts screaming that he wants it. I have created a monster.

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February 15, 2010

Sam Eating Toast

I needed to finish off a roll of film from a family photo shoot, so I took a couple quick ones of Sam before we left to take him to school. Here he is finishing off his morning toast.

Shot with a Hasselblad 500C on Kodak Portra 400NC.

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February 13, 2010

Salsa Extraordinaire

I have to admit that I am not an avid reader of Pioneer Woman's blog (although I hear it is excellent), but I happened to be on there one day when I saw a photo of some yummy looking salsa. Since I moved to Texas I have had a heck of a time finding some good, fresh salsa in the grocery stores. But I am WAY too lazy to make it with fresh tomatoes, plus they are hard to find at this time of the year. So when I saw that she had a recipe and that it was EASY to boot, I had to make it. And today I did. And it was YUMMY. Not award winning, but definitely the best fresh salsa I have had in awhile. So if you like salsa, try this one. The recipe makes a ton so the next time I make it I will half it. And I added extra cilantro and garlic because I love them so.

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Katherine | Austin Portrait Photographer

I went to my friend Katherine's the other day under the auspice of doing some quick head shots for her. What I really ended up doing was drinking coffee and taking up her morning with my chit chat and letting Ben mess up her house. We did them so quickly because it was freezing and we didn't want the kids to burn down the house while we were outside. I just had to post these two because they are my favorites--of course I love the soft ones.

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