Last month I shot Pam and Ankit's wedding with the fabulous Dave McLaughlin. I always have such a great time when I work with Dave. Be sure to check out his fabulous photos here.
All taken with a Polaroid 600SE on Fujifilm FP-3000B.
My wonderful Foundation team leader and friend Amy Deputy took this wonderful photo of me with the donkeys.
The boys love their Chinese dumplings. Sam was even reduced to tears when he thought there were no more steamed pork buns.
Here are two shots from the Roselle's session that I had not posted yet and that I love. They are just so 'parenthood' to me. Its blessings and its frustrations in all their glory.
Sam's class always has a really fun party to celebrate Valentine's Day.
All images shot with a Hasselblad 500C on Fuji 400H film.
Here are some more from this very fun session.
I love it when I get film back from the lab and I LOVE this shot of Josh and Ben. I just started using Richard Photo Lab and they rock the casbah.
For most people those two words evoke Florida, drunk sorority and fraternity kids, string bikinis and all around debauchery. Not for me. For me it means playgrounds, Scooby Doo and general entertainment for a five year old. Yes it is this week. So all of the client work I am already behind on will have to wait a bit longer while I play host to the little man. He instructed me this morning that we were supposed to go on vacation during spring break. This made me think of those retro 50s photos with the captions over them. Mine would have said "Whoops! I forgot to book our all expenses paid luxury vacation for four equipped with a nanny".For clients wanting to get in touch with me--I will be checking email and voicemail when the little tyrant allows me to : ) For those of you parents who are in the same boat as I am--may the force be with you.
I take Sam to school every morning and Josh takes Ben. Part of my morning routine is to hang out with the kids in his class for a little bit every morning. They are all just so darn cute and they love it when I take their photo. Plus it always puts my life into perspective. Like this morning when I was pretty proud of myself for having showered and put on not only clean clothes, but clothes that were not sweatpants. So I sat down on the playground with my cup of coffee, enjoying the sunshine when the button of my pants popped off (always a bad feeling) and then out of the blue a little boy named Alex ran towards me and gave me a big hug. It was a nice feeling. Then they all started coming to me one at a time for a hug. Pure sweetness. Suddenly Lillia was standing before me, her hair and hands covered in shaving cream and glitter. And I had to pause. Do I ruin this clean outfit and possibly hurt Lillia's feelings or do I say screw the clothes and give her a bear hug? Of course I gave her a big hug. And then Alex came running at me again and the coffee (luckily no longer hot) spilled all over both of us. Isn't that just the best metaphor for my life? So here is one morning's journey from home to school and who we found there.
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.
Finally here are the rest of the shots of baby Henry and his entourage, who are most likely overworked, underpaid and exhausted about now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am still playing catch up from being out of town last week. So for now. here are some more from the other night.
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.
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.
