Refreshing

It's senior portrait season and I am loving the variety it's bringing to my photography. It's often a welcome break after months of chasing toddlers, hoping to get a shot before they are on the move again. Believe me, I love photographing little kids, but it is refreshing to hang out with these seniors. We wander around downtown hunting for cool alleys or doorways, talking along the way. It's fun to get to know them and learn about their interests and personality, putting away the bubbles and squeaky toys for the day and taking my time with backgrounds and poses. But most importantly, I enjoy taking the time to capture each senior's uniqe style and personality.

Have you had any welcome changes in your photography routine lately? If so, we'd love to see what's keeping you refreshed.

Yin and Yang

 Sometimes I feel like I have bipolar disorder when it comes to photography. I have two great loves, nature macros and people portraits. In many ways they seem so different, but when you really start to dissect it, maybe not so much.

Partially because, when I shoot people, I end up all up in their faces, in their eyes, trying to catch the intimacy of the moment. I don't go telephoto like many photogs do when they are shooting people, because they don't want to crowd their subject and make them feel uncomfortable. For better or worse, I use a shorter lens and crawl around, up, down, and on top of the people I am shooting. Luckily most of the time they are children, who seem to tolerate my antics better than adults. I make faces at them, or in desperate times, even pull out the silly noises from behind the camera.

All of which I don't have to do when shooting nature. When I am rolling around in the dirt, I enjoy the silence. The calm. The fact that I have to control my breathing to be absolutely still since I don't use a tripod when shooting very close macros. It almost becomes meditative. Zen like. Peaceful.

Such different experiences, but both essential to making photography such a rich part of my life. The laughter and the peace. The yin and the yang.

Thanks to Aimee aka Greeblemonkeyfor being our gracious guest blogger/honorary sister today and for sharing her perfect photograph and words with us. Aimee has also offered one of her stunning 2009 calendars from her etsy shop today for our giveaway. Leave your comment for a chance to get your hands on it! It's one beautiful way to keep track of your New Year. And be sure to visit her blog for yet another super sweet greeblepix contest this month.

the practice of patience

Babies oblige, scrunching and burping and stretching and drooling, more or less lying there all chubby and delectable. Toddlers must be chased, cajoled, tickled, bribed, tricked. Adults require layers upon layers of self-awareness to be peeled back with a gentle hand.

A few days ago, Marco taught me a new lesson. He was too cool for me. And it changed everything.

We scrambled atop boulders and danced like crabs and dug for treasure and walked through the woods to a secret cabin perched on the edge of the sea. What made for shot after shot of his little brother and sister was contrived for him. UGH, he said to me, rolling his eyes in mock boredom, sticking out his tongue. I don't want to do that.

You... what? Oh. Okay. Harpy out.

Startled, I turned away for a while, focused instead on the toddler and the preschooler, pointed my lens at familiar and readily tameable beasts. All with my mind racing, and one eye trained on the conundrum that stood kicking rocks by himself, hugging his mother one moment and scowling good-naturedly the next.

Shooting Marco was the first time I've ever been so exquisitely attuned to patience. To stepping back, to letting him show me what kind of photo he wanted me to take--not the kind myself or his parents may have envisioned, but what is just right.

This is the age of the birth of a sense of self--delicate, tentative, antsy.

But looking straight at you, when he chooses to.

Enchanted

It is true that the magic of childhood is for the most part intangible however, as a professional photographer and a mother I know that the perfect moment in time captured in a picture can tell a pretty grand tale of the enchantment.

What is it exactly that makes us swoon at the sight of a sleeping baby or melt when we feel the motion of uninhibited play and total freedom of being?

Do the eyes have it? It is a gesture? Or something about the context of the shot that makes it irresistible?

Even after all these years, and many clients later, I’m not sure I can put my finger on it exactly. I guess I just know it when I see it, just as I’m sure you do.

Share with us in a photo what kind of kid stuff stops your grown-up heart in reverie.

Superhero Photo Challenge: just bodies

 Sometimes you don't need to see their faces to take an evocative portrait. This photo is from a wedding I shot recently. The grooms are there, standing strong on the top of a bluff.... I love seeing the wind flap their jackets around and how they seem to match each other crease for crease. Somehow you can see the love passing between them in the simple embrace of their hands.

This is the superhero photo challenge this week. Let's see what portraits can communicate without faces. Here are a few shots for inspiration.