BOSTON CHILDREN'S PHOTOGRAPHER, BOSTON FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHER, BOSTON NEWBORN PHOTOGRAPHER

“Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she’s a beautiful girl
She’s a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm”

[Thank you KT Tunstall]

This year marks my first real journey into the world of photographing Seniors.  And after five sessions (with a few more on the books), I am overwhelmed, excited, rejuvenated, inspired and a bit awestruck.  I feel giddy when I come home from my sessions.  I call my mom and I tell her about each and every one of these women.  What makes them so special, how amazing they are, and… today I asked “was I really that bad a kid?” [It's not a simple answer... I was just young and a little rebellious and a tiny bit unfocused... but I turned out alright, I think!].

It’s simple.  I am overwhelmingly fortunate to be able to photograph these girls and spend time with them.  I could not love this any more.  Maybe I could.  Next year this will be a big focus for me.  More on that in the spring.

If you are a Senior and you have not booked your Senior Photographs, you still have time.  Masconomet is due in November, and this leaves us with September and October and the glorious light and color of the Fall.  Please email me using the contact form on this blog, through my website or message me through Facebook.  And don’t forget to Like my business!  If you are a parent of a Senior, please feel free to email me or call me.  I feel it’s important to have parents connected and involved with me so that you know you have entrusted your child to someone who is infinitely concerned about their happiness and their well being (even if they are all grown up!) and will do everything I can to ensure they have beautiful photographs that you both will love.

For more details on my “Keeping it Real” senior sessions, click here.

Most of these have already been posted to Facebook, but I thought I’d share them here.  I will have more to share in the next few week, stay tuned.

I love having siblings join.  What an awesome way to knock out some holiday gift prints and get the image for your holiday cards!

So I am a tiny bit backed up on blogging.  I am sure you have figured that out.  I am also a tiny bit backed up on editing, that’s sort of obvious too.  I know I keep repeating it, but someday it will be true.  I do believe tomorrow is the day I will be caught up!  And tomorrow I will be sending out Lisa’s slideshow and gallery.  Because it’s all edited and I’ve been a bad blogger, I figured I’d share more images in addition to what I already posted on Facebook.  So you know, sometimes at this time of year, there is no rhyme or reason to my blogging.  Sometimes I blog immediately.  Sometimes I post to Facebook.  Sometimes I email a few favorites and they never make it to anywhere else.  And sometimes I just send out the gallery.  Unless you ask me not to post anywhere, how things show up is just sort of random and no indication of how I felt about the session or what your images look like.  Sometimes it’s just hard to get it all organized consistently!

Anyway, I suggested the back of River Road to Lisa, and then she emailed me her wardrobe selection, and I have to tell you, I was THRILLED.  It really felt like something out of a J. Crew catalog.  I simply love the style, and I think it was an amazing blend of classic mixed with whimsical.  I believe it was perfect.  I loved this session so much.

I really love this family of hers.  When I first brought Christofer to Joyful Noises, even before Rainor joined the Toddler One class, Will used to lean out the door of Preschool and say “Hey Christofer, hey buddy, come here and give me five.”  And I’d think “Wow, my son has older friends!  How cool.”  Then I met Rainor and Lisa and I immediately liked Lisa as there is a bond with any mom that is juggling her work and her kids and somehow pulling it all together.  And what I first remember loving about Lisa was that she used to put cute little notes on Rainor’s lunch.  And that’s the sort of thing that a hormonal pregnant woman would start crying over [NO.  I am not pregnant.  I WAS pregnant at the time.].  Christofer and Rainor became fast friends and still are.  They are getting ready to be the big guns in Preschool and I am so thrilled they have two more years in class together.  I can only imagine and hope that Rainor’s sweet demeanor might possibly rub off on my boy and bring him down from a 10 to a 4 in energy (OK, I think we’d all be happy with a 6 or 7).

Here are a few more of my favs from the night!  I am so excited to send out this slideshow in the morning!

If you can believe it, it’s been two weeks since I shot this wedding.  And though I posted to Facebook, I didn’t want to blog it until I knew Jessica and Sean were home from their honeymoon.  It occurred to me that if they were not constantly connected, other people might actually get to see their sneak peak before they did.  The few days after there is such a hyper buzz mixed with complete and total exhaustion, you are still caught up in the moment, trying to unwind.  When you get home from your honeymoon, things settle, they become real.  I remember coming home from Greece with Owen, being dog tired, and sitting at my parent’s kitchen table thinking “It was amazing, but it’s finally done.  All I want to do is go to Home Depot and putter around the house.”  At that point I was happy to relax, and finally ready to pick up the phone and talk to people and begin to rehash the day.  So hopefully by now, Sean & Jessica are home from what was probably an amazing trip to Hawaii, and hopefully they are kicking back on their roofdeck, and enjoying a cold one as Mr. & Mrs. with the details behind them and a wonderful every-day-life to live together.

Sean and Jessica are such a neat couple.  There were more than a few times through the night that I found myself thinking “They totally have their act in gear, these two are amazing…” and then the next moment thinking “They are adorable.  They just completely get each other and are so in love!”  It was just really awesome watching two people have so much love and admiration for each other, and to be so in sync.  Jessica is not only lovely, and I really mean lovely, but also smart, savvy, kind and caring.  And stunning, old world, simple, beauty.  Sean is smart, collected, traditionally handsome but with a very, very, very uncanny ability to JUMP REALLY HIGH.  Together, they are very fun.

Since Jessica & Sean met training for the Boston Marathon together, the reception had a fabulous theme to it… each table held a sign that marked an important milestone on the 26.2 mile route.  There were endless other details tying together the location venue (nautical) with their passion (running) and their athletic affiliations (baseball).  Much like my own home, it will be a blended marriage.  And some day I suspect Jessica & Sean will have to have the uncomfortable conversation and their children will have to make a choice.  Will they be Red Sox or Yankees fans?  Jessica, in my home I had to throw in a sizable measure of guilt and say “Owen, should anything ever happen to me, please promise me their first game will be at Fenway.”  Feel free to use that line, it’s recevived with mixed results.

So landing the plane, here are some images from the day.  I am so excited to see this entire gallery pulled together because it was truly a night to remember.

If you haven’t done so already, check out Amy’s perspective.   We hooked up with Jessica though Abby Gray of Olivia Browning, whose meticulous planning helped facilitate a wedding day without a hitch.  Both the wedding and the reception were held at the Commandant’s House in Charlestown, which is a fantastic venue that provides an atmosphere of nautical, old world Boston, and preppy chic.  The flowers were downright amazing… unique, whimsical and stylish and Lauren from Raspberry Bouquet was hands on and incredibly involved, making sure that Jessica was thrilled.  I thought I’d shout those out because everyone really pulled it together for a great day!

Seriously.  Because this is the second time I started to title a post “Mine on Monday” only to realize that it’s now after midnight and Thursday.  I have been a bad blogger lately, and it’s not for a lack of subject matter.  I have had some seriously amazing sessions lately, including a fabulous wedding.  I just got caught up a bit in the weeds, sort of like dragging a boat engine through beach grass… but I powered through and can happily say that I am only officially late on two session galleries and then I’ll be cruising!  If those go out tomorrow, I am so good!  I’ve posted a bunch to Facebook, so check it out over there and make sure you “like” my business.

Anyway, amidst some bad fall allergies, the need to get up from my desk, and my OCD to make sure my lenses are not acting up, I shot a quick sesh with the kids.  Let’s clear a few things up right away, this really was just to test my 24-70 2.8L lens to ensure it wasn’t back-focusing, so I put a few important measures to the side.  For instance, many of these are compositionally wrong.  There are chopped limbs galore and yes, I blew out the whites in Janey’s dress.  To state the more obvious, Janey has a teething rash and drip nose from her molars and her diaper is sort of dragging.   Christofer went inside the house after school and changed into something he preferred (“pants with no buttons and no zippers” and a strange summer obsession with long sleeve t-shirts that once belonged to the Fellows boys), my chair needs a final coat of paint (and you should see how cute the blue one looks!).  And the Joe-Joes.  I am sure there are many of you people who frown upon chocolate sandwich cookies at 5:30PM just before dinner (you know who you are, you use salad forks at dinner… mwah).  But my kids won’t give me the time of day if I have my camera in my hand and I REALLY needed to test my lens before my session tomorrow, and so you do what you can.

Anyway, no idea WHY I decided to choose these to blog, other than it’s sort of typical of how we roll here at Casa de 157, just trying to keep it real, yo.

I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say it out loud, but I have been known to lick the side of his face… and to play incessantly with his hair.

I love the progression here from “Fun… are you done… seriously lady, get over it.”

And how in a matter of seconds they go from uber cute and in love to stone-faced children that have no time for my antics.  Do you get what I mean when I say “they gang up on me!”?

Honestly, with the hair pretty, have you ever? [And for you 24-70 haters... look at how crisp that dust and grime and my chair is, back in love with this lens.]

You are probably thinking that these next two are totally unrelated.  They aren’t.  They are related (was that a double negative sentence?)  Image on left is what the demon child looks like when she’s about to take something… with great force.  Image on right is what unsuspecting wounded older brother looks like in the aftermath.

And finally, my girl.  With the slight shadow of a dent in her forehead, just above the left eye… Janey-left-eye-Young… sad evidence of what happens when Mommy chooses to make coffee rather than to help her little girl down the stairs.  Fortunately, she has forgotten and lives her life thinking “Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing…”

Good night my friends.  If you’ve stayed with me this long.  Off to move Christofer to his bed, and no doubt me to Janey’s bed.