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

Happy Monday.  It’s a rainy and cold Monday and our new heat isn’t hooked up yet and my fingers are frozen and maybe a little arthritic (yes, I am old) and I can’t really type.  I feel like they did in Little House in the Prairie.  Except I live in suburbia.  And I have a really amazing hot cup of Rao’s coffee from Main Street Market (even though I planned to quit coffee again today).  And it’s actually 64 degrees in my house which I suppose is not quite as cold as what little Laura Ingalls was subjected living in Walnut Grove in the 1800s.  So maybe I am not frozen really, just chilly.

It really felt like a perfect day to share a little (long) slideshow that will make your heart “super happy.”   It’s from a session at the end of August, the 30th, and it’s at the beach, and it was SO hot it was beyond sticky.  It was itchy hot.  Here’s the backstory…

I met Stacey through Missy & Kevin across the street.  They really wanted to give their friends a special gift, so they hired me to shoot a newborn session for them.  The twins were 12 weeks when I met them.  At that time, the twin’s father, Joe, had an incurable form of brain cancer.  To say I was nervous would be a gigantic understatement.  But I knew it wasn’t about me and as soon as I met Stacey, I knew that I would photograph her family forever and that we would be friends.  Three months later in July I returned to do what would be a final family shoot.  They lost Joe in August.

Throughout the year I stayed connected with Stacey, we photographed the twins at nine months and one year.  And during this time, I watched with complete and total amazement as Stacey moved forward with such determination, love, purpose and grace.  She is an incredible force.  She not only took over ownership of Joe’s very successful HVAC business, but maintained her job as a manager at a staffing company.  Not enough?  She has raised an INSANE amount of money for the Dana-Farber and has rallied hundreds of people around her cause.  Oh, and she’s been named a “Woman of the Year” by the National Association of Professional Women.

It sounds like a lot, and it is.  But it’s all meaningless without her children and her family (love her mom, by the way).  She is — above everything else — an amazing mother.  Her babies (who are now toddlers, how did that happen?) are beautiful, sweet, spunky, and loving little wonders.  And every day they bring her love and joy (and maybe a few tears).  And every day she can hug them and know that she has this part of Joe still with her.  And every day they can give her more inspiration to continue to do about 36,000 times more than the average person and be the dynamo that she is.

So on August 30th, the anniversary of losing Joe, we went to the beach and we sent some balloons to heaven.  And Stacey and the kids got to run around and get a little wet and play in some sand and blow bubbles and do what most of us take for granted every day… she was just a mom.

On a completely and totally selfish note, my sessions with Stacey are a gift I give MYSELF.  I shoot them completely free of structure, not worrying about the technical perfection on which people typically judge.  I shoot them for capturing endless moments in time so that someone who I admire, respect and love can have them forever to add to her memory bank.  They are truly my pleasure.  {And of course she has to wait like 5 weeks for them, yes, I suck.}  So here they are.  If you are followers of her story, please leave some love in the comments below.

MWAH!

CLICK HERE if you want to listen to it with the music (it’s way better that way), otherwise, click the play arrow on the thumbnail bar under the slideshow!

[And because I am a little neurotic, yes, I know my music doesn't sync up and then song loops, normally I like to time it that way, but there are so many images and I wanted to share them all and this was the only song I wanted to use.  So that's that.]