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

The boy is four.  I write that and then I pause, because there is so much more I want to say, but I am having a hard time getting it altogether in a cohesive way.  I know Owen & I are not different than anyone else in our feelings about our kids, so when I write “you can’t even imagine how much we love him” I know that if you are a parent, you do know.  I know my parents felt (feel) this about me, and his about him, and when you have kids, you just love them so much more than you ever thought possible.

But the boy is four and he is MY boy.  He is an extension of me in the truest sense possible.  I know what is coming out of his mouth before he does.  I know how he constructs his thoughts.  I know when he’s being fresh and when he’s really sad and confused.  I know what makes him happy and I know just by a look in his eye that he is going to tell me that his heart is super happy.  He has my attention span.  He has my obsessive pestering habit.  He is persistent and relentless.  He wants to know how it all works and how it all ads up and where it all fits together.

His favorite color is blue.  Sometimes red because it’s faster.  He knows my favorite color is orange.

His two favorite activities are riding his bike and playing Candy Land.

He loves a nice warm shower.

He likes to help his dad do whatever his dad is doing.

He loves his sister and she is the bane of his existence.

He doesn’t like to nap, but he loves to be snuggled.

He wants to hear made up stories about the old train in the abandoned shed.

He is a dancing fool.

He loves Scooby Doo.

He starts his sentences with the word “actually.”

He loves Mrs. Fellows and Jessie (both of them) and Jackie and Rachael and pretty much every other woman or girl he’s ever met.

He knows all the words to almost every single song on “Free to be You and Me” and we sing them every morning.

He can ride on a boogie board and swim across the pool with swimmies.

He wants to grow up so he can play ping pong with the bigger boys but he promises he’ll stay my big baby.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a sucker for a boat.  There was one summer where I kept my cousin’s husband on speed dial and pretty much called him every day saying “Dana, what time are we going out?”  Not a “may I,” but a demand.  When I met Owen, and started heading down to Quogue, I used to insist on tagging along on the Owen/Doyle jaunts in the bay.   Even the ones that occurred way too late at night, that were a little suspicious.  But then I had kids.  And really, the last 4 summers have been a big, fat, blur… literally.  I honestly worried that I might never be able to snake my way onto someone’s boat again.   There was the one day last summer on the Puleo’s sweet new rig, but really, Owen and the boys don’t really extend the invite to me much anymore.  Oh, wait, that’s cause someone has to watch our kids.

Long story short, yesterday Stephanie says “I have a friend Jimmy with a great boat and he’s taking us out this afternoon… can you get a sitter for…” and before she finished the sentence we pretty much roped Rachael into the deal.  Just like no time had passed, in an instant I had to cooler packed with beer and wine on ice, plastic wine glasses, and a life jacket for the boy. [Owen was heading out on said Puleo boat to do some fishing -- not catching -- of his own].

We had a blast.  The weather was perfect.  The kids were awesome.  The girls just rock.  Like rock like it would be fun to just velcro myself to them for a few weeks just to sink into their fun-ness.  And Capt Jimmy was beyond patient with three kids and three chicks that didn’t belong to him.

So now I have the bug back.  I don’t care if it takes 10 more years (yes, I’ll be 50 then).  I am getting myself a boat.  It can be little (ideally wooden)… it can be a stinking row boat… but I will have me a boat!

I thought it would be fun to share the slideshow.  I never proof this many personal images in one sitting, but for some reason, these got done.  Oh, wait, I know why they got done.  Someone said “Yeah, right, and we’ll never sees these in our lifetime.”   She’s a smartass, that one.  Anyway, yeah, I have a complex after hanging out with these girls.  Yeah, I hope Christofer marries Gracie.  Yeah, I know there are a lot of me at the end and no, I am not totally thrilled with myself, but honestly, it’s me, so there I am.  And yeah, I am obsessed with Christofer and his almost-4-year-old self.

[click on image to start slideshow]

And on another note, I am uncalibrated.  There is a good chance that my colors and contrast are just WAY out of whack.  Test prints come in Tuesday and I’ll know for sure what needs to be fixed.

I have a bad case of insomnia.  I finally got out of bed and decided to flip through the pieces of my old hard drive.  I wondered where we were this time last year and went back and found us.  We went to the Sanctuary for a morning walk and saw a few eagles.  I decided to just proof one.  This is it.  I feel like I could construct about 5 story lines to talk about what was happening.  But instead I’ll construct none and just love it for what it is.

Extraordinarily and incredibly grateful.

For my husband, my kids, my family and friends.

But today I am completely and totally indebted to Western Digital, specifically my friend Constance.

Last summer I came home from vacation with a blown hard drive on my brand new MacBook Pro.  I thought to myself “luckily I didn’t keep much on that drive.”  All my client work is backed up on portable drives, DVDs and my Drobo unit.  All my family stuff is backed up on external drives, with the exception of the last 6 months running, which is on my desktop.  Apple recovered my laptop harddrive picture folder and I promptly moved it over to my desktop.

Flash forward two weeks.  Come home from vacation and think “hmm, we must have lost power, my Mac is totally off.”  Quickly learned that totally off actually meant totally dead.  On the bright side, it was covered under warranty.  On the dark side, my hard drive was dead.  Six months of every day images filed under “Daily Life” were GONE.  Along with invoices, bank statements, quicken files, and other mundane details.

Long story short, with a few strange turns, my friend Constance at Western Digital was able to recover my drive in it’s entirety and I received it back this weekend.  I have full res files back of some of my most favorite days with my kids and family.  I spent last night sifting through them, and backing them up, and ordering more Drobo drives, and backing up more…

Needless to say, today I am beyond happy and at total peace that our family history as I like to tell it, is back in tact, and safe.  You know the moral of this story.  Here are a few favs… not for any technical merit or review, but just because (as Christofer would say) “they make my heart super happy.”

If you are FB friends with me, you’ve already seen these, indulge me in looking twice.  Having a few images with my kids means the world to me… I think I’d fall over if I ever had an entire session of lifestyle candids.  I just can’t imagine.  I know I shoot almost weekly with my kids.  In fact, I am working towards an overhaul/revamp/massive update of my family blog.  But rarely do I capture the moments I really want… with me and my husband… and the kids… just being us.  Typically a simple shot goes something like this “Alright, I’ve metered and I’ve pretty much composed… the focus point that is red is the one that should be directly on my face, please don’t let it hit the wall behind me.”  Never mind going on about chopped limbs or rule of thirds.  And keep in mind that although he’d never dream of shooting with me, my husband actually has a wonderful eye.  So he shot these and I love them.

But more important, I went out and found a total “stranger” photographer to shoot a session for me this summer.  I have so many very talented photographer friends… in fact, I am really looking forward to a swap with Jennifer this summer… but I wanted to find someone who doesn’t know us, and more importantly, shoots and processes incredibly different than me and would treat me like a client, and I would pay like one.  So I tracked down an extremely talented woman whose blog I stalk and begged and pleaded (actually, she was cool and said yes right away!) and so we have set up our session for sometime this summer!  It’s a 5 year anniversary present to us.  I am hoping it’s also a “Congrats on losing all the weight” present to me.  I really can’t wait!

Until you can see her artistic wizardry, here we are.  [And yes, I'll post who she is a little closer to the session!].

I see this one and I just scream “MUFFIN CUPCAKE!!!!!!!!!” and Owen rolls his eyes at me.

We had a tough love talk.  “If you don’t smile, you get cropped out of the picture.”  “You’ll take me out?  Don’t you love me anymore?”  “Oh boy.  Never mind.  You’ll just be the only one in the picture making a funny face.”  I am guessing this was a good conversation to have with my own child, not so much with a client’s.  As he would say “these make my heart feel so happy.”

These make my heart more than happy.  These make my heart sing songs.  Really.  Until it becomes painfully obvious that I have given both of my children matching combovers.  They are so young, do they need a part so low?

If you’d made it this far, you’d know that I actually thought this title was perfect because I thought it was Monday. Until I realized it was Wednesday.  Except that is after midnight so it’s Thursday.  So I edited the title, sort of embarrassed.  Until I went back and looked again and saw the date said Wednesday.  So now I look like a dope.  Like everything else that is too big for me to wrap my brain around “it is what it is.”  Good night.