I was given the opportunity to do a maternity shoot for our farmers who happen to also be good friends.  She is the most lovely pregnant woman.  He is the best husband who is very dedicated to their new lives as parents.

They call their baby “Sprout”, so it was only fitting that we take some photos in the Brussels sprouts.

I love how much fall is in this photo.

Out in the cabbage patch.

I love how personal these photos are.  Very fall-like and very farmer friendly!

Definitely glowing.

Perfect belly shot.

What a magical time.

I am so incredibly pleased with these photos.  I had to take both my kids with me on the shoot.  I spent most of the shoot photographing with a nursing baby on the front and a 2 year old on the back.

I have decided to start working on a new project that I am very excited about.  I am going to work on a project called 365.  The premise is that I take a self portrait every day for a year.  I will be posting these photos to an online forum as well as to this blog for your enjoyment.

Why do such a project you ask?

I am glad that you asked.  I have  so many reasons to start working on this project.

• Things have started to become a bit strained and mundane around here.  I am getting 3 hours of sleep most nights which makes it hard to operate during the day, and some things were just simply not fun.  I decided that I was going to start a project to start making things fun again.  I like having something creative to look forward to every single day.
• I have followed a friend’s 365 over the past year, and I have seen incredible growth in his photography.  I have been looking at work other people have done on this project, and I am amazed at how incredible some of the photographs are.  Not only is this project about documenting my life, my day and myself, it is about growing as a photographer.  I love that I can push boundaries.  I can spend as much time or as little time as I want every day on the project.  I will be making photographs.  The only way to grow and expand is to actually do the work necessary.  When I am working with a client, I have to work quickly to take many photos that capture a moment.  This project will allow me to spend some time exploring areas of photography that I don’t generally work with.
• I got a piece of advice from a friend that has helped me in life many times before.  She told me that at the end of year, I will have either gone somewhere or not.  In other words, I can pretend to be too busy to fit a project like this or I can make it work to do it.  At the end of a year, a year will have passed, but I will have 365 beautiful photos to show for it if I do commit to the project.
• Motivation.  The truth is that I am still 40 pounds over my ideal weight after having 2 children.  I am working very hard to lose the weight.  I have lost 30 pounds so far, but I need motivation to not eat lots of sugar and to control eating over all.  I am always starving because I am nursing a baby, and it can become easy to consume more calories than necessary to feed the baby and operate my body.  The truth is that taking photos of myself is motivation to continue shedding weight so I don’t have to look at nicely taken photos of myself 40 pounds overweight.

Alongside all this, I am going to be documenting one thing about each of the kids that I love and admire.  All these photos will be posted to my blog here, so stay tuned and enjoy.  I am excited about this journey.

I took these photos of Cyprus while I was working on a photo shoot for someone else.  I thought they were very lovely with a nice fashion type twist.  Cyprus really wears that swaddling blanket well don’t you think?  I just adore everything about these photos.  The peaceful sleeping baby and the texture of the blanket.

This was a lovely little maternity session I did with Rouge’s mom before she was born.  We were blessed with a beautiful late summer day that allowed us to go for a nice walk around.  We explored Carlton and got to spend some time around the old granary.  This mama looks radiant in these photos.

I was given the pleasure of photographing this lovely little lady when she was two weeks old.  She was a perfect angel for our session.  I am very pleased with the results.

This has been the object of my distraction for the past couple of weeks.

Sam and Linnea’s wedding was incredibly special to our family.  Sam and Jared have been friends for decades, and they are also the godparents of our children.  Jared was a groomsmen in the wedding and Daphne was the flower girl.  I was honored that they involved me by asking me to document the event.  The truth is that we had a blast.  What is better than going out to the beach for a couple of days for a big party with friends?

This is a lovely slideshow of the event that I created for the couple to share their wedding story.

I also wanted to share some photos that were special to our family.

Sam teaching Daphne the ways of the world.

Daphne was the best flower girl.  She was willing to walk down the aisle with the ring bearer.  She didn’t need any adult help, and she even stood up with the wedding party for the whole wedding.  I was impressed at how lovely she did at only 2 years old.

Jared and I made the tutu for the occasion.

Daphne took the task of “throwing” flowers very seriously, and she tried her hardest to slam the flowers to the ground with great force.

Here she is at the altar.

Here is Jared as a groomsman.

Making his boogie exit.

Love these two.

Linnea had to wrestle Daphne into some photos.

A tackle was achieved.

The wedding party.

Jared worked hard at his groosman duties.

Jared was also on dad duty during the day, and he did a darn fine job.

Cyprus was a big hit at the wedding.  There was a line with people taking numbers to hold him.  There was no lack of affection for Cyprus throughout the day.

The bride got her turn when she wanted it.

After Sam and Linnea had their first dance, Jared and Daphne got to have a nice little dance on the dock overlooking the water.

Then she boogied with her friends.

Jared was in charge of the escape vehicle.

I was invited to take my gear out into a canoe with the bride and groom, and I got some AWESOME shots.

We then went to the beach for some fun.  Jared and his friend!

The sunset was unbelievable.

I love how Daphne wanted to be included so bad.  She had short legs, but she was in with the crowd.

Godparents are for tickling.

And for funny faces.

They are the best godparents ever.

Congratulations Sam and Linnea.

I had the most incredible and lovely experience today.  I must say that it is in the top 5 experiences that have changed and shaped my view of the world as I see it.  I was invited into the world of a friend and asked to document the birth of her baby.

When I was pregnant, I sought out someone who would be willing to take photos of my birth so that I could see it from the outside.  I was certain that if I had a VBAC that it would be a victorious experience for me, and I wanted some photos to look at to remind myself what a birth warrior I was.  My birth photos have gone to great lengths to heal the trauma from my first birth.  I no longer feel like I have a large hole in my life as a mother who “failed” birthing my first baby.  I just wanted some great photography from the birth and maybe help heal some trama when I asked a photographer to join me at the birth.  I never imagined that this would spark my interest in documenting the births of others.  In the interim after my birth, before I got my photos, I was sent a lovely slideshow of birth photos.  I started searching out birth photographers from around the world and looking at their work.  I was truly hooked.  When I started to show the photos to my friend who was about to have a baby, she said that she was ABSOLUTELY interested in having me attend to create some beautiful photos.

I’m not the kind of person who knows where my cell phone is for days at a time, so I had to make quite a few changes being on call to attend a birth.  Finally, last night, as I was getting ready to go to bed, I got a phone call that she was headed to the birth center and she would like me to join her.  I’m so glad I got the call.  I put Cyprus in the car and headed out.

Things were slow going at first, but eventually active labor kicked in and I got into my groove as a birth photographer.  My classical training in photography mixed with my experience with over 100 weddings had me very comfortable photographing even though I had never been to a birth before.  My photo journalistic viewpoint was well suited to me tiptoeing around, allowing things to happen, documenting what did happen well without staging anything or getting in the way.  I must say that I was successful.

Photography aside, I am so honored that I was asked to be a part of this birth.  There are few things in life that have the pure, raw emotions involved than birthing a child.  A mom that is committed to having an unmedicated birth outside of the hospital has made an agreement with her baby to  come into the world and start life with respect and dignity.  Birth is incredibly hard work, but it was magical seeing a mama labor and birth in a way that was collected and respectful.  There were no interventions telling her that she needed to get things going or that something wasn’t normal about what she was doing.  She was allowed to listen to her body and not be restricted in any way.  My birth was intervention free, but when you are the one giving birth, you end up in your own “labor land” that doesn’t allow you to look from outside and see what a miraculous experience it is.

The fact that I was allowed to share the birth experience was incredibly special to me.  It reinforces to me the strength involved in being a mother.  The first test to being a parent is birthing a baby.  With that successfully completed, a mom and a baby have started a journey together that includes mutual respect.  I got to witness the love that moms everywhere experience when they agree to become a mother.  Though I have been a mom for over 2 years now, the past two months have really given me a new outlook on what that means.  I feel like I have a much stronger connection with my son and especially my daughter after watching the miracle of giving life.

I have had several incredible experiences in my life that have changed me completely as a person, graduating from Delphi, spending a year studying art in Greece, the birth of my children and my wedding.  This is an experience that I will have to add to the list of important influential experiences.  I can’t thank this mama enough for allowing me to be a part of her birth experience.  It is something that is incredibly personal, and asking someone to share is a great honor.  I only hope that I showed that I deserved it and that I was able to document it in a way that she can see how lovely she was.  A woman who is 9 months pregnant feels waddly and frumpy, but a birthing mom looks gorgeous no matter what.

Congratulations Julie on the birth of your 3rd baby.  Thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of your birth team.  Your photos are very special to me, and I hope that they will help you see and understand what an incredible warrior you were today, the day your 3rd daughter was born.  Your experience was very profound for me, and I have been brought to tears today more times than I care to admit in this public forum.

I am writing this the day that it happened, but I am postponing the publication for 2 weeks so that the mama has a chance to announce the birth in her own time.

I have been meaning to post these photos over the past couple of months, but they seem to have gotten lost among the hundreds of baby photos I have now taken.

Back in May, when I was 36 weeks pregnant, I set up a photo shoot with my good friend Christy over at Studio Christy. Christy and I go way back. We used to work together as Photo Lab Technicians at Oregon Photo.  After that, we spent a semester in Greece at the Aegean Center together. She has since set up an incredibly successful photography studio, and she is the person that I call whenever I need photos taken of my family.

I think she did a lovely job, and I wanted to share some of them with you.

I think she captured the pregnancy beautifully!

Our friends Sam and Linnea got married last month. Jared was a groomsman in the wedding, Daphne was the flower girl and I was the photographer. We have all been good friends for a long time. Sam and Linnea are the godparents of our kids.

Since we were so involved in the wedding, we decided to go out for the rehearsal dinner and spend the night in a hotel. I took some photos of the kids there while I was testing out a new lighting system for my camera. I finally replaced a Whale Tail from Gary Fong that has been lost for over a year now.

Of course Daphne and Cyprus were being cute. She decided to help change his diaper, and it was totally adorable to watch–and photograph.

At least he is a good sport about all this.

And he is pretty bendable.

What a cutie pie.

Cyprus LOVES to stand up. His legs are incredibly strong.  He will stand and talk to his daddy for a long time.

He also loves when his daddy holds him.

I adore this photo.  Daphne is in her own world playing while Jared is working.

More daddy play time.

We had a blast at the wedding.  I am slowly working my way through the wedding photos, and I promise that I will share.

I wanted to get some beautiful newborn photos of Cyprus before he turns into a baby and loses the newborn characteristics. I never got a chance to pick up the camera and make some nice photos when Daphne was a newborn because recovering from the c-section was quite rough, so my record of her really starts at 1 month old.

This is a photo shoot I did of Cyprus when he was 10 days old. I think they are lovely, sweet little newborn photos. I don’t like to post too many photos at one time so that I don’t overwhelm, but I am such a proud mama that I can’t help but post all the photos I like. Enjoy!