Staring out the window

I saw my son Griffin and my kitten Belle staring out the window together. I knew that I'd probably blow the shot since I'm terrible at this kind of lighting but I'll post it anyways because I think it's kind of cute and it's the only one I took! If anyone has any advice on backlighting, pleae feel free to fill me in. I metered on the cat with eval metering. Oh, by the way, Griffin is feeling MUCH better today - he even smiled!

I've been tagged!

1. My pinkie fingers turn in at the ends and look really bizarre.
2. One of my favorite foods is Marmite which is basically yeast extract. It smells toxic and tastes really salty but I love it, so does my son!
3. When I was pregnant with my first born I dreamt that I was lying in the gutter having purple puppies while my co-workers walked by!
4. I really like the sound of crinkly paper, like the kind they make for the inside of baby toys! I think I remember it from when I was young.
5. I have a wicked good memory for things from when I was very young (3 and 4) but have a very bad memory for anything recent.
6. Hats and gloves make me feel claustrophobic...a bad thing in Northern Vermont.

I still need to tag 5 more people. I've already tagged Maggie and Christie.

19.8 pounds

That's my Grif. He had his well baby one year check up today although he was not such a well baby. He has been sick for the last 4 days or so, poor little guy. Nothing major, just a bad cold but he's definately not been himself the last few days. He has been fussing pretty much non-stop morning 'till night. I feel so badly for him, I know that his throat is hurting. Hopefully tomorrow he'll feel a little better. I found out that his height and head circumference put him at almost 50% but his weight is only 10%. I guess he'll take after his Daddy, having a high metabolism - what a gift!! The picture today is only a snapshot since I couldn't get too technical in the office with a fussy baby.

My Madeleine

Everyone who has children has one...a child that refuses to look at the camera! Madeleine is mine. She either looks up or away or smiles nicely for the camera but looks down, it's almost like she can't help herself. Today she was looking especially cute after her dance class. Her hair was not in dreadlocks, she had her black leotard on with footless dance tights. I really wanted to capture her in some nice natural light. So, I asked her. "No mommy" she said. "Please, you look SO cute today and your hair is so stylish" I said. "NO" she replied. "I will let you have your binky (pacifier) if you let me take a good picture of you". I can't believe I bribed her with my bigest pet peeve (how low will photographer moms stoop?). Her whole face lit up and she actually let me take a whole series of her with her angel bear. At one point she said enough and I told her that I was only taking pictures of angel bear. She thought that was OK. Afterwards I gave her her binky and she settled onto the couch. After I got done uploading the pictures I went over to her to see what she was up to and she was snuggled up on the couch fast asleep! Needless to say, I grabbed my camera again and went photo crazy, it was great! I've never been able to get so many pictures of her! I'll spare you and only show you a few!

Baby Sadie, a Christmas miracle.

My photo today is of a newborn named Sadie. She was born on Christmas day, then adopted into this loving family. She is such a lucky little girl because she is SO loved by this family. I felt very honored to have been asked to photograph such a special time in their lives.

The Bouncy Castle

In the summertime I am afraid to admit, Paul and I had an impulse buy. We bought a bouncy castle! Can you believe it? The rational behind it was: if we get a bouncy castle they will want to be outside all the time to play with it. Well, it was a hit for about 15 minutes until someone got their nose smashed or foot stepped on. We did pull it out about every other week to have a go at it, but it has always been hit or miss. Since the weather has turned colder we decided that since the children don't have as much of a chance to be outside, we'll put the castle inside! It is quite a novelty, a huge castle in the house! Luckily we have cathedral ceilings so it doesn't feel too completely claustraphobic inside. This is a picture of Madeleine enjoying the ball pit, you have to love all the static in her hair! We have a huge bay window to the south that is giving her the sun on her face. It's kind of nice to take pictures of something other than the snow.

Skiing in the backyard

Here is a picture of Paul cutting some turns in our back yard. We live on the edge of a big hill, which has proved to be lots of fun for sledding and now for skiing too. He hiked all the way to the top to where I couldn't see him anymore, hidden in the trees - then popped out of the forest making great turns. One thing that we've learned since having children, is we're home-bound a lot more than we used to be. This mini ski hill gives us the chance to go skiing without driving anywhere, it's great!

Tutu girl

This is Kylie, I had a photo shoot with her in November for her 1st birthday. This shot is one of my favorites so I thought I'd share. I'm thinking about making this into a canvas for my studio one of these days.

I took pictures today but am experiencing technical difficulties getting them downloaded. So I'll leave you with Baby Kylie.

The Wallpaper

I swear, I did take some pictures today but none that you haven't already seen...snow, kids, more snow, you get the idea. So I thought I'd share something with you that I've been having to deal with for the last 4 days. The bathroom wallpaper! Ugh!! We are staying in a condo in Maine where there are many different patterns and textures throughout the different rooms, I'm sure all were fashionable sometime in the 70's. But the bathroom wallpaper takes the cake. What were they thinking? Did someone actually get paid to make this choice? Was it really in-style or did someone get it for super cheap off the bump rack? We'll never know. Hopefully tomorrow I can get a picture to you that is a little more inspiring.

The Coffe Shop Scene

...has changed a lot from when I was a coffee sipping, couch resting teen. My sister and I used to whittle the hours away in our local crunchy coffee shop named Penny Lane in Boulder, Colorado when we younger. We would order refill after refill of the house coffee for 25 cents while sitting with whomever walked through the door. My coffee shop experience is quite different now. I have graduated to lattes, I usually am wiping melted chocolate off of someones face while wiping up spilled milk on the table then picking up gobs of crumbs from under the table! We found a great little coffee shop in Bethem, Maine where we are staying. It is suited up with all kinds of gourmet natural foods, knitted hats and scarves made locally and the prerequisite sound of foaming milk. The kids had a great time eating oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies while spilling water all over themselves! I loved the light in there (full north facing picture windows) they made for some interesting catchlights.

The White Mountains, NH

For any of you weather channel fanatics out there...last night Mt. Washington in NH was featured as the coldest place in the United States, -90 degrees with 120 miles per hour wind. Well...it's just a hop, skip and a jump from where we are staying (brrrr!). Today we took a very scenic drive right by the presidential range on our way to the LL Bean outlet a must when you're in this part of the country! While 2/3 babies were sleeping and the other playing nicely in the car, we were able to make a few side trips off the main road where I could hop out to get some nature shots. All of the mountain pictures are of Mt. Washington or it's nearby peaks. The other images are of a beautiful moutain stream which I captured from a wooden suspension bridge and of course I had to take some pictures of the masses of birch trees groves along the roadside. It was amazing scenery and great practice for getting the right exposures.

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Posting from Maine

We're on a trip and lo and behold, they have wireless internet, so I can keep up my posting! Yay! It's pretty cold here, windy and blowing snow. We were planning on skiing in the morning but instead decided to check out the town. It's pretty Maine-like! After town the plan was to go swimming in the indoor (thank goodness) pool. The girls had been on about it ALL morning so they were very excited. After getting them all ready I realized that I didn't pack my own bathing suit - aaargh. So Paul decided to take the girls while I stayed in the condo with Griffin. We didn't bring many toys for him, not that he needs many since there's so much to do here. Lets see...empty out all the kitchen cabinets, unroll the whole roll of toilet paper onto the floor, unroll the whole roll of paper towels onto the floor, pull all the shoes out of the closet, unpack all bags onto the floor and finally take a full inventory of the fridge. I stopped him there before he pulled all the contents onto the floor. You may ask what I was doing during this whole time? Just watching! It looked like so much fun and worth the clean up afterwards. Here is my capture of Griffin in the fridge!

More winter scenes

My little snow angel. More snow today. I'm getting a little bored of all the snow pics! I'll have to start being more creative. I'm not going to be posting for a week but I"ll catch up when I'm back around.

Clean up crew!

Here's my dog, Bronwyn trying to get in on some cake action. Does she look guilty or what?!! This was the leftover cake from Griffin's one year birthday shoot on Jan 16th.

Is it the North Pole or Vermont?

We had so much fun today. It was a whopping 3.5 degrees today, the coldest day of the year so far. I actually talked my two girls into going outside for some fresh air, fully expecting to be back inside within 10 minutes. Low and behold, they had fun! It has been snowing recently with a 2 hour period of ice/rain a couple of days ago. This made for fabulous (only if you're playing with kids and not driving) layer of ice hiding in the snow. It's unbelievable how much fun they had breaking through the ice and pulling it up in huge chunks. We threw the dog ice frisbees which magically broke apart as soon as the dog got her mouth around it. We also built a big ice castle for the ice princess! Madleine got busy piling the ice up for Daddy on the driveway so he could snow blow it away. Ella spent about an hour digging in our sand box for missing sand toys; then when found - dug for treasure. What great imaginations - I love it! After an hour and 15 minutes and some very red cheeks we headed inside for some steamy hot coco.

Here is a picture of Madeleine in awe of the huge piece of ice that she distracted from the snow. She is very pleased with herself!

Griffin turns one today!

It's so hard to believe that one year ago I was in the hospital giving birth to our 3rd child and 1st son. He has been such a blessing. He is so mellow, good natured, happy-go-lucky and so darn cute, in my opionion! We had a great day today. I planned a one year birthday shoot with different outfits, some birthday suit shots and of course the cake shot! Here are some of my favorites.

Newborn Shoot today

Pictures today were from a newborn shoot that I had. So much fun and such a sweet baby. She is 14 days old.

I missed a day and it's only the 15th day. It's not hard to take the pics, only to edit and post.

summer collage

I have taken lots of pictures today but mainly have been trying to figure this out...I really want to use this as my header but can't figure out how to do it. Can one you blogger experts tell me where to find the information to add this to my blog? More daily pics coming soon...

Madeleine is three

It's hard to believe that my Madeleine is three. Actually her birthday in on New Years Eve and we had a family celebration at that time but today she had two little friends come over. We set up the bouncy castle inside the house, which was way overstimulating for the adults but the children seemed to like it! I hope to post more pictures of her soon but she is my little photo phobic child...everyone seems to have one! She rarely looks at the camera, she is willing to stand still but always has her eyes looking down. It is a rare capture to have her looking at me.

My little girl growing up

Today I wanted to capture something pretty specific, something that shows how quickly the children are growing...I decided to take pictures of Ella while she was willing. I remember when she was born, when she had a crop of spikey hair on her head. Now, at 4 years old it is all the way down her back! She won't let me cut it. She was busy prancing around to classical music in her ballet outfit carrying a bouquet of plastic flowers. She informed me she was the dancing bride!

This was was taken with iso 1600 f1.4 with my 50mm. I am trying to work on my low light shots.

Baby Carl

This is not my baby, but isn't he the cutest ever? There were a lot of firsts today... this is my first shoot with my new camera, the first day I tried custom white balance and the first time I shot in RAW. I was pretty nervous which is silly considering this is one of my closest friends babies but still I wasn't sure if I'd get anything right. Besides the fact that I was so focused on technical stuff and couldn't think creatively at all, I think it turned out OK.

Snow Eater

Finally we got a little snow! Do all children love to eat snow or just mine? Ella is perfectly content crouching down grabbing handfulls of snow and stuffing in her mouth. She has done this since she was a baby and at 4, it looks like she's not outgrowing it anytime soon. Here is a picture of her with a mouthful of the cold fluffy stuff!

Poker Hill School

A school day today, kind of dismal and eerie but at the same time very beautiful. There were layers of fog covering the mountains today, when the sun hit it just right it was amazing. This image was taken at my daughters school, the fog was just lingering around the playground.

Dance day

Monday is dance day. It is a great start to the week as both the girls enjoy it very much. All I wanted to do was get a good picture of my little dancers. Turned out that the lighting was terrible, and the little dancers weren't very cooperative! I got a few but none that really did much for me so at the end of the night...I found our dog Bronwyn hiding in the closet. Yes, you can really see how messy it is. But believe it or not, she did it! She pulled down all my sweaters to make a bed for herself! So no dancers, maybe next week but you do get to meet my sweet dog.

The Ruby Shoes

A picture a day? Today I took out my camera

and took 165 pictures! How do I narrow it down

to just one. Well, the whole purpose of the day

today was to try and capture something little

that we would all one day fail to remember.

This is what I came up with THE RUBY SHOES.

It all began 2 years ago when Ella received a pair

of ruby shoes to wear with a Snow White dress

up costume. They quickly became a favorite but

only to be worn during dress up time inside. Our

little Madeleine coveted them so much but didn't

have a pair until Ella grew out of hers. Of course

we had to replace Ella's with new ones!

On Madeleine's first day of pre-school she was

like any other little child...clingy, scared of what she didn't know, overwhelmed by the noise and

of other children and adults that she didn't know. She was sad. This made me sad. On the

second day of school she asked me if she could wear the ruby shoes. I hesitated, then remembering her sadness, I said yes of course she could. When she got to school we walked intogether holding hands, I could feel her grip on my hand tighten as we got to the classroom. Then a few children wandered over, then a few more. All of them were gaping at the shoes! The boys stooped down to touch them, the girls said "I love your shoes!" The girls then grabbed her hand and said "come play with us". After that day she was always greated with enthusiasm and joy. Needless to say she wore the shoes everyday for a couple of months.

Learning to pump

The amazing weather continues. So much for
our ski passes for this winter! We are outside today on the swingset. This is Madeleine with an "ah ha" look when she learns to pump her legs for the first time. She didn't totally get it but she's getting there. Both Ella and myself were yelling "point...bend...point....bend!!!" She was so eager to learn, it was a great moment.

My little guy waiting for his birthday

I moved the dining room table out of the way so I could work on photographing in natural light with the oak wood floors. Here is Griffin enjoying his sisters balloon. If you look hard enough in the background you can see that our dog, Bronwyn waits patiently under the high chair for any scaps that may be thrown her way. She doesn't care that dinner is still at least two hours away!

Talk about depth of focus!

It has been incredibly unseasonably warm here
in Vermont. It's actually kind of freaky. Two
years ago our pipes burst in the middle of the
night, it's was 20 degrees below 0. Today it
was about 56 degrees. We are taking full
advantage of the situation however strange it
may be. This is Ella playing outside in the
sunshine.

Miss Madeleine

I was in a parking lot just about to go shopping when I
saw the light in Madeleine's eyes. By chance I had my
camera so I was able to capture this shot while she was
waiting for me to unbuckle her to go buy cream cheese!
It is just the simple moments - nothing glamerous here!

Griffin in the studio

Here is Griffin trying out the new props in the studio. He's quite proud of himself!

This has been a great year so far...but since it's only January 6th I still have a long way to go. I am trying to figure out this blog thing. I've never done it before but every says it's so easy so I thought I'd give it a try. Well, three hours later I still don't have anything posted. I swear, things just don't come easily to me. I'm hoping this post will work since it's the last one I do before I give up.

So I'm motivated. 1 picture a day for the whole year. Not that I have trouble taking pictures and not that I need anything extra to do but I thought it would be fun. A journal of sorts to track the year, see what everyone is doing, see what inspires me at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to see a progression in my photography - that's the hope anyway.

For our anniversary my husband gave me a new camera. Wow, it's fabulous. I'm trying to figure out how to use it and hopefully Image 365 will give me the opportunity to try something new, something out of my comfort zone.

Here is my first image of the year. Taken in Southern Vermont. We made a special trip to photograph a barn that I had been admiring, turns out I couldn't get a good shot of the barn since there was an ugly fence in the way but these horses caught my eye as they came into the sunlight.