Upside Down Beauty | Connecticut Children’s Photographer

Little Boy Laughing | Simsbury Children’s Photographer

Smiling Boys

Halloween Ghost

A holga shot of my own girlie in a ghost outfit. She wavered between this and the princess outfit but decided on “princess” for Halloween itself.

This is my homage to Suzanne Revy, whose ghost picture I adore (and, *hint to the husband for Christmas* would be thrilled to own as a small fiber print for my collection).

Children’s Film Portraits

I have nothing to say about this except, oh, those eyes. Those wonderful eyes. How does this child’s mother ever manage to say no to him?

I love the way film photography looks. People always want to know WHY would anyone want to shoot an analogue medium these days, when digital cameras are so very good. And they are good. I still like film better. I shoot digital too, but there is something special about film. The images are, to me, gentler and more emotive. The tones are amazing. The grain is a pleasing thing of beauty. And, of course, one of the really incredible wonderful things about film is fiber prints. Regular digital prints are fine but fiber is really special.

Fiber paper has silver embedded into the paper and the image becomes a part of the paper rather than being printed on it. These prints are truly archival and can last hundreds of years with proper care. I call these “museum quality” and they are; fine art photography is printed on fiber and it truly is the only choice for those who demand the highest quality. If you do an in-person ordering session I’ll show you a sample of the same image on fiber and as a regular print and you’ll see what I mean.

What Beauty Looks Like

Adult women often have this weird idea that they need to look like a model to be beautiful. Well, maybe it’s not so weird since we are all bombarded with images of young women made up by experts, with their hair styled by experts, retouched in Photoshop by experts and told that this is what we should look like. Of course, it isn’t possible unless you walk around with a computer generated image floating in front of your face but, hey, telling people if you would just buy our product you might look a tiny bit more like this digitally-retouched 18-year-old with professional hair and make-up works. There are billions of women in the world, of whom maybe several dozen would qualify as supermodels. If that’s what it takes to be beautiful we are living in a dreadfully hideous world. Except, of course, we are not. We live in a world surrounded by beauty at every turn. Like this woman. Not 18-years-old. Not professionally styled. But beautiful.

World Breastfeeding Week Poster

And VOILA. Having harassed asked people to tell me which were their favorite of my breastfeeding images I present the finished poster. I’ll be doing a final proofreading tomorrow to avoid embarrassing typos.

How embarrassing? I brought a stack of free postcards to the La Leche League conference in April touting the wonders of breasfeeding. I’d like to avoid that this time.

SO I’ll be doing a final proofread then send the file out to the printer. I’ll be giving them out to local breastfeeding professionals. You can order a personal copy as long as my extras hold out.

Downloadable PDF:
Please note that this is made freely available for you to print and distribute at will and am trusting in the basic goodness of people to use it as intended. Please respect that I retain copyright to these images and do not use them individually on your web site or in your materials even for the very best of causes. If you make the download available on your on web site please do it by linking back to this, original, post.

This file is very large so that you can make a very good print – you should be able to send this to a professional printer if you desire and have no issues with resolution, or just print it on the laser printer!

Gorgeous Children | Avon Children’s Photographer

This was one of those childrens’ portrait sessions I was really grateful at the end it wasn’t my kids because there is simply no way I couldn’t have every single one of these. It was s fun mix of film – love that film look – and digital for these. I adore working with film and am always thrilled to have a client who appreciates the special feel of a film portrait!

Of course, my kids never actually cooperate like this. Mine aim more for the “running away from the camera as fast as my legs with shoes on the wrong feet will go” look. Since if they consistently gave me portraits like THESE my house would be wall-papered with photos perhaps I should be grateful.

A Day in the Life

Just one from the A Day in the Life at the Cobb School. This was a full day of shooting, following this little Miss around her preschool as she washed windows, painted, prepared herself a snack, played with her friends, sang songs and more.

Your album should be ready in a few more weeks!

Moments to Remember at Photography Sessions

Now and again things happen at photography sessions that make one laugh, though usually not until a bit later after a glass of wine or two. A small sampling…

1. I was doing a very casual portfolio building shoot of a friend’s 3-month old son at my house on my back deck. She took her glasses off to get some pictures holding her child without the specs and my own child grabbed her glasses, broke them, and dropped them under the deck. We had to fish them out (or rather, I did, as she really is basically blind without her glasses) using a hook AFTER we located where they were by peering through the wooden boards at the assorted dead leaves below. Finding patterned brown glasses in dead leaves with almost no light is, well, interesting. I told her to let me pay for new ones. Did she? No. They are STILL taped together and that boy is 18 months old now. Every time I see them I feel glasses-guilt. Lesson learned: don’t ever try to do even the most casual shoot with your kids around. This just doesn’t end well.
2. I did a maternity session for one woman and was doing a set of rapid fire pictures, one after another, of the same pose. When I went back to proof the pictures, as I flipped from one to the next, I realized I could see the baby shifting around inside her womb and causing her abdomen to change shape. I’ve also had a woman have contractions during the shoot; she was a trooper and hiked all over West Hartford Center – in high heeled boots – pausing only briefly during contractions. She admitted she hoped the walking would bring on full labor. No such luck. I did, however, once have a mother go into full labor about 5 hours after our session.
3. Babies pee on my ALL THE TIME. It’s just part of the job and one reason I wear very casual clothes to shoots. Only once, however, did I manage to actually catch an arc of pee in the air when I pushed the shutter RIGHT as the baby peed. If this happens to you I will add a complimentary 4X6 of that shot for you to tuck away until your child’s wedding rehearsal dinner when you can add it to the slideshow of cute childhood pictures. This will be payback for the sleep deprivation.
4. At a wedding I once, camera gear hanging from my neck, jumped down a river bank to grab a blow-away ketubah that the wind had snatched and was attempting to introduce to the water, not 15 minutes after every single person in the family had signed it. This was not in the fine print of “How to be a wedding photographer.” I’ve also helped a bride into her dress, which eliminated any sweet “the bride getting dressed” shots but ensured that she actually DID get zipped into her dress.