It has never been more important to celebrate the strong females of our lives.
Last year I started a personal project to document the FIERCE females I know. This year I want to extend it beyond femalesĀ I know.
Please nominate FIERCE females who you think should be documented and celebrated.
Happy FIERCE female Friday and I look forward to marching with FIERCE Bay Area Females at the Women’s Marches on Saturday.
Holy Jenga, the sun came up on a new year. (After 2016, I wasn’t so sure it would.)
But the last thing we need is another blog post about how bad things were in 2016.
I figure, since most of our history books are filled with one-sided perspectives, and those perspectives aren’t always very factual…
And since we now live in a society that prefersĀ make-believe over reality…
Why notĀ write my own history of 2016.Ā So here goes…
It was amazing. 
My house was always clean.
My kids never fought. 
The IRS gave us lots of money back after our audit. 
I have perfected the work/life/love balance.
Orangutans are making a come back.Ā Syria is rebuilding better than everĀ and…
Hillary Clinton won the presidency. Ā 
OK… so maybe not.Ā 
But instead of dwelling on the darkness…
I am going to focus on the light…
And extend an invitation toĀ more of the awesome…
And less of the shitty forĀ 2017 (unless it’s compost.)
But there is an extra challenge for me, because entering this new year means entering a new decade.Ā 
I am not thrilled about my new decade starting the same year that our country offers the potential ofĀ nuclear war, or startsĀ burning so many fossil fuels that we cook our way backĀ into a primordial soup.
Oh man, if I didn’t have kids… I would jumpĀ off of this doomedĀ life raftĀ so fast…
And jumpĀ on to a booze cruise in Mexico, preferably one with lots of milkshakes and tequila.
But thanks to raging hormones that took over my good judgement in my early 30’s,
I now have two small people who IĀ amĀ responsible for.
And I desperately want those two people to live in a world where police don’t shootĀ citizensĀ they were hired to protect, presidents don’tĀ encourage hatred and violence, warlordsĀ don’t kill innocentĀ children, andĀ companies don’t destroy the planet or wipe out species for products like ivory, palm oil and shark fins.
So I have lots to do in 2017.Ā The partyĀ is over.
It is time to get to work.
Because it is better to solve problems than cry about them (although I have little to no control over my tear ducts thanks to having kids, so crying is probably going to happen regardless.)
But through the tears you may hear our family theme song,Ā “If there’s a problem, yo, I’ll solve it. Check out the hook, while my DJ revolves it.”
And for the real history books (and because I promised to focus on the good)…
Here are a few of my actual favorite moments, projects and memories of 2016 and a new songĀ (from La La Land) for the soundtrack of a new decade….
A bit of madness is key to give us to color to see
Who knows where it will lead us?
So bring on the rebels
The ripples from pebbles
The painters, and poets, and plays.
Here’s to the fools who dream.
Crazy, as they may seem.
Here’s to the hearts that break.
Here’s to the mess we make.
Here’s to a work-our-asses-off new year.
Thank you for all of your love and support.
I look forward to seeing what we dreamers create together in 2017.
(Drawing by Christian Anthony)
A couple of months ago I received an email from photographer Freda Banks saying she needed causal, natural portraits for her website that show she is artistic in a friendly and approachable manner.
I had never met Freda, I had only seen her beautiful work online, so when she answered the door looking like this…
I was immediately very excited and extremely intimidated.
Very excited… because she wanted me to photograph with film, which is my most favorite way to photograph.
Extremely intimidated… because I always assume every photographer is more talented and knowledgeable than I am. So photographing other photographers means having to wrestle my brain into silent submission, at least enough so I can do the job I was hired to do.
Also extremely intimidated… because Freda is stunningly beautiful with an incredible sense of style, which meant I felt this overwhelming pressure to take the most amazing photos of my life, in order to live up to this fun opportunity to play with film and with beauty.
But because Freda really is artistic in a friendly and approachable manner, it didn’t take us long to feel comfortable with each other, allowing me to silence my overactive brain and focus instead on finding good light. We talked and played and talked and played, and before I knew it, three hours had passed, which is a long time to make one person model, so I reluctantly put away my cameras and we said good-bye.
(All of the above photos were taken with medium format film.)
While I do love film, it was a long painful wait for the film scans to return… luckily I had a few digital files to tide me over until the film scans finally returned.
Digital photography is a wonderful tool and I am so grateful to have it, but when given the opportunity to shoot with film… it is really hard for me to put down the film cameras and pick up the digital ones again.
I just love the sensory experience of photographing with film cameras. I love the sound of the shutter and the crisp, yet ethereal way the world looks through film lenses.
But film is slow, it is expensive and it can be unpredictable. You don’t always know what the results will be like and you have to wait a long time to find out… which for me translates to: exciting and risky (like the hard-to-get, tall cute guy, with big glasses and mismatched socks, who I married.)
Digital is fast, it is inexpensive (if you don’t factor in your editing time and you don’t upgrade your equipment every 9 months) and you know immediately if you got the photo or not… which for me translates to: boring and predictable.
But the advantage of shooting both digital and film is that I get to show a direct comparison between the two and you can decide for yourself which you prefer.
Below are examples of similar photos taken in both digital and film, with no retouching and very minimal color alterations on the digital files…
digital Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā film
digital Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā film 
digital Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā film
I admit, it’s a really close call… but film still wins my heart. What do you think?
Green grass in our front yard.
Or toddlers playing in the sink.
Because California is experiencing a very serious drought right now.
(This is what the hill behind our house looked like last year.)
(This is what the same hill looks like this year.)
So it is time for all of us to start finding ways to conserve what little water we have…
And hopefully we will see…
Farm animals happily munching on green hills and toddlers defiantly standing in puddles again soon.
Instead of sending out Holiday cards with pictures of my own family…
I sent my friends and family photos of themselves. 
Photos I took of them with one of my medium format film cameras…
And have been hiding all year…
Just so I could send them as holiday cards.
These are a few of my favorites…
It was hard for me to keep them hidden.
So it is a relief to finally let them out in the world,
Now that the holidays are over and the cards have been sent.
But also it is helpful for me to share them all at once,Ā Ā 
Because people ask me all the time what are the differences between film and digital.
I always have a hard time trying to describe the differences in an email. 
So I decided I needed more blog posts that only show examples of film.
Now when people ask what film is like…
I can send them to this blog post…
And they can see that film creates the kind of photos you want to save all year just to give as presents.
(This is also helpful so my friends and family can see that they really should hang out with me at least one time a year š )
It has been so long since I have logged on to my blog that I had to generate a new password.
I used to think in blog posts…. Now I think in facebook captions, although Instagram is slowly creeping up behind.
But I miss my blog, just like… I miss reading books (that are more than 20 pages long and consist of a topic other than cars and trucks,)
I miss seeing friends…
I miss walking my dog…
And I miss going on dates with my husband (damn, I should have put that first.)
Somewhere along the way life got busy and I just don’t have enough time in the day for it anymore, hence I am starting this post at 1:40am.
But, as it turns out, I also need the blog. I get so lost in the forest of making new work that I forget to look back and see which trail I took and how far I have come… And then the insecurity vines creep up and block my path forward.
That is where I was today, lost in an editing forest, until the mail arrived (meaning: Arann walked in my office and flung a Priority Mail envelope at me.) When I opened the envelope, I got to see some of my portrait work in print, in Bike magazine. A magazine that hired me to take one portrait…
(Executive Director of NorCal High School Cycling League, Vanessa Hauswald)
And then because they liked that portrait they hired me to take another portrait…
(Strava Co-founder and CEO, Michael Horvath.)
And then they hired me to take another portrait…
(The Godfather of mountain biking, Charlie Kelly)
It made me so happy to see photos of PEOPLE published for once that I remembered I had a blog and that I could actually record my excitement in a blog post. While I was digging for photos for that post, I found other portraits that I am proud of…
(Chef and Restaurant Owner, Charlie Hallowell)
and then more portraits that I am proud of…
(Chef and Author, Bryant Terry)
…and suddenly the forest was a little bit brighter.
(Co-founder/co-inventor of Twitter and Jelly, Biz Stone)
And the path forward was a little more clear.
While I really enjoy all the other side projects I have been so lucky to work on… I really love photographing people the most.
Taking really good portraits of people is very, very hard. And I still have a long way to go.
(Lagunitas Founder, Tony Magee)
There are so many things to think about… not only the light, the exposure, the composition, but also making people feel comfortable, especially after they have just finished telling me how much they hate being photographed. (Food never tells me it hates to be photographed. And flowers just beg me not to stop taking photos.)
Photographing people makes me nervous and sweaty… not in a bad lighting-fireworks-illegally-kind-of-way, but in a good exercise-my-brain-kind-of-way.
It means I am being challenged. It means I am doing something I really care about. And that is the goal: Do more projects that challenge me and that I really care about.
My other goal is to hire an office assistant, so that the editing and book-keeping forest do not get over-grown and swallow me whole anymore. And so my blog can once again have a place in my life.
(Publisher: Chris Gruener)
So if you know anyone looking for part-time work…
I need a very organized, hardworking, self-motivated, left-brained person (sorry no photographers please) who can help me for 10 hrs per week (hours are flexible) with: data entry, organizing files, returning emails, updating social media etc.
If you are interested, please send me an email detailing your approach to organizing and attach your resume to paige(@)paigegreen.com
Lou is HOME and purring on my lap right now! Yesterday we walked by our old house, one last time, and there he was meowing in his tree… so, so hungry. Luckily I happened to have some ham in my pocket.
Thank you so much for the support. We will keep him indoors now, so hopefully we will not be doing this hunt again.
At the end of a year I love to look back at the year gone by…
…and get inspiration for the new year to come.
After I have finished reflecting on the year gone by…
…I take that inspiration in to the new year and…
…with all of my heart.
Thank you for being a part of my inspiration…
…on my journey through photography.
Happy New Year!
I hope you have the best 2013 possible.
one year ago…
…one year later.
one year ago: two people (and a dog) full to the brim with nervous anticipation from the mountain of, ‘what if’s,’ and, ‘what next’s,’ and, ‘how in the world’s?’
one year later: three people (and a dog) chuckling comfortably as if we knew what we were doing all along.
And that is the beauty of one year.
Happy First Birthday, Harper Albi Harris. I wish I had the time to write all the feelings, emotions and lessons I have learned with and because of you over this past year. But you are sleeping… and if I learned anything this past year, it is that when you are sleeping I need to be sleeping too.
The blog will be back again someday (hopefully soon.) I have been storing up a lot of good material. But to be honest, it has been nice to take a break from blogging and to be present during this one very short and very full year.
When our friends Sarah and James announced that they were getting married this summer in Michigan, I immediately said we’d be there.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan was a very important part of Arann’s (pre-Paige) life and yet in the eight years we have been together I still had never been there… so we decided to make a trip out of it. We decided to actually take a vacation.
That statement is misleading because we do take lots of wonderful vacations, but usually the trips we take are with my family because I live thousands of miles away from them, so we happily spend our free time with them. But every once and awhile it is nice to get away alone, just the two of us, so we decided July 2011 it was Michigan or bust.
The plan for our 10 days in Michigan… was not to plan. Or so I thought.
As far as I knew, the only thing on our schedule was that we had to be in Cross Village by Thursday for pre-wedding prep. Other than that we had no reservations, no route marked on a map, and no prearranged accommodations… except for two nights with friends of friends in Detroit… because I definitely wanted to go to Detroit.
From all of the media hype over the last few years, it sounded to me like Detroit was becoming the renewed frontier. It is the place to be for artists and farmers because old industry is gone and land is once again cheap, so if you can make your own job and grow your own food then you can have a pretty good life in Detroit.
Unfortunately we weren’t there long enough to say if all that is really true, but in the 48 hours we were there we did see lots of big beautiful houses for sale and lots of wide open vacant lots, we met lots of very friendly people and we went to the largest and most crowded farmers’ market that I have ever been to.
So I can say that Detroit made a good first impression on me and I would love to go back and spend more time getting to know the communities and the people who are making it work in this new version of an old city.
After Detroit, we headed north-east along Lake Huron, at what I thought was going to be a leisurely pace… but this is when Arann started to get antsy. I soon discovered that while I was thinking we had all the time in the world to wander and explore this big beautiful state… the only thing Arann could think about was getting to The UP.
So we hurriedly passed through several very random small American towns…
Stopping only to succumb to basic needs, but happy to discover that the Cheese Capitol of Michigan was one of those stops…
…and we had a cheese picnic, of course.
When we finally made it to The (one-and-only) UP, Arann immediately ate his first pasty and slowly started to breathe normally again.
And when we arrived in Marquette, I finally understood the reason for Arann’s anxious behavior. It turns out that Arann knows a wonderful community of people from when he lived there 10 years ago. Word spread quickly that “Arann Harris was back in town,” so we spent the next 24 hours reminiscing with his long-lost friends.
On our memory lane tour, I finally saw the log cabin that Arann “helped” build.
We met Russel, the crow.
We reunited with more friends, and their children who really loved Russel…
…although I can’t say that Russel really loved meeting them.
And then finally… we made it to the place of many legends, The Huron Mountain Club…
aka: the place where Arann Harris found his calling in life…
Arann likes to tell people that he is a professional camp counselor, and now I can happily say that I got to see The Bridge where it all began so many years ago… and now the new generation of campers can say that the original Pizza Man really does exist.
We were only there for 48 hours but we managed to do a little bit of everything… including donate a significant amount of blood to the local mosquito population.
And after serious exploring and serious relaxing, we were on the move again…
This time we headed south-west to meet our California friends who had descended upon Cross Village, on Lake Michigan, my third Great Lake of the trip, where we…
Skipped rocks.
Tasted the local cuisine.
Helped our dear friends get married and celebrated by playing a whole lot of very cut-throat lawn games.
It was the perfect ending to a well-balanced and carefully planned trip.
And just the kind of recharging we needed before we start our next big adventure…
somewhere between a handshake and two kisses 
