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the un-birthday birthday party

Sunday’s Un-Birthday Party was the Un-Official Launch of Paige and Jude Photo, a Partnership and Adventure in stock photography. Petaluma photographer, and my new friend, Jude Mooney, has been dreaming of stock for the past few years… and she decided in order to make her dream a reality, she needed a partner… and lucky for me…. she picked me. So we started our journey by having an un-birthday party in her brightly colored breakfast nook.

The un-birthday party went exactly as planned, well, except for lumpy icing, a grumpy young party go-er (not pictured here), and minor technical mishaps with camera settings… but all in all it was a successful first shoot

However, there was one other minor important point to mention. During the shoot, it took me a little while to get used to the artificial element that comes from staging everything, but I realize now that is because I am coming from a hands-off documentary photography approach, so it makes perfect sense.

But because of that feeling, and because the whole scene was Jude’s creation anyway, I let Jude do most of the photographing on Sunday. I did manage to capture some candid moments and I played with my beloved Rollei a little, but I look forward to jumping in more actively on the next shoot. I think learning how to produce and direct photo shoots is going to be a well-needed challenge for me. I also look forward to setting up some scenes that I have been imagining, but would probably never make into a reality my own. And most importantly, I look forward to just having fun with photography with another photographer…. so let the adventures begin! And maybe it was a real birthday afterall.

still learning….always learning

After using medium format all summer…..where the camera is so slow and therefore each photograph is so slow and at every shoot I take an average of 3-5 frames of each person……I forgot how to use 35 mm and I forgot how when you photograph a 6 year old, there is no slow…..but photographing Hannah while I was visiting SF, I had to relearn and relearn very very fast.

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Hannah on the stairs is my favorite shot….so I did get a few keepers, but I got a lot of ‘oppses’ as well….but it is so wonderful that Marla, the mother of Hannah, appreciates film and actually requests film over digital, even though it costs more. The quality shows….and I fell in love with black and white all over again.

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This was the third time I have photographed Hannah and it has been so fun to see her grow up from a 3 year old with a cast, to a 6 year old, who in her saucy-polka-dotted-halter dress looks much older than she is, until you make her laugh and suddenly her big toothless grin appears and reminds you she is still just a little girl.

To see more photos from this shoot click here.

And again, I have to give credit to my wonderful assistant and boyfriend, Arann, who made many of the toothless grins possible….I couldn’t have done it without him. It is nice to have an assistant who you love and who is good at assisting.

Ann Poe…

Except to me she will always be Ann Carter. She was my best friend in high school; we were inseparable. I thought we were exactly the same person. We planned to go to college together. We planned to get a jeep and share it. But then I went to Georgia and she went to Charleston. After college, Ann came back to our hometown, but I never did.

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I was always a little jealous that Ann lived her whole life in the same place, because I moved 5 times, to 3 different countries, before I was 10. It turns out that my life of moving around, and her life of living in the same house for 18 years, made us pretty different people after-all.

Ann doesn’t like change. She lives in the same neighborhood she grew up in, with her husband and her, soon to be, two children. She has been teaching first grade in the same classroom for 8 years. Whereas, during those same 8 years, I have moved 7 times, had more than 7 jobs and have traveled to four countries.

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Ann asks me when I am going to settle down… I ask her when she is going to come and visit me, wherever it is I am living at the time.

We couldn’t be more different, but our friendship is still strong. And now it is fun to see Ann with her little Susie. And when I hear Susie call my name in her little Southern accent… I am still amazed by it all.

Taylor

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This is Taylor. She just turned 10 and for her birthday she wanted to have a boy-girl dance party. Her favorite presents were a razor to shave her legs and a toothbrush with a picture of a new boy-band singer who sings when you brush your teeth. She is wearing her new favorite clothes she got for her birthday.

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Unfortunately the party was not a huge success, because it seems 10 year old boys are not as into dance parties as 10 year old girls and so Taylor spent most of the time upset that her boyfriend was not acting the way she wanted. And by the end of the party there was a rumor that he was going to break up with her which made her upset because she really wanted to have a boyfriend for the fifth grade. Taylor’s mom (left) and step-mom (right) tried to make her feel better by giving her their relationship advice.

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Moments later the grandmother’s ex-husband, who she is dating again, rough-housed with this dog until the dog bit his arm and made him bleed.

shopping ‘R’ us

Welcome to strip malls and chain stores. Welcome to anywhere USA.

But what are families supposed to do, when there aren’t many other options, and time and money are not disposable? For young working families, it has to be cheap, fast and convenient. This is life for millions of Americans….

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Susie learns about helium, as her second balloon floats to the ceiling. It is a tough lesson for a two year old.

her eyes work fine

but not many smiles from this one. it is nice that many of our friends are reproducing (just add water) because there is never a shortage of cute little people to practice photographing. arann’s friends came to visit the farm and i played photographer…7 months is the perfect age…they don’t move much….and sometimes you can get them to smile, especially if you have two grown men sweet talking to them in high pitch voices behind you…..although it didn’t work this time. she was too smart for such reindeer games.

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