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Margot, the Cutest Little Chicken Pirate Bug in Montana…

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Saturday was Margot’s first trick-or-treating Halloween, and her mother Nici, who I fell in love with in the dorms during my freshman year of college, thinks it is the last one that Margot will allow her mother to choose her costume.

I just loved spending the whole day following around this little creature, who came from two incredible people who I love dearly, and watching a new American learn the strange traditions for our wonderfully bizarre holiday.

The strange new behaviors Margot had to learn include… dressing in a costume that she was not allowed to pull off or touch, learning how to hold a bag and say, “trick-or-treat,” when she wanted something instead of “please,” and taking candy from strangers who were often wearing strange masks or hats.

Margot was not so sure about the taking candy from strangers part, and since she can’t really eat the candy either, I am not sure she got as much from the experience as we did. But we had lots of fun, and visiting five houses was just enough for us to get the candy we wanted.

And the day was complete with a bath for Margot and candy and wine for us.

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Baby Therapy…

This morning, I kind of was feeling like this…

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But then, a little of this…

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….and I suddenly felt better. I am a strong believer in baby therapy, especially if you get to borrow someone else’s baby, and then sneak away right before the smiles wear off and the nap time blues start to take over. But we got two solid hours worth of toothy grins out of 9 month old Hudson before his modeling session was declared over.

It was a good way to start a Sunday.

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A one year old… one year later…

The photo above was sweet Sydney last year, when she was just a year old. As a one-year-old, Sydney just sat and smiled with her big blue-green eyes at the rapidly spinning world around her and at anyone who happened to pass by.

And one year later… this is the same big-eyed girl, as a two year old…

This year, when I had the camera out, the only photos I could get without her hiding her face behind her hands, were when she was looking through her mom’s purse, or sneering at me for interrupting her.

Even swinging her around, until she was laughing uncontrollably and too dizzy to walk, she still held her newly shy hand up to her mouth.

But finally, with quick and sneaky persistence… I eventually got the photo of the big-eyed girl I was looking for.

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.

inspiration

This weekend I went to Atlanta to visit an old friend. While I was there I discovered, by chance, that there was an Annie Leibovitz exhibit at the High Museum of Art.

For a brief moment, I thought maybe I didn’t need to go, because I saw her talk last fall in Berkeley, California, and I have her book Annie Leibovitz: a Photographer’s Life which the images in the show come from….but I was in need of a good dose of inspiration, so that moment of doubt didn’t last very long. I went with Betsy, an old friend who is not a photography person at all, and I got exactly the inspiration I was looking for.

The show was well worth the $15 entry fee….for me, I don’t know about for Betsy. I enjoyed staring at the faces in the enlarged portraits and then to getting in close to her smaller intimate personal photographs, that I am so happy she included in this collection. My favorite part was a side room that was filled with hundreds of small photos grouped in chronological order to show her editing process for the book. It was wonderful to stand and get lost in the walls of that room. I could have spent at least two hours in that section, but I was with Betsy the non-photography friend and she looked ready to go, and I had promised I wouldn’t stay too long…….so although I left earlier than I would have liked, by going with Betsy I was able to hear the reaction from a photography civilian…..she admitted she had a hard time telling which photographs were supposed to be good….she admitted they are better than ones she could take, but she thought some of them looked like ones I could have taken……now I don’t know that I agree with that statement, at all, but the point that I took was that it is important to remember that not everyone is as trained to see the differences in photographs as we, photography nuts, are.

The other thing that I realized is: unless you are taking photographs of celebrities…no one really cares that much….so you can do whatever you want. And on my way out of Atlanta, with my new inspiration and my new liberation, I visited Summer and Michael and their new baby Camden….the photos of her have received more hits than any of my other summer work. Why? Not because they are amazing but because her family who lives on the other side of the country cares……so photography can have different purposes…..we take photos to make us happy and we take photos to make others happy……it is nice to be able to do both.

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to see more click here

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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