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 females 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.
Ever wonder what 16 photo shoots in 12 different cities in 22 days looks like…
November 2nd: (9 am) Oakland with this lovely family.
November 2nd: (1 pm) Healdsburg at the DaVero Olive Harvest.
November 4th: San Francisco with Education Outside.
November 5th: Bodega newborn session.
November 7th: Petaluma documenting nine months.
November 8th: (10 am) Petaluma with this lovely family.
November 8th: (4 pm) Point Richmond with this lovely family.
November 9th: Berkeley with this lovely family.
November 13th: San Francisco head shots with AOC.
November 15th: Point Reyes Station at the Fibershed Wool Symposium.
November 16th: Seattle with The Big Flip.
November 17th: Petaluma with this very special high school senior.
November 18th: Healdsburg for the upcoming Christmas Tree book.
November 19th: Portland with The Big Flip.
November 22nd: LA with The Big Flip.
November 23rd: LA and our very last photo shoot with The Big Flip.
And (after all the editing) this is what I hope November 24th-27th looks like, and for that I am very, very thankful. Happy Week of Thanks, everyone!
I met up with an old college friend today, who I haven’t seen in way too long. It was fun to catch up on all that has happened over the past several years and to meet the two very different babies in her life…
Both of her babies are always very happy to see you…
Both babies can be a little stinky at times and need cleaning up after…
Both babies do a lot of drooling…
But only one baby has a face that is so easy for everyone to love…
And the other baby…
Has a face that I especially love…
I am a such a sucker for dogs, and at 135 lbs, this guy is a whole lot of dog to love.
I’d sneak him back to California in a second, except he doesn’t quite fit into my carry-on luggage.
This is Charlie, chef and co-owner of Pizzaiolo in Oakland, and the truck he uses to pick up his produce from the farmers’ markets.
And this is his son, Eli.
Charlie’s daughter, Matilda, wanted them to put on suits because she felt weird being the only one dressed-up during the group photos, after her impromptu wedding dress photo shoot.
While I really like the photo above, mostly because of Charlie’s socks, I think I like the one below better…
It is definitely random, but it is more of an honest reflection of who they were on that rainy Monday in the middle of January. I love dressing up but if I have to choose… I prefer honest reflections over imaginary projections any day.
I wish everyday was Halloween.
Someone asked me how I managed all the roles of film that I take with my Rolleiflex, and the answer for this summer was… I didn’t.
I was so busy running around taking more photos that I didn’t have time to deal with the negatives. So I had towers of envelopes, with negatives inside, building a little city in our spare bedroom. It was so intimidating that my solution was to keep the spare bedroom door shut, so I wouldn’t have to see all the work waiting for me.
Finally, this week was the week. Sunday night I got everything set up on our kitchen table, still no office, and Monday morning I got to work. And I worked and worked and worked… filing, scanning, filing, scanning. And now that everything is filed and scanned, the dust retouching begins.
Film is a lot of work.
But it is so worth it. I found so many treasures that I didn’t even know I had.
Digital photography is incredibly useful and I am grateful to have it. It is a great learning tool and essential for photo shoots with quick turn around times. But film inspires and excites me in a way that digital just can’t.
I wish I could post all of my new loves tonight, to prove my point that film is amazing once and for all, and because I am still not good at saving, anything. Not presents, not money, definitely not chocolate, I eat all the chocolate in my Advent calenders during the first week, and not photos that I love.
But I am going to try and be patient and create my own Rollei Advent Calender… one Rollei photo post a day… until?
Well, at least until all of this batch has been introduced to the world, and then we’ll see.
(Models: Arann Harris, my skateboarding muse of a husband, and Mia the wonder dog.)
This is my beautiful friend Shari. She is embarking on a new adventure and she needed some photos of herself… even though she is not a fan of being photographed. In an effort to get her to forget about the camera, we spent the day slowly catching up, sipping on champagne to ease her photo nerves, with me occasionally snapping photos during our conversation. Contrary to her belief, she was the perfect model and I thoroughly enjoyed photographing her… bright blue eyes and dimples are a pretty easy combination.
My advice to Shari, and to all the amazing women I know… you are beautiful, smart, funny, and kind, and you deserve the absolute best… so don’t settle for anything less. Be yourself and love yourself, and eventually you will find your perfect match.
And if you are an amazing single guy who lives in the Bay Area… then you should get in touch with me, cause I know some of the most incredible single women ever, and I do enjoy playing matchmaker.
And here is the ladybug who crawled to the very tippy end of a single blade of grass, as we sat and talked. I couldn’t resist. Although he was kind of hard to photograph, because his perch was blowing in the wind and therefore blowing out of my narrow depth of field… but Shari didn’t mind sharing the spotlight, so I kept trying until I got the one I wanted.
That’s the voicemail my mom left on my phone after she saw my last blog post with her photo on it. Her message made me laugh because she can be really funny, even when she isn’t trying to be. But she really wanted me to take that photo down… but… I didn’t.
I didn’t take the photo down, partly because she is my mom, and not a client, but more importantly because I LOVE THAT PHOTO, because it is my real, uncensored mom, and because it was a great day with a great hike, and because that is a look that I know and love so well.
I was a little nervous though, because she said that I could never take another photo of her again, and I do have some family members who mean that. So I thought I should at least try and take a photo that she might not hate, because to take a photo of her that she would love would be impossible. So on our hike in Pt Reyes, during her Thanksgiving visit, we happened to stop in a spot where the light was just perfect and I talked her into trying one more time. Hopefully this time she won’t hate the photos… we’ll soon see.
Most people do not like photos of themselves, even really good photos of them, and that is one of the hardest parts of being a photographer. Before the shutter is ever pressed, the protests come… “I am not photogenic,” or, “Your camera might break.” And sometimes the offensive body parts are listed, one-by-one.
But if I want to be a photographer then I have to ignore all protests, because if I didn’t then I would never take another photo of a person again. So I say,”You won’t break my camera. You probably are photogenic, but you may not have had a photographer who understands what makes a good photo.” I promise them that we will end up with photographs they will like… and I won’t put any photos that they don’t like on display to the public… (as long as THEY are not my MOM… sorry mom… I love you. Thank you for being a beautiful, trusting, understanding, supportive and a patient model/mother!!)
And… here are a couple more from the hike that I love too.
I have all my film, from my trip across the East, in a nice neat stack, just waiting for me to scan them and show them to the world on my blog, but the problem is I have 10,000 other things to do first… so I am saving my film as a reward for myself… “No film, until you finish your veggies.”
But I couldn’t help myself, here’s one of my favorites, so far, from Gina and Keith’s wedding at the United Nations in NY.
OK, now back to work, seriously.
somewhere between a handshake and two kisses 
