Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love and Best Wishes,

Amy, S, Little Man, Ellie, Echo and Norman

See you soon.

Garfield's Flowers

Once again when we were in Indianapolis in October, we visited the Garfield Park Conservatory and Sunken Garden. And once again, I had fun taking some snapshots of the absolutely beautiful flowers and plants therein. Here are a few of my favorites. I hope you like them too:

Nearly Neon Lantana


Speaking of neon, I think this has to be some kind of coleus.
We'll call it neon coleus!


I like this one for the light and the bokeh.


The orchids in this place are amazing.


Orchids with creamy bokeh.


An exquisite variety.


Pretty in pink.


This one reminds me of a ruffled shirt.


Very unique.


Pomegranate, used in last month's header.


Then, outdoors, there were mums.


And these...not sure what these are, but I liked them.


Bees were also outdoors, of course.


Outdoors, it was definitely autumn.

So there you have it. I love this place. Or any place I can take pretty pictures of natural things. Thanks for ruminating through them with me.

See you soon.

Amanda and Russell and the Girls

Our friends Amanda and Russell asked me to take some photos of their family at the Dallas Arboretum the other day. They were to be family shots - not Christmas photos. And, all week we were worried about what the weather was going to do. Turns out it was a beautiful day and we happened to get some great photos of this good looking bunch, so I had to share them with you:

The fall colors were just about perfect here in Dallas on that day.


This is Miss Amelia, four years old.

Amelia was not so sure about me at first. We have met before, but it had been a while for sure and she didn't remember me at all. So she had to warm up to the idea of taking these photos. Getting to run around the big open field helped the warming process immeasurably. She actually came up to me a few minutes into the shoot and explained to me she didn't know me at first but now that she does know me, it was alright that I was taking their photos.

The live wire and the not-so-live wire.


She even posed for me later in the afternoon.


I like this one, but it would have been better if I would have gotten down even with the stone.


Once she started playing in the water with her dad, she had the most fun of all.


Then there is Miss Lola, just over a year old.


She is cute as a button, too.


And all smiles.


She had fun running in the field, too, with Mama nearby.

Attempts to capture a photo of the two girls together did not go so good. Actually, those photos would make a pretty funny blog post all by themselves. The only one that came out remotely salvageable was this one:

Then we took several posed family shots in different locations of the Arboretum. Here are my favorites:

This one...still when Amelia wasn't so sure...


By the fossil walls and all that water.


In the field full of fall colors when the sun was just about right.

It was nice to enjoy the beautiful day with this beautiful family! Thanks Amanda and Russell for letting me take your photos!

See you soon.

Thanksgiving Silliness

On Thanksgiving at S's parents' house, we once again attempted to get a photo of the five grandchildren together. Yeah, well, here's what we got:

I should say, in Little Man's defense, he was not feeling good at all.



Winner of the "first to cry" award - Katherine!



Next...it was Alexandra.
She didn't cry - she just crinkled up her sweet little face.



Sophia was all like, "What's the problem, girlfriend?"



Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle.
Giggle.
I think Little Man and Alexandra might look even MORE alike than he and Sophia...



OK, all looking sort of in the same direction.
But Andrew is eating a cookie.
And everyone else sort of has this "why am I here?" look.



Andrew is now on the move.
Alexandra is pretty sure the grown-ups are on something.



Little Man's turn to cry!



S said, when viewing these photos, as if speaking for LM,
"I sure can enjoy the holidays more now that I've got my Hoveround!"
So now, of course, we call it the Hoveround.

Sophia to LM: "Come on, you and me, let's blow this Popsicle stand!"



Add in grandparents - add in another layer of complexity.



Look at LM...he is really enjoying himself.



This would be one of a series of shots where I took my eye away from the viewfinder.
Ahem.



Sophia's turn to get upset!



Then we tried individual family shots...they were MUCH better. Ha.



Actually, I think this one is pretty darn good.
Excellent, if you know what came before. And after.



Family 2.



About as good as I got on that one.



Then sicko with his grandparents rounded out the festivities.



Later in the day, we humiliated LM a little more with this great wig.

So there you have it. Another round of grown-up silliness, trying to get little kids to cooperate for a photo. Until Christmas...

See you soon.

A Little Holiday Magic

Here are some photos to get you into the holiday spirit! The woman who runs the store at work asked me to take some photos of Little Man in some of their holiday baby clothing. She felt having some photos displayed of babies in the clothes would help sales. So of course I obliged. And, I roped in his "twin" cousin Sophia to help too. I really needed a baby who could sit up by themselves for one of the outfits, and Sophia, being two months older, already does that on her own. We were able to get some really cute shots - I might even use one for our holiday card. That reminds me - I better get on that. I also hope they help the store sell for the holidays!

I should give credit to Sophia's mom Kim for the props - we had a tight turn around to get these done and I had no time to go get props. Kim picked up the Santa hat and made the little present. They were PERFECT for this shoot. I wanted something that said, "Christmas" but wasn't too over the top. I also want to note that during this shoot, I couldn't get one of my studio lights to work. So, the shadows on the left are from the failed light. But we did the best we could! Here are some of my favorites.

This is baby Sophia in her outfit...




...she was in a great mood for the shoot and was smiling a ton.

Then, Kim got roped into doing some photos too - the lady at the store gave me a matching adult shirt, but when I put it on it was, shall we say, WAY too tight in certain quadrants of the shirt. So, Kim put it on. Of course, it was way too big on her all over, because she is so petite especially compared to me. But it worked for the purpose of getting a "mom and baby" photo.

Then we put the bouncy seat under the muslin to take a few photos of Little Man in the Christmas pajamas, some with the Santa hat and some without. The shadows were more troubling in these photos, so some of them were just unusable. These were OK:

I cropped this one to get rid of some shadow.


I did this one to include in a photo collage...obviously not much product showing here.




With the hat on, the two babies look even MORE alike, don't you think?

Then, I used some of the photos to create some collages. I was going to do more, but then decided to wait to see what might be most useful to the store manager before I spent a ton of time on collages she didn't like or need. Here are two that I made:

By the way, I am purposely not mentioning the name of my employer in this post (even though you can see it in some of the photos) so it doesn't come up on Internet crawler searches...they are going to use the photos on their blog too at some point, and I don't want to steal their thunder. Without the name, I think we're probably fine just talking about them as they are!

***UPDATE*** - the blog post is up at work and you can see it too by clicking here.

So anyway, there are the photos from what I'm pretty sure was my first deliberate "product" photo shoot. I learned some things about product photo shooting, and will do a better job next time if I have another I have the opportunity to do it. We had some fun taking the photos, and I think they are going to work out for the store's purposes.

See you soon.