A few from my afternoon shoot today…
so cold!
so much warmer….
and happier!
Beautiful Ava and mom….
And with Dad….
more soon,
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At long last! My new line of products is ready to launch. This has been a long-held goal of mine, to be able to provide my clients with different boutique products to display images from their sessions. From Kolo linen albums, to the most amazing photo boxes (if I do say so myself), to storyboards (9 images in one big presentation box), there’s tons of new stuff.

Come over to our new shared studio space in Mt. Pleasant on Saturday from 2 – 6pm. Touch. Feel. Gab. Eat. Place your Holiday Orders and breathe a sigh of …. ‘done’ before the holiday rush even begins.

Of course after the show, all will be available online. But who wants to sit on the computer? Come and mingle!

The Details:
*october 24th from 2 – 6pm
*past tense studio – 3253 mt. pleasant st.
washington, dc 20010 (corner of Park and Mt. Pleasant)
*bring a guest! children welcome!
*on street parking available

See you then and bring a friend!
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If you were to ask me one word to describe my photographic style, I would say Color.
I love color. Not just a little, but bold rainbow stripes of color. My kitchen is yellow and my living room is red. My car is purple. Ironically I wear a lot of black.

Before I was a photographer, I was a painter. Back when I lived in an apartment three times the size of my current coop at a 7th of the price. Granted, I had to live in Buffalo…but i digress. Back to color. I painted bold swaths of color all day and night, moving the oil this way and that, diluting, blending, edging the angled brush endlessly, in an effort to get the deepest saturation possible.

So I look at my images these days, and that’s what I see. Last night, photographing my boldest client yet (it’s 40 degrees and raining, she’s nine and a half months pregnant, it’s dinner time, and she says “can we go outside?” and I say “halleluja I thought you’d never ask!!”) I see this:

That line of orange just raining down on them just got me. I love it. The ripple of street light on the wet street … it just screams… “welcome home! cozy blankets and chicken soup awaiting inside”.

Rain saturates the colors of the natural world just as an edging brush does to oil paint. The photographic opportunities these next few days are endless…if i can only keep my fingers warm enough to push the shutter. Another point for painting.

Oh, and I was at the White House this morning, shooting stills to accompany a video of Sam Kass. He’s the White House chef and helping promote young chefs, healthy school lunches, and a bunch of other really admirable stuff.

Both shoots tomorrow have been postponed due to rain (wimpy 2 year olds 🙂 – so more on the flip side.
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“This is a really good way to raise kids,” my three year old mind whispers, as my Dad and I are walking side by side through a National Forest.

And so I ask him, “what is the name of your job?” to which he responds “I’m a photographer”. I counter, insistently “No! What’s the real name of your job? The exact name?” I wanted to store that title away like a sacred acorn so that when I got married, my husband could have that exact job, and our kids could experience what my brother and I were living, in that moment.

Turns out my Dad was a Kodak photographer, a job which sent us cross country in a red station wagon, to Estes or Sequoia National Parks. All summer, our weekends were spent at the top of mountains, Dad rising at the break of dawn for early morning nature walks…leading a gaggle of photographic students from picturesque scene to scene.

I learned two things from this memory. First, kids are listening, so watch what you say. Second, we are all given gifts, which ironically, we take for granted. I used to feel that the things that came naturally to me, and brought me the most joy fell into the category of “hobby”, and a job was something else, something ultimately less joyful.

The ah-ha moment came 26 years after my insistent question, when I realized that I had known all along what career would bring me joy. I just had to rewire my brain that in my family, the mom would have the job with the camera. I started my photographic business on January 5, 2008, and haven’t looked back a single day.

Okay, I did look back once. Last week, at the pumpkin patch, I couldn’t help myself from recreating another little memory…

Me, as photographed by my Dad. Circa 1980, right around the time of my first memory
of how great it would be to be a photographer.

29 years after I was laying on my belly between two pumpkins, I photographed this client.
She was much happier.

more memories to come, or to be made…
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