Location, Location, Location...

Had a fun time scoping out some new locations, spots, oddities... etc!! Commissioned a couple gorgeous young ladies in gorgeous dresses to play model for a day and they both did a super job!!

Most of all it was fun!

It's something to be able to completely run a shoot, without a client's concerns to include in my head. This is a great way to show potential clientele something new and different.

Coming of Age

These Senior portraits I took of Miss Taylor are special for a couple of reasons.

First, Taylor is actually family and she was witness to a pretty serious car accident with my daughter last fall and all of our family, including my daughter and Taylor, have emerged from the other side, alive and kicking. Taylor's smile is an example of the life we have all gotten back to!

You know, there are countless beautiful and unique settings to take pictures. I have my eye out for them all the time! Taylor's sitting including those types of places, but I really think the best pictures were places that were special to her, places she has come to know, living her life in the same town.

Included in her sitting were some railroad tracks and bridge near her home, an old full sized steam engine train that her grandfather actually use to engineer, the park we all know and love and last but not least, photos actually taken at her family home.

We went all over that day, but I really didn't see until I was back in my office, how at home and happy she seems in those places. Thanks to Taylor and her mom Patti for a fun, albeit hot shoot day! :)

Wedding Planning?

Ok, get ready for hilarity!

I have no boyfriend. No prospects. My last two dates have since contacted me to announce reconciliation with long lost exes. Yes!

Anyway, even when I am dating, I am in no hurry for a huge commitment. I can commit, but marriage, kids... hmmmm, I'm on the fence due to tragedies passed.

Despite these truths that are self evident, I am forever planning my next wedding. ???

What wedding?

Thus far, I have decided the setting/ceremony of my next nuptial and the song!! Hope my hubby doesn't mind... wherever he is!!

So this bridge is the aisle, down which I intend to walk unassisted. Lined with guests, handing me my flowers one at a time. Later, whoever the lucky chap standing at the end may be, we will dance to "Heaven," remake by Jason Aldean & Bryan Adams.

Is this because I photograph weddings?

I don't oogle in jewelry store windows. I do not buy bridal magazines. Hmm.

Wearing My Glasses...

Ugh... I am working on a sitting/viewing... over 100 prints now that I have done the breakdown. I am forever scorning myself for zooming in, when what I should be doing is wearing my glasses!! I like my glasses, both the brown and the violet, but for some reason I think of them more when I am accessorizing, than when I actually need to see something! Hmmm... note to self.

Mind you I have no insurance, so I have paid cold hard cash for these beauties and so, where are they? Hmmm.... I don't know. I think the brown ones may be on my bedside table and... yes! The violet are behind me, on a tower of drawers, meant to organize, but really just hiding chaos.

I put them on. They're filthy. Cleaned them. Still not great.

I am wondering if this is a secret, subconscious problem I am having, since my last boyfriend said they made me look old. Old?? Ugh!! I am 34! They're supposed to make me look smart, mousy, sexy? Maybe not. I need to wear them, so that everything else looks... clear!!!!!

Sixty Three Chapters of Summer

Well I am cautiously motivated, excited, mystified!!! My first novel is seriously put to bed, on the shelf, never to be edited again, I hope. So, my summer is ear marked for completion of three, YES, three more! Not novels, well, not all of them anyway. My cook book, my memoir/biography on my experience with my daughter's car accident and my children's book Creepy Christina, should, could, WILL be done by September 1st!!

Honestly, the children's book is the only one testing me at the moment. The other two I feel are wll within my reach. Sadly, the children's book is done! It's been written for two years, illustrations recently completed by the talented Hanna Marie Copithke, so what's the hold up you ask? Ugh! I've never dealt with illustrations, full page on every page. So the publisher keeps kicking it back, full bleed, zero margins, pixelation.... they're speaking Jackanese to me!! But I power on.

The memoir is all in editing and photo insertion, but I can only handle a few pages before I have to take a break... but again, totally written!

The cookbook is not totally written, but it lives and breathes in my head. I just need to conduct a July August affair with my desk and we'll be ok!

All of this is in hopes of a clean slate in the Fall. Ok, the slate is never clean... with a few other titles rattling around up there, but for the most part! The Senator's Daughters was shelved when the first 911 call came in, but it's back on the burner now and maybe I will plan to have it done before NANOWRIMO 2010. Ah, back to the place where so much has been born. Love it.

Meanwhile my favorite time of the photographic year is upon us. Wheat fields and raindrops, late sunsets and so much light!! I am in heaven!