Thank you everyone who has been following along with me on this journey the past few months. I have been enjoying the challenge of finding photos that are worth sharing with everyone. I hope that everyone has happy holidays and that the new year treats you well.
Here are the photos I took to share with my family for the holiday season.
When my son was born I took photos of him constantly. I think I had ten thousand photographs of him during his first year. Ten thousand! I did really like have a photo every week on the day of the week he was born and every month.
He loves to ham it up for the camera, he loves to hold the camera, instruct others one how they should stand, and take the photo himself.
Oddly he does not much like cooperate the way that I would like him to for a birthday portrait. At least not quite the same way he did when he was six months old and would sit on a bench, gaze up at me with his big blue eyes, and give me the biggest smile ever.
We took these photos at a near by park. The two weeks leading up to his birthday were chilly but in the afternoons the light had been perfectly shinning on this tree with yellow leaves. The leaves had fallen on the ground and created a carpet of yellow. I kept thinking oh man I should just take the pictures today, it is not raining, they have not come to rake the leaves. Unfortunately, I waited.
On his birthday it was chilly, raining, and when we got to the park…the leaves had been cleaned up. He refused to put on pants and then was way too cold. He switched between acting grumpy and goofy, my daughter was hanging to my legs the whole time trying to pull me to the car. Rain was getting all over my lens…overall not my favorite experience.
Oh well. The pictures do show his personality and I think they will actually show off the general mood of the day better than perfect pictures.
Feeling cold, he refused to put on pants.
Trying to be grumpy.
Being his goofy self.
Three years old already!
We went to the park to do this portrait session. It was a wonderful sunny day there were fuzzy caterpillars all over that she was holding onto throughout the session. Even while climbing the fence! She even managed to keep the little caterpillar safe the whole time.
Kids starting up school for the year always calls for first day of school photos. These two were excited (if not a little nervous) about their first day.
I went on pintrest to gather first day of school photo ideas and found a couple that I liked. One was having your child write their name out and have them hold it in the photo. Another was asking them what they want to be when they grow up, writing in on a prop, and put into the photo. Another was taking a photo on the first day and another on the last day of school holding the first day of school photo. Of course that will have to wait until the last day of school.
I decided to combine a few of these ideas and have my son write is name and then I wrote the grade and what he wants to be when he grows up. (I hope you don’t mind i covered that all up, I know it makes the photo look a bit funny).
Maybe now that school has started I will get back into actually posting to this blog! Sorry I haven’t been very good about it.
Once again I went out and photographed the PDX kids calendar photo booth. It was a lot of fun and the evening was a perfect balance of warmth and clear skies (i.e. no rain and not blistering hot). These families were so cute trying on outfits. I love that so many of the parents were having fun letting their children dress them up.
This last weekend I had the pleasure of doing photography for PDX Kids Calendar. They are a great resource for families looking for all of the kid friendly happenings in the Portland area. They had a very fun booth set up for kids to do crafts and take photos at during this Super Hero Fun run.
I took tons of photos of the booth and activities they had set up. During the down time I was able to capture a few shots of the larger activity, the run.
I love this photo of Batman talking on the megaphone! Funny. He was the main “director” for the run, whenever an announcement had to be made he was the one to make it. He was also there promoting the new Batman movie.
I plan to share photos from the run itself as well as a few of those I took for PDX Kids Calendar so stayed tuned for more.
Sorry for the long interval between now and the last post things have been incredibly hectic around my house! Whew! Hopefully I will get more photos up soon. If you want a preview you can head over to the PDX Calendar site I think there is a link to the the photos I took for them there. 
Today is the start of a new project that involves myself, my 5 year old son (AB), 2 year old daughter (AK), and my Mom (Grandma). We are going to do an inter-generational photography learning project that will aim to help all of us learn more about photography, have fun taking pictures, and see what cuteness occurs.
Both of my children are very interested in cameras and whenever we (my mom or I) have one out they want to get their hands on it. As I have talked about previously my Mom was the biggest teacher of photography that I had and most of the learning occurred while on hikes or during other outings.
We are going to have “challenges” where each of us goes out and takes photos of something specific and then submits a photo for this blog. Due to time constraints this will most likely occur on a monthly basis or possibly every two weeks.
I plan to have the theme of each project be something super simple that even my 2 year old can understand and then to use that time to talk about other concepts in photography (very simply), much more of that will happen with my 5 year old but I did want to include my daughter because she already shows such an interest in the camera. My hope is that my Mom will be able to be there while we are shooting but if not she will submit photos separately.
I thought it would be fun to see the world through 4 people with such different placement in the world. So here is our first batch of photos. There is a caption on each on to show who took it. (Except mine).
My son took his photos with out much guidance from me this time while my daughter did have some help with placing the camera a good distance away for the lens that she was using (for the columbine photos).
So those labeled AK are taken by my 2 year old. AB were taken by my 5 year old. NO label taken by myself. Jennifer/Grandma taken by my Mom.
These were all taken at Schreiner’s Iris Garden.
This little guy is a little past a year old. He is the son of a life long friend of mine. These photos were taken during a wedding reception we were all attending for another friend. He was sitting there so nicely I just could NOT resist taking his picture even though it was in the opposite direction of the wedding festivities!
See other photos of people on the People Page.
This weeks photo challenge topic is summer. Since it is not technically summer yet I am mostly looking to past photographs to help show you what makes me feel like it is summer.
Here are some of the things that I found that help me to feel like it is summer.
This is a photo that I took while sailing with my Aunt and Uncle on their boat on Seneca Lake. I have visited upstate New York almost every other year since I was born because most of my relatives live there. Taking to the lake on a sail boat is perfect in the hot and sticky summers that happen there.
In case you couldn’t tell, the next thing that tells me it is summer is a wedding. I loved this wedding in particular for a few reasons. First because this is a couple that has played a very important part in my life. Secondly, this couple spent a long time making sure that getting married was the right step for them so I know that they are very happy together and that getting married was a very good thing for them. The last reason is that I just loved that the Bride and Bride’s Maids all came in to the ceremony on canoe! How cool. Plus the entire wedding party ventured on a hike down a steep dusty path so they could take photos in front of a waterfall near by. So cool.
The last thing that tells me it is summer is a vegetable garden. Here is a picture of some kale from my raised beds.
This weeks photo challenge was the to find something that represents together. There are a few photos that I would have loved to put in this category but already have posted called Great Grandma and In Honor of my Father. So I chose a portrait and a photo that is so classic of a boy and a dog walking together.
