Exie is one month (already!)

Sometimes I sound like the daftest of grandparents..."they grow up so fast" but honestly I swear I did Exie's newborn shots yesterday and now she is already 1month. Sigh. Leaves me murmuring over my tea, "so fast...".

This is Exie with baby doll Exie...



I love daily scenes. It's photos like these that I think will be especially nice in many years when you look back and see the doll house you used to play with, the toy kitchen your granny made, the room in that house you grew up in....

Rebe in the City

I always have such grand plans for visits but I'm not always the best planner. We wanted an art day. At the last minute we decided to forego Seattle Art Museum and head to the galleries in Pioneer Square. Probably a quality mistake but we did get a nice quantity of togetherness time. The small, wandering around, drinking coffee, taking goofy photos, laughing at ourselves kind of time. Those are the times I miss anyway. I'll just go to the museum on my own. I promise..

A-man at the Park

Wednesday's are always good days. It's my day with my little buddy. There is such a wonderfulness in typicalness. So even though Rebecca, who has unparalleled kid ju-ju, was with us we had our same routine. Bakery, park, stroll....

The photos seem to be the same each week and yet when I put them all together at the end of the year the changes are subtle yet profound...



I don't approve of pushing items because eventually I'll be stuck pushing them but Rebecca agreed to be the keeper of the stroller in such an event...

My friend Rebe

My friend Rebecca has come for a visit. We've been friends since college and it's always so nice to have such a familiar presence to relax into. She's just moved back from Ireland and my last visit with her was last April as we did a driving tour of Northern Ireland's Antrim Coast. Pretty much the most magically beautiful place ever.

The bizarrness of Giant's Causeway clearly affected us.


You can add food to my list of photo obsessions behind shoes...


There's a series of these shots but I'll spare myself...

My buddy

Here's my little friend A. We hang out every week. And this is what we do--a lot.

We have snacks. We go to the park. We have dance parties. We laugh.

Here's the snack part...

Exie Newborn

Back to school yesterday. I spent a day at Luminous Works learning how to better use Lightroom--my new editing and processing tool. Whew is pretty much all I can say. This program is so cool and, being brand spanking new, it's only going to get better. Now I just have to integrate it into the work flow....(why is there always a "now I have to...").

It's another up at 6:30am because I'm so excited to work on photos day...that's not photographer blog speak...I really did wake up thinking "whoa, I have to go reconfigure lightroom" and yes, sometimes I speak to myself in 80's surfer talk.

So I poured another cup of coffee and sliced off a bit of Zingermann's coffee cake sent over by my good friend Anne which reminded me to schedule her baby's 1 month pictures. She's going to let me photograph her brand new one, Exie, every month for a new sitting style/product I'm trying out. As you can imagine, I didn't have to twist her arm very hard.

Here are a few gems from Exie's newborn session...

Slideshow Ta-Da

the official photo love slideshow from Maddy and Mike's wedding that Deena and I shot

Crazy Love

Here's just a teaser from the crazy booth. The slideshow is on it's way (again with the irrationally positive attitude...I like to think it's my trademark).

What I learned at WPPI

We had an awesome weekend shooting Maddy and Mike's Wedding. Okay, that was such a photographer blog thing to say. But honestly, we set up a background and shot some crazy photos of nearly every guest and the photos are so stinkin funny, cute, outrageous, etc..... There's a little slideshow but, and hence the title of the blog, it's a new program we got at WPPI and the actually outputting the slideshow is causing many headaches. Arghhh new technology....

I feel sort of on-fire from WPPI. I actually said "I'm totally on fire" over lunch when referring to my recent work and enthusiasm. I think soda was spit across the table but regardless...

So, this is just a little experiment we did after WPPI when a presenter shot with a video light. I had to rush out and rent one to play with which I'm totally glad I did since I'm going to "rock" it this weekend (I told you, I'm on fire). I'm going to have the slideshow online tomorrow (big happy wishful positive thinking attitude) but until then here's a few of my neighbor Marcia from the lighting experiment.

Karaoke

I've decided that even though I just updated my website I'm not really happy with it. Plus some people have had problems with it which makes me really sad. So I've been so into checking out other photographer's websites and blogs.

The whole blog idea is pretty new to me and I really struggle to communicate with my words. I feel like my writing sounds so hokey and, I'll admit it, lame. I don't really want to be the type of photographer that "fell in love with photography when I was given my first camera at age 6" (which may or may not be true) or "discovered photography with the birth of my first born" (which, being childless, definitely isn't true). I'm not knocking that sort of bio but I'm not really that halmarkish special.

So, even though I think blogging can be pretty silly when you see a good one it's so inspiring (halmarkish word...sorry). I've had so many ideas for what I want to blog that my mind is racing around. This morning in the shower I couldn't remember if I had washed my hair or not I was so busy planning my blog.

It all started when I was checking out Jesh de Rox's blog and he highlighed this wedding dance

from youtube (which my awesome friend Deanna taught me how to embed!). It's a super cute wedding dance video and it made me think of funny wedding dances I've had and the two that really stuck out in my mind were both karaoke and both were in the Methow Valley/Sun Mountain area. The world is one big coincidence.

This party was really fun and the dancing was just getting going when Lisa took the mic and busted out a totally perfect "Baby's got Back". It brought the house down!

And that karaoke moment naturally led to Sara and Laurel's most awesome wedding party with Rock-a-Roke--karaoke with a live band. Can you imagine how cool that is? I mean there were backup singers and everything! If I could sing I would be all over that! Ahhh...another if only....

I'm not sure why his pants are off...It was that kind of a party...

Jen and Mark pt 2

Okay, this totally made my day! I blogged about Jen and Mark yesterday after I had put their proofs in the mail and then this morning this email was in my inbox! I love when people love their photos as much as I love taking them!

"Libbyyyyyy!!!!!

Thank you.................... I just returned home from morning workout and got the photo album-it was all i could do to run in the house fast enough to rip the box open!!!

I love your work!!!!!! The pictures are so wonderful i couldn't stop laughing and welled up a bit too!!! Mark looks so gorgeous-and you have no idea how self conscience he is-he doesn't think he is photogenic--and he looks so amazing-he will be so happy!!!

I can't wait for the wedding!! literally around the corner now!!! yeah!!!!"

Jen and Mark

When I first met Mark it was the middle of the holiday season and he was working incredibly long hours. He was so sleepy. But a relaxed, well-rested Mark is a totally different experience. I laughed the whole time. Their wedding in Portland next month is going to be a blast---who wouldn't look forward to a wedding at McMenamin's Grand Lodge!

Haeli's Senior Photos

Haeli is so easy going. Despite the rain and super chilly temperatures she did all the silly things I asked of her and we got super cute photos in return! Plus I got to use my new camera (yeah) which I am now officially in love with. What was really cool though was that I've been taking Haeli's photos since she was 12!

I think people assume it makes me feel old to see kids grow up but in truth it makes me feel so amazingly privileged. I am literally creating memories for them. There are things in my life I only remember through photographs and now I am entrusted to give that to someones future. I have the coolest job in the world!

Haeli now...

And Haeli then...

Inlaws & Outlaws

It's been a really busy weekend which makes me really excited for my blog. So many things keep happening that I want to share but this one trumps them all. Last night I was on TV! Or more to the point, my photos were on TV...

I knew that my photos had been used for a documentary called Inlaws & Outlaws but because of scheduling I was never able to see it in the theatre. And then last night it was on KCTS. It's a really beautiful documentary about love and marriage and civil rights and one of the couples whose wedding I photographed in 2004 were featured along with their wedding photographs.

That was back in the dark ages of film so I don't have all of their photos but I do have a few scans... Interestingly enough I ran into Laramie about a month ago and she was super pregnant and chasing around another little one that they are adopting. It's always exciting to see "my families" grow!