Evan’s 1!

I spent some time with Evan this past weekend. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since I photographed him!  It was great to see his photos all over the house – it’s rare I get to see where my photos end up!

 

Back to boudoir

I still have a ton of Azores photos to post, but I thought I’d break it up a bit. Lots of wedding photos to come soon too.

 

Azores – Wall art

I will have lots of bare walls to fill at my new place in Arlington in a few weeks. It’s going to be a tough decision. I’ve already ordered prints of the hydrangeas and the tree bark photos below are strong contenders for my living room. And let’s not forget about the sensual trees. Decisions, decisions…

Azores – Photos of me taking photos (incomplete)

I had a wedding last night with Ali and she handed over a disc full of photos of me shooting, most of which I didn’t know she had taken. It’s always funny to me to see myself shooting because when I’m in the “zone” I get excited and contort myself into some pretty interesting positions.

This post is incomplete. My intention was to post a photo of me followed by the photo I was taking, which I started to do. Technical difficulties, which I’m too sad about to explain, are preventing me from finishing this, but hopefully soon.

I included some, “Look, I’ve on vacation!” photos too.

I realize this looks funny out of context. There’s a story here. While slipping around the mountainous roads we managed to get a 5-foot stick lodged into the light or our rental car. Just pull it out, right? It was wedged in so tightly, Ali had to pop the hood and dig through the car’s guts to yank it out. This is my reenactment later that day.

 

Special request by Ali.

 

 

Azores – Sensual Trees

On our first day in the Azores, Ali and I had our first experience following a tourist map. The park where these photos were taken would be the only place we easily found. Tourists maps aren’t really maps, but rough guidelines of where things are. Sao Miguel is spattered with small villages and towns with supposed attractions, marked on the map with icons. We desperately searched for waterfalls (more on those later) and windmills. We found the windmills, or rather stumps of windmills. It was like someone had gone around and stole the tops of them all.

Anyhow, the title got your attention. I know my readers. As a primarily boudoir photographer, I’ve apparently trained myself to look for certain things when I take photos. Or maybe I haven’t trained myself, it’s just something that’s always been there. Who knows… that’s pretty deep for a Friday night. I realized how ingrained in me this has become while taking photos of trees. Yes, that’s right, trees. When considering the angle which to shoot a tree or palm I found myself looking for certain curvatures. Let’s say in the past year, I’ve been Georgia O’Keeffed.

For me, Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings are almost embarrassing to be caught gawking at, yet I find it hard to look away. She was goose bump brilliant. I’ve been reading up on her every now and then since I saw one of her painting alongside an Ansel Adams exhibit last year. She’s also very quotable. There are parts of her well known quotes that I feel describe my photography.

“So I said to myself I’ll paint what I see…”
“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me…”

Anyhow, that was a tangent, back to my trees. Excited by my findings and working intimately close to a tree, I announced to Ali I was photographing sensual trees. She, on the other hand, was in search of the perfect path photo. Ali found this hilarious and she is still referring to my sensual trees. Though I’m still working on them, I thought I’d share a few.

Azores – Where We Went

Like I mentioned in the previous post, we went places that most tourists (or natives) don’t usually see. And after traversing unpaved roads, having our car stall the the top of a mountain, and getting stuck in the mud several times, we know why. We can safely say that cows have seen every square inch of Sao Miguel. There were cows in places so high, steep, or muddy we couldn’t figure out how they managed to get there. More on the cows later.

Ali made a comment when we were in a valley, sandwiched in between two skyscraping mountains, to the effect of , “how do I capture the beauty here?” What she meant is it is hard to show how grandiose a place is through a photo. We see photos of mountains and landscapes all the time. Did you ever stop to think how the photographer got that photo? After my trip, I’ve really come to appreciate landscapes in a new way.

One way to show the scale of a place is to stick a person in the photo. Many places we visited I was so consumed with keeping my balance and getting the shot quickly that I didn’t have time to snap a shot of Ali, but the photos below will give you an idea of where we went.

(that’s boiling water incase you were wondering)

(more boiling water that stinks of sulfur)

The Azores – Hydrangeas

Those of you who follow my blog know I just spent a week in the Azores. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been asked many times how it was to which I don’t have a good response.

Every day started and ended much the same. In the morning, my travel companion, Ali, who is so very cheery as soon as the sun rises, would whisper my name until I got out of bed. I’d mumble a few things and then it was off to breakfast, which consisted of a shot of coffee, a gulp of passion fruit juice, and soggy scrambled eggs. We’d stuff apples and bottles of Gloria Patri water in our camera backpacks and head for our temperamental car rental. Once we managed to finesse our way out of our street parking spot (better put, ran into the curb a dozen times… I think Azores streets were designed for the width of a single horse… or cow), we’d head up the curvy, death roads, as I like to call them, and start our daily photo adventure. At the end of the day we’d consume an amazing amount of steak, fish, bread (Ali – was it 9 pieces that night?), and wine and then fall asleep to the sound of old American movies, which they play on Azores television stations.

Not every day started off well. The Azores are literally in the clouds, which is a bummer if you want to see anything five feet in front of you. Then there was the rain, wind, and street signs that showed cars falling off cliffs… but that story is for another blog post. By then end of every day we had come across new landscapes, interesting people, and places we never could’ve imagined. I’ve decided to post a series of photo vignettes to tell the stories.

The first has a little back story having to do with my tradition of giving my mother a photo every Christmas. She likes this so much she has started to make requests, even though I tell her it doesn’t work that way. She really loves hydrangeas and has a spot picked out for my future hydrangea photo that she insists I will take for her. She even offered to buy me one to take photos of. Again, it doesn’t work like that.

Hydrangeas typically run rampant in the Azores. The islands are blanketed with them… usually. Apparently we just missed the right season for them. For the first few days of our trip, all we saw was soggy, barren hydrangea plants. I was really disappointed. As the days went on, Ali and I got more adventurous. There are many photos to come of scenes that we can safely say the majority of tourists, and probably Azorians, have never seen. I won’t detail every one of our adventures because my parents read this blog and I love them, so I’d prefer not to give them heart attacks. The photos will speak from themselves. More on that in the next blog post. Anyhow, during one of our journeys, I found a few hydrangea bushes that were oddly just starting to bloom. I suspect this has to do with the high altitude and moist location of this particular part of the island. Sorry to spoil part of your present, mom.

My Favorite Little Kid is Turning Six!

I saw Jenn and CJ today, my favorite mom and son duo to photograph, and was shocked to see he had lost his front teeth. Time really does fly. Jenn and CJ were among my very first serious photographic subjects a few years ago and it’s been fascinating to both watch them both grow and my photography develop. Click here for a look back.

CJ gets the modeling gene from his mom. As you can see in the first few photos, he’s going to break some kindergarten hearts. But no matter how young Abercrombie & Fitch he looks, he’s a fireman at heart.

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