Day 180

Day 180. Half way there. Crazy. This year has flown by, no? This was my attempt at an emotive capture of Day 180. This project has been a photographic immersion. Some days I lug my camera with me wherever I go, look at the world with the camera in mind, attempt to put thought and motive into the process and product. Other days, I have a shoot or a wedding and I am so thankful to have something to sink my teeth into. And yet, other days, 6 o'clock rolls around and the camera sits on the dining room table, untouched . . . unloved. Those are the days where I pull something out of my proverbial arse at the last minute (really trained well for this type of creation in architecture school) and somehow it all turns out ok . . . often better than ok. Either way, this year has been a turning point for me . . . 180 degrees to be exact.

Day 179

I should've known if I wanted the real low down on the aforementioned Silver Bullet, my best bet was to strike up a conversation with any of the aforementioned neighbors. I went outside to take a few pictures this evening. Not 2 shots in, the Mayor of Norvell comes trotting out of his house, "What'ya taking a picture of Sarah?" As he was giving me the details of this new creature in our neighborhood (the guy used to live in it, now he's selling it, he can't have it parked there for more than 3 days without a ticket, he's fixing it up, etc. etc.) I looked up at my neighbor, Grace's window, to catch HER peeking out at us. I resisted the urge to wave. After Jeff retreated, I went back to taking a few more photos and I could just feel my other neighbor, VA, burning holes in the back of my head. And of course, I'm only assuming here that none of them are actually reading this (unless they are reading it behind my back.) Geesh.

Day 178

Sprinklers + sunset = pretty.

Day 177

Met up with these two cutie pies yesterday for a fun, quintessential SF city engagement shoot. We hit the busy Ferry Building, Pier 7, the Embarcadero, and almost got hit by a streetcar, but a few of my favorites were in this quiet spot amid the chaos. Looking forward to the wedding next year!

Day 176

My neighborhood, small and modest, is full of larger than life, exuberant personalities. There's Jeff, the "Mayor of Norvell," who used to operate trains, walks around in his torn shorts, sandals, and ponytail, works on his VW bus frequently, brings over microbrews for Keegan and homemade Chicken Enchiladas and Easter ham for me and Liam. There's Grace, who works on her yard starting at 6 in the morning, brings over half dead plants and insists that I plant them in my yard, pulls weeds in other peoples' yards, brings in other peoples' garbage bins, sometimes looks right at me and ignores me and other times chats Liam's ear off for twenty minutes. There's Virginia, who lives next to us, has 4 kids, at least 10 grandkids, and 10 great grandkids, knows everything about us even if we haven't told her, and who one day we caught peeking out her window at us at 6 in the morning as we packed the car for a ski trip. Then there's the house across the street. A rental. Transients. And who apparently are parking this big silver bullet in front of our house now indefinitely. Creepy.

Day 175

My tough guy . . . aka . . . not so tough really. I told him to give me a mean face. Hah. He picked this shirt out yesterday at Target. It's a hand drawing of a full drum set and it reads, "I love to make noise!!" I saw it before he did and I knew the minute we passed it, he was going to want it. I was not wrong. He reached for it immediately. It's perfect.

Day 174

A little detail shot from the living room. May build a little series of these...

Day 173

Few and far between, but I love to catch him in a quiet moment.

Day 172

I've been experimenting a bit more with my fantastic wide lens lately as my favorite lens is in the repair shop yet again. I hate to have the 50mm off my camera, but I am very spoiled to be able to replace it with the 24-70mm f/2.8.

Day 171

My son, the chemist.

Day 170

I could NOT think of a better way to spend the day after a fantastic, yet long and exhausting wedding, than with these 2 guys at the outdoor beer sanctuary of Lagunitas. Happy Father's Day to my Dad, to my husband, and to all of you fabulous fathers out there. You make our children laugh in such a different yet equally as special way.

Day 169

Said huge wedding exhibit A. It was a long day, but so well spent with the lovely bride and groom, Rachel and Ryan. She is stunning, he is hilarious, and they are both full of sincerity.

Day 168

Phew. It's been a helluva week. Haven't had a spare minute to blog about it. Huge wedding on Saturday. This was a little gear check the night before. (The beer didn't make it into the bag.)

Day 167

We have been blessed with some unseasonably seasonal summer weather here in the Bay Area this week. We have been enjoying it to the fullest :)

Day 166

Day 165

Liam's end of school year picnic celebration was this evening. I love this photo of him. It so succinctly wraps up in so many ways what these first 6 months of school have been like for him (and for me if I'm being fully truthful, although it's not about ME of course). He's so calm, cool, collected, confident, and full of character both in this picture, at school, and in life. It didn't start out that way, and still, at drop off, shy little boy hovers in my shadow until the very last minute we can say goodbye. But he does it . . . and without tears. They had the children perform a number of songs at the end of the picnic and I swear, he might be the smallest one up there, but he no doubt had THE loudest voice. No shyness, no second thoughts, just belting it out in front of about sixty parents. I was so blown away. It was more than I ever expected. At one point, the teacher turned to me and said, "Well, looks like we have a new leader of the choir for next year!" Congratulations Buddy. You climbed timidly to the top of the ladder, looked down the steep slope ahead with trepidation, plummeted off the edge and slid effortlessly through your first "year" of school . . . all with a beaming smile on your face. We are so very proud of you in so many ways.

Day 164

Tired.

Day 163

Isn't she lovely?! I was lucky enough to shoot this beautiful bride's wedding last summer and I was thrilled when she contacted me a few months ago to do her maternity and newborn shoot. What a full circle. We met in the golden California grasses at sunset yesterday and I lugged this rocking chair about a half mile straight up hill. SO worth it. Stay tuned on my other blog for full post.

Day 162

This would be my mother's pure genius at work here. The twins' fourth birthday is coming up on Saturday and I have been racking my brain for about a month on what to get them. Recently we were at their house and I was questioning their mom and she said, "Dinosaurs. Anything dinosaurs. And dress-up. They are really into dressing up." Well then, ok. I did a google search for dinosaur costumes. The cutest thing I found were little dinosaur superhero cape type things and they had W and T's name written ALL over them. At $40 a pop though, my good intentions were squelched. We have a joke in my family . . . whenever my mom finds anything in a catalog, desirable and overpriced, she turns to my father and says, "RICK!!! YOU could MAKE that!!" And being the loyal, loving, and handy guy that my father is, to no ones surprise, he usually does. This time I turned the joke back onto my mom. And being the creative and sweetheart that she is, this is what she sent over for me to give to the twins. Liam tried them on along with his best dinosaur roar. The twins are going to FLIP.

Day 161

I don't know why but one of Liam's favorite ways to pass time when I'm not looking is to rifle through our mail pile, open loads of important mail, and tear much of it to shreds. This is where I caught him late Friday afternoon. Perhaps it has to do with his current occupational goals. We were at a mailbox one day mailing something and he wanted me to open the mailbox. I told him you have to have a key to open it, that only mail carriers have the key. We walked away and after a few minutes he said, "I want to be a mailman Mommy." I said, "Yeah buddy? That would be cool. You would get to drive a mail truck." He replied, "Yeah! And have a key!!"

Day 160

My cat is pure awesomeness.

Day 158 and 159

Tuesday and Wednesday I took almost 200 photographs of the 30 students at Liam's preschool. I consider these images as fulfilling my photo of the day quota, but I do not have permission from parents to post them online so a verbal description will have to suffice! Trust me, they are darling little faces :) although it didn't really work out how I had envisioned. Since the location of the photographs was to be right outside the doors and windows of the classroom, the director felt as though it would be too distracting for me to pull kids out one at a time to work with them individually. Instead, I jumped right in while ALL the students were playing in the yard. In other words, I had about 12 little people surrounding my legs, waiting their turn, while I tried to snap off shots of one child at a time sitting in a chair. They were standing where I needed to stand, bumped my arm a few times, I have extraneous kids peering into the frame from either side of me, and almost no one fell for the seemingly clever, "Do you see the dinosaur in my camera?" trick that worked like a charm on Liam. I had to just love my child to pieces though because the few times I attempted the dinosaur trick, I could hear him behind me saying, "Yah, yah!!! Do you see it? I saw it!! I saw it Mommy! Yeah! It's there!!" All said and done, it was fairly successful regardless. Next year, I might try the studio atmosphere/lighting approach.

Day 157

How to turn a kind of cool, but nothing special kind of photograph into something fun? Play around with the white balance and tint. Insta-fun.

Day 156

My new favorite family photo. We are so urban :) And, my boys are so sweet to humor me.

Day 155

For the past 2 1/2 years, Liam has had an intense aversion to swings . . . he wouldn't even LOOK in their direction. Right around the time he turned 3 (3 months ago), he started to take notice of them again, catching their eye, albeit briefly, from across a crowded playground. "Do you want to go on the swing, Liam?" I asked gently and encouragingly, and to which he replied quickly and definitively, "No!" The window slammed shut, and his attention returned to sand and slides. Recently, he's mustered up enough courage to SIT on the swing, and at sparse interludes, allow me to push him . . . but "NOT TOO FAST!!" On Saturday, we hiked through the woods while Liam had a little off road experience with his bike, to this cool park nestled in the redwoods. I'm not sure how it happened because Liam and Keegan pretty much dusted me and my torn ACL, but when I finally caught up to them, Keegan was pushing Liam on the swing. For the next hour, Liam would not STOP swinging, asking to go higher, faster, to be pushed again and again. That Daddy influence is just oh so powerful.

Day 154 (revised #)

Day 154

My child . . . a.k.a. poster child for Miam Miam Lounge. Blood Orange frozen yogurt: YUM.

Day 153

Day 152

I was supposed to go to Liam's school today and start taking portrait photographs of the 30 students there. I had planned to do them outside so the rain was a complete disappointment. I postponed until next week and am keeping my fingers crossed for good weather as it will be our last chance before school lets out the following week. At any rate, I decided to do a little practicing on my own rascal-y preschooler. This is a new little game I call, "Do you see the dinosaur in my camera?!" Ummm . . . . can you say, "Works like a charm." This is the cutest, most genuine, smiley "portrait" photograph I've taken of him in weeks. Of course he said he did see the dinosaur. I wonder out of 30 students, how many will see it. I'm betting all 30 actually.