Meet Alex.

Alex is a kinetic little boy of the tender age of 3. He was very difficult to photograph, for the mere fact that he move so quickly and so much. But every now and then I caught a moment of fun or goofiness that made running around with him worth all the while.

On a technical note, one of the things that helped was keeping the camera on either aperture-priority or shutter-priority, so as I moved through the dappled light in his backyard quickly I didn't have to worry so much about exposure. Usually with portraiture I control everything manually, but there are times (especially when photographing weddings or kids) when it's helpful to have the camera think for you, as long as you're being smart about when you let it do so.

My nephew, David-Benjamin, is adventurous and kinetic, much like the young Alex I photographed awhile ago. He's not much of a ham for the camera, preferring instead to put on theatrical displays of face-making or some outrageous gesture to gain laughs.

While on vacation in South Carolina, I caught two moments that I think capture his energetic and daring spirit.

Fearlessly climbing over slippery rocks is one of his specialties, as you can see above.

I especially enjoy this second shot of him leaping out from underneath the waterfall. He looks so fish-like, and at ease with his environment. It's as though he was made for the water, and that the photograph captures the breath before he's reunited with his true element.

Unlike his brother, David-Benjamin, Isaac is a willing camera ham. The instant you point your lens at him, he smiles broadly and happily, saying, "Cheeeeeeeese!" in a long, drawn out, genuinely pleased fashion.

Isaac is also one of the most flexible and foldable little boys I've seen, fearless and innocent, climbing atop slippery rocks to perch himself precariously. He's happy to explore.

And of course, who can ignore that winning smile?

Continuing with the theme of brotherhood, I thought I'd include a few shots from a portrait I took of David-Benjamin, Isaac, and their youngest brother, Fintan. We had taken the three boys to the playground to help them work off some steam. I figured that during that time we could assemble them briefly somewhere and take a nice smiling photo for their mother--a nice surprise, right?

What I didn't anticipate, however, was how difficult it would be to get these guys to stop goofing around with each other and joking. After a few minutes, I gave up, and started encouraging them to make faces. "Okay, now give me a different face!" I'd say.

The end result, while certainly not what I had planned, worked well to keep them in a happy mood, while giving me some endearing results. They were released "back into the wild" and continued their playground mischief shortly thereafter.

Hannah, my niece, is quite a swimmer. Nothing could make her happier than to spend her days at the beach or the pool, splashing away in the water to her heart's content. Here she is at a pool we happened to stop at, enjoying the setting sun and refreshing water.

She's athletic and confident, always ready to play, and definitely holds her own in a family full of boy-cousins and brothers. When I took this shot, they were in the middle of playing some game involving a ball and a bucket they had found outside one of our cabins in South Carolina.

On December 7th, 2007, I became a mother!

This is an exciting new role for me, and as many mothers do, I have fallen completely in love with my daughter, Ruth. She's such a joy to be with and behold, in spite of all the work and change.

It's a challenge, too, to photograph her changing moods and growth. It's like they morph right before your very eyes!

Her father and I are proud parents, and we can't wait for the rest of this journey. I can't wait to photograph more babies!

As my niece, Hannah, gets older and older, her tastes continue to evolve. Just a year or so ago, her room was a flood of pink, princesses, and sparkles. When her birthday rolled around, she declared, "I'm not into that anymore," and with the help of her mom, redecorated her room.

She may not have a "princess bed" anymore, or any trace of pastel, but it still screams little-girl-magic to me. Our little Hannah is still growing up.

As many of you know, I'm a new mom.

It's strange to think that this person entered my life a mere 4 months ago (give or take a few days now). It's cliche to say it, but it's true: they grow up so fast.

Ruth's latest trick is not only to hold herself up on her tummy, but to fold herself in half (contortionist-style) and suck on her toes (photos of this feat are forthcoming).

I'm learning so much about her as each day passes, but more than that, I'm learning so much about myself. Parenthood seems as though it was built to tell us hard truths and give us beautiful moments. It tests our limits (and our tempers). It teaches us self-sacrifice.

And I hope I'm passing its tests.

At the Hilton in Linthicum, Maryland, Melanie and Brad tied the knot!

It was a short ceremony and an intimate reception of maybe 30 people. On record, the smallest wedding I've ever photographed, and for the shortest amount of time--only two hours.

An interesting sidenote: Melanie's dress is one of the first strapped dresses I've seen in recent years! She also mentioned that she bought the coverup separate from the dress. When photographing Melody's wedding just a few weeks ago, she too was noting how difficult it was to find something with sleeves, and had to get her long sleeves specially made. Could this be a new trend in bridal fashion?

Since I've been photographing smaller weddings lately, I've found that I really enjoy these smaller affairs. They tend to be low-key, but highly demanding and exciting for a photographer. With no down time, there's always something to photograph and do, and it's a neat challenge to remain unobtrusive when you're one out of thirty, versus one out of a hundred.

The new baby that one family member brought along, of course, barely noticed me.

I love photographing children.

They keep you on your toes by having another agenda.

And sometimes capturing people at just the right moment...

...can be the most fun thing in the world.

Little Zenaida got a baby brother recently. His name is Aiden.

She and mom are adjusting well to their new roles and new demands. Aiden is a beautiful pudgy boy, with his own very distinctive grunt, his hands in perpetual motion when awake. He downs a bottle eagerly.

When I visited them, Zenaida had just woken up from a nap, her hair tousled, but she was very eager to make friends.

Aiden is quite the darling; I'm sure that Zenaida will make a great older sister, and that he'll be a captive audience for her antics.

I love taking photos of my family. Most of all, I love taking photos of my nieces and nephews in action (and my daughter, of course, but she's in a whole other category). The other day, my husband and I visited my sister-in-law and her family for an afternoon walk. We trekked around their neighborhood, and I caught their three kids in the midst of their free-flowing exploration.

The kids are so free around me, both performing and distracted by other things. This next picture, one of my favorites, was taken by my sister-in-law, Meg. I was changing a diaper, and so set the camera to auto and let her play. It's classic little kid.

I hope that someday soon I can visit my brother-in-law's family down in Georgia and catch the fun of their five kids in their garden, with all the chickens & the beautiful garden in their backyard.

I didn't stage this photo, I swear.

One of the benefits of running my business from home is that I get to be around my daughter a lot. She's an endless source of entertainment, frustration, fascination, learning, and love. Her latest craze is to tear all of the letter magnets off of our refrigerator, one by one, munching each before they get tossed into an alphabet-soup like chaos on the floor.

R is for Ruth, but R is also for reckless abandon!

Remember that cardboard box in the back of my fridge? Well, quite a bit of film has returned from the lab, most of it medium format black and white work. It's been such a trip looking through it and seeing my old subject matter with new eyes. I'm a big believer in learning from one's past and reviewing your work frequently. I ask myself, what do I gravitate towards? What do I seem to have a knack for? What do I fail miserably at? Am I relying too heavily on a certain technique to make up for my own technical ineptitude or lack of ideas?

Well, one of the things I gravitate towards without fail is children. And luckily, I seem to have a knack for them. My favorite thing about this shot is that even though I obviously shot these two images from slightly different vantage points, the horizon line remains exactly the same in both frames. For me, that makes the diptych sing.

Well, I'm sad to say that I missed blogging my "one a day" portraits the past few days. However, it was for the absolutely wonderful reason that my cousin Martha got married in Barnstable, MA (Cape Cod) on Saturday. I was lucky enough to be both a guest and the photographer, so you'll hear more about that later, for sure!

And now, business as usual:

Again with the "film stuck at the back of the refrigerator" trick, I've managed to find a few more interesting diptychs. I like the differences between the frames here: one on land, one in the sea. One child clinging to its parent, the other independent. Male and female, old and young. The light artifacts from the HOLGA are also quite charming, I think.

At the time, I'm certain I wasn't thinking all of those things when I took those frames. One of the happy things about analog shooting is the mystery of what you'll get in the end. And because you're forced to view the pictures in a certain order (the order you took them), the progression (or lack thereof) between each frame feels highly significant.

I can feel the air cooling around Baltimore, and it's already making me miss the summer. When the seasons change, it's almost always a case of "grass is greener" with me. I dislike the intense humidity here, but I love being able to go barefoot and to have the light extend long into the evening.

Oh, and I'll miss swimming too!

This shot is unusually panoramic for me. Taken with a HOLGA, it has four exposures made to overlap in-camera. Usually I find I can only pre-visualize three frames at a time, but this one proved an exception. It helps to have the ocean as a wide open backdrop; which is why I think more exposures succeed here. In a more crowded environment, you might have too much going on to create a unified composition.

My daughter occasionally offers me some sand for consumption.

"Thank you, darling. I'm already full."

Over a year ago, I photographed my three nephews on a playground.

This year, I photographed them on the front stoop of a beautiful house in Charleston, SC.

They grow up so fast!

One of the most beautiful things in life are those tender moments between parents and children.

Of course, it's always more tender when it's your own child and your beloved husband.

I love you, darlings!

While my family was on vacation at Folly Beach in South Carolina, I had the chance to spend quite a bit of time with my nieces and nephews--always a joy. Eudora, the fourth of five, was thrilled to discover that each night crabs created lovely holes for her to fill with sand.

I followed her around from hole to hole, and eventually discovered that, given a little time, the crabs would kick the sand back out of their holes again. Eudora didn't know, I'm sure, that she had a never-ending stream of work ahead of her.

My favorite little tidbit about this shot is the contrast of her braided hair amidst all the sand; such a lovely texture to devour with your eyes.

This is the story of Gabby and Maya, two adorable kid sisters.

Their mom, Jamie, invited me over for a spell one afternoon. Instead of traditional payment, we agreed to barter: I photographed her daughters in exchange for a huge haul of excellent used toys to bring home to my daughter Ruth! A great win-win situation.

Gabby, the eldest daughter, conversed with me freely and enjoyed hamming it up.

Maya was almost completely full of giggles the entire time.

Some of my favorite goofy shots were when I told the girls to spin around and be silly. By far, the best technique was to tell them, "Don't you smile at me!" in a scolding voice, or "Don't let me take your picture!"

Photographing these little girls gave me a little view into what motherhood will be like for me in the coming years. At every stage in a child's development, there are new levels of beauty and mystery!

What could be better than a sunset on the beach?

A cute kid playing in the sunset on the beach.

Oh how I love the internet. I am blogging to you all from my Grandparent's home in Texas. I'm the photographer who never sleeps, I tell you! I can't stand to leave you all hanging for too long, so I'm sharing with you lovely photos of the Lewis family.

When we went outside to shoot on Sunday, it was cold. Real cold.. Julia, Stephanie, and Joe braved the weather and posed for me outdoors before the light disappeared.

We then snuck inside to warm up, for a diaper change and bedtime! Julia loves diaper time.

She's such a doll!

Family memorabilia is something I've always been fond of, but loathe to spend a lot of time creating. I've never been one for the scrapbooking movement, composing pages and carefully arranging special papers and whatnot. Instead, I pepper my albums (if any) with photographs, (obviously) and my hand-written notes.

This album chronicles my daughter's first year of life. I gave myself the parameter of "first year," so that the album would have a clear narrative and an ending. After one year Ruth is no less a member of the family than she was before, but I felt comfortable folding in her photos to the general family album. This also leaves me with a do-able goal for each child as he or she comes along.

I guess I felt like sharing this on my studio blog because it shows that there's so much more to photography than something you see on the screen. Photographs become the things that your children and your children's children use to learn about themselves and their history. I loved looking at photographs of my parents when they were young; it made them so much more interesting and human.

I made sure to save a few keepsakes, but didn't overthink it.

I gladly wrote out the birth story, and spent a little extra time making it special.

The rest of the book is made up of cards given to us, as well as a photo of her from each month--something simple that I think I can easily repeat with the next kid.

I hope one day to hand this over to Ruth when she gets older as a keepsake. It probably took me just a few hours of my time, and it's so much fun to look through again and again. For me, the album was a lesson in how a little simple planning (document the first year, mostly using photos) can make something lasting and beautiful.

Early one Saturday morning, I met Ian and Jenna, two cute little ones. Their family was taking pictures for the ubiquitous holiday Christmas card, but we had a little extra time to do a few "outtakes".

Ian proudly paraded outside on his scooter, wearing a bright and fetching hat.

Indoors, he made his affection for a certain stuffed toy reindeer quite apparent.

Jenna, his younger sister, also loved up the stuffed reindeer.

And squealed her delight!

On a Sunday afternoon, the Kesslers had me over for a little while to photograph some of their family moments. Their three little girls were simply beautiful. The youngest, only a babe, cooed and laughed at her older siblings before succumbing to her nap. Liza was especially funny--I told her to jump up from the couch and run-run-run in place to get out some of her fidgets.

After the babe was fast asleep, we all ventured outside for some good old-fashioned playtime.

Daddy gave Ava a smooch.

Liza went swinging!

And Ava did some climbing.

Then the girls went inside to have a tea party with marshmallows for "soup".

The baby slept soundly away...

The girls finished their "tea" and then I crept away. What a fun family to be around!

I am so fortunate to have family that is willing to visit me on a regular basis. Our parents get along well with each other, and my brothers treat Stephen as a long-lost sibling.

We partook in eggnog...

...delicious stuffing, turkey, and a wide variety of homemade desserts cooked by my sister-in-law, Megan.

Of course, Ruthie looked absolutely charming, laughing at danger while she stood on a rocking chair.

We opened presents...

...enjoyed each others' company...

...and snapped a quick family photo before the light disappeared beyond the horizon.

A Merry Christmas to you all. tags: children, family, portrait,