Whoa.  My very first “First Year Documentary” baby isn’t a baby anymore… not even close!  She has grown into a beautiful, bounding, curly haired girl.  I can still see the baby face but she’s just so…. growing up!  As Dick and Jane would say, LOOK:

We thought it would be fun to go to the Richmond Zoo to begin our shoot so I met Tricia, Camille and Dorothy the doll there.  I can admit that, growing up in the DC area near the National Zoo, I was expecting our local zoo to be kind of lame: a goat tethered to a rope or something.  Maybe some geese.  But I was actually impressed, our zoo is pretty cool!  I’ve never fed giraffes before and let me tell ya, Gene Simmons has nothing on these guys:

Its been the summer of the peacock.  I lived in India for almost a year and not one peacock sighting.  And then, within one week here here in Virginia, I’ve had two close encounters of the flamboyant bird kind between Logan and Joey’s wedding and this puffed up male who was just cruising around for… chicks?  As I turned my lens he came right at me for his close up… and I wondered for a moment if peacocks were attack birds.  I was assured he was just flirting but Camille wasn’t so sure about the peacocks either.

Or the budgies.  We had a budgie stick with honey and birdseed so we were expecting small visitors with busy beaks but its still a little strange.

Hmm… so far this post seems to suggest that we took a little girl to the zoo to torture her with a succession of traumatic, wild animal advances but I promise you that Camille really did have a good time.   The skyride over the park was definitely a big hit.

After the zoo we went home so Camille could show me her “big girl room”.  Her new room has many of the elements of the original nursery but with a new piece de resistance: a great big bed in the middle that is so much fun to jump on…

Something about life imitating art?  I did nothing to coax this photo and it makes me laugh, especially with that plastic broom: Camille is clearly the master of her little girl domestic domain.  I’ve known Tricia and Patrick a long time now so I felt like I could be my true inappropriate self and joked that we should put a beach ball up her dress so she could be barefoot, pregnant and sweeping her kitchen while feeding her children.   Using our better judgement, we refrained.

Camille did have some motherly advice for me anyway.  She told me that if a baby is crying, you should burp it to make it stop and then she showed me how.  Thanks, girl, I need all the help I can get!

I’m feeling multiple photo displays when it comes to this session.  Maybe its because Camille moves so fast, single photos just aren’t summing her up for me.

We even had a chance to update the family picture.  After I left, Tricia told me that Camille asked when I was coming back.  Soon, I hope!  An announcement was made since our shoot that another family member is on the way.  Woot!  Camille is going to be the greatest big sis….

Here’s a slideshow and click here to see the online gallery, I’m so excited about the big news!  And a great, big Happy Father’s Day to Patrick and all our WP superstar dads!

Posted by Mel @ 9:30 pm, in Portraits, Wee Ones | No comments | Permalink

Baby Roscoe is a V.I.B (very important baby) to me.  Exactly one year and one day ago I photographed what remains the single most powerful event I have ever had the professional pleasure of documenting: Roscoe’s amazing birth (to revisit it with me, click here).  It was an important day for me personally as well as professionally: I was six months pregnant at the time and I still play Midlake’s Roscoe when I need to muster just a little extra positive and/or creative energy in my day.

My mother always says, “12 faces for 12 months” to explain the drastic changes in a baby’s features over the course of their first year.  I don’t see the newborn in my own son’s most recent face but I immediately saw the tiny baby from the birth and newborn session in this older version of Baby Roscoe, its kind of amazing to me.  The first thing we did was to take photos around the nursery, I especially love this updated family photo.  (Relax, Chloe pup… really, don’t be so uptight…)

Next we packed up the car with the stroller for a trip to the The Mall in downtown DC to spend the afternoon.  I loved watching Roscoe explore and play with the monuments in the background.

We stopped for a quick snack, how darling is this little apple eater?  These photos are 100% boy baby to me between the overalls and all the dirt beneath his busy little fingernails.

Hey, I heard this is how the pioneers used to brush their teeth:

Throughout the day Jacqueline, Andy and myself reminisced about births and the experience of this first year… the birth of parents… the trials and triumphs of this brand new life.  We wondered if it was possible to brace for the impact of parenthood and decided that its just one of those things you have to go through.  We talked about how it is harder than we thought it would be and yet more rewarding and amazing than we could have dreamed.  I remember a kind girl once telling me that there would be a lot of conflicting emotions in parenthood: that it is possible (and maybe even normal) to feel both elated and exhausted, grateful and inconvenienced, confident and terrified.  Spot on.  Jacqueline suggested Frou Frou’s Let Go for their slideshow song because the words sum up the first year for her but she wasn’t sure anyone would get it.  Girl, I get it.  There is beauty in the breakdown.

Click here to see his online gallery.  Happy Birthday, beautiful Baby Roscoe….  I can’t wait to photograph more birthdays.

Posted by Mel @ 10:13 pm, in Portraits, Wee Ones | 1 comment | Permalink

Today’s rain may have thrown a monkey wrench in my portrait plans for the early part of this week but I’m making the most out of this dreary day by catching up on editing.  And just in time…I definitely wanted for Natalie and Craig to see these before Baby Boy arrives!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: belly portraits are the hardest thing I do.  Its not for a lack of great subjects (I truly have the best) or because I don’t love the maternal form (I definitely do) but because its so hard to do in a way that is artistic without being cheesy, emotional without being over the top, and most challenging of all – unique.  While I’ve never really succeeded with it (by my own standards), I get a little closer every time I do it.  Natalie and Craig’s photos are the closest I have come yet.

Natalie and Craig built the house that has become the hub of their life so it only made sense to take photos in this very special place.  The couples’ dog, Hilton (as in Hilton Head where the couple was married, not Paris or Perez), was a very willing participant and all I had to do to get her to look at me was say the word, “ball”.  I often joke that my job is like taking a test you can’t study for: each shoot offers the gift of serendipity, particularly when I shoot for a client for the first time.  So I was pleased to find so many intimate and welcoming details in Natalie and Craig’s home that I could use to frame this special, happy time in their lives:

I couldn’t decide which close up I liked better so I included them both!

Its kind of creepy (or maybe just cool) that the specular highlights on Craig’s shirt and the couples’ profile mimic the look of their baby in the ultrasound.  I didn’t intend it but I liked it:

I find myself drawn to the same things over and over again when I do belly shoots: clocks in the background (tic tock!), open windows letting light in, and items that lay in wait for the tiny person they belong to.   I always hope that loving anticipation comes through these photos.  There are both excited moments of chatter and quiet moments of pause on a belly shoot.

Sam made fun of me for wishing Natalie a “powerful” birth earlier today, he called me a hippy.  Guilty as charged, minus the patchouli.   Good luck to you both in the days to come, enjoy those first sweet moments of parenthood and I can’t wait to meet Baby Boy on our newborn shoot very soon.  In the mean time, here’s a slideshow and if you would like to check out their online gallery, click here.

Posted by Mel @ 8:39 pm, in Bellies, Portraits, Wee Ones | No comments | Permalink

Most of the time I am grateful that photos don’t include audio (motherhood, apparently, is no cure for potty mouth) but it would have been a pretty cool feature for this shoot.  At a mere 15 months old, Jasper had me very impressed by her vocabulary and knowledge of numbers and letters.  Joy assured me that they haven’t been using any index cards (we both roll our eyes at the “My Baby Can Read!” commercials) but its obvious that Jasper is big into story time with her parents.  She has little foam letters and numbers that she loves to play with and she can pick out just about any letter you request to see.

Jasper’s baby sister is on her way any moment now, I am always peeking at email to check for good news.  A beautiful mural was painted on the wall of the nursery-to-be by a family member, I love how both the Moses basket and rocking chair lay empty in wait.  Can you find the bunny on the wall?  Jasper can, she’ll show you if you ask.  Predictably, I loved the tiny, knit bunny booties too.

Poor Jasper doesn’t really know what’s coming.   Joy and Reggie have tried to explain the concept using a doll baby that Jasper can wheel around in a dolly stroller.  But to be fair, I hear that its just as hard for mommies and daddies to imagine another child too, how is it even possibly to love someone as much as you love your first born?   While it might take a little while for Jasper to really appreciate it, she will someday know how lucky she is to have a sister.  Sisters are the best.  Brothers are OK too, they are just smellier.  Or so I have been told.

While taking a snack break from picture taking, Jasper was coloring in her high chair and I witnessed the following exchange.  It made my heart swell up… could it be that they teach us?

(Joy draws a heart on the paper with a crayon)  ”What is this?”

Jasper says, “HAPPY!”

“No, that’s this.”  (Joy draws a smiley face)  ”What’s this?” (Joy points to the heart)

“HAPPY!”

Indeed, girlfriend.  Mine too.

Posted by Mel @ 7:46 pm, in Portraits, Wee Ones | No comments | Permalink