When Seamus was born, both my brother and my sister gave him the book, “Guess How Much I Love You” by Sam McBratney. It was funny how they both had picked out that book for him, completely independently and not knowing the other was giving it to him!
I’ve gotten a lot more “mushy” now that I have had a baby. I suppose the well of emotions has deepened. Every time I read the book, I get a tear in my eyes at this last line…
With all of the news on Egypt recently, especially hearing that the Egyptian Museum had been looted, I felt compelled to dig through my notebook of slides. From December 1999 to February 2000, I traveled through the Middle East with a friend of mine, Rick Price. Rick, by the way, is an amazing painter and you can see some of his work from that trip here.
We started our trip in Greece, where we rang in Y2K. Our trip then continued onto Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and we celebrated Christmas, Ramadan and Hanukkah all along the way. It was a rather bold trip, in retrospect. I was 24 and this was all before 9/11. Our families were appropriately worried, but we were bold and determined.
Being that this was back in 1999/2000, I shot slide film with my Nikon N90 and had an awesome little Nikon Coolpix 900. This was a $1000, 6-megapixel camera and was an amazing thing to own back in the day. (Thanks Dad!)
I wish I could go back and re-photograph everything I saw as I’ve had 11 years of experience since then. But here are a few of my favorites from my time in Egypt. It’s an amazing place to visit.
Easily bribed with full bottles of milk, Seamus is an awesome test model. He’s helping me improve my lighting skills and practicing to be a baby model all at once.
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy photographing Bennett every three months. Looking back through his photos gets me a little teary eyed and I’m not even his mom! It’s seeing the changes that take place. They are subtle, yet so obvious as he grows in leaps in bounds from a newborn to little boy. We’re working on putting together photos from his entire first year into an album and a canvas collection. I’ll let you see those when they are ready!
Well I finally decided to follow my own advice and blow up one of my favorite Seamus’ photos into a 30×40 canvas for my house. And I’ve got to say, it makes me smile every time I see it!
I took these photos for stems back in December, but they are still brightening my day!
Craig & Elise’s “foodie” wedding is on the Wedding Row & The Wedding Chicks today. Click on the photos and let them whet your appetite! And thanks to Jebb Graff for his help second shooting this wedding!!!
I had one of those days yesterday where a lot of hard work and time spent on a certain project got me barely a shoulder shrug. The frustration turned to gloom and eroded a week’s worth of optimism. Days like that are demoralizing. You want to close up shop and move on to some greener field.
But as the day went on, things got better. And when I came into the studio this AM and saw that I’d left this photo open, I had to laugh. As Seamus says… “This is not how I thought it was going to be.”
I hope your day’s better than mine.
