life in photography

family and peace

2012-02-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, we walked around the Sundial bridge about an hour before sunset. Instead of putting Sophie in her stroller, we let her walk with us. It took us a while, but we had fun, basking in the mild winter weather and warm sun, showing Sophie how to throw stones into the beautiful Sacramento river and loving the far-off views of the mountains that surround Redding. It's on days like that that I really enjoy living here. The feeling of family, peace, the arrival of the weekend bringing more family time, and the beauty of the nature around us, as well as the amazing Sundial bridge, just warmed my heart really.

Some of the beauty around the Sundial Bridge (not actually taken last week, but before Christmas!):

Well, Obviously Autumn is Over...

2012-02-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

These last few months have been the busiest I've been in this photography business and I feel like I've been editing, editing, editing... It's been crazy!! As soon as I finish editing from one shoot, I have another whole set of photos to edit from another. While scrolling through some pictures just now, I found these pictures that I really like from our autumn here in Redding. Obviously, our autumn has been over for sometime now, which just shows how behind I am on my personal editing.

These pictures, to me, are quintessentially autumn in Redding (well, except this last autumn was very dry, which is pretty rare here). We had 63F weather almost every day, hence the lack of coats and hats in these pictures (and Sophie is barefoot in one photo!). Our beautiful trees in our front yard dumped their leaves in almost one day, I think it had frosted that night, and we spent lots of time outside, enjoying the weather, letting Sophie explore and get lots better at walking (she started walking mid-September).

Despite our move into a more rural area of town (not really my cup of tea), I'm really beginning to appreciate our quiet street and large yard, so Sophie can explore and run around. All the neighbours drive slow and I don't have to worry about constantly watching for cars racing around the corner. As we head quickly into spring (winter was also oddly dry and short, all our bulbs are sprouting - we're back in 60s weather again, and I hear we're hitting 68F tomorrow), I thought I'd look back real quick on this lovely autumn we've just enjoyed (or, fall, for all y'all Americans out there).

Introducing Alexander David Braaten

2012-02-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

I had the wonderful privilege of being a part of our housemate's birth last week, and boy, was it the process. Her waters broke at 12:00am on Wednesday January 25th and baby Xander was finally born on Saturday January 28th at 5:57pm. It was quite the journey for Tabitha (more on that in another post) and she did so well!

Here is a sneak peek of the journey these guys went on to bring baby Xander (7lb, 4oz and 21") into the world. Here he is at just a few minutes old:

Grant & Tabitha Maternity

2012-01-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was privileged to do a mini-shoot with my wonderful housemates, Grant and Tabs, who are expecting a baby boy any day now (she's due on the Feb 1st). It has been really fun to be with them on this journey towards parenthood and we are super excited to meet baby Xander.

When we first met Grant and Tabby, we were amazed at how quickly we connected with them and how easily it was to go deep. They are so open and real and we have loved connecting with these guys on all kinds of topics. They both carry maturity and wisdom beyond their years and each have their own unique sense of humour that always makes us laugh. They have been such great house-mates and we love how much they dote on Sophie, stopping in the hallway to make her giggle, letting her play with some of Xander's toys in their room, and just enjoying who she is. We just know they will be such fun parents and hopefully lifelong friends. Love you guys!

Newborn Squared

2012-01-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

Today, I'm enjoying the rain and taking an editing day to catch up on recent shoots. It's nice and cosy, I've had my cup of tea, John is making a fire, and I'm settling in to enjoy the dreariness outside that oddly enough warms my heart.

Here is a sneak peek on the newborn twin photo session I did last week. Absolutely adorable babies:

A Gaia Wedding

2012-01-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

I was super privileged to photograph this wedding last November at the Gaia Hotel, in Anderson. Despite the super rainy and dreary day that pretty much turned all our well-laid plans upside down, this wedding was too much fun! Gina and Matt definitely know how to throw a party.

The rain meant that the ceremony got moved inside, and we had to strategically place all the pictures so that the entire bridal party wouldn't get completely soaked, but the day continued smoothly with lots of laughs along the way. As John and I spent the day with the groom and bride, respectively, we learnt a lot about this sweet couple. What great friends they were. How they both made each other better people. How great Matt was with his soon-to-be step-son.

Their vows were sweet and funny, and had everyone crying, even me! The unity sand involved Matt, Gina and her two kids and was beautiful to see. The reception was a lot of fun with a lot of dancing.

All in all, we had a fantastic day and it was so great to see such a great pair of people commit their lives to each other. It was such a privilege for us to be there.

The Help + Sneak Peek

2012-01-14T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've watched The Help a couple of times and the second time I saw it, this scene just stayed in my head:

I've found myself saying that to myself at random throughout my day and seeing how powerful it can be to speak something positive over myself. It can be easy for me to let my insecurities dictate who I feel like I am, and for some reason, these three little statements counter those insecurities pretty well.

I've also changed it a few times to fit what I need in that moment. This afternoon, at my first newborn photo shoot (with twins!!!), I started feeling nervous and overwhelmed. In my head, I just said, "Be confident". And for some reason, that made all the difference and I started feeling relaxed and, surprisingly enough, confident! Later on, I thought to myself, "Hey, that was like that thing she did in The Help. I should have said "You is confident!"

"You is kind, you is smart, you is important." I think I want to start saying something like that to Sophie every day.

On another note, I'm busy editing, editing, editing from the wedding back in November and here's a sneak peak (this wedding was tons of fun!):

New Year's Resolutions/Hopes

2012-01-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

My New Year's Resolutions:

- get pregnant! Yep, we're trying for a second little one.
- continue to work towards healthier eating and becoming 85% vegan. It's hard. Cheese is in my blood.
- leave behind negativity in my life. It's something I've been working on for a few years now and am needing to see another facet of it be dealt with. I want to be a positive person!
- go to Switzerland and England. I really need to go visit my Swiss family and I would like to visit friends in England. We just got $800 of United vouchers yesterday so we're hoping we can use that plus miles to go to Europe sometime.

My hope this year is that my photography business continues to expand. We would love it if John's work hours could decrease as I pick up more work and then we can both be super involved in raising Sophie. He's a bit jealous of all the time I get with her! ;) I also would love, love, love to book ten weddings for 2012.

And just because I always must post a pic, here's my sweet baby and I in our new Chucks (well, her's are fakes, but still so cute!):

Bonjour Family (now with Isa)

2011-12-13T11:30:00.000-08:00

A month or so ago, my grandma emailed all her grandkids, asking for some recent pix of everyone. My bro called me and set up a quick little shoot, so he could send her some recent pictures. The last shoot I had done with them was when Beth was just a few days shy of delivering their third girl, Isa. I love being able to bless my family with photo shoots, so we went for a walk down by the McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Gardens and did a mini-session. We always love walking together and taking pictures so we all had a fun time.

I love doing shoots with these guys, because I feel like they always come out so bright and colourful! The girls always pick these gorgeous flowery dresses, and it just adds so much colour to the pictures. I love their headbands here too. Gorgeous girls!

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for my family.

I love being married, I love having a daughter, I love being able to be at home with her and I love that John works from home and gets to be with her too. When other things get crazy, or I get a bit stressed, or down, or jealous of others, I remind myself of these four things and it makes everything better. I could not imagine life without these two, they have made my world richer, happier and lots more fun.

I'm also grateful for our extended families close and far away. We're so happy to have such a large family and we count each one dear to our hearts.

"What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories." George Eliot

"Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts." Author Unknown

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bradley-Schmidt Seattle Wedding

2011-11-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege last year to photograph my friend's sister's wedding up in Seattle. I was both excited and super nervous as it was my first paid wedding. I felt quite honoured to be trusted with this endeavour!

Alex and Tiffay's wedding was beautiful and intimate. They had moved the wedding forward a month in order for her brother to be there, as he had been called back to his airforce base and would have missed their original date. It was mostly family and a few friends, and they held a larger reception a month later in her home-town, Yakima, WA. It made it really special and cosy.

The weather of course was freezing and overcast, but fortunately the rain mostly held off. I remember expressing hope for more sun and getting chuckles from all the native Seattlites! The weather didn't dampen anyone's spirits however, and the ceremony was filled with beautiful moments, from Tiffany being given away by her parents, to Alex washing Tiffany's feet. After pictures, we moved onto the reception which was a in a really fun restaurant, called Buca di Beppo where again the atmosphere was cosy and intimate. All in all a lovely day:

Family Photo Shoot Sep 2011

2011-11-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a small break from prepping for a wedding this weekend to do a quick blog post. I realised that I hadn't yet posted our pictures from our little photo shoot back in September, when Sophie turned 1. I asked our wonderful housemate, Tabitha, to snap some pix of us - she is an aspiring photographer herself and has such a great eye. I was looking forward to not have to bring a tripod and run back and forth from the camera (since I haven't yet bought a remote for my new camera) and do all that work, but only end up with about 10 shots. She did an amazing job. We traipsed up to a "wild" area that's right up the street from our house and was gorgeously dry and dead and I love how the pictures came out.

So...one year into parenthood. What can I say? It's been amazing. So far, there have been more ups than downs and Sophie is just so much fun. She started walking a little bit after her first birthday and just loves getting herself around all by herself. She has challenged us in many ways, and in many more ways, brought smiles and joy into our life. We just can't wait for every day we get to spend with her. She is our little social bee, loving new kids (though needing some time to warm up), and loves to sing and dance. She knows how to colour, and the other day, put her little spoon into the dishwasher (with my prompting... :). She puts a smile on every face, and easily shows us her own three-toothed smile. She is happiest when eating, and loves being outside.

We always tell people that this is way more fun than we thought it would be. And it's true. What joy and life she brings into our lives.

Louwrens Family

2011-10-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of doing a photo shoot with the wonderful Louwrens family a few months back. I met Sanette, the mum, at the parenting/mums class I go to here in Redding. They really were the sweetest family and the kids were adorable. We spent time wandering around their lovely property and took some fun pictures. They're from South Africa and are big rugby fans, so I took some of all the boys dressed in their rugby shirts - they were a lot of fun!

Sanette is pregnant again, with twin girls, and wants me to come back this winter to take pix of her new daughters! I'm very excited to do a twin newborn shoot.

Here are some of my favs from the shoot:

Happy Birthday Sophie!

2011-09-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

My baby girl is one year old today, and I can't quite believe it. It really has gone by so fast and each stage has been so much fun. Right now, she's in the mimicking stage - she copies our sounds and our motions. Earlier today, she tried putting my glasses on her face. It's the sweetest thing. She is so happy and giggly and chatters to herself and others all day long. She loves being outside and does quite the amazing monkey crawl when she doesn't want to scratch up her knees. She loves other kids and other babies, and is definitely not shy around them. I love watching people respond positively to our baby girl, smiling and interacting with her. It's too much fun!

At one year old:

- she has two teeth
- she's been on four plane trips that were comprised of 15 flights
- she's been to 8 states: California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Connecticut.
- she's been on two long roadtrips, to Tacoma, WA and Yachats, OR.
- she has moved house
- she has lived with two family members (my dad and my sister-in-law)
- she was at the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans within the space of one week
- she did her first night of sleeping 12 hours straight through at 3 months, and officially was sleeping 12 hours at night at 8 and a half months.

Here's to Sophie throughout the months:

10 Months Old!

2011-07-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Sophie turned 10 months old a few days ago. It is tripping me out that she is 2 months away from turning 1. It really is crazy how quickly it all goes by. She is our crazy little mobile baby, and we're loving it. She's exploring things and touching things and looking at things and eating things. Seriously too much fun! She finally got her first tooth about 2 weeks ago after what felt like a good few months of teething. The weirdest thing was that after all the teething, the day it popped through was no big deal at all! I would have almost missed it if I hadn't seen the little sucker just above the gums.

We went outside to take just a few little pix of the big girl. She was way too distracted (my dad's dog, Scooter, was there and she was just watching him the whole time) and she didn't give us any smiley ones, but here's some cutesy pix of her, none-the-less:

Three Kids

2011-07-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

Here are three pix of kiddos from a shoot I did a few months ago. It was an extended family shoot, so I had John come and help me. I had been warned that one of the kids was going to be difficult to shoot, as he did not like having his picture taken. AT ALL! The shoot in general was a challenge, as our time and location was limited, due to the constraints of most of the family that were traveling into Redding.

They were really the sweetest family to shoot, however, and we had a lot of fun, as the kids ran around their back garden, and John and I worked to get some good photos. John was a huge help and was able to warm one of the little boys towards all the picture-taking. He snapped these three shots at the end - definitely the best shots of the session, I think!

Speaking of photo shoots, I'm taking a bit of a break from it all for now. Moving into a new house, with a very active (almost ten month old) baby, is just making my life mega busy. Hence, the name change on the blog, as well as other things. Photography had begun to stress me out, and I was losing my joy and passion for it, and instead was waking up in the middle of the night with semi-panic attacks concerning future and past shoots and edits and techniques, etc. I'm still hoping to grow and learn more about the artistic side of it all, but will let it become something I enjoy again and hopefully actually grow more creatively in the midst of it. I feel like I'm stuck in a rut and need a bit of a break really.

Anyway, here are the wonderful pix from my wonderfully creative husband (the second and last pic are of the one boy who adamantly refused to look at the camera for the first 15 mins of the shoot, and just look at what John was able to capture towards the end! He is so good with kids):

Summer Days

2011-07-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, summer is officially here. With temps hitting the 100s (yes, I live in Redding, CA), there's no denying it. Jeans are out, shorts, dresses, tanks, bathing suits are in. I have to say though that 101F (a whopping 38C for those Europeans out there) feels a heck of a lot better when you're not pregnant! I'm truly amazed at the difference. Though yes, 101F is still pretty stinking hot! (Our high so far this summer is 106F (41C).)

So what do you do if you grew up in England and never really dealt with summer weather that was above say 77F (25C)?

Well, the trick is, to be outside either early on in the day (though it can be 85F by 9am). If you do venture out later on, stay in the shade or by some cold water (pool/paddling pool/sprinkler, etc.). Start the car 5 minutes before you leave anywhere and let the AC blast. In the evenings, just before going to bed, open all the windows and let the fans go crazy. This will help cool the house somewhat, but only if the day has been less than 103F. It will still sometimes stay above 80F at night and that is just not a comfortable sleeping temperature (at least, for me, it isn't!). Drive out of town in any direction, you'll go up in altitude and the temperature will drop anywhere from 10-30 degrees.

These are a few tricks I've learnt from living in Redding. And this is only my second summer here. It's amazing how nice 90F can feel after a week of above 100F!

Despite the heat, we're looking forward to lots of pool-time at my dad's, camping in the beautiful landscapes of Nor-Cal, family camping vacation in Oregon, other family vacation in Florida, working on our garden and seeing it become beautiful. Loving and looking forward to summer with my husband and my baby.

Some pix of us enjoying the summer weather:

Paddling pool!!

Hanging out outside one morning:

By Trinity River up in the mountains for a friends' kid's 1st Birthday party:

This pool will be used a lot this summer:

And just because it's so cute... Sophie standing up:

Spicy Jalapeno & Cheddar

2011-06-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

We always joke about how my baby girl will eat ANYTHING. Seriously. Anything. And we found out the other day how true that was.

We had gone up to gorgeous Whiskeytown Lake with some friends and sat and grilled some yummy food. Someone had brought along a loaf of Jalapeno and Cheddar bread from a local bakery of deliciousness. There was one slice left on the table when John had set Sophie down. She spied the piece of bread immediately and proceeded to make her way towards it. She grabbed it, stuck as much of it in her mouth as she could and then ate it. ALL OF IT! Within a couple of minutes. We all cracked up as we watched her wolf down this fairly spicy bread like it was nothing! This girl never ceases to amaze me. She really loves her food.

According to my mother-in-law, I can attribute it to John, as apparently he was a really eager eater as a baby. I'm so glad, because I was not. I would only eat meat, and spinach was the only vegetable I would eat. I'm hoping Sophie continues to stay open to eating and tasting and loving all foods. Here's to our baby girl, who eats well!

Cousins

2011-06-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

My niece, Isabelle, and my baby girl, Sophie, did this all by themselves. At the same time. It was pretty cute. I'm glad I was able to capture it. They also both were licking the metal part, but I was only able to get a pic of Sophie doing it. I just love watching what these babies do, especially at this stage when they're exploring, grabbing things, finding things, putting EVERYTHING in their mouths, stopping crawling to pat their heads or to clap their hands together. Too much fun to be had. Babies are seriously the funnest!

Tiny Dancers

2011-06-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

John, Sophie and I had the pleasure of going to our nieces' ballet recital last weekend. They were soooooooo adorable! They did a fairy dance and a rock'n'roll medley, where all the songs were from Grease (one of my all-time favourite movies to which I know almost ALL the words!). It was really fun to see them do their dances - they were really cute!

Having done 9 years of ballet and around 5 of modern, I've really loved seeing my nieces take ballet (the three of them old enough to do so are in ballet classes). I like to think that they got my little dancing/ballet gene, though I do know that a lot of little girls just love ballet and want to be ballerinas! It makes me wonder too if Sophie will be into ballet or sports or reading like I was, or into whatever John was into when he was a kid (when I asked him, he said "Fire, destroying things, I don't know..."! ;) We can't wait to watch her personality develop and see her giftings, talents and hobbies emerge.

Anyway, once they were in their costumes and make-up, the girls happily came outside and posed for me so I could take pictures. They showed me some of the dance moves and, well, just gave me some of the cutest pictures ever! Enjoy:

Milestones and Milestones

2011-06-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

One thing that I never thought about while getting ready to have a baby was how fun each and every milestone would be! And how quickly they all start to happen. How exciting it is when Sophie first reaches out and grabs something. And how proud we are when she first starts to pull herself up. Every new little thing she does just amazes me, as I see her becoming more and more mobile, and active, and interactive. I love that I get to see all these things with her every day.

Sophie is 9 months today. It is so hard to believe that 9 months ago (minus 9 hours or so), I gave birth to this beautiful baby girl. I can't believe she is 3 months shy of her 1st birthday. As everyone warned me, it really does go by so fast once you have kids!

Her recent milestones (from the last week or so):

- clapping her hands
- shaking her head "no"
- pulling herself up to standing
- crawling
- sleeping through the night (from 7pm-7am). It is amazing to no longer have a night feed!
- sitting herself up from a lying down position
- saying "dadada" and "nenene" constantly. She was saying "mamamama", but hasn't done that as much lately!
- first big girl bath-time

Since I started writing this post, we have come to the conclusion that she may be cutting a tooth today. We'll see! It feels like she's been teething for months now but it may finally be coming through.

And lastly, we went to the lake yesterday to celebrate Father's Day, and Sophie had so much fun being walked around in the freezing water. She's definitely a sweet little water-baby!

Here are some pix from the last few days of milestones and from our Father's Day yesterday at breakfast and up at the lake:

The Baugh Family

2011-06-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

How can I express how much this family means to me? I first met them when their oldest, Haddie, was around 5 months old. She is now 9! Jim, Kelly and I staffed a school with YWAM in Brussels, Belgium and we became best friends really quickly, bonding over silly things like Ace Ventura quotes and Gollum impressions. We would stay in almost every Friday, while Haddie slept in the corner, and watch The Fellowship of the Ring over and over again.

From there, I went on to staff with them in Kosovo, took care of Haddie during the birth of their son, Gideon, in England, and visited them twice in Fort Collins when they moved back to the States and I was living in the Mid-West. Kelly was my maid of honour in my wedding and helped us get our first apartment after we got married, hence our move to Fort Collins (we lived in her nana's basement apartment). We lived there for two and a half years and loved, loved, loved being an honorary member of the Baugh family, as well as an extended member of Kelly's family, the Fonfaras. Spending Easter, Thanksgiving, July 4th, and other holidays together while our own family was far away truly made us feel at home and well loved.

We've laughed (lots) together, cried together, prayed together, shared our dreams, worries, fears and hopes together. They are like an extension of my own family. They are those people on my list of "People Whom We Want To Have Live Close By" (so the title is awkward, but you get the idea!).

Here's some photos of their shoot:

I Heart Faces: From a Distance

2011-06-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

A photo of my friends' cute kids, Gideon & Haddie, from a recent family shoot:

Summer Days

2011-06-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

I've been super excited to swim with Sophie. Our house back in Redding has a pool, but it just didn't quite warm up enough before we came to Fort Collins, so we weren't able to jump in with her yet. Yesterday, it finally hit a decent temperature here, and we were able to give Sophie her first pool time. We had just bought her bathing suit over the weekend, a yellow polka-dot, ruffly, super-girly, bathing suit.

She LOVED being in the water. She started splashing around, and did well when she got water in her face. John and I took turns holding her and walking her around. It made me even more excited for the summer and swimming with her lots and lots in the days to come.

Fort Collins, Colorado

2011-06-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

If you've never been to Fort Collins, Colorado, then you really should try and make it there some day. I don't know if it's because we lived here for the first two and a half years of our marriage, or because we have so many friends here, but we just love this town. Home to Colorado State University, it has a super fun Old Town with really good restaurants and yummy ice-cream and coffee shops. It's climate is mostly reasonable, never getting too, too cold in the winter, or too, too hot in the summer. And it's SO green. I think it got some award for having a certain amount of trees. We love, too, that it's two hours from snowboarding, one hour from a decent international airport and the fun city of Denver. It's also supposedly a great city to raise a family. I think we'd love to end up here again one day.

We're house+dog-sitting for our friends' neighbours for a few weeks. We figured since my husband can work from anywhere, we might as well take some time and enjoy it out here for a while and get to see lots of friends. We're looking after a Maltese for three weeks and two Siberian Huskies for one week. It's been nice and relaxing so far, and John's been able to get lots of work done as I'm distracted with hanging out with friends!

Some pix from our time:

Shake it, Just Shake it, Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture

2011-05-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot I have this fabulous iPhone app called ShakeItPhoto. I've been pulling it out lately and using it to catch some fun every-day pix. I like how it takes a basic iPhone photo and spruces it up a bit, giving it a fun vintage Polaroid look.

We've had a CRAZY couple of weeks lately. We bought a house, packed up our current house, switched over the lease, utilities, internet to the new tenants, put all our stuff in our garage. ALL in the space of about 3 weeks. And I was sick for about a week of that time. My wonderful husband took care of me & Sophie and packed during her nap times. And we moved out! (Oh and Sophie has been teething all this time too! :)

We are headed to Colorado tomorrow to house-sit for our friend's neighbours and visit our old stomping ground and all our buddies and we'll move in when we get back. The funnest part about Colorado will be introducing Sophie to all our friends. We figured that since John works from home, he can also work from anywhere, so have decided to have an extended visit.

In the midst of all that craziness, we've had some sweet moments together these last few weeks:

Hitting some warm spring days and putting Sophie in her cute summer clothes:

Hanging out & giggling at my dad's dog, Scooter, after one of our first meals outdoors:

Sophie hanging out with us at Yama Sushi/napping in the car after a run of errands:

Having fun in the car on the way to Sacramento today:

My Dad the Photographer

2011-05-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

I never knew this until recently, but when my dad was finished with high school, he told his dad he wanted to be a photographer. The dream was never realised, but was reignited of late as he went to a photography workshop here in Redding. When I bought my Canon 5D, he bought my old Sony A300 DSLR with two of the lenses. It has been fun to watch him begin to grow in photography and step out in this area of creativity.

He recently went to the Philippines and took some amazing pictures of some kids whose faces they painted. I edited some for him and wanted to showcase them on my blog as an encouragement for him to continue to pursue photography.

Group Shot!

2011-05-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

I was asked to take a photo of my dad's revival group at his school. A revival group is a smaller group of 60 or so from his School of Supernatural Ministry, here in Redding, California. It was my first time doing a big group shot like this. I had completely lost my voice that day, so my husband and awesome co-creator/photographer came with me, along with our baby girl, Sophie, to be my voice and to help direct when my voice could not.

It was a good experience to try and do a big group shot. There are so many people to direct! You really have to keep your eye on everything and everyone. You can definitely easily miss out on some details. We also had a time constraint which meant we couldn't get the best light outside so I just decided to do an inside pic. It was also easier to do it inside since everyone was already together having just had a meeting.

Anyway, here's the final result:

Weather You Will or Weather You Won't

2011-05-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've always been this way, but I know that since living in Colorado with it's average of 300 sunny days a year, I've loved weather. Storms, hail, rain, clouds, wind, sleet, snow, drizzle, clouds, you know, weather. I just find weather variety so much more interesting than "Oh, it's another sunny day again" over and over again! I know some people will hate me for writing that, but it's true! The ironic thing is that we moved from Colorado to Redding, California, which, according to one website, has 250 sunny days a year! I just can't get away from the sun, apparently.

It took me a while to figure out why I'm just not a fan of the sun (other than the fact that I hate getting sunburnt and I hate being hot). I realised that, after years of growing up in England, which gets 150-190 days of rain a year, sun makes me antsy. See, with so much rain in England, a sunny day becomes an occasion. You go for a picnic, a walk, a bike ride. You go to the market or sunbathe, or dare to take a dip in an icy outdoor pool. You drive to Brighton and walk along the sea. You drive to the cliffs and walk along the sea. You take a day-trip to London and just walk, walk, walk, soaking up the sun. You NEVER sit inside on a sunny day. That would be unthinkable. What a waste it would be! Do you get my point?

For the first few months in Colorado, I would wake up every sunny day thinking I HAD TO GO OUTSIDE to make the most of the sunny day. And since I was on my own, waiting for my work permit, and my husband was off working in Denver every day, it was hard to come up with fun things to do to spend an entire day outside by myself. So, I would stay inside. And I could never quite rest, having this ingrained thought within me that I was just wasting my day!

When I finally figured all this out, I felt so much better. And I do much better with sunny days now and don't get quite so freaked out. I do, however, still just love rainy days because I can rest inside and get all cosy and feel so peaceful and relaxed. Rainy days just don't stress me out like sunny days do!

We had a small thunderstorm last night while it was still sunny outside - hail and a double rainbow and everything. Tried to catch some pix of the torrential rain outside our house, however, it was raining so hard that I had to stay as much under our patio roof as possible to keep my camera dry, so I didn't get a lot of great shots. Also discovered it's hard to take a photo of a rainbow? If I slowed the shutter speed and upped the ISO, it was too bright to catch the rainbow against the whiteness of the sky, so I had to take the pictures kinda dark. I was able to brighten the sky in Photoshop without brightening the rainbow (LOVE editing in Photoshop), but it would have been nice to get a clear, bright rainbow (I mean, it was a double one, after all). Any thoughts on photographing rainbows???

I Heart Faces: Motherhood

2011-05-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Teething sucks...

2011-05-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

We've had a poor teething baby on our hands for almost two weeks now. And surprisingly enough, STILL NO TEETH! (Apparently it can take forever.) Fortunately it's been letting up a little bit this last week and hasn't been as intense as the first week. But, yeah, teething pretty much sucks. Especially since most of the baby Tylenol and Advil are full of nasty ingredients that are just not good for babies (butyl paraben and high fructose corn syrup being two of those).

She's been such a trooper, but we're ready to have our baby Sophie back. She's just not as smiley as normal and is much more sensitive and fussy. She also got a rash on both her cheeks and a super gross runny nose. :( She's still giving us smiles and giggles, just not as many as our usually happy and easy-going Sophie normally give us. On the plus side she's even more cuddly, which is really fun.

We ran into somebody last week who told us that his kid got 12 teeth all at once, and that they actually liked it that way because it meant that the teething was all concentrated into one short space of time, instead of spread out over ages. Since then, I've had two dreams that Sophie's woken with multiple teeth showing in her mouth. Some have been all the way out, like they just grew all the way out over night, and others have been just starting to show. For some reason though, they have always been full grown adult teeth. So weird. It does look like potentially there are a few pushing through, so we'll see (definitely the bottom two as they're nice and swollen).

We've finally been able to get her back on her nights again after traveling and the intense teething last week. Last night she slept all the way through until 5:30, which she hasn't done in a while and it was nice to see that maybe the craziness has subsided somewhat (we had a night last week where she woke up every 5-15 minutes until about 4 in the morning - that was one crazy night).

Anyway, all that to say, teething is no fun, and seems to last forever (until they're two?). Still waiting to see those little white teeth peeking out through her gums.

I was able to snap some pix of her little teething expressions:

Mummy, my bottom gum feels weird:

I can feel something there with my tongue:

It hurts :(

But I'll still smile at ya:

Bonjour Claude...

2011-04-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

I went out today just down the street to do a photo shoot with my dad. I've driven past this one spot so many times and wondered if it would make for a good place for a photo shoot and was so happy to find that it was. We spent just a quick half hour there where I helped my dad relax in front of the camera while I gained some more experience and practice in directing shoots. It was fun to try to make him laugh in order to catch a natural smile (he doesn't like smiling in front of the camera), and I hope that I can eventually have the skills to be able to do this with strangers.

My biggest weakness, in fact, is client interaction while directing the shoot, and I'm hoping to continue to work past that, to push myself more and to eventually become good in this area through merely continuing to just practice, practice, practice. I always want to naturally just be good at everything and I've used my lack of social ease as an excuse to not pursue photography as intensely as I could be. I've been realising lately, that with every job, whatever it may be, there are and always will be some areas that you just have to work at that little bit harder because it just doesn't come naturally. Of course, I feel like I'm already working so hard on the whole photography part itself, that I obviously find the social side even more overwhelming!

Anyway. It was really fun to spend some time with my dad today. He went along with my direction and it was fun to share this aspect of my life with him. It's been so great to have him live here in Redding with us this last year and I've appreciated his grandpa-ness towards my baby girl, his incredible help as a dad to me while I was pregnant and his humility and eagerness to learn during this time that he is a the School of Supernatural Ministry here at Bethel. He's grown a lot and remained open to a lot of things and it's inspired me to be humble and willing to learn when I'm his age.

Here's my dad:

Perfection

2011-04-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a parenting class at the church we go to here and I have been so privileged to get good tips on training and parenting each child individually and being intentional in every step of parenting. Lots of good stuff. Overwhelming at times to think about, but really good. We are still way early on in this whole parenting malarkey but know that we will all too quickly be needing lots and lots of good parenting info and advice so are making use of the time we have now to get as prepared as one can be!

We started reading through the binder from the parenting class and the first little article showed how one encounter with your child can go either really well or really horrible, depending on how you decide to parent. In the scenario that ends badly with the child being hurt and disappointed, the mum was too obsessed with being perfect. She baked her cake while her daughter was sleeping so that it would be perfect, didn't let her pick the flowers from the garden, but only from the field, and she didn't let her child put her flower into the bouquet that she was arranging because it was going to ruin it. In the second scenario, they baked the cake together, she let her pick flowers from their garden, and she let her put in her flower even if it didn't fit, because the little girl was so excited to contribute.

It was good for me to read, because today, I was trying to be the perfectionist mum. Sophie had a weird day where she didn't really take her morning nap. She fell asleep for about five minutes and then was wide awake! And boy, did it stress me out. I was worried about the rest of the day and how her next nap would go, and how her schedule would be all off and how she'd get overtired and it might be hard for her to go down at night. She's also teething so I worried that no nap would just make it all worse too (It turned out she had a bit of plastic from a Kleenex tissue packet stuck in her mouth for an hour and a half which is why she didn't nap and didn't take her paci among other things. We just were so grateful that nothing worse happened because of the plastic.)

Somewhere along the day, I just relaxed. I was able to realise that all this stress is silly and pointless and she's going to be fine. And sure enough, everything was fine. She ate well and then went down great for her afternoon nap, and went down great for bedtime too. She was still moderately fussy due to the teething, but it really wasn't that bad.

Reading that article made me realise again that I just need to calm down about things. Especially when it comes to Sophie. I don't want to be the mum that squashes my child's enthusiasm to help with a bouquet or a cake or anything I'm doing. I don't want to squelch her happy spirit with my stresses. Perfectionism is definitely over-rated. I just need to remind myself of this every day and hope to be able to let lots of things go on this great journey of parenthood.

And because I just must post pix every time, here are some of me and my darling baby girl, Sophie:

Boston

2011-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

I often forget that my husband is an amazing photographer and I need to remember to hand him the camera more often. His eye and creative touch are different to mine and I like that, need that. He's actually going to assist me on a larger family shoot this coming Friday and I'm excited to have our strengths work together. As I've said before, I would actually love for us to do all my photos shoots together as he really brings something that I just don't have. Speaking of my husband, I just love that he is totally this engineer/web design and coder/IT guy but he also has this amazing creative, musical, social edge that sets him apart from those typical engineer/web design and coder/IT guy type people. What a fun combination. :)

While wandering the streets of Boston, while in Massachusetts last week, he took a few snapshots of some fun buildings around the Boston Commons area. Love his eye:

Easthampton Visit

2011-04-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

John, Sophie and I just got back from a wonderful visit with John's brother, his wife and their new baby, Noah. The twins got to spend their birthday together for the first time in four years and we had fun having our babies meet for the first time (they are exactly four months apart). They sat together (well, Sophie sat, and Noah sat propped up by Britt) and laughed and smiled at each other. It was really cute. We also got to head down to New Haven, CT and hang out with their sister, Bekah for the day. So fun to get to see lots of family. We all love to play games, so we did that a lot, as well as go get coffee and walk around Northampton, a fun town near where they live. We hit up Boston and wanted to do New York but it was just going to be a long and expensive day with the kids, so we sadly decided not to (I LOVE New York! No seriously I do, it's not just a t-shirt, it's a reality).

It's really fun for us all to be at the same stage in our lives. My brothers and John's older sister, Rachael, have all had kids for a few years now (our oldest niece and nephews are 6 and 7!) and it was fun to get to connect with Mark and Britt on the fact that this is our first kid, and they're around the same age, and that we're all learning so much about babies and parenting. We just love that Sophie has so many cousins right around her age - she will have four total by June all born within a year of her.

We decided to do our own little photo shoots in Boston and in Easthampton, and here are some of the pictures from our time (thanks, Bekah, for taking our pictures!). We're going to send the one of the four of us with our new babies to the Taylor University alumni page, to introduce Noah and Sophie.

I Heart Faces People's Choice Photography Challenge

2011-04-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

Click here on Monday to vote for my photo: I Heart Faces People's Choice Photography Challenge

Sophie's First Hair Cut

2011-03-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Sophie was born with a super cute full head of dark hair (see pix of her here at 6 weeks: Introducing ... Sophie Burtness). 6 months on, she's losing the hair at the top of her head and the top part of her sides, has a bald spot from lying on her back and was growing the nicest little baby mullet... up until last week. I decided that it was time for the baby mullet to go. My friend, Tabitha, took pictures on our camera while John held Sophie and I chopped off some of her hair for the first time. She did really well, even though she moved her head the entire time, and I only did one tiny mistake that probably only I can see. It was fun! I've been looking forward to having a daughter so that I can cut her hair; I just didn't think that I would be cutting it this early.

She's continuing to lose the hair from the top of her head, and John and I are both curious to see what her new hair will be when it grows in. Stay posted, right? The great thing is that she still looks totally adorable and cute even with the old man balding look, and losing the mullet definitely helps too!

You can see a little bit of the mullet here:

She did really well:

Some of the end result:

And of course, we kept the hair we cut and put it in an envelope:

I Heart Faces

2011-03-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

A Slice of Life:

Capturing the first time my daughter sucks on her toes:

Let The Cuteness Overwhelm You

2011-03-26T20:54:00.000-07:00

It won't surprise you to find out that my most often-photographed subject is my very own daughter. And I'm posting pix of her just because.... well, because she is just the cutest thing.

She just turned 6 months old and this has seriously been the funnest few weeks of milestones and new things: eating solids, rolling over, starting to sit up, sucking on her toes, making new sounds (mege, bege, etc). I know there are more that I just can't remember. One thing I did not envisage in becoming a parent is the excitement and fun that comes with each new stage. Every stage becomes my new favourite stage as she becomes more interactive and alert and mobile and coordinated. There's always new things to experience with her and it is such a blast. One of my favourite things too is that John gets to see all her "firsts" as he works from home. He also LOVES this too!

One of my favourite comedians, Jack Dee, does this whole bit on his kids and jokes about parents who resent their kids and resent their growth. He was on holiday with his family and were hanging out by a pool when their baby started crawling. The family nearby made some comment about how it's all downhill from there and just you wait till they start walking and then running. He then said something funny that I just can't remember (and can't seem to find online!) but that part always stuck with me about not resenting your kids. It's something that John and I are aware of and try not to do. Especially since we wanted Sophie for long and tried for her for so long that we can't be anything but grateful for every little part of her amazing existence.

And of course, most days it isn't hard to be super grateful for this little bundle of cuteness that smiles and giggles at us and gets excited when we walk in the room and makes the cutest sounds and finds everything interesting and laughs at the dog, etc. Though there are those moments of growth spurt night feeds, of why won't she go back to sleep, of why is she having a melt-down right now when I'm on the phone and about to check out of a store and everything is happening all at once, that we have to stop and deal with it and not get negative and not get frustrated. We're still working on those, and I think it's normal, and we always come back to, dang it, we just don't want to ever resent her and everything that she goes through as a normal part of development and growth in a baby. And so we try to remember to stop, and say thanks for Sophie, for every moment that we will get to spend with her whether she is giggling or crying, smiling or fussing, happy or having a blow-out and we forgot a change of clothes.

Bill Johnson, pastor of our church, recently said at a parenting class, "Every moment I get to spend with my children is a privilege and an honour". Definitely something we want to live by.

And now I leave you with some recent pictures of my beautiful baby girl (doesn't she just have the prettiest smile):

Beautiful Kristin

2011-03-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

I was so lucky to get to have a visit from my dear friend, Kristin, last week. We had done the school together here in Redding last year but she had gone back to Montana after the school was over, not sure if she was returning to Redding. To my chagrin, she did not return here to live. She was probably the girl with whom I got the closest during our school year so was sad to not have her around any more. However, she graced me with her presence last week and it was so great to see her again.

She has this beautiful combination of striking red hair and soft alabaster skin. She's tall and lean and full of infectious energy. She has a great depth and is a friend to everyone, accepting of all. She's also a lot of fun and has a great laugh. She has the most beautiful singing voice and loves to sing.

On a slightly chilly day, during her visit, we headed out to Cauldwell Park with Sophie, picnic and guitar in hand and I got to snap some shots of her singing for me. From opera to jazz to musicals, we had a lot of fun as I snapped away. This was my first shoot with my new Canon 5D and I'm very pleased with the result.

Once again, here are my favs:

Tacoma Visit

2011-03-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

We went up to visit our Tacoma family this last week. My brother lives up there with his wife and gorgeous three kids. They had just bought a house that we were all able to squeeze into during our stay there. It was really fun as always to see the cousins play together and run around and we got to visit with other friends during our stay there. Sophie did really well on both the outgoing and return trip in the car and it was fun to see her with her two cousins who are just one month and two months older than her.

It has been really nice to have family close by. This season of life, where we all have kids (and most of John's family now has kids too), has really made me cherish family and enjoy their proximity. Having most of my family in Redding, and my brother's family 10 hours away has been so nice. So nice, in fact, that it has made us put off our big move to Europe that we have been dreaming about doing for a while now. We just don't want to be that far away from our family. We always want to be around family and take some of them with us if we do move permanently far away.

It has something to do with the last-minute drop in and spending most of the weekend together. Seeing our baby with their kids and us all just having a super fun relaxing time together. The way that we connect together and know each other and are comfortable with each other. Comfortable in a way that can take years to build with other people. We are definitely those people that just love our family.

So here are some photos of my wonderful family this last week, taken with my new Canon 5D. I am definitely loving this new camera and the range of possibility that has been opened. I like how much better it lets in light and just how much better the quality of the pictures are. I'm most certainly going to enjoy this new purchase of mine!

My dad is so good with his grandkids and they really love him:

Chloe, out in the snow:

Olivier in the snow:

My baby girl, Sophie:

My younger brother, Sam:

My older brother, Matt:

Love her eyes:

Their cat, Rushmore:

My niece, Isa:

Sophie, with her two cousins:

Love her eyes:

My niece, Sylvie:

Baby Isabelle

2011-02-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law, Beth, recently framed and put up on her wall some photos from the shoot I did with them last summer, when she was almost 39 weeks pregnant. She realised that she didn't have any of her baby, Isabelle, so we decided to do a quick shoot with her yesterday. She was a bit tired, so when we next hang out, we'll do some another little photo shoot in order to get more of her cute little Isabelle expressions.

I have to admit, I enjoy taking photos of my family the most. And in particular, my nieces and nephews. We now have five nieces and four nephews, with another nephew on the way. We are so lucky to have such a large family, and we love that Sophie already has loads of cousins and will have even more cousins as our siblings and their spouses continue to procreate, if you will.

We head off to visit my older brother and his family next week. We're making the 8 or so hour drive up to Tacoma, WA, on Wednesday and I'm desperately hoping that my new Canon 5D arrives in the mail before we leave. My nieces and nephews are my best test subjects for new equipment and this next week will be perfect as I'm sure I'll be taking loads of photos anyway. We shall see, we shall see...

Here's some from Isabelle's shoot:

Snow Day in California

2011-02-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, we got snow in California. I was pretty excited as I have been craving snow since we moved here. Growing up in England, we just never got a lot of snow. If we did, it would all melt by the next day. Every now and then we would get a decent dumping and one time I remember, it lasted a week. We had a blast! Any snow in England pretty much equals a snow day as we are totally unequipped to deal with it.

There's something about being all warm and cozy inside, drinking a hot chocolate, or tea, or a caramel latte, or any kind of hot beverage for that matter, and seeing flakes of snow falling from the sky. I just feel so peaceful and can sit for a while just watching the snow come down (which for me, is saying a lot, as I don't like to sit still for long). Moving to California, I knew that my chance of snow was small, but one can always hope.

And to my delight, after 3 weeks of over 70°F (20°C) way-too-early-for-spring-weather, we got one day. One glorious day of some snow (15 minutes in the morning and about an hour and a half in the afternoon). Surprisingly, it actually settled. Here's the snow we got in our back garden:

Winner!!

2011-02-19T14:21:00.000-08:00

On Thursday afternoon, I successfully won an auction for a 5D. I was pretty buzzed. In the end, John and I were at the mall shopping for our niece's birthday, and we were able to put in a bid using my iPhone ebay app (love my iPhone). I was so happy to see that I had won. We got home and I promptly paid and am now anxiously waiting it's arrival in the mail. I also went ahead and ordered my first Canon lens. I can't wait to start taking photos with it next week.

I have a whole bunch of ideas to blog about, but our router is busted and has completely killed our upload capabilities so I can't upload any photos until it's fixed, which basically kills anything I might want to do on my blog or on my facebook page! Oh well. I feel like we're back in the dial-up modem ages and everything is taking years to load.

So I've been doing what I can do, which is to revamp my blog and add a flickr side-bar which will post my newly uploaded flickr photos. Check it out to the right.

Just did a mini-shoot this morning with my cutsie niece, Isabelle, and am excited to upload those photos too. Stay posted....

Canon 5D

2011-02-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

I am about to become the proud owner of a Canon 5D. About a year ago, I began to see the limitations of my entry-level DSLR and yearned to upgrade. I wanted to save the money from my photo shoots to get a new camera. Sadly as my shoots are few and far between, I realised that I had to lower my budget. I figured I could work my way to save around $1000 here and there. I was unsure which camera was the best one in that price range, so I posted a question about it on Brookelyn Photography's formspring page. She recommended a used Canon 5D. After doing some research, and actually seeing the price lower on Amazon.com used Canon 5Ds from $1200 to $950, I realised that the camera was within my reach.

I have found even cheaper Canon 5Ds on ebay and so have been bidding on multiple auctions all week in the hopes of purchasing one. This morning, I sold one of my old lenses for $195 (which is amazing as we bought it for $50) and this will go towards a new lens for my Canon. I am selling my old DSLR with two lenses to my dad and this will also help me buy a new Canon lens. I am so close and impatient with the whole ebay bidding process. We are using a program called JBidWatcher hoping it will help me get in a final bid right at the end but so far we've been outbid each time. All in good time, all in good time. Good things come to those who wait. Etc. This is what I keep saying to myself to help with my impatience!

I feel like this camera will definitely increase my photo-taking, help me to really love photography even more and allow me to take higher quality pictures than I was able to with my entry-level DSLR. And so I continue to watch ebay, and continue to bid and continue to hope that today will be the day that I win. It will be mine, oh, yes, it will be mine.

Stay posted for new photos taken with my new Canon 5D.

My beautiful Sophie...

2011-01-31T21:49:00.000-08:00

I have completely been failing in my blog challenge the last few days. To be honest, it's been hard to get out of the house this last week as we have been working on my baby girl's naps. It's a whole long story, but it's very hands-on, so it's hard to get out for more than 30 mins to 1 hour at a time right now. Hopefully as we continue on with this, her naps will get better and consistent, and I can once more venture out into the world. We feel like today was a pretty good day actually, so we're hoping that we've made some breakthrough!

So I'm postponing my current blog challenge and seeing if I can come up with something else right now that won't require me to leave the house!

During one of Sophie's awake times last week I was able to do another little shoot with my darling baby. She seriously is the light of my life and her smile makes my day. I never knew how amazing it would be to be a parent and have so much love for such a small bundle of cuteness. She's so much fun! Here are my favourite pictures from the shoot (in case you didn't already catch them on facebook!):

a portrait a day... Day 10=Samuel

2011-01-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

And so concludes my nieces and nephews!

Samuel is about to turn four years old in February and he is quite the sweetie. He has gorgeous long eyelashes and like to jump off of things, onto things and into things! He speaks slowly annunciating every word as if he is making sure to say everything he wants to say correctly. He's such a sweet cousin to Sophie, holding her hand and touching her very gently. He's such a sweet little boy.

a portrait a day... Day 9=Noah

2011-01-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog challenge, my newest nephew, Noah, wasn't even born yet! He was born 4 days after I started it on Jan 20th, at 7:25pm, exactly 4 months after his cousin Sophie. His full name is Noah Robyn Daniel and he loves to sleep and cuddle with his mummy and daddy. He is still getting used to the world and just celebrated his first week birthday. He has a cute little newborn squishy face which to me definitely has a good mix of Stebel-Burtness elements. He is excited for when his cousin Sophie and his Uncle John and Aunty Marie come visit soon. I took this photo via Skype when we met him for the first time. I just love technology.

a portrait a day... Day 8=Jaidan

2011-01-26T10:10:00.000-08:00

Have been falling behind in my blog.... have had a few busy days.

And realised I didn't blog about my nephews on John's side of the family. So I present Jaidan Piercey! He is 7 years old and is a big goof. He loves to play Super Mario Brothers on the Wii and loves cuddling his first cousin Sophie. He was really quite the sweetest cousin to her over Christmas time wanting to hold her and wanting her attention to be on him only! He likes things to be organised and wants to do things in order. He's a pretty smart kid, is already reading pretty well and knows how to play Monopoly Deal! He's a lot of fun.

Blog Challenge no. 2 = 100 steps from our mailbox

2011-01-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Here's my blog challenge no. 2. I walk 100 steps from various locations around Redding, stop and take photos of what I see.

This afternoon, I went for a 2 mile walk with John and Sophie to Cash and Carry to buy yummy syrups to add to our coffee beverages. We bought caramel, vanilla and pumpkin pie. This last fall season got me buying lots of yummy pumpkin flavoured lattes. So good. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, the perfect temperature, and we had a great time pushing Sophie in the stroller and getting some good connecting time. Walking to shops or parks or restaurants is one thing I miss about living in Europe where everything is so much closer together so it's easier to walk more.

After not finding a whole lot the first 100 steps, we decided to walk another 100 steps where I got a few more shots. The first 100 steps:

I couldn't resist posting this of my gorgeous baby:

The second 100 steps:

Sophie fell asleep like this on the way home:

a portrait a day... Day 7=Sylvie

2011-01-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

Sylvie was born just 2 months before Sophie so she is around 6 months old. Again I feel so lucky that Sophie has another cousin close in age to her. We were able to go up and meet little Sylvie when she was 2 weeks old and I took this photo of her. She now has a crazy amount of hair, so long that they can put it in pigtails and she looks a lot like her older brother, who likes a lot like their mum, Tracie. We're heading up to Tacoma again to visit the family in February and we're all so excited to put the little cousins together to hang out!

a portrait a day... Day 6=Isabelle

2011-01-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

Isabelle is now almost 5 months old, she was born 3 and a half weeks before Sophie. It was really fun being pregnant with my sister-in-law, Beth, and now we have little babies less than a month apart. She has an adorable little smile and an amazing blonde mohawk. She makes cute little cooing noises and even has the cutest cry. This picture of her is when she was just a few hours old. I was honoured to get be at her birth and take the first photos of this gorgeous little girl.

a portrait a day... Day 5=Sophie

2011-01-21T20:25:00.000-08:00

I wanted to do Sophie today as today (well, yesterday, I'm a day late) is her 4 month birthday! I can't believe she is 4 months old already. As everybody was warning me, it really does go by so fast. She is the light of my life and my little angel bear. She is super friendly and will smile at anyone. She loves to be out and about looking at lights, and likes to be held up high in the air. Her cousins, Emma & Adi, will tickle her until she giggles and she loves to interact with them.

I've posted this photo before but I just love it. It truly is her personality.

a portrait a day... Day 4=Chloe

2011-01-19T21:35:00.000-08:00

Day 4 is my niece Chloe, who is 4 and a half years old. She makes her fingers come alive and uses them as toys. She loves to twirl and dance and wear princess dresses. She plays with her older brother really well and is quite the little cuddler. She has the cutest voice and reminds me a lot of our mum who passed away 9 years ago. To me, she is definitely a little Bonjour. She is joyful and mischievous, and will always give you a great big Chloe smile.

a portrait a day... Day 3=Adi

2011-01-18T22:03:00.000-08:00

Adi is 4 and a half years old. She loves to wrestle and wear princess dresses. She has the cutest little lisp and loves to live life at her own pace. She loves to cuddle and run her fingers through your hair (which is John's favourite). She lets me take pictures of her and her cute infectious smile. Her blue eyes capture the light amazingly and make such a pretty combination with her platinum blonde hair. What a cutie.

a portrait a day... Day 2=Olivier

2011-01-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed so much blogging about my niece, Emma, that I decided to change my blog challenge and to blog about each of my nieces and nephews with photos that I've taken of them recently.

So for day two, I'm blogging about my nephew, Olivier. He turned 6 a few weeks ago and is just one of the funnest little kids. He'll run around looking at everything around him and will also play quietly with lego for ages. He is super creative and is one smart kid. He is a bundle of energy and loves to learn. I took this photo of him when we were visiting my family up in Tacoma. We spent the day in Seattle and sat by the sea and let the kids run around. I think he was spinning around when I took this shot. Love this kid.

a portrait a day... Day 1=Emma

2011-01-16T20:21:00.000-08:00

In order to challenge my photography and my blogging, I've decided to set myself up with some challenges for the weeks and months ahead. I'm starting with a week of portraits, where I take a new portrait every day for a week.

I'm starting with my niece Emma...

She will be 6 in February. She just lost her first tooth (bottom middle) and is the cutest little thing. She loves tickling my baby Sophie and making her laugh and smile. She is really intelligent and will talk your ear off. She likes to plan and organise and is full of smiles and giggles. I love that she lets me take photos of her and when I took this one, I just called her name, and she turned around and gave me this smile. Love those dimples.

Here is Emma:

Jan 2011 Favourites

2011-01-08T08:05:00.000-08:00

This lens is the one I use almost exclusively and I love it. It's a really simple one but has improved my photography in huge ways. I love my SAM DT 1.8f/50mm lens:

I am SO lucky to get Photoshop for free and was able to upgrade to CS5! This really is a huge part of my photography business so I'm super grateful for this. I love all the fun actions and being able to batch resize/edit hundreds of photos with the touch of just a few buttons.

We just bought this diaper bag two days ago and I love it. It is a Skip Hop design, which is a company run by a couple who are parents, and so they really have amazing ideas. It has great pockets, is completely waterproof, has handles so you can strap it onto your stroller, and is huge, but has an outside zipper that makes it smaller. We flew home yesterday using the bag for the first time and we were able to put all of Sophie's things in it and MORE!

My husband bought me this super cool MacBook Pro Incase cover that I've been eyeing for a while and it's in my favourite colour. I love it:

We also just got this remote for my camera and we are having so much fun with it. It works up to 100 feet away and has 16 different RF channels:

And finally, my goal for this year is to purchase a Canon 5D. I've been saving money from my shoots and I'm just over halfway there to being able to buy a used one.

2010 Favourites

2010-12-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

Well, what a year 2010 has been. Here are my highlights:

finding out we were pregnant on January 11 after trying for 13 months
giving birth to my beautiful daughter after a (approximately) 24 hour labour
traveling to French Polynesia with my husband in April
having my dad move to Redding in July
seeing the birth of my niece, Isabelle, and seeing my other niece, Sylvie, at 2 weeks old (our family is expanding!)

Here are my favourite photos of 2010:

Family Shoot

2010-12-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

The fun thing about this whole photography malarkey business is that we can have our own family shoots any time we want! I recently purchased a remote for my camera (an idea I copied of my brother-in-law and his wife!) and we set out for our first remote-controlled family photo shoot last week. And it was so fun. It was great to be able to set up the tripod and then take as many pix as we wanted in that one spot, instead of having to run back and forth to set the timer. We were able to walk away from the shoot with 60 pictures instead of 8! What a difference. The only thing we didn't have was somebody standing behind the camera smiling at Sophie so she would grin back.

Speaking of Sophie, I am just loving having her in my life. And I'm loving being this little family. I love John time and I love Sophie time, but my favourite time ever it John & Sophie time. I didn't realise how much I would enjoy having to take care of this gorgeous little person. She's quite the cutie and I am amazed at how much love I feel when I watch her sleep, see her smile, watch her under her playmat smiling at the little helicopter dangling above her or when she does just about anything. And then I'm amazed too at how she came from John and I, that we made her, that she is part-him, and part-me. We see bits of him and we see bits of me, and all those bits together make up this unique, brand-new, never before seen or made, little person. Parenthood truly is quite amazing!

Anyway, here are my favourites from the shoot:

Celebrating Four Years...

2010-12-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today, I want to celebrate my husband, John Burtness. Fours years ago, today, we were married in Kona, HI. It was an amazing day, beyond my wildest dreams and expectations. We have had four wonderful years together since then and I have felt so often how lucky I am to have such an amazing husband.

He is a wonderful and involved father and I love how much he loves Sophie. He is so excited to spend time with her and is willing to give her the world. He loves being involved in parenting her and is so happy to be working from home so that he can be with her throughout the day.

He is such a caring and loving husband to me. I appreciate how much he has grown while we have worked on our relationship together and how much he loves and honours me as his wife. He was an amazing support to me during labour and I honestly couldn't imagine life without him. He is my best friend, is a great listener and he champions me so much!

I love his engineer mind, how he can fix almost anything, how much of a hard worker he is, and how entrepreneurial he has become lately. I've been impressed with his self-discipline to sit down and get work done at home when there are so many distractions.

All that to say... I LOVE my husband! Here are some wonderful pix of him and the wonderful memories I have of us together since we first got married.

Our beautiful wedding day:

Hanging out at the MOMA on our New York City vacation in May 2009:

Helping me prep for a photo shoot by posing for some shots for me back in Fort Collins, CO:

Testing a satellite for his college on the vomit-comet - anti-gravity flight!

Snowboarding together at Copper Mountain, CO:

Being gorgeous as ever while visiting friends, in Victoria, Canada:

Isn't he handsome?

So excited for baby Sophie's arrival!

Such a lovely and caring daddy to Sophie.

Recent Family Shoot

2010-12-15T13:29:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure recently of shooting this wonderful family; Angie, James & Chazz. They wanted a photo for their holiday card. It was absolutely freezing the day of the shoot so we did just a quick walk-around and took just a few photos. We connected over the fact that we both have babies just two months apart and are stay at home mums. They have just moved to the area and she was all excited to hang out with another mum and have a playdate. We have just hang out once since the shoot but it was a really fun time and I'm excited to get to know her more and hang out some more! So fun to have a new friend from a photo shoot.

Here are some pix from the shoot (my favourite is the one where they're kissing their son on each cheek!):

Venice...

2010-12-09T20:23:00.000-08:00

I married my wonderful husband almost 4 years ago, on December 16, 2006. We spent our first week of honeymoon in Hawaii and then flew to Europe. We spent two days in London, three weeks in Venice, and one week in Switzerland. I had a one last professional black and white film in my old Konica-Minolta SLR and I had tons of fun taking photos of one of the most amazing cities, Venice. We loved the canals, the narrow, windy alleyways, the fact that there were no roads, and therefore no cars in the city. We got a three week "bus" pass and spent days on the boat-buses touring and viewing the city from the canals and surrounding water. We loved all the churches, cathedrals and old palazzi, as well as all the mainstream tourist spots, such as the Ponte di Rialto and the Piazza San Marco. We loved eating salami and brie sandwiches for lunch and pizza for dinner, and finding those hole-in-the-wall restaurants with amazing lasagne and spaghetti. I think our favourite night, for both of us, was New Year's Eve, which started with following a Cuban drumming band from one piazza to Piazza San Marco, where they served free champagne and had amazing fireworks at midnight. Beautiful!

Anyway, it took me a while to develop the photos as I had to take them to a special photography store, but when I did, man was I happy with the results! What an amazing film of photos, if I may say so myself. Here are my favourites that we have on our walls (these are scans of my photos, so not the best quality, but you get the idea!):

In Memory of...

2010-11-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

On November 19, 2001, my dear mum passed away after battling breast, bone, lung and finally brain cancer for 2 years. Her name, Francine, means triumphant or free, and that is how we think of her today.

She touched so many lives. She was a great listener, a right goof, loyal, kind, gentle and full of peace. I try to tell John as many stories as I can to keep her memory alive and allow him to feel like he knew her in a small way. I'd like to do the same for Sophie, so she can have an idea of what kind of woman she was.

My mum's wishes was to have her ashes scattered in the Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) in Switzerland. She grew up a stone's throw away from it's shores her whole life. After she passed away, we flew to Switzerland to have a funeral there for all her Swiss family and friends. On one of the days there, we went out onto the lake, the four of us, with my grandpa on his sailing boat. He had tied a bouquet of yellow flowers to one of the masts. After we scattered the ashes, we also scattered the flowers out onto the lake. To remember her now, John and I scatter flowers out on to a body of water, and pray and think of her.

Last night, we realised it was the anniversary of her passing and so John, dad and I cut some roses from our rose-bush and headed back to our pool. We definitely still feel the lack of her in our lives, particularly with the arrival of our baby girl, but yet we are grateful for all that we have received these last 9 years - three spouses, a plethora of babies, a greater closeness in our family. We'll still always think of her and work to keep her memory alive.

Introducing... Sophie Burtness

2010-11-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

Fifty minutes after midnight on September 20, 2010, Sophie Francine Burtness was born! We long anticipated her arrival and it has been wonderful to have her with us. She is now almost 8 weeks old and is doing really well. She is sleeping amazingly at night-time and is a happy baby during the day. We have really enjoyed being a little family and going on little outings together and introducing her to all our friends. Neither of us realised how much we would enjoy being parents and having a little one to care for and hang out with.

We are glad to have made it through the first six weeks. Man, they were and hard! Lack of sleep and post-partum hormones are not a good combination. Add to that, figuring out her cues, learning breastfeeding, working through the pain of breastfeeding and waiting for the healing of, you know, down there, it definitely was a challenging time. Lots of ups and downs, joys and frustrations, laughter and crying! Moments where we loved it, and moments that are some of the hardest I've gone through!

However, we made it through and feel like we know her cues, know how to help her get to sleep, have got breastfeeding figured out, have her sleeping for longer and longer stints at nighttime. More sleep for her means more sleep for us means we're all just happier!

Anyway, I did a mini-shoot with her a couple of weeks ago and here are some of the photos:

Final Pregnancy Photos

2010-11-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

We did our final pregnancy shoot two days before our due date, and I started having pre-labor contractions the night of my due date (she was born two days later). I've obviously been very busy with a new baby! Sophie Francine Burtness was born at 12:50am, on September 20, 2010, just over 2 days past her due date (photos to come in another blog post). She is now 6 weeks and we're just about to the point where we have a bit more of a schedule and I can find some time to blog!

I wanted to upload a few of our final shoot - they really are my favourite photos of all our shoots:

Our Baby Girl's Arrival?

2010-09-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

We are now in our last week of pregnancy (according to the way they date pregnancies!) - I'm officially due in two days! We did a quick final shoot last week of the belly and are now anxiously awaiting our little girl's arrival.

My brother-in-law and his wife recently put up a poll on their website for people to vote on whether their baby was a boy or a girl (they found out last week) and I decided to do something similar for when our little girl was going to be born. Below the two photos my husband took of me last week, go ahead and vote for when you think our daughter is going to be born!

When will our baby girl be born?

Bonjour Family

2010-08-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

I had the wonderful privilege to be able to do a quick shoot with my brother, his wife, and two gorgeous daughters. Despite Beth being 38 weeks pregnant and myself being 36 weeks pregnant, we were able to get a few beautiful shots of their wonderful family. I went ahead and did some early edits for a sneak peak:

Sylvie

2010-08-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

My fourth niece, Sylvie Estelle Bonjour, was born July 18th, 2010. My dad, husband and I had the privilege of being able to drive up to Tacoma, WA, last week to meet her and visit with my brother and his family. I totally fell in love with her; with her gorgeous blue eyes that caught the light amazingly, and her pretty, thick, brown hair. She's a mixture of my niece and nephew, with her own little gorgeousness thrown in.

Here are some of my favourite photos that I was able to take of her:

Favourite Things (Present & Future)

2010-07-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

I am lucky to have the free (and legal) use of Photoshop CS4 for editing my photos. I love it and could not imagine using anything else right now. I'm working on getting CS5:

Thanks to a lovely Best Buy warranty I was able to upgrade my laptop to a MacBook Pro. I've been
an iBook G3 and standard MacBook girl for almost 10 years, but I was ready to upgrade and I love it:

I also love this iPhone app called ShakeIt Photo - it turns your photos into Polaroids:

I'm working on saving up to buy a used Canon 5D. I will have to save for a while, and buy brand new lenses (as my current is a Sony), but I know it will take my photography to the next level:

And just for laughs, I love this blog called Catalog Living:

Wedding Shoot No. 2

2010-07-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

I was privileged to do a shoot with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law as well. I had asked them ahead of time to do a shoot while we were together on vacation in Lake Nacimiento. When we got together, Rachael told me that she was really excited about doing the shoot, because their own wedding photos hadn't actually come out that well. I was so happy to do a shoot with them and be able to offer them a better set of wedding photos, 10+ years later!

Here's a sneak peak:

My Long-Term Dream

2010-07-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

My long-term goal and ultimate dream for my photography is that I get enough clients and business to be able to pull in my husband, John, to be a full-time partner and photographer. He has joined me on a few shoots and has always been an amazing help; in directing, having a great eye for shots and locations and being a wonderful support. When my brain goes blank, he has an idea. When I'm stuck on one angle, he finds another which I hadn't seen. He can tend to think a bit more outside of the box than I do and brings an area of creativity which is so different to mine but which I absolutely love and need!

He joined me lately on my recent bride shoot with my sister-in-law, and took some amazing photos that I just had to blog them:

Experience

2010-07-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm discovering that experience is key when it comes to photography. I'm not always the best at trying to get the most that I can, but I did make the most of our vacation week with John's family recently. I set up two "wedding" shoots to increase my experience and my portfolio. I did bride shots with John's sister, Bekah, and bride and groom shots with John's sister and brother-in-law, Rachael and Matt. We were in a gorgeous location, at Lake Nacimiento, and were able to take advantage of the amazing light we found between 7 and 8:30 that night! If only I could have this much control over timing and lighting at all wedding shoots!

I'm working on the edits for Bekah's shoot and here's a little sneak peak:

Seattle Wedding

2010-06-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished editing some of the photos for the Seattle wedding and before my brain shuts down completely (pregnancy sure makes you tired!), I wanted to throw my favourites online!

Seattle

2010-06-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

We spent a wonderful few days in Seattle last week. I took the photos at my friend's sister's wedding and then we spent some time visiting with our friends out there. I've become so used to taking photos of people that I wanted to practice a bit more on other types of photography! Here are some from our time there (some down-town and around the Space Needle and some at our Theo Chocolate tour):

Kids Photography

2010-05-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

Kids have become some of my favourite subjects to photograph which I never thought would happen. As I said to a friend recently, they can be the most challenging to photograph but also the most rewarding. They definitely have their own minds; they can choose not to smile, look at the camera, nor even face the camera! Every now and then, however, you can catch them just at the right time and end up with a gorgeous photo!

We spent the day yesterday visiting friends on Vancouver Island, and we went to play bocce ball on the beach. While we did, I had fun snapping shots of their adorable little boy, Sebastian. Here are my favs (especially the first one):

Wedding Rings

2010-05-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

I spent most of this weekend and some of last week editing all my best photos to get them ready for the launch of my new website (which should hopefully be going live tomorrow - stay posted!). I only have a few wedding photos and am always trying to think of ways I can get more photos for my website galleries without actually doing a wedding. Fortunately I am doing a wedding this weekend in Seattle (again, stay posted for photos), but I decided to play with our engagement rings to create some wedding ring photos for my website. I had lots of fun and it gave me more ideas for the wedding this upcoming weekend.

I'm probably only going to post one of those on my website, so maybe you can help me decide. Which one is your favourite (holly, shells, petals or coffee beans)?

a few of my favourite things

2010-05-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of my favourite photography-related resource websites that I'm browsing right now:

where I bought my website (stay posted...)

great blog and inspiring photography by brookelyn

a three-"man" team of photographers from fort collins, CO, whose style I love

Here are a few of my favourite baby websites that I'm browsing right now:

nursery design, I think I'm looking at green and brown, with maybe a touch of pink!

i've read so many helpful articles here!

helpful product reviews by mums

Some music I'm listening to right now:

i need to get this album, but in the meantime, she makes an excellent pandora station

i've been re-listening to keith green again - good stuff.

love all songs on this album

A few other randoms of my favourite things:

my new incase iPhone case

my lovely singer sewing machine, given to me by my sister-in-law, tracie bonjour. i don't use it as much as i want, but hope to start using it more.

ultrasound photos!!! i can't get enough of little baby girl burtness!

It's a girl!

2010-05-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

I am just over 22 weeks pregnant (about 5 and a half months). We found out two weeks that we're having a girl. We got to see her for about half an hour during our ultrasound and we both fell in love. As all our friends are leaving soon since our school is over, we had our baby shower last week. We got all kinds of cute little girl clothes that are making me even more excited for little baby girl's arrival!

I've been able to recently feel her kick more and more. And John was able to feel her for the first time the other night. It is still so crazy to me that this little person is growing inside of me, hanging out in there while she gets ready to come out. Soon she is going to be so much a part of our lives and we are so excited! We're not officially announcing a name yet, though if you ask either of us, we'll tell you. We can't wait to meet this little munchkin!

Wedding Shoot

2010-05-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I was able to assist Heather Armstrong, an amazing local photographer, at a wedding shoot. I have only done one wedding before, so I was excited to go with her and shadow/learn/glean anything from her that I could during the afternoon.

Heather was very generous to let me use her Canon 5D during the shoot and I had lots of fun with it (and walked away coveting it!), as well as fiddling around with her lenses. My favourite from the day has to be her 70-200mm 2.8f lens. I was able to take some beautiful shots with this one.

Things that I learnt:

- Be bossy and take control. As photographer, you have to work hard to make sure you get the photos you need. Don't be afraid to block people's views, stand right behind the couple during the ceremony, order people around, etc. to get the photos.

- You'll need lots of memory. A wedding shoot will require much more memory than a one hour portrait/family shoot, which is mostly what I have been doing. Fortunately, Heather was getting rid of her old 4GB and 2GB CompactFlash drives, and I walked away with an extra 10GB of memory for my camera on top of the 4GB I already had.

- Move fast, and stay focused. The shooting time, particularly the formal shoot, can sometimes be short and you've got to move fast to get all the photos in.

- Lenses, lenses, lenses. She brought with her the six lenses that she owns, and had rented two extra. Sadly, I'm not at the level to own six amazing lenses (I own two mediocre ones, and one decent one), but it has got me looking into them a lot more!

I get to shoot my friend's sister's wedding up in Seattle, WA at the end of the month, and I am very excited to take what I have learnt and use it there. Thanks Heather for this opportunity!

Here are my favourites from the shoot:

Pumper Magazine

2010-04-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

Back in October of last year, about a month after I officially launched my photography business in Redding, CA, I got an email from Cole Publishing asking me to do a photo assignment for them for their Pumper magazine, "dedicated to the liquid waste industry". They were writing an article for a local business and needed a local photographer for the assignment. I happily accepted their offer and spent the next few months working on the assignment.

The article came out in April's issue and they sent me a copy of the magazine for myself! I am happy to have my work published (even if it was right at the beginning of my "career" and my photos are quite simple - have improved lots since then!)

I scanned in the pages and here they are for your viewing:

Tahiti II

2010-04-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite things to capture is people. Ever since I started taking photographs, it's what I've enjoyed the most. And candids are my top, top favourite. And I think candids of kids are up there too.

While in Tahiti, I snapped these shots of these amazing people.

Damali has the most gorgeous skin and her favourite colour is purple. She stopped to watch the fish descaling and de-gutting and I loved the purple of her pareo (Tahitian for sarong) and the darkness of her skin set against the gorgeous blue of the ocean behind her.

Tony is half Kiwi, half Maori and has the coolest tattoos on his forearms and legs. As I snapped this shot, I accidentally focused on his arm instead of his face. I've found that some of my accidental shots are the best, and I love this one. I like how it really focuses on his Maori culture.

This is Don, the father of the group and the ultimate joker. He was sick almost the entire two weeks we were there and yet he had the best sense of humour. As I tried to snap a shot of him, he saw me and stuck out his tongue. Yep, that's Don!

The Islands of French Polynesia

2010-04-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

My husband and I just got back from a wonderful two week missions trip to French Polynesia. We visited the islands of Tahiti and Rangiroa. Rangiroa is a beautiful, large atoll, and we got to visit both sides. Tahiti, as most know, is the main island of French Polynesia. Despite being sick and badly sunburnt, which put me off taking photos for a few days, I was able to snap some fun shots of Tahitian island life. The first, my favourite, is of our taxi-boat driver. His tattoos, which covered his entire body, including his face, showed that he was a village elder and was of a high social ranking. We had just arrived on Rangiroa, and this was my first encounter with Tahitian culture. I thought it was beautiful and quickly snapped away!

The following three represent to me the fishing culture and lifestyle of the Tahitian islands. Almost every day on Rangiroa, our host's son and his friend would head out to the inner lagoon of the atoll to go spear-fishing. Once they returned, we would gather around to help descale, gut and clean the fish in the sea. That night, sure enough, we ate the delicious fresh fish they had caught that day. We definitely ate more fish in one week that I've probably eaten in a year!

Family

2010-03-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

John and I moved to Colorado February 2007, three months after we got married. We loved living in Colorado, we loved Fort Collins a lot. We really enjoyed the little community of friends that we met there through church, through Starbucks and through my second job out there. However, we really started to miss our family!

We then felt a nudge towards Redding, as we started to look at what might be next for us. One factor that definitely drew us was that my brother and his family were here, and we were so excited at the thought of being around family!

We now get to live close to our family (literally - we're within a five minute walk of their house) and have dinners together, go away for weekends together and see them multiple times a week. I have been especially blessed to get to see my nieces lots. After spending three years or more away from our nieces and nephews, we have definitely missed being part of their growing-up and seeing their little personalities develop. It has been a pleasure to be around Emma and Adi. They light up my world when they see us coming over and run out and give us big hugs. Or choose to sit next to me and snuggle when we watch a movie. We are so lucky to be able to get to connect with them and we are taking as much advantage of that fact as we can, as we don't know when we might be moved onto the next thing, the next location.

I snapped a few shots of them the other night as we went over for dinner. They were playing outside making a cake out of mud, leaves, grass and berries, and happily let me snap some pictures. They have very patiently been willing to let me practice my photography on them and it has been happy to take gorgeous photos as they are so cute and smiley! Here are some of the photos:

March

2010-03-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

For me, the month of March always remind me of my mum. Her birthday was March 19th, and in England, Mother's Day is in March. Her favourite flower was the daffodil and, if you know anything about flowers, you'll know that these tend to bloom in March, and in England, they're everywhere! Not just in the flower shops or supermarket but they grow wild everywhere. Officially you're not supposed to pick them but everybody does. You can guess that for my mum's birthday and for Mother's Day, she always had plenty of wild daffodils that her kids picked for her on the way home from school or on the way back from a friend's house. Daffodils now have a special place in my heart as well, as they will always remind me of my mum and her strength, silliness, loyalty, love and caring mother-heart.

Here's to my mum, Francine Bonjour, and to never letting her memory fade.

New lens

2010-03-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

After taking the photography class (can you tell how influential this was by how many blog posts I've written about it?), I realised that it was time to step up my game a little bit and I started looking at lenses. Learning how important a low aperture can be for portrait photography, as it increases depth of field and creates more blurriness behind the subject, I started looking into a lens that would have a low aperture. The lower the aperture, the larger the opening and the more light can come through, which means you can take photos easier at low light without a flash. I was pleased to find one with an aperture of 1.8, whereas my current one only went down to 4.5.

I was even more pleased to find a reasonably priced lens, as I definitely didn't have money to invest into anything pricey. After researching reviews, we decided to sell our point-and-shoot Nikon in order to pay for the lens. A week later, the camera was sold and the lens was on its way!

I am now the proud owner of a DT 1.8f 50mm SAM lens. John and I went to the park over the weekend and I grabbed the camera so I could test it out in natural lighting. We had fun with the lens and here are some of the photos from our walk:

Final Photography Class Shoot

2010-03-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

For our final shoot, a couple of weeks ago, we did an outdoor shoot with natural lighting. This was great for me as this is what I do with my shoots for my business. She took us to a great area behind the church and had provided us with lots of models and props in order to have fun with the shoots.

I definitely learnt how to be more comfortable with the subject and that interacting with the model resulted in a much better picture (otherwise, they looked bored or awkward - a lot of them were high school students!) I was able to look at more details in the shoot as well as overall poses and positions, which for me is harder when there is just one person in the shoot as opposed to a couple or whole family! It continued to give me ideas and experience in this area of portrait photography.

Here are some of my favourites:

Shahala Shoot

2010-03-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

I did my first maternity shoot last weekend with lovely Shahala. It was not hard to take beautiful photos of her! I ventured down-town to try some new spots but only found a few that I really liked.

On another note, I was able to purchase a new lens (after selling our trusty but unused Nikon point and shoot). I will soon be the proud owner of a 1.8f, 50mm SAM DT Lens and I am excited to get almost two weeks in French Polynesia as the team photographer to practice with it!

Here are my favourites from the shoot:

Photo Shoot

2010-02-21T17:32:00.003-08:00

In the midst of enjoying my wonderful photography class, I get an email from someone who had found my Craig's List posting and was interested in doing a family shoot. I was ecstatic. December and January had been completely dead for me with absolutely no shoots booked, and minimal contact from potential clients. This gave me a reason for me to continue to work to make this business happen. We had visited the Shasta ruins back in January when John's family was here to visit, and I found some really nice spots that I made a mental note to return to for a future shoot.

I had the family meet me there and we spent just under an hour walking around and taking photos. I think I was my most relaxed, and was able to have new creativity for some photos as well as a new eye for details in the photos along with the bigger picture of the shoot. They were a gorgeous family and I had a lot of fun. After doing more Photoshop tutorials and googling and spending a lot of time this week editing, the shoot is complete! I feel like again, I have been able to put in what I have learnt and come out with probably the best shoot I've done so far.

Here are my favourites:

Studio Shoot

2010-02-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

In my photography class last week, we also got to do studio shoots where we used softbox lighting to illuminate our subject. Having taken no photography education whatsoever, this was all completely new to me and also very enlightening! Though I am a bigger fan of the more natural, outdoor shoots, I enjoyed the fact that this completely controlled the amount of light you needed for the shoot.

Having booked my first wedding shoot this summer, I thought about an idea I had seen from a friend. He had been to a wedding where they had set up a studio shoot for all the guests. They had empty frames that they used as props and they made a really fun addition to the usual guest wedding photography. It gave me an idea to try something similar to this for the wedding this summer. However, softboxes can run as low as $300, if you want a good one, to as much as $1000 for a really amazing one. Since I am so new in this photography business, I can't even fork out $300. However, I do have an ingenious husband and the internet!

Almost right away, I discovered online multiple sites with step-by-steps and pictures on how to build your own softbox for as little as $50. We are going to look into this option to see if it's even feasible, with the current equipment I have, but I am excited to potentially have a studio set-up available if I need it!

Here are my favourite pictures of the shoot (Kira Armstrong, daughter of Heather Armstrong, who teaches our class):

Photography Class

2010-02-14T10:40:00.005-08:00

I've been working on developing a photography business for the last 6 months. I've had four shoots in total (two paid, two for free), and I have one tomorrow and I just booked my first official wedding shoot. I've been struggling with my lack of technical knowledge, as well as editing knowledge, and feel like I just needed to figure these things out before I could get to the level where I want to be.

I am currently a part of a 5 week photography course at the School of Ministry of which John and I are a part and we did some studio shots last week. While waiting for my turn, a few of us went outside and practiced on each other as well as on some kids that had been brought along specifically for us to practice.

I enjoyed the shoots, and was excited to see the final product. I had fun editing and I think I've come up with my best work so far! I'm so excited to see that somehow I've improved and gotten closer to a level that I've been wanting to for a while!

Here are my favs:

The long-awaited blog

2010-02-08T16:27:00.004-08:00

This one has been a long time coming. I can finally blog about being pregnant, about the 13 months we spent trying and about how excited we are for this baby.

The journey to make this baby was at first fun, then tear-filled, ironic, difficult and required lots of patience. In the 13 months we tried, I think I seriously had at least 2 friends get pregnant every single month. Every time I ovulated, we had guests or were traveling and in a place of not really being able to "try" to get pregnant. My cycle was sporadic and by June, when I skipped completely, I realised it was time to get this checked out.

At age 29 and 11 months, I found out that I had Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), which means that due to some hormone imbalances, I sometimes did not ovulate, or I ovulated late. Fortunately, I have a mild case, which means that most of the time I do ovulate whereas there are women who can not ovulate for years. We were very lucky to have a mild case even though we were still recommended to visit the Fertility Doctor two weeks before we were going to lose our insurance and move to another state. Our options were limited, but at least I was still ovulating.

We decided to continue doing what we could do to make this baby and trust that we could still get pregnant. Arriving in Redding, surrounded by Bethel Church and new friends, we were covered with amazing encouragement and prayer for our little one.

Lo and behold, on January 11th, 2010, we were pleased to find those double lines appearing on our pee stick! We're due Sept 17th.

We are excited for the arrival of this little one and feel that we have learnt a lot during this trying to conceive period. I feel like I went from wanting and trying to have a baby to the realisation that we are going to be raising a little person. I went from thinking we're having a baby to we're going to be parents. I liked that it made me think more intentionally about what kind of parents we wanted to be, and how we wanted to raise our kids, and I feel like we continued to learn more and more about parenting during the 13 months. We're excited to be at the beginning of this wonderful journey of parenting!

Some pix from our day of celebration.

New York, New York

2009-12-17T23:52:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot about New York lately. John and I were able to spend five glorious, short days there in May of this year. We mostly walked around in different parts of the city, taking photos and remembering movies where we'd seen this street or that part of Central Park. We enjoyed coming home at the end of the day to the apartment we rented, making it feel like we were New Yorkers, Manhattanites, stopping by the pizza place on the way home to grab a slice. We felt that we didn't have enough time and could go easily go back and have each day be as full as the days we spent there.

I've lately been wanting to go there over Christmas time, when it's snowy and cold, and you can ice-skate at the Rockefeller center, get caught up in the crazy shoppers at Bloomingdales and see all the lights. I would actually love to live in New York. Spend my weekends hanging out in Central Park, walking up and down the long New York streets, always having somewhere to go, something to see and do.

The truth is that I fell in love with Manhattan. With the hustle and bustle, the noise and the dirty subways. The skyscrapers, and art galleries and endless amounts of shops. The culture, the life, the diversity of the city. I hope we can go back some day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Kitchen

2009-11-14T14:59:00.002-08:00

I have never before appreciated a kitchen as much as I do in our current apartment. I'm sitting at the kitchen table right now, watching the sun peak through the tree outside our window, the tree with its leaves just starting to go orange. As the wind blows through the tree, it makes the leaves' shadows dance across the wall next to me.

Our kitchen is nothing really out of the ordinary. The floor is kinda ugly, the cabinets are old and basic. But it has a lot of counter space, a full oven, lots of cabinets, a pantry, and a double sink. Lots of space. John and I lived in a basement apartment in Fort Collins, and we basically had a kitchenette. Small sink (until we upgraded ourselves), no real counter space (until we bought an island), no oven, just two plug-in burners. It did have lots of shelf space, which saved us, but we had to be very creative with how we set up the space - setting up a shelf over the fridge for our pots and pans, another shelf high above us for our fondue set and other things we didn't use so often, and a little rod with a small shelf from Ikea for our serving/cooking spoons and spices.

We loved our little kitchenette, always reminding ourselves that it can always be worse.

But now, we get the use of a full kitchen. It's amazing how much more fun it is to cook and bake, even do the dishes! We are so grateful for our little kitchen that is so big and wonderful to us!

And now, time for a latte.

Stuff about me

2009-11-06T13:35:00.003-08:00

My sis-in-law did one of these in her blog and asked others to do the same! Was bored in class, so here goes:

1. where is your cell phone: On the chair next to me – now that I have an iPhone, I keep it as close to me as possible – it has so many uses to it!
2. your hair: Long, layered, bangs, dyed dark brown. I like keeping it long right now, so I have fun with bangs and colours!
3. your father: Claude Bonjour, been with me through a lot, very supportive!
4. your favorite food: Love curry and seafood
5. your dream from last night: Yikes, I dream pretty vividly every night so they end up merging together and it’s hard for me to remember sometimes.
6. your favorite drink: I love caramel macchiatos, Earl Grey cup of tea, but as far as alcoholic, I like anything with gin.
7. Your dream/goal: Living in Europe, in a city, with family close by, a few kids, doing lots of outreach, and being involved in local community, working with YWAM, doing photography and leading worship.
8. what room are you in: The sanctuary at Bethel Church – yes I’m doing this in class…
9. what is your hobby: Currently photography and working to develop it more. Recently getting into sewing, and hoping to have more time to do it. Love snowboarding, going to cities and reading.
10. what is your fear: I have many, but I think I mostly fear loneliness.
11. where do you want to be in 6 years: See question no. 7.
12. where were you last night: Dinner at Sam and Beth’s (bro & sis-in-law), then home with John & a redbox. Nice and relaxing evening.
13. something you are not: a man, in my 20s, late,
14. muffins: I’d rather have chocolate.
15. wish list items: MacBook Air, hubcaps for our car, $3000 camera for my photography business!
16. where did you grow up: Staplefield, Harpenden and Luton, Engand.
17. last thing you did: Worked this morning, had lunch (made by John), had mocha (made at home), drove to class, submitted payment to school and found seats.
18. what are you wearing: Jeans and H&M jumper – want to be cozy today!
19. your tv: Huge and ugly – want to sell it, but it is nice to watch movies on! We don’t have tv though, but watch tv online.
20. your pets: Zilch – John’s allergic to cats and we just moved and we rent a pet-free apartment!
21. your friends: making lots of new ones out in Cali and love ‘em! Missing the ones I left behind in Colorado – loving the ones that have been friends through the long years!
22. your life: Enjoying it right now – it’s always a bit too busy than I like, so I’m learning to relax and let some things go.
23. your mood: Right now, good, pretty even, am slightly frustrated at my contacts that are irritating me right now!
24. missing someone: Madison Bonjours, all over the world Burtnesses, and friends we left behind in CO.
25. vehicle: VW Golf 2000, Black, 3 hubcaps missing, lots of little dings given to us by other people (grrr). Love it, great gas mileage – we’ve put 51’000 miles on it since we got it 2 years ago!
26. something you're not wearing: Underwear. Just kidding, um a hat.
27. your favorite store: H&M for clothes, Ikea for furniture, and Trader Joes for groceries.
28. your favorite color: Green
29. when’s the last time you laughed: Probably last night while watching stupid movie.
30. when’s the last time you cried: Last night while watching stupid movie – since my mum died, I cry all the time at anything. Can’t stop it!
31. your best friend: Other than John, probably Kelly – we have lots of history and know lots about each other. She’s walked with me through a lot of stuff in my life.
32. one place you go over and over: Currently – Bethel Church (6 times a week at least!), also Sam and Beth's house.
33. one person who emails me regularly: Probably my dad, I facebook a lot of people now!
34. Favorite place to eat: Chipotle is always a favourite!

First Photo Shoot

2009-08-05T07:57:00.004-07:00

I did my first photo shoot over the weekend. It was so nice because it was with some of my closest friends and it wasn't too nerve-wracking, even though I was a touch nervous!

John and I had gone into old town, in Fort Collins, the day before to scout out some potential spots for the shoot, and we found this really cool back alley/courtyard area that was perfect! It had some great industrial stairways, a bright turquoise wall, a house with tons and tons of flower baskets, and some great brick walls. We led everybody out there and started to take pictures. Initially I wasn't sure how to direct, and John jumped in and helped boss people around. It gave me a better idea of different shots I could take, and different "poses" I could put the groups in.

I then spent about 6 hours editing the 450 pictures I had taken, and come out with about 120 that I was really happy about! Not bad for a one hour shoot! I've heard positive comments from the families and feel really pleased with my first try. I'm now working on setting up a website, and just yesterday finalised my business name: Photography by Marie. I read that with a photography business, you are really marketing yourself and your skills, not your product, and so you should have your name in the business name.

I'm excited to continue doing practice shoots to build up my portfolio. We go to Massachusetts in a couple of weeks, where I'll shoot my sister-in-law and her family, my other sister-in-law on her own, and then my friends in Delaware. When we go to California, I'll shoot my brother and his family too. Hopefully that should be enough pictures to get me started!

Here are some of my favourites (see my facebook album for more):

Dreams & Life

2009-07-29T07:24:00.003-07:00

I have the kind of personality that always feels like I could be doing more. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and want to achieve big things every day. The motivation will be lacking here and there, but most days I can come up with some productivity to make me feel like I at least achieved something that day. Even if it was just ironing three of John's shirts, or watering the garden. I feel better about myself and I feel better about my day!

I also think a lot about my long-term achievements. These are harder for me to think about, because they just seem so small. I don't have a degree, I haven't really moved up any corporate career ladder. I've done some traveling and got some good years with YWAM under my belt, but that's about it. I feel like I am creative, and I really enjoy work that involves creativity, so I've been thinking about how to expand on some achievements in my life that involve creativity, and things that I love doing. We've also been thinking about the 8-5, being a slave to a company/employer type work we've been doing the last few years and are ready to branch into something else.

Hence, my new plan! I am very good at making plans, strategising the best route, writing to do lists, and figuring out what needs to be done. I've been getting better and better at actually turning that plan into reality, and this is one plan that I really hope I can make work.

I love photography, and have always considered photography to be a hobby. I've done some decent pictures and feel like I've improved a lot in the last few years. As we've been looking at trying to get part-time work as we move to Redding, I've been thinking more about how nice it would be to be my own boss, make my own hours, take vacations whenever I want to. Enter Photography plan.

I'm hoping to become a professional photographer. I'd like to start with family portraits and hopefully weddings, and then go from there. My main plan initially is to build up my portfolio, build a website, and then when we get to Redding, get the word out and hope to find some clients! I already have some friends lined up for family portraits, so I hope I'll have enough for a decent website. If you'd like me to take some informal family portrait pictures for you (for free!) in the next 3 weeks to help me achieve me my new goal, please let me know!

Here are some recent kiddy portrait pictures that I like:

Go West, young couple!

2009-07-20T13:47:00.004-07:00

I figured, "What better way to announce some big news, than on my blog?"

Yes, in case you haven't heard by now, John and I are moving to California at the beginning of September. We are going to do the School of Ministry at Bethel Church, in Redding. Redding is about 3 hours north of San Francisco, 3 hours south of the Oregon border, and three hours east of the Redwood Forest and the coast. My brother, Sam and his family will still be out there (he did the school last year) and we are super excited to be spending this next year with them. We have really been missing family this last year and a half and are ready to be with family for a bit.

We're excited to do the school for multiple reasons. We feel like it will be a good next step before heading back to YWAM, and it will really help take us deeper in our relationship with God and with each other as well as really refining some character issues and continuing to center our identity in God.

We are also excited to be around family as my brother and his family will still be there (he did the school last year). These last two years we have really missed family a lot and it will be so nice to get to live near family and to see them every day.

Our plan is to move at the beginning of September. We are sad to leave Colorado and our home here in Fort Collins, and we'll miss our friends a lot, but we are excited for the next step and feel confident that this is what we are supposed to do next.

So that's what we're up to next!

NYC - Day 3

2009-06-09T09:55:00.001-07:00

Today, we decide to follow our VRBO host’s suggestions and go to Brown, a café about a block away from our apartment. It’s this cute little non-descript place with a tray of the best looking pastries this side of Europe. We sit, order Americanos and two pains en chocolat and enjoy the quiet music and pretend to be New Yorkers. The pains en chocolat are heavenly, and the coffee is strong. With food in our bellies, and caffeine in our blood stream, we take the subway up to Penn Station to meet Bekah, who took the train down from Connecticut to hang out with us in New York for a day!

We take the train down to Battery Park and Lower Manhattan to take the free Staten Island ferry. The Statue of Liberty is closed to the public (except to go to the island and gift shop, but apparently the security lines take forever and it turns it into a whole day affair), but the ferry takes you within 350 yards of it. We decided to take the ferry there and back to take pictures, to see the Statue of Liberty, and to see the Lower Manhattan skyline. It was actually quite relaxing and rather fun! We were off our feet, it was free, and we had about 15 minutes to just hang out on Staten Island before taking the next ferry back.

We had arranged to meet John’s cousin, Will, for lunch. He lives out in Brooklyn and invited us to head down that way to eat lunch at this great little restaurant. I had a delicious salad that was nice and refreshing as the weather had officially gotten hot and humid! He then takes us to this great little park, where we sit and chat, and we get to see a bit more of Brooklyn. We finish up with some delicious ice-cream, a quick trip to his apartment, and then back on the subway to Washington Square Park. Will heads off to work and we stop for a drink and a rest at the park, while taking pictures, and enjoying some initially refreshing rain, which later cranks up the humidity even more.

We hop back on the Subway, make our way to the Flatiron building, the building that John and I were the most excited to go see. We take more pix, grab a smoothie, sit in the park and relax some more. We then go drop off Bekah at Penn Station then make our way home, stopping by to get dinner. We finish the day in bed, eating pizza and beer. A great third day!

NYC - Day 2

2009-05-28T13:52:00.001-07:00

With our bodies aching and feet a-hurting, we get up again to face the grand city of New York. Today, we decided to do the mega-touristy tour-bus thing. We decided that our bodies hurt too much to walk around again, and we wanted to sit and see everything. We take the subway to the bus stop where we can buy tickets, but get distracted by a really big H&M. We head in and find tons and tons of clothes. I ended up in the changing room (this is British for fitting room) with 38 items of clothing. After trying all of them on, I end up aching as much I had done the night before after walking around New York for 12 hours straight. I was very glad that we were going to be bussing it the rest of the day!

After buying way less than 38 items, we head to the bus stop, and start our tour of the city. We only did the downtown loop which surprisingly covered almost everything we wanted to see anyway. We go past the Empire State Building, quickly zip through the Flatiron district then decide to eat lunch in Greenwich Village where there was a Gray’s Papaya on the corner by the bus stop (a hot dog place that had been recommended to me). We get the “Recession Special”, two hot dogs and a yummy juice drink for $4.75. We sit outside on the curb and enjoy our lunch!

We head back on the bus and take it south, towards Lower Manhattan and the financial district. We barely make out the Statue of Liberty through the trees, but we see lots of other sights on the way. We then head east, going right past the neighbourhood our apartment is located, and get to see a lot of the tenement buildings that now house young up and coming Manhattanites, but formerly housed thousands and thousands of immigrants. We eventually head further north, seeing the Trump Tower, the Waldorf Astoria among other sights. Once we hit Fifth Ave and Central Park, we decide we’ve had enough of the bus and we want to explore Fifth Ave.

We head into Apple – the coolest Apple store, actually the coolest store I’ve ever been to, then pop into FAO Schwarz (as seen in “Big”). We then walk about 15 miles (at least that’s what it feels like) to get to a Best Buy to purchase another card for our camera (our current one was only letting us take 150 pictures at a time), then we make our way all the way back uptown to the Guggenheim. We were surprised by a really long line that snaked all the way around the building and to the side, but fortunately we went through it quite quickly! The museum was showcasing a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs and scale models for buildings that had and hadn’t been constructed. Being in there was really cool, but after seeing the third floor of architect drawings and an increasing back and foot ache, we decide to head on to dinner.

We catch the final tour bus down to Times Square where we find a pizza place that had been started by an Albanian family, and now has multiple chains across the USA. We decide we’re tired enough, and head home to our lovely apartment with its comfortable and gorgeous shower, to wash off all the humidity from our bodies! Day 2 done with and we’re loving it!