A Few Portrait Session Favorites

I’ve been working mostly on web design projects lately, so it was great to set that aside for a bit and break out my portrait camera again. What a treat that Jay & Megan came up from North Carolina to visit family… I’d photographed their wedding over ten years ago, photographed their daughter when she was a baby, and now I was finally able to spend time with their son, who gave me a tour of his entire tool bag.

While I do an okay job of taking straight-on, look-at-the-camera portraits, my favorites images are always the ones with a more documentary feel to them. I think it’s the storyteller in me.

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I hardly ever get to do high school senior portraits, so when I was asked to take Abby’s I was nervous! It’s funny, though, how the second I get behind a lens I just start “seeing” in photographs. Nerves go away. Of course it didn’t hurt that Fudge, the love-bug Golden Retriever, was part of the fun for the first round!

And yes, senior portraits are technically about, well, the senior, but I couldn’t help snapping this one..
Cheers to Moms, who make life so special!

Venice

John had a vacation week and asked me where I'd like to go. "Venice!" I said without even thinking about it. We checked the standby lists... there were plenty of seats on the direct from JFK. Two days later we were off. We even got bumped up to the business class "pods." As if ANY free seat on an airplane isn't the greatest gift already, here I am with silverware, a menu, and a seat that turns into a bed. This always feels so surreal, like somehow I got zapped into someone else's life..

We stayed at the same monastery guest house that we did last year when we came with John's girls. Except for the fact that they added a little continental breakfast buffet, nothing had changed. It felt like coming home.

The view from our window.

Wanting to do something fun and different on this trip, I found Classic Boat of Venice. Somehow John and I were entrusted with an electric motorboat equipped with GPS, a sun shade, comfy cushions, and a chart of the lagoon. The CBV crew showed us how to work things, came with us for a test run in the marina, and waved us off. I can't say enough about how FUN this day was. John and I argued in their office (in Italian) about who was going to be captain:
“Io sono il capitano!”
“No, IO sono il capitano!”
I am surprised they even let us take out a boat after that. In the end we took turns, but I loved navigating more than piloting anyway (What is it about me and maps?)

We visited the islands of Torcello and Burano, braved the open channels, decided NOT to go swimming with the jellyfish, and found several places that we want to explore next time.

Certosa, Venice. (Yes, you’ve seen this one already, I know, but it really belongs in this post.)

On our last day, we decided to hop the vaporetto to Lido and rent bicycles. First, though, we had to stop at our favorite sandwich shop for picnic supplies. What is it about European bread??!! In Paris, I could not get enough of their ham & cheese baguettes. In Venice, it’s the prosciutto & arugula with brie & tomato. I actually had a dream a few nights ago about eating one, I miss them so much.

We bicycled the entire length of Lido, stopping along the seawall halfway for our picnic, then for lemon popsicles at the south end of the island. We walked through the pine forest and out to the old lighthouse at the end of the jetty. The Adriatic Sea stretched out all blue before us, shimmering in the low sun, while massive freighters glided sooo quietly in and out of the channel. Now, to walk all the way back to the bicycles AND ride them all the way back to the vaporetto…argh!

John asked me why I love Venice enough to have foregone traveling elsewhere for this trip. I think it's that Venice is just such a magical enchanted place: canals-for-roads, sidewalks so skinny that two people can barely pass each other without bumping shoulders, and secret gardens around every corner. Even Venice's foundation seems an amazing miracle: millions of logs jammed into the mud, left to petrify into stone harder than concrete. Ta-da!

Amazing food, of course, is a given. One of our favorite restaurants had a little garden courtyard overlooking one of the canals. We actually ate here twice.

This was such a perfect mini-getaway, especially because it was so spur-of-the-moment. It even included a quest to find a shoemaker who could recreate my favorite pair of red shoes for me—but more about that in a future post. For now, though, Ciao, Venezia!

View my previous Venice posts HERE and HERE and HERE.

ps - Our anniversary happened to fall during this week away. John went for a run that morning and came back with a bouquet of roses :-)

Hello, October!

I love October in Columbus.  No more air conditioning or mosquitoes!  (Although as I type this it’s gotten crazy-hot again! But regardless…) The sun seems to shift its position in the sky overnight, sending bright late-afternoon rays right into my studio again, and I can open all the windows and doors to the breeze. Sweaters and scarves make their way out of the closet but it's still perfect picnic weather. Ahhh...

Last month brought a spur-of-the-moment trip to Venice for John's and my anniversary (I do believe it has become my favorite city! — and yes, photographs forthcoming :-) and I started two new website commissions I'm very excited about: one for a furniture maker, the other for The Sewing Hive, a new sewing school opening in Columbus. Rehearsals also began for the Magpie Consort's December concert series (they're the chamber choir I sing with.) While I am NOT ready for Christmas shopping displays and 24/7 holiday radio, I love working on the pieces we'll be singing for the concert because I always wind up in a festive mood after rehearsal. We even landed a guest appearance at one of Ballet Met's Nutcracker performances at the Ohio Theater—it doesn't get any more Christmas-y than that :-)

But anyway, back to autumn. I hope you are enjoying the change of season!
Cheers for now.

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Portrait Sessions

This is one of my favorite photographs from my shoot with Abby a couple weeks ago... something about the light and the red, white, and blue (and those Hunter boots!)

I still have some availability for portrait sessions this month, so whether it's a quick mini-session for your holiday card, or something longer to add to your wall of family portraits, let me know if you'd like to set something up.

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Save the Date!

December 5-9 — The Magpie Consort's winter concert program, All is Calm. Details HERE
January-March 2019 — Velvet Winter exhibition at The Meadowlark restaurant in Dayton, Ohio.
January 17-March 23 — teaching Introduction to Bookbinding and Projects in Bookbinding at CCAD's Saturday morning program. Details to come.
June-September 2019 — Flying Adventures exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, Ohio. Reception date to be announced.