A Family Session – At The Campground

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This family was beautiful to work with in every single way. In fact, I wish I could have followed them throughout the rest of their vacation. Dad was recently home after a long deployment, and the connection everyone had with him was electric. It was a powerful thing to be witness to.

When I showed up to the location, I called them. Camp Pendleton was busy and crowded and I didn’t know where they were exactly. We quickly realized that I was in the wrong location. INSERT PANIC. None of us had known there were actually TWO campgrounds, and unfortunately I was at the one thirty miles south of where I needed to be. AND there was major traffic on the 5 freeway. They told me another way to get there, through the base instead of taking the freeway, and I hauled ass to meet them as quickly as I could. I was sick to my stomach over making this mistake. But the minute I walked up to their campground, I knew it would be okay. They were so kind and understanding, and didn’t let the mishap effect our time together at all. We lost about forty minutes of the session, which in most cases would be a deal breaker, but because they were so friendly and rolled with it so well, I was able to connect to them quickly and get to work.

I told them at the time that if I thought in any way that the session didn’t reflect my other work because of the time restraint, I would offer them a free reshoot. Truth is, I was relieved and thrilled that the session was a success but I was also a little disappointed. I would have loved to stick my camera in their faces again.

WE ARE OUR FACES – MAJOR TOM TIMES

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Oct 2014

Meet Major Tom, our boat.

We share this fixer upper sailboat with friends. I call it our tent on the water. He is named after a song in Walter Mitty. The boat is our Kristen Wiig singing Major Tom helicopter moment (if you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I mean!) We just kind of WENT FOR IT, without knowing anything about boats at all. Let me submit exhibit A into evidence: the first time we motored around the harbor, something went wrong with our tiller, and we had to wave down a fisherman and meekly ask to be towed back to our mooring ball.

Not exactly pumped about being on the open sea just yet, but hanging out and sleeping over every once in awhile is pretty cool.

We drove down to scrape the bottom of the boat and hang out a few days after I got home from Bali in October. I was on a total high but still jet lagged, so cleaning up a bit, then laying out/reading on the boat while the kids swam and the husband scraped an ecosystem off the bottom sounded pretty good. It turned out to be a really perfect way to ease back into family life after being gone for ten days, focused purely on myself. I reconnected with everyone again, in a real way, as we spent the day together. I came home from that trip with a new-found sense of calm, which made me so …this sounds so hokey but it’s TRUE I’m sorry… so open to joy, and on this day I soaked every morsel up.

Something always happens to me near the water. Being on top of it, surrounded by it, is something entirely on another level of inspiration for me. I am always privately losing my shit over the ripples and tones of blue in the water. It’s ridiculous but I can’t get over it. I have probably taken nine thousand versions of the same shot – just variations of ripples on water.

Can’t stop, won’t stop.

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Film notes : shot on the Nikon One Touch – I noticed some focusing issues and exposure issues with a large portion of my roll. As this is a point and shoot camera I don’t know if it’s the camera or the low ISO of the film I was using. Shot on Kodak Ektar, which can and did make a lot of the skin tones red. Kind of afraid to run another roll of film through that camera, but I need to test it out.

Sarah & Frank await the arrival of Mylo

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My heart swelled a bit when I saw that their due date was stuck in place on the perpetual calendar that sat on the shelf above her computer. I loved up on their dog and marveled at her open and free spirit. I love a girl who can jump on the bed at nine months pregnant. I mean, come on.

When I left, I hugged her and asked, “Can we be friends?” Thankfully she laughed and said, YES.

Got a text a few days later from Sarah: “I can still smell you on my dog and I am obsessed.” (fyi Patchouli oil all day erry day)