Posts Tagged: creative studio photography nc
one year in the life of a one year old girl – 1st birthday lemonade stand (and the vendor is a diva…)
It started here. She hit the planet in a cute bomb. We added the feathered head band and props, but she brought the pout, the languid body language, the laser-focused eyes and bored expression. Someone 20 times her age could never have pulled off that look without some coaching. Miss Ivy would have shaken it out of her sleeve – if only she’d had one.
And then THIS happened. 6 months passed and her cuteness turned to a pensive longing for a purpose in life. Just look at her expression. What on earth is she dreaming about? What is she plotting? Or is she remembering the good times …. all 6 months of them?
And this.
Then Ivy crept up on her first birthday and her parents, Kim & Justin Myers, had a plan. They designed a lemonade stand themed birthday party complete with stand, sign and big jar of lemons. When we heard their plan and saw cell phone photos, I insisted that we also use it in Ivy’s one year portrait session. We moved from our indoor portrait studio to our outdoor portrait garden in order to grab the best lighting and have fun with all the props. The kid is a natural.
Quick aside: Please know that we don’t mind if parents bring their own props. We want you to get as much use out of them as possible and coordinating is always fun. Ultimately, I bought the lemonade stand set up. It had to be done. It was just too cute and I know some of you parents out there can picture your babies and kids playing in it for their upcoming portrait sessions.
This kid is all about pink AND sugar AND dress up. The tutus have become sort of expected with little girls and with Ivy, the headbands. She also loves pop music, but don’t we all? The lemonade stand theme was perfect for her personality. You sort of want to dip a big ladle into a bowl and come up with this little creature floating in pink sugar and tart pulp.
Still Life with Ivy & Cake
Year one is in the books. Actually, it is. We created a custom photo book for the Myers to enjoy, share and show Ivy when she’s older. We had five (5) sessions with Ivy during her first year, and we are already planning and have scheduled year number 2.
Pablo Neruda writes poems about the sea ~ Rayne Hatfield washes gently into this world, with style
Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit of your gifts and destructions, into my hand,
I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel, your vigilant spaces of air and darkness,
and the power of your white tongue, that shatters and overthrows columns,
breaking them down to your proper purity.
– from The Wide Ocean, by Pablo Neruda
And here is Rayne, as if wrapped in seaweed and delivered directly from the sea. Even her name evokes refreshing water – a summer storm, a cool bath, a plunge into an adventure or just the way we all feel when running into the surf or diving into a pool and then reaching the surface for air – reborn. Rayne’s mom, Kim, is a friend of ours and owns our favorite pet store, “Waggles” and she brought this little mermaid to us with a wardrobe bigger than most of us have before our 5th birthdays. (Kim’s cool that way.)
Awash (see what I did there!) in blue – sweet Rayne’s portrait session was precious. She was this little bundle in sea foam and sweet baby freshness and ….. sleep. We love newborn portraits, because the babes are so stinking cute and mushy and perfect. Rayne’s was the very definition of that kind of session at our in house studio. Placing her in little outfits or her birthday suit with a bit of cute bling was easy and tender.
Check out the ruffles, the tush and the sweetness of this little surfer to be (maybe?). We always wonder what on earth these babes will think when they see themselves later, so we definitely cultivate strong relationships with all of our clients and relish watching newborns become toddlers, watching toddlers become kids and kids become siblings. The evolution is both spectacular and personally grounding. At Pixels, we do not take this lightly. We’re the documentarians. We’re the stewards of those bits of time that seem to disappear before you can find lost car keys or your cell phone.
Creative photography is one of our specialties, whether you’re a mermaid, bride-to-be, a family ready to snap a moment in time or just looking to capture something fun and smart about your life RIGHT NOW. Get in touch with us and we’ll figure out how to get the right shots of you …. and we try only to get the good ones!
catching dreams with Holden
“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. If they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
– Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
The catcher. The saver. There are heroes in fiction and Holden Caulfield is one of the greatest. Care-taking, tender, filled with contradictions, incredibly quirky and loving while questioning life. The Holden (below) who belongs to Traci and Andy Pierce is surely made of all of those things; they’re just brewing under that sweet exterior. We defy you to look at this face and tell us he’s not conspiring to do something and be someone special – even in his sleep.
The best among us usually sleep soundly and well.
We were asked to create the Pierce’s baby announcement to alert friends and family that this little person was going to join the world. We created a Christmas card to drop the baby bomb and Traci’s sister wrote a poem to accompany it.
Holden’s father Andy is a pilot, so Traci set up Holden’s nursery in the colors, icons and theme that would allow Holden to dream of travels and get a sense of his dad.
We also took Holden’s 6 month photos and loved watching him with Traci, as they snuggled. Traci chose the all white theme and it turned out to be so pure and sweet. The Pierce’s bought our full-year baby plan, and we love being able to watch the growth over these shoots, not just in the babies, but in the families … how they orbit around each other, how they show their love for one other, what makes them light up. Capturing all of that makes our job the absolute best.
And coming full circle, we loved taking the Christmas photo for them following Holden’s birth in our outdoor studio.
Holden Caulfield said, “Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.” We know that Traci and Andy feel this way about their boy.
Stay young, Holden. Take your time. But as you grow…. grow up into a man who makes a difference. In the meantime, messing with your toes is a fine idea. There’s time for that now.