wild in the streets

my biggest, Jack has a best friend, Sophie. Sophie lives in the neighborhood where my in-laws live. the kind of neighborhood where kids run in the streets until sundown, bike to the playground and play endlessly, bouncing back and forth like ping pong balls from yard to yard. eventually to be dragged apart, covered in dirt, or each other's clothes. i wish i could leave Jack in this neighborhood. it's everything i want for my kids. to grow up like this. like i did in my smaller than a spec of dust hometown. my want for it is all consuming at the moment. but i am glad for Jack. that frequently he gets to be in this type of neighborhood, with his best friend. that he gets a taste of the freedom, the pure innocence of childhood, of playing in the dirt and swinging from trees and just having fun with what you have. of feeling that safe.

i love this light. spring is so damn close, it hurts.

isabel

last minute sessions are the most fun | medford family photographer

my friend messaged me yesterday to see if i would mind doing some last minute holiday photos of her kiddos. my friend who has cut my hair and my kid's hairs at a very ridiculous discount for a very long time. a friend who has the most gorgeous, sweet, well behaved (yes, well behaved!) kids who i've kinda been dying to shoot for a while anyway. so of course i said yes. and of course it was tons of fun. and a few hours later she messaged "did you get anything?"

ha.

such a shame. we hardly got anything worth saving...

xo isabel

dc sessions | teenagers | friends

whoa. i am just now finally getting this session completed and blog post ready. forgive me friends! these are my wonderful friends who housed me during my whirlwind DC trip a few weeks back. i can't even do justice to what a great time i had. how much i truly enjoy Jessica's kids, and Jessica and her husband. i can so clearly remember being Max and Anika's ages, dragged around to dinner parties and meeting endless close friends of my mom's. sometimes the dinner parties were fun and i enjoyed myself, and sometimes i just couldn't wait to get out the door. i remembered all this as Max and Anika sat nicely with us, on a saturday night no less, for dinner. computer time sacrificed and friend time. all to sit and chat with one of their mom's old family friends. ah, the circle of life.

onto the session. my first with teenagers. i will admit i was nervous. but they were hilarious and at ease, though they may not have felt like it in the moment. there's no denying that Jessica and her hubby have done well, fostering some serious love between these two kids. keep in mind, they're almost 16 and 12, and hugging?! smiling?! like i said, Jess needs to write a manual.

enjoy! xo isabel

sister | brother

once upon a time, my mother lived in NYC, with the Beels family. the two kids, Jessica and Alexander, were around 10 and 12. maybe 8 and 10. anyway, you get the idea. and now, my mom would say that felt like an entire lifetime ago. but the memories they have of my mom are the best. trying to start out as a sports writer, taking their dad to his first baseball game and baking chocolate cakes every week. chocolate cakes which i remember from every birthday party as a kid ever. every year my mom made a chocolate cake. she, to this day, is sort of funny about finding the best chocolate cake. challenge her and she'll make you her flourless chocolate cake. but she'll deny to the end that she has a thing for chocolate cakes. anyway, i digress.

last weekend i was in DC visiting my sister in law. but with the new baby and the cozy quarters, i needed a place to stay. enter Jessica and her awesome brood. she has this amazing place with two amazing kids, a great chef husband and a very, very sweet dog. so to pay for my stay i got to do a portrait session with her and her two kids Anika (15) and Max (12). did you follow all that? kinda crazy huh? plus! Jessica does this amazing jewelry/sculpting which you should see here. so i drank wine, ate delicious paella, stayed up way too late watching SNL and conked.

a longer post from their session is coming, but when i started going through these, these two particular photos just jumped out at me as being so Max and so Anika. they are both such fantastic kids, and i'm not just saying that because i should. they really are just both really amazing, interesting, talented, kids who actually give a shit about interesting things. it's pretty great. i want Jessica to write a how to for me...

i mean, Anika is just gorgeous and confident and counting down the days to her 16th birthday and Max is 12 and that's what these pictures say. i hope.

xo isabel