distractions of the Milo kind

hey, guys, did i tell you i'm shooting my first wedding this weekend? like, the day after tomorrow. did i tell you i'm totally out of my brains nervous. that i'm dreading new england will pull her old tricks and snow or rain or BOTH! we had a ton of rain which put a major crimp in my "go out and drive around the area of the wedding" plan for days. you know what's hard? finding a spot that's beautiful, public, but not crowded and not the same as everything else you've seen and also not ugly. i think i may have got it though, which has really relieved a lot of my stress. the husband will be my right hand man the whole day. if i can go into a room and make my ugly freak out face with anyone, it's him. but mostly i know he'll just keep telling me i'm doing great, which i might need. who knows, maybe he'll become my always assistant. he is great with kids... starting a business, becoming a mother, a wife, a friend, a sister, whatever transition it is that you and i are going through, is really hard. sometimes i wake up and wonder why i feel so out of sorts. probably because every day is a combo of constant worrying about all the balls i'm juggling and constant worrying about what balls i'm not juggling that i should be juggling. i should be writing a post about why i freaking love shooting and editing in RAW and how i ponder how one can be a photographer without doing it this way and what took me so damn long (fear, duh!) to switch. i should be catching up on late print orders, i should be putting away that 3573498673986739876th load of laundry or spend more than 10 minutes with my husband that doesn't involve the glow of a screen. i should also be enjoying this exhilarating feeling of being at the very beginning of an adventure, because while adventures are super crazy happy fun times, they're also a lot of work.

i should also find a way to work on photos of my own kids and life. i know for a while it probably felt like they were all you were seeing. but sometimes there is only enough time or energy to whip up what i'm feeling, what i want to write about, what i want to share. maybe i'm going to force myself to share some amount of photos of them a week. a classmate's mom asked me for photos i had taken at their winter concert, in JANUARY, and i realized. shit. i haven't even touched those photos. i was waiting for my niece to be born (which meant my travel to DC), my lens was in the shop. then february happened and sucked. and then march happened and sucked, mostly. and then poof, it's not january anymore.

but with april comes a fresh start. a wedding, mother's day minis, meeting new families and doing what i love. speaking of doing what i love, i love spending time with my baby Milomunchkindoodle. he kind of is my baby from another mother. don't worry, it's a joke i make with his ma. funny, right? anyway...Milo and his ma, Leah, made the trip up to our stomping grounds yesterday. and since last i saw him (here) he is now sitting up alone, and has two teeth, his very first two! since it was a nice day out, Leah and i treated ourselves to some starbucks, which Milo found quite boring and unimpressive:

and a walk to the playground. it just happened to be Milo's first time ever in a swing. i'd say he's a fan.

Leo was, in fact, at the playground with us. i think he was in such shock that we were even able to be at the playground that he was totally happy by himself.

then, we headed back for food and nap. after everyone was fed and rested, it was time to get to work. the wonderful owner of the wonderful Gnorasaurus, saw a picture i had taken of miss Mary in a hat from the Gnorasaurus store, and wondered if i would be interested in photographing some more babies in some more awesome Gnorasaurus threads. uh, don't have to ask me twice! but with that whole crazy winter and no indoor natural light studio (yet) it was proving harder than i first thought to get this done. Milo to the rescue! he modeled two of the little boy onesies and boy are they cute! the onesies are so soft and the fit is great. Milo is a huge chunk and the 6-12 month onesie fit him perfectly with enough room to grow. but before we got him into his clothes...we had to get him out of his clothes!

ok ok, Milo, put some clothes on young man.

like my make shift inside studio? (insert me rolling my eyes) that's one thing i'm really hoping for in whatever our new place is. maybe just a small corner where i could set up a mini travel studio. dream a little dream for me...

i might post one more jibberish filled post before the wedding. it will contain mostly brain mush and likely will not make sense.

wish me luck! xo isabel

the cousins came, they saw, they drooled, they fevered, they went.

so yea, remember the whole my husband is one of nine thing? what this means is that when all his kid having siblings get together in one spot, we have this many children running around (and this many germs...) :

i had my camera out the whole time, and was starting to shoot in RAW. it's taken me forever to get through these images. sometimes, i wish i shot film, because you would just get your pictures and that would be that. half of my lack of motivation came from how exhausted we all were every day after being around so many kids. and half of it was that i was so sad when they left that i didn't really want to look at all the fun we'd been having. then, in the mix, i started shooting RAW and really really prefer the post processing abilities that come with that, and going back and forth between JPEG editing and RAW editing was, well, a pain in the ass. but i knew if i didn't just get through them asap, i never would.

the great thing about this trip was i got to photograph my sister Tricia with her various nieces and nephews. since they live in DC she hasn't really gotten to spend time with the babies.

we spent a lot of time just hanging around inside. since, ya know, we live in new england and it's still freakin freezing...

we did go home occasionally. my little guy got his hair cut, finally. after all my whining, there is nothing quite like a clean cut little boy.

i spent a lot of time following Olivia around. sometimes, i put so much pressure on myself for every shot, every moment. that i forget to just take the moments for what they are. the lighting might not be perfect, maybe i was too busy cooing to get the focus right. i have to let that be ok when i'm just being with my family.

the expressions on this child are too much...

this is the bassinet my husband and all his siblings, and even some of the grandkids, slept in.

and we, the sisters, even got out one morning!

and on our last night, it was mild enough that we dragged all the kids to the playground.

my brother, my sister and i, walked the kids back. ate dinner. said goodbye. until next time...

xo isabel

out like a lion, in like a lamb...

i would just like to start this post by saying how incredibly hard february and march sucked. i am finding it so difficult to find our new normal and to find energy. the freakin gloomy new england weather is not helping. when we returned from CA i was invited by a friend's mother down to Hingham, MA for a playdate and relaxation. it was a lovely day despite rain and the kids had such a fun time together. you may recognize little sisters Anna Rose and Josephine from a session last fall, or maybe from the mother's day ad. these girls are just so gorgeous. Josephine with her dreamy curls and Anna Rose with her fiery red hair, and both with big brown eyes that melt me. yea, i'm a sucker for little girls.

anyway, this was visit was well over a month ago, and then my sister in law came into town and i shot nothing but nieces and nephews for 12 days straight and i switched from jpeg to RAW shooting and and and...and so i decided i had to start somewhere. so i started here. hopefully i can muster a big post i've been dreaming up that will be me blabbering endlessly about my jpeg to RAW revelation.

i wasn't kidding about these two, they're gorgeous.

Leo and Josephine enjoyed a show together. two year olds are hilarious to me. they both requested to be seated snug next to each other and also requested a blanket.

the other cool thing about said friend's mother is that she has the most amazing knitting room i've ever seen. that i wasn't quite able to do justice in pictures because it was very dark and very gloomy and the light in the room did not lend itself well that day.

and one more of beautiful Jo.

love these girls and their mama and look forward to documenting much more with them. one post down, many to go. i will get my mojo back!!!!

in other exciting news, i'll be shooting my first wedding this coming weekend and the weekend after we have our mother's day mini sessions! there are only 3 spots left so if you're itching to book, do it now! i'm so excited about all the new families i get to meet with our first round of minis.

xo isabel

this weekend i overdosed on family - and it felt good

this is part one blog post of my weekend. because i'm sure you're all just dying to know what i do with my free time. i use the term "free time" loosely, as all mothers and wives will attest. when we all returned from the CA trip, there was a strong calling to spend more time with each other. within days of landing my brother asked if we could find a sitter, so he and his wife (another one of my many fab sisters) could take us out on a double date to china town for dim sum. my sister in law, Alysia, brother(in law)'s wife, is half chinese and spent a large part of her childhood growing up in Hong Kong. to my surprise, brother Mike didn't even like chinese food until he met Alysia!

anyway. we happened to have a plethora of babysitters available this weekend and so we dumped the kids for 2 hours and headed to china town. when we sat down, husband and i made a pretty lame attempt at picking what we wanted, but quickly realized we had mostly no idea how dim sum worked. before we could even scratch our heads or begin to look confused, Mike and Alysia said that they were picking everything. this made me nervous, as i really don't do well with things such as random parts of rare seafood being added into a dish, or parts of a dish that resemble something along the lines of wet garbage. Mike has rarely led me astray in terms of food, so i handed over my menu and proclaimed my faith in him.

we over ordered, 10 dishes i believe. we reassured ourselves that this would provide a bounty of leftovers. well, maybe 45 minutes later and one weird dish, we had eaten pretty much every spec of food. the weird dish you ask? turnip cakes.

after we headed to a bakery for smoothies. which my five year old made sure to recommend to me. this is what happens when the people who surround your children are so cultured, and i freakin love it. yes, my five year old has gone to dim sum, more times than i have i believe.

i love my brother Mike in a crazy person way. it was a wild ride for a minute, but worth it. i love what he does for my boys, i love to see the way they love him. in fact love isn't even a big enough word for what he means to my boys. i love Alysia for loving him and i love him for loving her. because really she's just so awesome. and adds so much to our crazy family quilt. i wish i could describe the relationship he and my husband have, but no one would understand it unless they knew each person. but this is them, in the doorway of the chinese masonic lodge, because things like masons really blow their mind, and a chinese masonic lodge was too much for their brains to handle. they cuddled up with their smoothies. have i mentioned i love these people?!

i'm very behind on lots of little outings that i've been on in the past week. people seen and loads of love floating around. one post down...how many more to go?

xo isabel