Flying the Coop!

WILL RETURN MONDAY!!!!
:)

Can't Leave Out...

...this sweet family!

So, back during the rush of Christmas season, THREE WEEKS before 12/25, I had three sessions that week. And among my crazy-busy, stress-filled, pre-holiday times, well, we'll call those "the lost sessions." They didn't make it to the blog!

This is the first family of the three that were sadly left out!


Miss E was just a bundle of precious energy!




Her mommy met me at my Holidaze booth, and won my drawing!


I'm so glad it was this adorable family that won because they were so kind, and endearing, and a pleasure to meet.

Did I mention Miss E had some energy? And quite the flare for the dramatic! This little one could be on a stage one day, that's for sure!

Either as a ballerina...


... or maybe a dancer!

No matter what she does in the future, she has two sweet parents behind her for support, (who are as cute and flirty together as newly-weds!)

:)

*The other two families who have yet to make their BP blog debut will come around soon enough. I may just pop them in for a surprise one day! Keep on the look-out!

Second Helping

I'm so excited! I leave for my "secret" workshop in 8 days! (That's the name of it, "The Secret Workshop", and since it has the word "secret" in it, I feel like I have to whisper when I say the name of it!)

:)

I found a roomie on the workshop's blog. A fellow "newly" wed with no kiddos yet, among other things in common, so I think we're going to have a great time! She's already scoped out the city, (San Francisco), and what spots we should hit in our leisure time. I just have to pack and I'm ready to go! CAN'T. WAIT....

Tonight, while editing Miss A's session, I came across some more images that I just had to share of this cutie.
Enjoy!

It's OK to hug a tree

So, I saw this on the Today show a couple weeks ago and have been saving my catalogs ever since, meaning to do this, but just putting it off....
To give you a little background info. first on how much joy this brings me: I am a card-carrying member of the 'I LOVE TO RECYCLE' club. I don't know why exactly, but it just sort of gives me this saving-the-world-high to put everything that I think could possibly be recycled in our recycle bin each day. It is a little badge on my green vest that we downsized our trash can with the city and up-sized our recycle bin! It's about every other week where, from our little house of two, that come trash day, we have a full recycle bin, but nothing in our trash bin because we often do not compile one full bag of trash a week!
I put everything in the recycle bin from your typical junk mail and milk jug, to a lightly used paper plate. Don't be grossed out, if the plate just had toast on it, crumbs can easily be shaken off to a perfectly clean plate that could be either: a.) used again or b.) recycled into a piece of paper for a young child to one day learn to write on! (And too, I often look for a scrap piece of paper to jot notes on before I'll pull a brand new piece of paper because I feel guilty if something else "junky" is next to me, perfectly able to hold my notes, and gets tossed.) Now, I know the other school of thought here would be, didn't you waste a tree by buying that paper plate? Well, I don't know, you tell me. Because if I had used one of my ceramic plates for my piece of toast, would I be wasting water, another one of Mother Earth's precious resources, to wash it? ....tricky...isn't it? So I figure, use the paper plates and just recycle, thereby saving the world two ways over, (by recycling the plate and saving the water.)
:) *Though, don't get me wrong, of course if the paper plate is obviously used and gross...it goes in the trash...

Anyways, so to get to the point: on the Today show, they did a story on a school up north that made it their project to collect unused catalogs and not only recycle them, but log on to this website, www.catalogchoice.org , and choose to no longer receive the catalog! It's one thing to recycle the unread, unappreciated catalog, but it's a whole other to completely cancel your subscription so that the tree is not wasted in the first place! I got very excited over this.

It just takes a minute to do it! You just hit the "Get Started!" button on the website with your unwanted catalog in hand, and it takes you from there. So when I finally declined my pile of catalogs tonight that have been stacking up for weeks, I felt like I deserved to go buy an Excursion to make up for all the global warming I just prevented. (HA!)

Just so you didn't miss the address...(I feel like an infomercial):

www.catalogchoice.org

And remember Earth Day, April 22nd, and plant a tree with your kids!
:)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Adorable A looks like a sweet Valentine in her pink polka dot baby leg warmers. (I was so excited when her mommy talked to me before her session about her little leg warmers! I love bright colors and bold patterns on a little one!)

This is her 6-mo.-old session and she is a happy, precious, little girl!

Her mom did a perfect job with their outfits. She found a cute onesie for A and then pulled colors from that for her and daddy's shirts. I've said it before, but I think that is the best way to photograph a family. Of course you want everyone to coordinate, but by allowing everyone to wear different colors, it shows more personality and blends together to make a classic photo session.

How could I resist this hen?

A doorstop in her day-job; a cute accessory to A's giggle for her photo session.

Scarlett, their doggie, got to join us for a shot! She was very interested in all that was going on and wanted to check me out, but I'd say we were friends by the time our shoot was over. (Probably because she would get a treat to distract her if she got in the way, and so I equaled more treats for her!)
:)

I love this little monkey! (A does too!)
You can find her at this site, among other precious, knitted items.

I love this shot! A's daddy was the one who came up with it. (Who is also a photographer!)

Her smile makes me smile!


It was fun to get to play together, A!

Native Texan

Such a smiley 3-mo.-old! Little W was so content. So long as his little gloworm was singing to him, he flashed us smiles upon smiles!

I was able to meet this little guy because his grandfather gifted him with my Chickadee Planner package for Christmas. Grandpa lives in Tennessee, which is where W's mommy and daddy are from, too. To his daddy's slight dismay, W's birthplace has a different shade of orange on the "T" than he had.

Though not to worry, once they return in a couple of years, W will get to know the stomping grounds from where his family descended.

But in the mean time, I get to return to see his sweet, little face and capture memories to share with his family.

I love his primary-colored nursery! So clean and classic.




See you again soon, little man!

Friend becomes a Mommy

K and I met at band camp in the 7th grade. Yes, some may refer to us as "band nerds", but I enjoyed playing my clarinet, and that was my identity all through school. All of my friends were from band and we spent many, fun hours together at the weekly football games and annual band trips. After middle school, we went to the same high school together, and she, along with 2 other girls from school/band, made up my close, little group of best friends.

(I'm sort of getting weepy thinking back on all our fun times together!)

As you can see from my documentation above, not only did we always go to our school dances and hang out in our little group, and eat at the same restaurant afterwards, all together with our dates, but after we hugged our dates goodnight, we would meet at one of our homes and all spend the night. (Just the four of us, no other friends - honestly it was probably hard enough to try not to fight with each other since we were all like sisters, that adding any other friends into our little clique would have thrown off the dynamic!) We actually rotated between houses each dance. It was always fun to reminisce about the night, and what we liked/didn't like about our dates. What girls looked pretty, what dresses we thought should never have been taken off the rack, etc. (your standard gossipy, high school girly-ness!)
~ p.s. - 1 benefit of practicing in the marching band in August in 100* heat... you do get a great tan!

(Pardon the cheesy pose and poor quality of the scan.)

Our senior year, we just *had* to have senior pictures all together. Not only was it *the* thing to do, but being the best friends we all were, we took a senior ad page out together in the back of our year book, so it was very fitting that we needed some professional shots to sum up our 6 years together - white eyeliner and all.
These girls definitely make up my schoolhood memories, and I couldn't imagine it any other way.

So, all that to be said... K is pregnant!

She is my first friend that I still keep in contact with from school that is going to be a mommy. Remembering back to all the immature, ....(well, immature about sums it up!) fun ways of our youth, it is somewhat difficult to grasp that this now adult, married woman, is about to start such an amazing new chapter in her life.

While shooting her session, I kept thinking to myself, 10 years ago, I wouldn't have pictured us doing this in our future. Well, a. - that I would actually get to live my dream as a photographer, and b. - that we would be of the few people who are blessed enough to keep in touch with old friends.

One of my favorite memories: K was the oldest in our group, which of course meant that she was the first to get her driver's license and car. Well, that first car was a minivan, I'd say a 1989? (This was in 1997). Being that we now had transportation with just.us.girls..... we could have cared less about what we were rolling around town in, it was just amazing, the feeling of freedom! So I remember one afternoon in particular, I think this was early on in her minivan days, she drove all of us to the mall. Remember how I said the "immature" part of our youth??? Well, our idea of fun was Chinese fire drills! We'd jump out of the car, run around, and then jump back in through the sliding door. I think during this particular episode, the traffic started going while we were still out in the road, (immature/dangerous, those words intermix...). So the other girls and myself ran as fast as we could into the van, and I just remember ending up upside down in the seat, laughing so hard that a pair of Depends may have helped a girl out in this situation.
That's all I've got to say about that...

:)

Her little boy is going to be named Andrew, so while a skull and cross-bones at a bar may not instantly bring sweet thoughts about a precious newborn, we couldn't resist the "Andy's" aspect.

She was great about letting me have as much creative freedom as I wanted. I feel like from session to session, I don't have a real "stamp" on my work that makes it look like something Birdseye Photography has done. I want to make sure that each of my clients are happy, so if some are more traditional than others, I try to please them just as much as my clients that are a little more artsy and free-spirited about their photo sessions. I feel like I'm getting into a modern niche, though nothing really clear-cut yet. Does that make sense? As much as I love to be artistic with my work, and try new angles, I certainly would never want to make anyone feel unwelcome if that is not their particular style. Though I suppose I'd also say that clearly, traditional is not what I'm practicing, but then that makes me feel bad for all the traditionalists out there because a modern, photojournalistic style is certainly what's sweeping the new age, and while that's where my heart is, the pleaser in me wants everyone to be happy!

*Well, that was certainly a tangent if I ever wrote one!*

I'm looking forward to meeting little Drewberry muffin!
:)

New Site!

I have a new website!

It was a little spur of the moment to make the change. Normally photographers "build up" to the big day, but I've been thinking about it for a while, and I got excited...so now I have an awesome new site to show for it! It's fun to have some change!

:)

Check it out!!

www.juliebirdseye.com


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p.s. Here is the official Feb. cover!