Two Cuddly Cuties

Take a look at these two cuddly cuties! These sisters were almost exactly the same weight at birth (within a fraction of an ounce) and were so much fun to photograph. Thanks, mom and dad of these girls, for letting me share your daughters with our First Day Photo world : )

Erin and Matt's wedding!

I just got back from Erin and Matt's wedding. Erin is one of my AMAZING First Day Photo photographers. Ginger Murray shot the wedding with Steph Bloom, but I can't attend a wedding without a camera! It was a gorgeous wedding and a gorgeous bride, no detail was missed.


The wedding was at Nazareth Chapel at Northwestern College - this is a beautiful place for a wedding, but very hard to book.



A couple of Ginger and Steph doing their thing...





What a classic image! The kiss is timeless...



I got to have fun shooting from interesting angles, since I was just a guest!




Ginger and Steph let me horn in on their space every so often, so I could get some details. Check out Erin's earings and the ornamentation in her hair.





One more cool Ginger photo:




The flower girl dresses are seriously the cutest I've ever seen! Of course, the flower girls and junior bridesmaid were really cute too : )





Ladies, thanks for letting me shoot with you today. What a great wedding. It was really fun to meet your families, Erin and Matt! Congratulations!

I think I'll just ramble

Sometimes I don't blog because I just have no idea where to begin. So, rather than not blog at all, I guess I'll just ramble. Happy Sunday everyone! Here we are, about to enter April, and the beautiful MN weather forecast says we could have 8-10 inches of snow on the ground by Tuesday morning. Most of the ground is clear now, the weather has been in the 40's. I was just telling my sister (who lives in Florida) that I wish it would just rain so that all the SNIRT would wash away. For those of your who don't know what "snirt" is, it's quite simply a snow and dirt combination most famously found at the side of the road in snowbank remnants. Mall parking lots are a common place for late-spring snirt, because the 20 to 30 foot tall piles of snirt from clearing the lots takes a long time to melt. I think the fire department should come in and spray it with their hoses and make it all go away. That really wouldn't be the best use of their resources, though. Oh well. Spring will eventually come to Minnesota.

I am sitting next to Brad, both of us catching up on our computer work, listening to Sixpence None The Richer Collage. It is a hits album, and something I haven't listened to in a long time. Great tunes.

I've had a lot of joy this week, as I've found out from several of my NILMDTS families that they are expecting new babies come fall and winter. It's always such a gift to hear that, to be included in the follow up of their lives. Every photographer does things differently, but I really like to give a free newborn session to these families as their baby gift when their new babies arrive. In each case, it was such a privilege to get to meet their babies that the world didn't get to meet, to help create memories for them so that they could share the photographs of their babies with their world. It seems to make sense to me that in the spirit of offering what is referred to in the medical world as "continuity of care," I should enable them to have a happy, healing photo experience with the babies who are the younger siblings of those whom they held for too short a time.

OK, rambling done. It's getting too late and I have to sleep. I have a really full week! One of our photographers, Erin, is getting married on Saturday! YAY Erin and Matt! So, she's not working this week and Ginger Murray is coming back to pinch-hit and I'll take a couple days as well. I have an important meeting regarding several hospital accounts this week, and have to follow up on some other pending accounts and conversations. Watch in the next week or two for our new logo and added FDP web content. By late spring, we'll be offering birth announcements, too! Such fun! Now, off to bed. Good night.

WCCO News

This morning I was interviewed by John Reger on WCCO 4 news (the local CBS affiliate) for a little over three minutes! I had a great time talking about First Day Photo, and showing off some of the work we do every day. Here's a link to the story... it's web quality, but at least you'll get the general idea.

http://www.wcco.com/video/?id=39649@wcco.dayport.com

All eyes on me!

Newborn babies sleep all the time. Actually, about 20 hours per day. So, very often, the photos we take are of a peacefully slumbering newborn. Today, though, all the babies I photographed were wide-eyed and wonderful! Here are photos of two cuties whose parents gave me permission to use their images. Stephanie is out of town at WPPI, so I was covering one of our hospitals.

about crying babies

I love crying babies! Ok, I should probably qualify that statement. I love photographing a good pout, scream or wail. Why? Well, mostly because it's real. Babies cry. I also like it because although a baby's look will change as she grows, the way she looks when she cries doesn't change that much because of the musculature of the face. This is a really cute little guy from today. Seriously, when else do we photograph our kids crying?

Twins! and Fox9

I started my day with a 3 + minute interview on the Sunday morning news at the local Fox affiliate, KMSP channel 9. It was a live interview about First Day Photo and also about Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. Most of the interview was about FDP, which was great. Walking into the interview, I wasn't sure exactly where they were going to go with it. I walked out of the studio thinking that I hadn't exactly done what I came for in terms of sharing the First Day Photo vision, but I was pleased with how the part about NILMDTS went. When I got to work about 20 minutes later, I already had emails from all over Minneapolis/St. Paul asking about whether First Day Photo was available in their hospital, or inquiring about pricing and if we would come photograph their baby or grand baby. So, I must have gotten some of what I wanted to say out there. I did finally summon the courage to watch the piece this evening. It wasn't quite as bad as I thought ; )

In other news... I got to photograph some adorable twin boys today. We do twins with relative frequency, but they never cease to be a challenge. When the babies are close in size and weight, it is a bit easier because they usually lie in the same focal plane (if they're being reasonably still). These guys, though, were separated by a whole pound! This meant that their heads were also different sizes, and when lying on their backs one was always out of focus. The lesson here is that you have to play with your aperture and with the background of the babies (perhaps place them on pillows covered by a blanket, so that you can prop one up more than the other.) These guys broke the "simple patterns are best" rule, but look carefully - their blanket has puppies on it and the outfits have paw prints!

Road Trip

I have to admit, I don't really like road trips. I am not quite sure why. I'd much rather just get in a plane - I think it's an efficiency of time thing. I can read in a plane, but not in a car. I can edit photos in a plane, but not well in a car (too much screen glare). Oh well, this road trip will be great anyway. Erin (one of my amazing First Day Photo photographers) and I are headed to Nebraska to visit with a hospital who is interested in what we can provide for their birth center. I am really excited to show them how we are different than what they currently offer their patients! It's just a whole different experience than your standard hospital baby picture. No baby "mugshots" here!

Preparing to go tomorrow makes me think of my first business trip. I was working for a small Christian newspaper, and I was sent to a movie set in Toronto to interview Mr. T! Seriously! I assumed that he would speak with more normal cadence in person than on TV or film, but he didn't. It was interesting.

No Mr. T tomorrow, but it should be a great trip. However, I will miss Jacob's art fair at school. I am really kind of bummed about that... especially since Brad will be on a plane to another exotic location, so he'll miss it too. Thank God for Grandma!

In case you missed it - Today Show link

In case you missed it, or want to see it again, here's the new link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23481435#23481435

You might want to have a kleenex on hand.

Wow

I saw it! I know that it has yet to air in the mountain and pacific time zones, but wow! They did an awesome job with such difficult subject matter. I cried seeing baby Olivia again. Her family was so courageous to share their lives with the nation. Such amazing people. As with every family I serve, I am truly honored to have met their beautiful daughter.

They led the story with my work in the hospital with a normal newborn... that our business First Day PHOTO! I talk about in an earlier post, but you can see our site (and the beginnings of our new look) at www.firstdayphoto.com

Of course, there are links to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep below too, but here it is again. www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org If you are a professional photographer, logon and join!

A photo of the day

I take a lot of pictures of newborns - it's the bulk of what I do. And, believe it or not, it doesn't get boring. Sure, there are things I anticipate, but every baby and every family is different. There are some things that do get redundant: I take photos of every baby's hand and feet. Now don't get me wrong, NONE of them look the same and they are all beautiful. Today, though, I had two things happen that don't usually happen. First, I had to re-shoot. I was finished with the session and found that my hand shot was really oddly colored (the baby's dad was wearing a gold sweatshirt that was doing interesting things with the light). So, I had to get a new photo of that baby's hand. Second, I got really excited about a hand picture. So, with baby Lillianna's parents' permission, here it is!

Beautiful Brooklyn

What is sweeter than a little girl and her daddy on Valentine's Day? Here is beautiful Brooklyn and her dad. I met Brooklyn and her mom and dad in the hospital when I took her newborn photos. I had the pleasure of seeing how she's grown when they invited me into their home to take some family photos while Grandma was in town. How I love watching families grow~ Keep an eye here for the slideshow... coming soon!

Gunnar's photo shoot

This morning, I took a great drive up to Albertville, MN to photograph little Gunnar. One of the photographers who worked for me at First Day PHOTO!, Ginger Murray (read her blog about working with us! http://gingermurrayphotography.blogspot.com/2008/01/where-my-professional-journey-began.html), took Gunnar's newborn photos almost 7 months ago. They were beautiful, and I was so looking forward to seeing how this little guy had grown. We had such a fun shoot... what a happy baby with an amazing mom. Photos and a slideshow to come~

What I do all day - First Day PHOTO!

I have got to start going to bed earlier! I've been training new photographers for the last several weeks, and have had 2 days off since December 10. I am TIRED. I have the greatest job, though. Brad and I get to work and be with our kids alternately. He's with them when I am at work, and vice versa. Today, we really did just trade. I was at the hospital from 8am-4:30pm, and got home just in time for him to leave to shoot a couple Bethel University basketball games. We love it, though.

In 2003, Brad started our company, First Day PHOTO! www.firstdayphoto.com in a response to a request from a local hospital to provide newborn photography that was better than what they had (the other company just bought everyone except us, so they are in most U.S. hospitals). What he discovered was that he was able to do SO much more than that. With my knowledge about how the birth centers work and what is important to them and his business and photography expertise, he created a distinctive in-hospital portrait service for newborns that is unmatched in quality and service. The service to the family is fantastic because they are provided beautiful portrait-quality images in their hospital room. For the hospital, the advantages are so many.

So, where do I come in? Brad got so busy with his ministry work and sports work that I offered to help with First Day PHOTO!. That was almost three years ago (and two babies ago!) and I've been doing it ever since. I gently took over all the operations and now I do it full time, and parent full time. Our kiddos are 4 years old, 2 1/2 years old and 1 year old. So, with a growing family and a growing business we are both busy, but we couldn't be happier.