More about me

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I realize that I don't talk about myself much, so I'm using this blog post to rectify that situation. I'm Alex, 31 turning 32 on saturday, and besides being a mom and a wife and a budding portrait photographer, the biggest thing going on in my life right now is being 38 weeks pregnant with our second. Yes, that is right, I am a girl (I've had a few clients be confused about that). :) Due to my rapidly approaching due date, I'm taking August - September "off" from scheduling client shoots, but I'll be scheduling shoots again probably mid-September onward. In the later fall I also plan on having a Family Portrait Package special in time for the holidays, which I'll update more about later.

In the photography realm, lst weekend I purchased the spiffy Slik Sprint Tripod since our other tripod broke in half. It's super light and very accomodating for my photography needs (which are pretty much learning about self portraits and self family portraits). I set it up to take a couple of maternity pictures of myself to document for this pregnancy. For this setup I had my backdrop with the black velour draped over it, and a ball suspended by twine from the ceiling to "focus" on while I set the self timer. Note to self: much purchase remote trigger soon.

self-portrait at 37 weeks


out, baby, out!


Samuel wanted in on the picture taking as well. the composition is a little off, but not bad for a last minute 3 year old addition :)


a recent shot of Samuel


and my husband


So that is me and my family in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed this blogpost and always, comments are welcomed!

A very new baby

Some friends of mine had a baby last week and were gracious enough to let me come over and take pictures and pose her. Shooting newborns is really, really hard work. I don't know about these other photographers that can just pose the sleeping newborns - this is my third shoot and they all screamed bloody murder during the entire 2-3 hours I was shooting them. :( I managed to get a few shots that weren't of a screaming baby though, and will chalk it up to more life lessons in photography. :)

meet baby girl Gwyneth, four days old


don't let that fool you, for most of the shoot she looked like this:


baby head


baby feet





ok last baby feet shot I promise. you can see how unhappy she is in the background


when she was happy, she usually was eating her hand


and an outdoor shot - it was such a nice day not to take advantage of the sunshine!

Website is back online!

My website is back up and running, hurrah! :)

Hannah - a photowalk photoshoot

Hannah is our neighbors' daughter and was gracious enough to come out with me this last weekend and let me pose her in different areas of Seattle. It's very different shooting a teen than a baby or an adult. It's really nice to have someone stand still, make funny poses, and do things like climb trees to get the pose you want. :) I had a lot of fun and hope she did too.

Originally I wanted to go on an art walk around Seattle, find graffiti and fun things to shoot her in front of. Unfortunately, even at 10am we were dealing with full sun, and I don't have reflectors or another person to provide some shade or relief from the harsh shadowing the sun was throwing up on her face. We ended up at the Sodo Art Corridor, which I highly recommend to anyone in the area. It's about three blocks long and full of artwork on old buildings that run along the old BN train tracks. After about an hour there, we headed over to the Botannical Gardens in Bellevue to find some shade and relief from the sun. We settled in the Japanese Yao Garden and took some fun posed pics. I had to deal with the green cast from all the foliage, and maybe next time I'll try calibrating with the grey card first to see if it helps with the color casting!

The Sodo Art Corridor


a closeup of the moon so you can see how gigantic it was. Hannah's head barely made it into the picture


Hannah


look, a smile!


At the Botannical Gardens. I'm still playing with my BW conversions, and I think these turned out pretty good

I love the bokeh in these shots






BW conversions




and my favorite shot from the photoshoot

Website down

Currently my website is down. We're working on fixing the problem, but if you try to go there it just times out. Let me know via email if there are any problems or hassles and I'll try to resolve things. Hopefully we'll have it back up and running by this weekend. Thanks for all your patience!

Another squishy newborn

April from this shoot graciously allowed me to come back and take pictures of her three week old son. As I remembered, newborns did take extra time to shoot, and I'm still working out the logistics of family posing with a newborn. Originally I had him set in the boppy but he was so tiny that I feel he kept blending in with the background instead of looking like a family member! Also, the amount of pee this kid could generate was amazing. I finally gave up and left the diaper on him because it was guaranteed he would pee, then pee again, as soon as the diaper came off! Overall, it was a very enjoyable shoot as April let me pose her little man in all sorts of funny positions as I was trying out different ways to pose a squishy baby. :)

and yes I do have a slight obsession with feet. :)

meet Jack!




mommy and baby


I love this pose and how she's looking down at her baby


nekkid baby with dad


dad and baby


baby feet


how a newborn and a two year old's feet compare


sadly, how Jack felt about most pictures involving his sister

Squishy newborn shoot

Becky, my willing and cooperative maternity model from this shoot came back with her newborn baby boy and let me practice taking some shots with a squishy delectable newborn. He's about 2 weeks old in these pictures.

Things I learned: newborns DO take a long time to shoot, between the crying, sleeping, nursing, feeding, and all the resting inbetween. :) Also, use less slippery fabric around the boppy because the baby kept slipping down on the fabric I was using. I read somewhere that using a bean bag was best with newborns because it conformed the most to their little curved shape. Overall I was pretty happy with the shoot and learned lots about posing such small babies.

and now onto the picture sneak peek! :)

how he spent about half the shoot, in various stages of unhappy


ahhh bliss


look, we even got some awake shots!


gassy smile


with mommy


with blocks


baby head!


baby hand

The S Family photoshoot

I met this family on location at Idylewood Park in Redmond. I don't think I've ever fully explored that park before, so Samuel and I headed out there early to check it out. If you haven't been there, definately go! It's got a great open area for frisbee, picnic areas, an awesome play ground, and the best part - a real sandy beach with a swimming area maintained by lifeguards! It was a beautiful place to shoot family pictures.

My biggest hurdle for this photoshoot was their cute little boy - who would not smile for me. I tried all my usual tricks - food bribes, Mr. Panda the Pez Dispenser, making clacky noises. The parents even tried to help by playing peekaboo behind my head. This worked great except for family shots. I was a little bummed I didn't capture very many smiles and instead got a lot of pictures of a solemn little boy. Next time I'm coming better prepared with maybe bubbles or some sort of talking toy to try to capture the toddler's interest!

Here's a sneak peek at some of their pictures. :)

the only smile I got from the little boy - the dad was jumping around behind me making quite the show for this to happen


my "artsy" family shot I was trying to emulate from all the nifty posts I see on ILP


Dad playing with the kiddo


same shot, testing out the "vintage lomo" action. Not sure what I think of the bright color overexposure for this particular shot


here is mom looking thoughtful for me. she was a very cute pregnant woman!


Pensive, thoughtful toddler


playing with his favorite puzzle, but still no smiles!


mom and dad!

Newborn, siblings, family - oh my!

This family was probably the most diverse group, age-wise, of people I had to shoot yet in a session. First, there was the delightful newborn who was about 7 weeks old. She had three older brothers who were 5 and in their teenage years respectively, plus a family friend, and mom and dad. Whew! Lots of people to line up and try to find good poses for.

From this shoot I learned that I need to step back further in order to get everyone in focus (and boy would it have been nice to have a wide-angle lense to capture the surroundings better!) especially when I had the f/stop lowered to let in light. The shoot was on location at their house, with the newborn being extremely non-fussy and letting me snap away. The mom was super-helpful in staging everyone and getting everyone ready and smiling. I even got a few captures of the dad and baby together which I thought were sweet. Hopefully they'll enjoy their pictures!

the very sweet baby D


look at that cute smile!


are you looking at me?


everyone loves baby toes!


and my favorite picture of dad and baby