A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (not)

Steven was my photographer for a photo for which I've purposely been growing my tummy. 
It's nice and round now, so we went for the shot:) 

 He had the idea for me to really go under the pier and waited for the bird to be in the right location. 

 Of course we had our other babies with us.  They found two beached flopping fishies.  Our jungle man, Dylan, picked his up and threw it back,

 But Isaac only touched his then pointed at it. 

 Dylan threw them both in for us. 

Now this is probably what we should have been doing, picnicking in our Sunday best staying in the shade of umbrellas with our family and friends, just admiring the water, like the proper people in Georges Seurat's 1884 painting. 

 But what temptation!! 

 Isaac knows how to enjoy God's creations.  He punches back when the waves are rolling in with their Sabbath Day karma. 
I could go hang out at the beach every evening. I'm always in the mood for a beach picnic - and Steven had the idea to take us to the Reddington Beach Long Pier to show me where it was because I have a photo session there this evening. Of course I said yes!

Then we dug in one spot for coquina shells and watched them dig down in the sand.  We'll be back tonight:)

More Maternity Photos

This camera was a good investment:)
I'm not making any $ with it, and it's taking up a lot of my time, but my right brain is happy, so that keeps me sane. I love helping people. Lindsay brought over a Steak & Shake shake over to me the other day when she picked up her files. That's fun:)

I usually dislike Fridays, so I made it a point to clean the bathrooms and work on some house projects on Thursday instead of waiting for my "off day" to try to do everything. It helps that it's been my SPRING BREAK-(in the fall). (Corrie, my friend and babysitter, was not able to babysit, so I didn't work, and her kids didn't come over either. We miss them terribly.)

So this glorious Friday morning, I woke up, rolled over and went back to sleep some more in my most comfortable bed, then woke up again later and kissed Isaac's neck until we felt like getting out of bed, (Steven must have brought him in to me some time this morning,) got Dylan and his cute smile up, ate breakfast, and got dressed. I still had a long list of potential things I could do, but instead called to see if Lindsay was still pregnant. She was, so we dropped everything, only ran one short errand, and spent an hour and a half over at her house. I took my boys, so we took a lot of breaks.

Lindsay's hair was so pretty and strait, and we thought she needed indoor pictures, and ones to include the nursery, so we quickly hung the art on the wall and snapped away! (We didn't include Scott this time. I know if he's anything like Steven, then he appreciates that.)
Remember, I'm just playing around w/ a camera, but it's fun and Lindsay looks so good that it works:)

Don't you love her hair and eyes here? I do.

Hey Lindsay, were you a model? You should be.

Which window pic is your fav? I was playing around w/ some effects.

Can you believe these shirts aren't even maternity ones? So cute.

I love her perfectly round little tummy!Lindsay had that beautiful "pregnancy glow" her whole pregnancy, so I accentuated it a little.
So I'm learning from my mistakes, and think that Lindsay has some good photos for the baby book too. Win Win! What a good Friday! (Besides taking, sorta editing, and blogging these photos, I also bought pants for Dylan and Isaac for their Uncle Matt's wedding, finished Matt and Hollie's slide show and made DVDs for the receptions, cleaned the house, did a load of laundry, patched some tiles in the pool, thought about going running but the boys had to nap, had dinner out w/ my 3 boys, finished sewing a baby gift, bought things for and made a wedding gift, and unsuccessfully tried to make flying to Hawaii with my sister for a week work.)

Lots of Maternity photos

First of all, I'd like to preface this with my UN-inspiration. I was really excited to do a maternity photo shoot with a girl I met who had a nice camera. I waited 'til I was nice and plump with Isaac and planned it all. I knew the park I wanted to go to, and talked Steven into the photoshoot by saying we would also get our Christmas card photo.

Well, when I got the pictures, I was upset. She hadn't told me if my shirt needed to be fixed, or if my hair did, and she didn't care where the sun was, or that she cropped my tummy out of a lot of the pictures! Then she had the nerve to charge me for what was supposed to be a free "portfolio building" shoot. There was NOT ONE single usable photo for hours of time. Steven was NOT going to do retakes no matter who the next photographer was. I ended up taking snap shots of myself and got better results, but didn't get the beautiful pictures in the park I had dreamed of.

SO, I decided to live vicariously through beautiful Lindsay and her handsome husband Scott. I did a little bit of pre-planning, and decided to be 100% manual with the camera settings so I could practice. (Our photographer had kept her camera on auto and STILL didn't get the exposure right.) Lindsay didn't have high expectations of me so it was stress free:) She didn't have any pre-planned poses or anything that was a must-have. We just had fun with it!

So here are some of my favorites. I'd LOVE constructive criticism and how to edit them, crop them, lighten them, future ways to pose them, angles, all of that. There are a lot of good ones, even if you just think of them as snap shots b/c Scott and Lindsay are such a cute fun couple!

Hiding the baby bump a little too much, but it's like they're giving Baby Girl a big hug, so I still like it.

She finally looks pregnant here
I was playing w/ the scenery. Too much?
Unposed:)


The color should be cleaned up a little bit. You already saw my fav picture (post below), but here are some other cute "cravings" ones. Look how fun they are. She really doesn't look pregnant from the back, but I like it:)
And they're silly.
How come she looks pregnant AND skinny here?

Grainy/bad focus, but cute faces!
I cropped the tummy out a little too much, here. Oops.



I'd like the sun to be a little higher here, but if I stood up more, the trees were in the way. I like it and I still learned a lot from the shoot.
Thank you Scott, Lindsay, and baby girl for trying some awkward poses, dealing with the heat, and waiting for me to fiddle with my camera. These may be more for me than for you:) Enjoy!

Cravings

I just took some maternity pictures for Scott and Lindsay. This is my favorite picture so far. I haven't really gone through them all just yet, but I like this one. I asked Lindsay what she had craved her whole pregnancy and she said that she ate a lot of cereal. I asked her to grab a box. She doesn't look particularly pregnant in the picture (probably b/c her cereal isn't the sugary kid cereal I was expecting her to bring,) but she's resting the bowl on her belly and they are such a cute couple with him feeding her. I can see the wedding bands, and the wind finally didn't blow the box over! I like how I figured out some of my camera settings to open the aperture enough to get just the box in focus. It was also nice having no pressure. They just had fun and told me not to worry. It was fun! I just had to share a photo before going to bed:)