Collages.net website of the week!

I’m excited to share some really great news today.

I use a company called Collages.net for my online event viewing and print sales. I love them for so many reasons. Their event galleries are simple and easy to navigate. Their customer service is awesome. They donate their services to a charity that I recently became a member of (more about that later this week). I could go on and on…but, bottom line: they’re great.

Each week, Collages.net looks through hundreds of their newest event websites and chooses both a portrait and a wedding site to feature as their Website of the Week. I’ve been viewing these featured sites for over a year now and have always marveled at the amazing talent out there.

That’s why I can admit that I was shocked when they informed me that I was chosen as this week’s Portrait Website of the Week! Needless to say, I’m honored and very grateful.

I will, however, give most of the credit to this amazing family who made my job look and feel easy by making it impossible to take a bad picture!

If I’ve learned one thing in my career so far, it is that there is nothing more beautiful than happy children…

 

Mid-Winter Thoughts

It is always nice to read nice things about yourself…

With that said, I was so tickled to read an entry in my friend, Cayce’s blog about a portrait session that I did for her family back in November. She posted some images and recounted what went on during the shoot. It is a lovely post and left me blushing.

People often ask me how I can get small children to look so happy in my portraits. My answer? Sit back, let the child and his/her family do their thing, and take lots (and lots and lots and lots) of photos. I have yet to meet a child who doesn’t want to smile. It is just that they may not want to smile for an hour continuously. Who would? My cheeks hurt just thinking about it. So, instead of trying to make a kid laugh or squeeze a squeaky bird-like toy, I just try to disappear and click away constantly. In the end, regardless of whether it is a great day or not, I get images of a happy child. I may get 60 smiling images and 360 frowning images, but after I delete the unwanted ones, I have 50 gorgeous smiling images. And as for all of those frowns? Well, I always keep a few for good measure as nobody wants things to look too unrealistic;), but beyond that, the trash can gobbles them up and we all forget that the frown to smile ratio may have been 6:1 that day.

So, thank you Cayce for the kind words! To read what she had to say, CLICK HERE.

On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to share a few personal images. We had the most delightfully warm weather here in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago and we tried to take full advantage. On one of these days, Kosta and I went to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose and found it to be in the mid-seventies. Here are a few from the goat area at Happy Hollow. For those of you who may not know, I am of Greek descent and have always had quite a penchant for goats. It was heart-warming to see that my son shares my sentiment!

The Goat Whisperer

I cannot believe that I managed to locate these, but here I am in the summer of 1979 with Honey, our family pet. The neighbors were perplexed with our choice of pets (there were not many Greek families living in Bath, Ohio at the time). I distinctly remember my mom taking both of these photos.

And back to Happy Hollow. A couple of fun close-up shots with my 15mm fisheye lens:

The following day, I pulled Kosta and his buddy Matteo down to the beach for hours of fun. It was a sight to behold, so I grabbed a shot with my point-and-shoot before we left.

I send each of you warm mid-winter thoughts!