2 miracles
This beautiful mom booked me for the Belly & Baby plan and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Nothing excites me more than photographing fun people who want artistic portraits… and the opportunity to photograph multiples. This hot mama is having TWINS. Doesn’t she look fantastic?!
TWO BABIES! Doesn’t she look happy?
Here's your sneak peek, mom & dad! Congratulations. Thanks for letting me be a part of this special time in your lives.
Sneak Peek!! This little beauty was a trooper. She let us dress her up in two outfits, photograph her in just a diaper and we even sat her in a giant coffee cup. Mom was pretty excited about this capture.
My poor blog is seriously neglected. Life has been very busy for us. If you’re one of my clients, then you’ve likely heard stories about our daughter Natalie and her kidney disorder. For those of you who are just discovering The Family Room, you’ll hear stories when you meet her. Natalie was diagnosed with Bartter’s Syndrome when she was 7 weeks old. The doctors at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit have taken fantastic care of Natalie. This February we discovered that Natalie also had developed an ulcer in her duodenum and GERD. When you think of an ulcer, you think of something like a canker sore, but Natalie’s ulcer has grown a lot of granulation tissue and it’s like a mass, taking up space in her GI tract. About 2 months ago Natalie could no longer eat. Everything she swallowed was vomited back up due to the obstruction. We’d been unsuccessful at medically healing her ulcer for about 8 months. We believe that one of her kidney medications is to blame, so it was time to eliminate this from her medication regimen. This would require Natalie to consume huge amounts of oral potassium, but with being unable to eat we had to get G-tube surgery. Long story short, Natalie spent 25 days in the hospital in September and October. It took a long time to reestablish her potassium and magnesium needs without the use of one of her drugs. During the time we were in the hospital, my business email and website contact form were not functional, and I wasn’t aware of it until a few weeks ago. This has now been corrected. If you tried to contact The Family Room during this time, I apologize for the inconvenience. Here are a few images of Natalie from the hospital: Playing with the music therapist Walking the halls Asleep “I wanna go home” Home again Halloween (Jojo from Disney’s “Jojo’s Circus”) There’s a glimpse into the personal side of The Family Room for you. Or, I suppose he found me. This little fishy swam into my studio today. Then he got nekkid. I wants to squish dat widdle tushie. heehee This little lady came to see me for newborn photos and now she’s come back for her 6 month portraits. Mom wanted the works. We did a summer outfit, a Halloween costume, and a photo for the Christmas Card that I still need to design. THEN NOW Look at that precious little pout! Little baby faces make me swoon. Hang in there mom. I should have your gallery ready by tomorrow. I had the pleasure of meeting little Lainey yesterday. Of course, she brought her mother too and we all got along like peas and carrots. Here’s your sneak peek! Oh, and… I designed the cutest birth announcement for you. Just wait till you see! I did that before editing the photos! I have been “tagged” by my colleague Anna-Karin. This means I am to post a blog entry with the same theme in which she blogged. She was tagged by yet another photographer, and it goes on and on. I’m supposed to share a few factoids about myself. Oh boy, consider yourself warned. 1 - My very first camera was a generic 110 camera. I don’t think it even had a flash. I found it on along the bank on a family canoe trip when I was a young child. There weren’t any identifying markings on the camera so there was no chance of returning it to it’s owner so my parents let me keep it. They bought me film and I began taking photographs of my family, our trips as well as my friends. 2 - My first darkroom experience was at Girl Scout camp right around 1983 I think. Every girl was given the opportunity to expose two frames on a roll of B&W film. Somebody processed it for us and we each got to make a print from one of our negatives. I printed a photograph of the other girls from my tent. I posed them in front of a field of tall grasses. I may still have the photograph somewhere in my basement. 3 - My senior year of High School I took two photography classes. For the first class, I used my parent’s Canon AE-1. Pleased with my enthusiasm, I received a Vivitar 35mm SLR for Christmas to use for my 2nd class. A year later I traded that Vivitar in towards a more fully featured Minolta. I forget the model number, but it had auto focus. Woo! It was a used camera, but it was new to me. I was really jazzed about auto focus. 4 - In college, I earned certification in “Audio-Visual Technology”. All of the photography courses fell under this category. I took various classes covering the history of photography, the fundamentals of camera operation, b&w, color and slide film, studio photography, portraiture and even a couple of cinematography classes. 5 - Over the years I’ve used medium and large format cameras, made prints from film & slides, sepia and selenium print toning, made and used pinhole cameras, cyanotype art and Polaroid transfers. I’d really like to do more transfers and cyanotype. ______________________ Cyanotype is a fun and educational way to for your kids to explore the art of photography. Just pick up a Sunprint Kit of photo-sensitive paper, arrange some objects on top of a sheet and expose it to the sun. Then develop the print in a bath of plain tap water. Cyanotype is a lesson in chemistry, math and composition all rolled into fun. Now I tag Jessi Baldwin, Steven Fox and Erika Martin… and the theme continues. London came to visit me today. I photographed this little guy twice before. Once in mommy’s belly and once as sweet tiny newborn. He’s grown so much this past year and today he was in a great mood and full of energy. He was just too much fun. Hey London, don’t be a stranger. Many say that photographs steal your soul, but sometimes I think photos are what keeps the child in me alive. When I was about 2.5 years old, my parents had a family portrait commissioned. My siblings and I got all dressed up. A photographer came to our house and set up lighting equipment including 3 umbrella style lights. I cannot recall if they were strobes or hot lights, but I remember the light. We were seated on top of the console radio against a wall and this man photographed us. I was in awe of this process an the lighting equipment and it left a huge impression on me. Below is a resulting photograph from that portrait session. We found it while cleaning out my parents dining room. They had it remodeled this year. I asked if I could keep it because I think this very image and memory may be the moment that made portrait photography my fate and passion. Doesn’t it just figure that my own child hates the camera? Whenever she sees a camera in my hand she runs away or stares at the floor until I put it away. Sometimes she cries when she sees studio lighting. I used to take portraits of her on a monthly basis until she decided that I had enough photos of her. That was about a year ago. I hadn’t captured an enlargement worthy photo (I’m very particular) of her since January until I got these sweet shots recently. Click on them to see them larger. She didn’t take that sucker out of her mouth for 1 second. She only sat in the chair on the set because she knows she MUST sit when eating a sucker. I got about 10 exposures and in the last one she’s giving me a dirty look - sucker still securely in her mouth. LOL!
I have been a bad little blogger. I haven’t posted for the last 2 or 3 sessions. Shame on me. This is from my session this morning. Mason was a ham and Gemma was shy. We did some portraits on the deck, by the pond and next to the house, but I think this one is my favorite from the whole session. Gemma was getting tired so I suggested that they all pile onto the bed to relax and see what unfolds. Here’s your sneak peek. I might add a few more later. Thanks for being so fun and flexible! 
Miss Maanasa
Our Natalie
I found Nemo!
Watching Alex grow
Little Lainey
I couldn’t resist.
I’ve been tagged!
London Calling
Thanks to mom and dad for doing a great bouncer job. 
Portraits are in my soul
Update
