Full on Fall / Tennessee Family Photography

Although it may not feel like it when I step outside my FL doors these days it is all fall inside my photo studio. After taking off a week from photography for my brother's wedding this past weekend, my camera and I have been going on photography adventures all week long to capture some awesome family moments in full on fall sessions. Throughout the week I found myself talking about how excited I was for each shoot as I reminisced about the last time we gathered together. It didn't dawn on me until well into the week that every one of the three family sessions I have had so far this week were repeat customers. What a compliment to be hired again and again by a family. And what fun it is for me to watch a family grow, to be greeted by smiling little familiar faces eagerly waiting my arrival. I have held more tiny hands as we crossed streets and wandered about and have received more kisses and hugs and professions of love from 3-5 year olds this week than I have in a long time. My heart is full...

(...and my fall photo season calendar is just about filled up too. I only have 5 slots left for booking in time for Christmas cards and gifts. Email me at cmprietz@yahoo.com to set up your session pronto.)

With all this fall-ness I couldn't help but to think back to the frenzy of last year and the beautiful family sessions I never got around to sharing. So today I am taking you back to one year ago when I hopped on a plane to Tennessee to spend a bliss filled few days with the Dowd family that included off road adventures, frolics in sunlight tree-lined fields and three little ones working their way into my heart in no time at all. All of which took place in the glorious fall setting of Tennessee, a photographer's dream-land.

Mary Kate Teaser

So far on facebook this teaser image of Bonny and her precious Mary Kate has gotten 27 comments and counting. People seem to love these two. I know I do. :)

Reina's 1st Birthday

I have to admit, my all time favorite way to photograph is to be just thrown up in the mix of life and capturing it as I see it, as it reveals itself to me, as it takes my breath away. But I have this new obsession called Pinterest.com that if I am not careful just might be threatening to take that away from me. Let me explain...

Pinterest.com is a collection virtual pin-boards/inspiration-boards from things you collect on the web. You can create your own and browse and follow those of others. People pin everything from home ideas, to wedding ideas, food, travel, art, it's limitless. What I seem to find myself using Pinterest most for is photographic inspiration (it is also fun to find other folks pining my stuff.) The photography that people find and pin is breathtaking. Just before a photo shoot I go a little crazy with pinning pictures of newborns, or couples, or posing for large wedding parties. Most recently I have found that pinterest certainly gives me inspiration but also gives me a sort of panic. I find myself packing up my things and hoping on photographic band-wagons before I even know where I am going, simply because I am afraid of getting left behind.

All the craze in lifestyle photography right now is props, props, props. Photographers are using furniture and frames and vintage suitcases and giant letters and wooden lips and mustaches on a stick (and I have certainly tried most all of this with pleasing results). And I have to admit there is something delightful about introducing the unexpected into the photographic frame. But as I find myself crammed onto the "wagon" with all of this stuff I begin to wonder where all the real, live people went? I am not saying that props are necessarily bad. More times than not the photographer is simply trying to create the conditions for experience, at least I know that is the case for me. You bring along a vintage scrabble game, because maybe, if the people actually play it you will see them as their real selves. Competitive, coy or goofy. But I have to make sure that the props do not get in the way of authenticity. When a client phones me up about locations and what to wear and what to bring I ask them about locations that are meaningful to them, clothing that they have in their closet and things that they enjoy on a daily basis. Sometimes it takes awhile. We fiddle around with posing and positioning until we end up on a quilt with a pile of books, a mom asking her son where the luna is in "Where the Wild Things Are" as his finger lands on the page. Beautiful. (Look for this in my Ford Family post.)

So, when a client comes to me and says, "I want you to show up at my daughters first birthday party at Highlands Hammock the day before Easter and capture the event, actual life, as it is happening," my heart leaps. No contorting of bodies into unnatural posing positions, no awkward moments as a freshly dressed, pressed and combed family stares in wide-eyed silence at me while I stare off into the nothingness looking for inspiration for their next pose, and not a single prop because, well, life provides it all. (Okay, yes, I may have had my quilt, and some paper lanterns in the trunk of my car but I didn't end up using them.) At Reina's 1st birthday party I followed the kids around as they played ball, swung on the branches of trees, collected Easter eggs and buried their faces in brightly iced cupcakes. I snapped away as the birthday girl dug into her cake and as she giggled with excitement when her daddy tossed her up in the air. This was life and I just happened to be there with my camera. I guess I am a bit of an anthropologist at heart.

So I am not saying I am ready to give up props completely, or Pinterest for that matter. These are two valuable lifestyle photography tools. But I am willing to say that I am throwing the fear of being left behind into the wind and working to push aside the fluff to capture the true authenticity of the individual and of myself as a photographer. I am easing away from those fears and off that bandwagon and watching all that stuff disappear over the horizon, but not without hanging onto my quilt, of course.

Thank you, Reina's friends and family, for inviting me in to your celebration to do what I love best.

Train Date

My lovely cousin and her (one of the loves of my life) little one, Blayne had me scoop them up from the train station the other day. I couldn't help but bring my camera along...

A Terrell Family Teaser

Just a little teaser for you, Aunt Cathy! I am pretty certain that you are my biggest fan and I love it. :)

Huntley turns 2!

I have decided that I would like to officially start a movement. From now on I think we should start celebrating birthdays in the same way we did as kids. Why is it that as we get older and older the parties get smaller and smaller, with thinner and thinner guests lists if there is even a party at all? Oh yes, I know that occasionally on a milestone birthday we really throw down, but in all the other years we act as if it is just another day passing us by and then it is off into oblivion.

To start things off I would like to take a few brilliant cues from the most recent birthday party I attended. Huntley turned 2 and I was there to celebrate the glorious occasion!

1. Have a theme and plan accordingly. Now Huntley's B-day party theme was based around tractors and included a collection of toy tractors for the kids to play with, tractor crayons to draw on the paper table cloths decorated with scenes tractors may like to frolic within, a tractor banner, a custom designed shirt for the birthday boy donning a replica of the tractor that was on the invite and on the piece of artwork over his bed, goodie bags for the kiddies with plenty of tractor paraphernalia, a John Deer tractor cake, and even a real live full-sized tractor which served as the perfect photo-op spot.

2. Invite a crowd. Now that you have the scene set you have to get some people in the mix. And don't just invite a crowd of friends your own age, but everyone. Your friends, their parents (or their kids), aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors, school friends, church friends, gym friends, work friends, grocery store friends, etc. The more the merrier, right? And definitely stand around in a circle with this crowd, hand-in-hand, and bless the b-day boy/girl, those who came to celebrate, and the yumminess you are about to experience.

3. Provide some seasonal, occasion appropriate snacks for noshing. For Huntley's party they hit this right on. There were the makings for smores for snacking then for dinner we had chili and corn bread muffins, hot dogs, chips and TWO options for dessert. There was the happiest little tractor cake I had ever seen and cupcakes. I tried both desserts, of course. And watched as little Edy, after eating her cake, sat just inches away from the cupcakes mesmerized for at least 10 min. before asking me if she could have one. Now I have learned by now that if a kid wants extra sugar after sun down you always ask the parent. "What do you think your mom will say?" I asked her. And she quite confidently told me her mom would most certainly say, "Why, yes!" And she did. :)

4. Invite a photographer, or a friend with a camera and a friendly disposition, to tell the story of the celebration through pictures. This way you can relive the celebration for the next 365 days until it is time to celebrate again.




delish........................ and delish.

and this is Edy, a double dessert eatin' girl after my own heart.

and this is the Birthday Boy. Happy Birthday Huntley!