Newborn and Senior Session Tips and Tidbits

I had a goal to blog about every session I do, but I'm usually a little behind on my goals. Oh well, here's my last two sessions in one post. Since I put lots of pics on Facebook, I'm mainly going to use this as an opportunity to make some notes to myself, and who knows, maybe someone out there will find it useful too. I usually have at least one thing I can learn from each session. I hope I never stop learning!

I picked a spot in my clients house in front of a large glass door that was letting in plenty of light. If I was paying closer attention, however, I would have looked at the other side of the door which was free of furniture. Since there was a big china cabinet right next to me, I was unable to get any side shots of the baby and changing my shooting position plays a vital part in getting different angles and helping each picture look unique. This was pretty much as far over as I could get. It works, but I'm a perfectionist and it could have been better. I can't stand to have a ton of pictures that all look the same. So, next time, I'll need to pay attention to giving myself enough space to move around!
In this newborn session, I tried layering my backgrounds on top of each other, so all I had to do was gently lift the sleeping baby and pull the blanket back to reveal a new backdrop. It worked wonderfully. The session moved much more quickly that way and helped me get a variety of shots without having to wait for the little one to go back to sleep. I also organized all my backdrops, swaddle cloths, and hairbows or tutus into the groups I wanted before hand, so I didn't end up rummaging through a wadded up pile of fabric on my client's floor. Another advantage to this was that my client could choose which ones she liked the best and I could make them priority in the shoot. That's time management for ya.

For these senior portraits, I loved that he was comfortable looking in front of the camera, but it was at the end of the session when I worked up enough nerve to crack a little joke, that I saw some pretty natural smiles. Sometimes I let my introverted side get the best of me. Other than that, I was pretty happy with this session. I love all the walls and rocky textures that Tennessee has in its architecture!

Friendship: the scatterbrained girly kind/the best kind.

Easter has always been my favorite holiday. I love that it's not quite as commercialized as most other holidays and that there's still a pretty good helping of Jesus in there. Plus, I always loved getting a new white dress every year when I was little. I'm such a girl. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what this post is about.

Since I couldn't sleep tonight, my mind naturally wandered to crafting. In preparation for Easter, Audrey and I will be doing some pretty fun crafts that center around the Easter story. We've just starting doing a little bible project together a couple of times a week (thank you to Abby Ellis for your motivation there!) and I've been loving our time together. It's amazing to see her get all giddy about reading the "bib-el" too! If you need any tips on how to incorporate teaching your child about God into your daily routine, talk to Abby! The point of all that was to say that my mind soon came around to Easter and I began reading the last bit of Mark. I'm a little scatterbrained. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what this post is about.

Mark 16:1-4 ¹ When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. ² Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb ³ and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”
⁴ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

This passage jumped out at me as I thought of the way my sweet girlfriends would totally be on board as soon as someone mentioned an idea of how to honor Christ. I laughed as I thought about all the times I've been so excited about something that I don't think at all about practical things (like rolling a big stone away). I think it's incredibly sweet that the women in the bible were so excited that they rushed out at dawn without thinking! I can just imagine one of them saying "Ah, crapola! What about that big ole stone!? Why didn't we think of that?! ARGGG!" Because they were so in love with Him, nothing else was on the forefront of their minds! I bet at that moment, God just fell in love all over again with those sweet, silly women when He saw how eager they were to serve Him. They took time to go shopping for spices and obviously arranged a meeting time and place (verse 1), and if it were me, they would have thought that they had everything all together and were all ready to go. And they might have been a little proud about what a good idea they had. And of course, when the obvious stone was mentioned, all the other woman would have been just as surprised at their own absent-mindedness. "Aw, dang!! Why didn't we think of that?! What'll we do now?!" I know that feeling all too well! I'm sure they were really frustrated with themselves, but I bet they forgot all about it in verse four! I wonder if they were a little embarrassed to retell this story. I bet they laughed about it for a long time. Kinda like how I still laugh at Kendall for greeting her own reflection at the drive thru window back in our college days. ;)

I can relate to this passage because 1. I'm super scatterbrained. For example, I lose my cell phone about 293502183465 times a day and 2. I have women around me that get excited in the same way I do and who are always up for honoring God in any way they can. I know that the women in my life would be up at dawn with me on the first day of the week (verse 2) if I were Mary Magdelene and I'm so thankful for that.

Also, this reminded me of Kassie's sunrise story. I don't want to embarrass her, but let's just say that she was so excited to see it, she hurried to the most familiar sunset spot. And waited... as the sun rose behind her.

Kendall, Stephanie, Shiloh and Shannon, thank you for the way you support, encourage, and are always there for and me and each other. I love you guys. I love your excitement. I love your scattered brains. I love being next to you when God reveals Himself to us, like He revealed Himself through the empty tomb.
I'm so glad to call you all friends. Which is really what this post is about.

Working at Home

Here's an example of how it's hard to have a "work at home" job.
You plan on having some "work time" during your child's nap time. This usually means that instead of taking the wonderful "rest when your baby sleeps" advice, you're running/making a mad dash to the computer to make as much of your time as possible. But that's okay. You're used to it. At least you'll have some quiet to work with. And oh, how you look forward to sweet, beautiful, still silence.

But your tired little angel falls asleep in the car on the way home from a morning of playing hard at the park despite all your efforts, including but not limited to singing "B-I-N-G-O!" at the top of your lungs and rolling the car windows up and down repeatedly. She naps for approximately twenty minutes, and the whole time you're saying to yourself "It'll be okay. She'll transfer to from the car seat to the crib with no problem.... Yeah, she's sacked out. She won't even know when I pick her up."

But you know it's all a lie.

You contemplate leaving her in the car seat in the garage to finish her nap until you remember that creepy story your best friend told you about the windowless van stalking around her neighborhood.
So you bravely start the transition. You do everything slowly, gently and purposefully. Pull the Velcro straps from her shoes s  l l l l o o o o o w w w w l l l l y y y.... put her snuggle-y blanket in just the right place over your shoulder, leave the car doors and garage door and back door all open for now (no need for any extra noises that you can avoid), you use your crazy awesome mom skills to carefully slip her tiny little jacket off her arms, and then it's time for the big moment: the lift and drop that occurs when you ever so carefully put her in her crib. You hold your breath. You tiptoe out of the room. You gently shut the door and are ready for a celebration of success.

And then you turn and see it: the very last thing you want to see at that moment: her big blue eyes.

Oh, the paradox: they're so sweet and beautiful, but the sight of them breaks your heart.

"She'll go back to sleep," you lie again to yourself.  She plays for twenty minutes in her crib, saying every word in her miniature vocabulary jovially, swooshing her canopy here and there, and giggling as she kicks the side of her bed.

Finally, you realize that your dreams of silence and work must wait, mommy guilt rears it's ugly head and you feel terrible that she's in there all alone just because you were expecting quiet time. So you go to retrieve her.

Then she's super cranky for the rest of the afternoon, but that little bit of shut eye was enough to keep her awake well past her usual nap time. And you know that when she takes a late nap, that means a late bedtime, and even though a later wake time would follow logically, you know deep down that it won't happen. In fact, she'll probably wake up even earlier. Every little whine is a reminder of the whole situation, and there's a lot of them.

Sigh. Oh, silence. How I long for you!

Any other moms been there?

I love photography

Feeling pretty technically unsavvy right now. I'm new to this bogging world, and learning as I go! I've thought about starting one of these up for a while now, but (even though I talk a lot, just ask my husband!) I think I might not have too much to say...
Hopefully, that will change as I get settled in here. So, since I have no idea what I'm doing, anyone got any pointers for me??

Well anyway, here's a little bit about me:
My name is Sabrina Stanford. I worship an awesome and powerful God. I have a beautiful family that I'm very proud to be a part of. I love my job and hope to share some of that love on here. I love to learn and hope to also share some of my trails and errors and learning experiences as well.

I studied art in college and have been addicted to it ever since high school when I had the best art teacher ever. I wonder if she knows the effect her teaching has had on my life. Photography is the perfect outlet for my addiction since it's a comparatively quickly satisfying media and is actually marketable. I've tried to sell everything from paintings to ribbon belts (don't ask), but nothing I've tried so far has as much market value as the blessed media of photography.

In art school, they make you read a book called "The Art Spirit," which is a wonderful read, but in which the famed art educator Robert Henri says “I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.” But that was written before photography was around and people wanted family portraits done at Olan Mills every year. Photography as an art form, is a little more market friendly than costly and time consuming oil paintings. So, against the advice of Robert Henri, I'm giving it a try and so far, it's been SO exciting and fulfilling and absolutely wonderful for me. "Henri is right. Making art is a tough way to make a living, I can already tell how much other (non-artsy) work is involved, blogging for example.. also, SEO and advertisement and website upkeep and print ordering and customer service and computer maintenance... the list goes on. But, Henri also said that “Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.” So far, with my little business, I've been trying to be very brave and I've certainly had some great happiness. This is a picture that seems like a "trace" to me. It just makes me happy, too. This reminds me of those little moments in life where beauty just seems to bubbling up and overflowing everywhere and all I can do is sigh and think "ah, this is life." Does anyone else have those??

This is another BIG reason why I love what I do: My sweet, 22 month old baby girl. Being a family photographer means that I can stay home with her during the week and can leave her at home with her wonderful dad for a couple of hours on the weekends to do photography sessions and I can get the rest of my work done during her naps times or those rare and wonderful times when she's playing by herself without getting stuck under a chair or testing out what a mascara brush feels like on various parts of her body. It's extremely difficult to try to balance running a business (small though it may be) and juggling the home/wife/mother responsibilities. When I need to work, it's tough to focus if I know there's a sink full of dishes in the kitchen or when the mommy guilt is full force because we haven't done a weekly craft yet and it's already Wednesday (gasp!) And when I want to stack blocks and listen to Audrey's version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," it's hard not to think about the people who are waiting to see how their photographs turned out. But, enough complaining... it's truly rewarding to see this little spiky haired thing smile at me, trust me, snuggle with me, and let me nibble on her little toes everyday. We have a lot of fun together. And come on, I know I might have mommy goggles, but how can you resist those beautiful eyes?? I love the textures in this picture too...

One last reason why I love what I do: the people! My clients blow me away. I believe that every person we come into contact with is in our lives by Divine appointment. God sets up the meetings! He matches the personalities and life experiences so we can learn from or encourage each other. When I grasped this wonderful concept, I realized that for every person I meet, there is either something I can give or something I can learn from. I strive to never let an appointment be in vain. Aside from that, I love that I get to share in the exciting things in people's lives. These engagement pictures were a birthday present for the bride to be from her fiance. Double celebration! I'm kind of a dork when it comes to celebrating, for example, color coordinating my wardrobe with minor holidays. I'll never forget the sarcastic tone in my best friend's voice as she commented on the fact that I was all decked out in green for St. Patrick's Day. "You should be an elementary school teacher." Anyway, the little landmarks in our lives are special and intimate, and I feel privileged to be part of memorializing those precious things in people's lives. Photography offers a unique way to get to know people and to appreciate who they are, and I've certainly enjoyed getting to know my clients thus far.

So, that's it. A little bit of why I love my job. There's lots more, but maybe I should take this blogging thing step by step! I know photographers are a dime a dozen nowadays, but I'm living, loving and learning so we'll just have to see what happens against the odds.

And I thought I wouldn't have anything to say....

check out my website: stanfordphotography.photoshelter.com