Anchorage will be increasing it’s population over the next few weeks as many, many soldiers continue their return home to Ft. Richardson.  Most of these guys have been gone close on a year and as you can imagine, this return makes for some happy, anxious and excited families!

I had my first “end of deployment” reunion for Operation Love Reunited this past weekend and it was truly an awesome and fun filled adventure.  I told my husband upon my return home that it felt like a quick party with a hundred of the happiest people on earth!

Crystal first contacted me months ago regarding her husband’s return.  She has been ready for this day for a long, long time!  Just days before the reunion, she tweaked her knee and had to wear a brace and was on crutches.  When I saw her in the gym she ditched the crutches because of all the excitement but her plan was still to wait patiently on the bleachers with her sore knee until her husband was able to make it to her. Right!!! Crystal was one of the first ones to hit the floor!  She leapt right off those bleachers and cleared half of the gymnasium before many of the other family members made it off the steps!

Congratulations, Crystal, on having your family reunited and to all the other men and women steadily making their way back to Anchorage — welcome home!

(**Note: The photos and other content of this publication do not imply any endorsement or recommendation by the Department of Defense.**)

New samples for 2010 are slowly but surely starting to roll in and I just received my first sample album of the year! It is beautiful! I tried a new album vendor so I’m always hesitant to see what kind of funky colors the prints end up looking like (you have no idea how many shades of magenta you never want to see!) Anyway, I had nothing to fear with this one! This album is beautiful! Yippee! The color was exactly what I was expecting and the craftmanship looks really well done.

This sample is the Fine Art Album. This style comes standard with Package III or can be an upgrade to the Coffee Table album included in Package II. The cover has three cameo photographs and is a duo-tone leather combination. The pages are thicker and sturdier than the basic coffee table album and for this sample I chose a linen texture. I love it! The album comes with it’s own black storage box and slipcover to keep everything protected and in perfect condition.

Below are a few photos and I also included some shots of it next to a coffee table album to give you a feel for the differences.  These pages are perfect for designing full page spreads across the center line without significant image loss.  The transition is smooth and almost indistinguishable!

The Portrait & Wedding Photographers of Alaska (PWPA) have banded together to put on a fundraiser, this Saturday, February 6th, at the Crosspoint Church next to Burlington Coat Factory on Dimond. All proceeds go directly to the Red Cross in an effort to help out victims of the earthquake and devastation in Haiti.

Please pass this information on to your friends, family and co-workers to let them know of this easy way to donate. In return for your efforts we will be creating quick family portraits as a thank you for your time and donation. You will receive a digital file of your image within about two to three weeks after the event.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or check out the Red Cross website at www.alaska.redcross.org.

Naked babies! I just love them. It seems like somewhere from about seven to twelve months are my favorites for the naked toddler cherubic look. This round fellow had an older sister who was also very sassy and cute! Fun pics from right before the holidays.

A big surprise showed up a few weeks early just in time to sport a Santa Claus hat and booties! Included are a few photos of his beautiful older sister, as well, from an earlier maternity shoot! He was just a few days old and as sweet and patient as anyone that young can possibly be with a crazy photographer trying to snap photos and make him pose!

Welcome to the world and Happy New Year!

It felt like I was doing an Engagement Session but this couple was actually nearing the completion of one full year of marraige! They were adorable and oh so photogenic! You can tell from the giggling shots that these two are madly in love! I had the opportunity to catch some reunion shots at the airport when he came home for a two week R&R stint. Right at the crucial moment as he was about to come down the escalator I received the dreaded “CF Card Error”. The most horrible timing ever! I changed cards as fast as possible and grabbed a few photos after they had already said their first hello’s but I was so bummed not to have gotten their expressions upon seeing each other after almost a year!

A few days later we did a portrait session and captured some fun images of them in the snow as well as with their cutest dog ever. The puppy apparently was a gift from him to her when he first deployed! Awesome present!

The exciting news for both of them is that he should be home earlier in the year rather than later! I know they can’t wait.

…

(**Note:  The photos and other content of this publication do not imply any endorsement or recommendation by the Department of Defense.**)

A couple of new portrait books came in and I just had to share! They include a newborn studio session, an outdoor family portrait session and a Christmas session of my boys for their grandparent’s yearly gift.

I love portrait books! They contain so, so, many images from your entire session that I feel they are one of the best ways to capture all the great moments from a photoshoot.

No, they are not cheap!  But imagine all the custom work that goes into designing and tailoring each book to your specific family and photo session.  All books contain a minimum of 20 pages.  They typically include about 25 images.  Calculate the price of purchasing 25 edited images individually and you can begin to see the real value.

Each image is fully edited and additional processing goes into matching the colors and tones of mutlitple images on a page.  The design can be basic white with crisp and clean transitions or a more modern feel with current design elements.

My parents now have four books.  When I spoke with them on Christmas day they told me they pulled out all their old books and were comparing and contrasting the changes in the kids to the new book they just recieved.  It made me laugh because I couldn’t imagine that I had actually remembered to give them books for the past four years straight!

Portrait books come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  My favorite is actually the 8×8 which is small enough to carry in your purse but big enough to have a panoramic print or two traversing the 8×16 inch full spread!  All of the books that I print now for our Grandparents are of the 8×8 inch variety.  It seems to be the universal favorite for layout and portability without losing the size of the image!

As a new product for 2010, I am also including mini-books.  They are approximately 3.5×5 or 5×5 inches and look similar to accordian cards but with an attached hard cover on both the front and back.  Because of their small size, the products only contain about 10 images and come in quantities of three.  More details on the mini-books with sample photos coming soon!

I met this baby girl at a wedding recently and had the opportunity to capture her one year portraits as well. The title says it all. She has the best cheeks ever! Such a cutie and a great sport as long as there was “Pirate Booty” — a fun kids snack– hidden in strategic locations.

My favorite shot is the one of her looking studious reading the book she brought along to play with.

Now that it’s colder outside, those family portraits with small children are starting to get pushed back into the studio.  I recently had the opportunity to photograph another family session for Operation Love Reunited during an all too short R&R break for a deployed soldier and his adorable family.

The studio works great for tiny tots and we were able to get some of the whole family as well as some individual ones of their baby boy.  It was hovering around 5 or 10 degrees outside but we attempted a quick jaunt out back and got a tiny handful of  ”Alaska” shots as well before everyone froze!

The idea behind OpLove is to send a small portrait book of a family session to the soldier while deployed so they’ll have a nice token from their family back home.  Luckily, the soldier’s from the last two OpLove sessions I’ve done will be home to see their families again in just a few months!  There should be a lot of great homecomings coming up in the new year for many troops in Alaska! Yay!

(**Note: The photos and other content of this publication do not imply any endorsement or recommendation by the Department of Defense.**)

For several years we’ve been fortunate enough to spend Thanksgiving with Dave’s Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim.  An added bonus is that Uncle Jim’s neice and her family also spend Thanksgiving there and our boys love having their kids to play with.  Our first trip up as a family was when Solomon was 2 months old.  We’ve made it several years since and we were anxiously waiting to see everyone again after spending last Thanksgiving in the balmy tropics known as Alabama.

Mary & Jim have a cabin several hours north and have added a bunk house and are now working on a stellar hangar and workshed that I neglected to grab a photo of.  It’s a mighty fine piece of woodwork!

The main house is a circular cabin and is heated by a wood stove downstairs which keeps the whole house toasty and warm — a huge bonus because many Thanksgivings it is barely above zero degrees outside.  This year, however, we had a heat wave. The kids were able to sled and sled and sled some more due to a warm wind which brought us up to about 25 degrees.  Woo-hoo!

Did I mention the food?  Mary makes just about everything from scratch and there were some divine bread rolls that I am still drooling over (butter makes the world go round, right!)  On our last night there we always get to experience the massive undertaking of making lefse, a kind of nordic bread that I know nothing about.  It requires a full team effort, though, and these guys have obviously been doing it for years and have all the kinks worked out.  The kids even helped rolling and carrying and flipping this year.  It was a blast.

Can’t wait to see what happens next year!

To see the slideshow go here:  A Far North Thanksgiving

We recently added a new member to our family.  He is furry and runs on all fours and sometimes answers to the name of Ivan. On other times he answers to the name Eisen-Howard (when Sid says Ivan it sounds like Izen) and yet other times he chooses not to answer at all.  He is a crazy fur beast with a perpetual smile on his face.  He looks like a Russian Wolf Hound mixed with an Alaskan Husky then crossed with a Golden Retriever.  He is a a nut (did I mention that already?)  The best part, however, is that he adores Solomon and Sid and they love him!

Ivan came from the Alaska Dog & Puppy Rescue from up in Wasilla.  It is a great organization of volunteers who house the dogs themselves until a permanent home can be found for them.  It was great for us, too, because we were able to meet with him in a home environment to really get a better impression of his personality. We were looking for a love sponge who would entirely tolerate two little boys and this silly puppy completely fits the bill.  He is a non-stop barker and the fastest thing on four feet that I have ever seen.  He loves to sleep upsidedown with his paws in the air and he has two ice blue eyes with a hint of brown in one.

This past weekend we took him out for a walk around the lake which is now pretty solidly frozen.  We’ve been dog sitting Mookie for the past week and had him join us for the jaunt.  The boys careened around the lake in the sled and the dogs just played and played and played.  It was a perfect little family adventure on a cold November day.

I had the pleasure of photographing this little girl before she was even born when we captured her mother’s maternity session. A few weeks later she surprised her parents with an early arrival!  She chose to make her entrance into this world during the middle of an important football game and to commemorate the occasion her parents brought along some team spirit to to use for props (both teams!).

Happy Birthday sweet baby!

On a day like today when it is at least 50 or 60 degrees outside, it’s hard to remember what is feels like when you are constantly being hit by arctic gusts of wind.  The day we headed out for Michelle and Brian’s engagement shoot was one of those days.

Michelle & Brian had on the coolest set of trench coats– which reminds me I still need to add one of those to my wardrobe! These guys were fun!  They didn’t even flinch at the chill in the air. They were so accommodating to all my silly ideas for poses that they even came up with several of their own ideas and locations.

This was the second shoot in a month where water was involved or someone falling into water was involved.  This time it was my beloved flash unit taking a digger right after we finished shooting.  I was breaking everything down and launched that baby up into the air for a splashdown completely underwater.   Brian leapt to my rescue and, of course, landed in the water.   He did, however, save my flash from certain death!  I am happy to announce it has now made a full recovery and I think Brian survived unscathed as well!

Brian & Michelle, thank you for your patience in the chilling winds of fall!  I had no idea how cold it was until the drive home so I know you guys must have been freezing!

Congratulations on your engagement!

Operation Love Reunited (www.oplove.org) is an organization that I only recently found out about.  At it’s core, it appears to be a moral booster to military families and the soldiers they have deployed overseas.  OpLove hooks up families with photographers in their area who agree to donate their time doing photo shoots for the family and then creating and mailing a small portrait book to the soldier’s military post overseas.  The photos can be taken before the soldier leaves, after the soldier is deployed, or even as a reunion shoot upon return at the airport.  After having experienced the constant emails from my husband, Dave, the last time he was deployed for “more pictures, more pictures, more pictures”, this seemed like a no brainer for me!

Although this is my first official shoot for the organization, I’ve spoken with several family members regarding the program. Everyone I’ve talked with is dealing with deployments of a year or greater.  I am in complete awe of how these families are able to hold down the fort and get the kids to all their designated activities.  When Dave deploys it’s usually only for about three months because of the nature of the Air National Guard.  That sounds so easy now!  I totally feel like a whimp for taking the kids to my folks place for help!  I promise that the next time – I will be stronger!

So, I have been in touch with the family in these photos since we started our journey back from Idaho.  I immediately connected with their mom because her cellular phone number began with an Alabama area code!  It’s a southern thing!   We had scheduled an outdoor fall session and then realized that we were probably going to get pelted with rain so we bumped it up a few days.  I ended up taking my boys along because of the reschedule and that added a new element of chaos to the adventure!  My youngest, Sid, kept getting in the shots and posing everytime I asked one of the girls, also named Sidney, to stand next to her sister.  It was soooo cute but needless to say my Sid was a bit exasperated with me before it was all over and he sulked off by himself and sat on a rock to pout.

The girls were awesome!  They seemed to have a blast playing on the rocks and hamming it up for the camera.  Their brother, however, was not at all thrilled at having some crazy lady stalking him with a camera.  By the end of the evening when they were playing in the leaves he decided he might be having just a little bit of fun and started cracking a few smiles.  Yay!

I am so looking forward to getting the book together and shipped out!  What a great treat to have when you’ve been away from your family for so long!  Kudo’s to Operation Love Reunited for coming up with such a great idea!

(**Note:  The photos and other content of this publication do not imply any endorsement or recommendation by the Department of Defense.**)

For more information, check out their website at www.oplove.org.

Every few years I get the opportunity to do something I don’t normally do and that is photographing seniors.  I am fortunate enough to live next door to a house full of young men.  One by one they’ve been going off to college and one by one I’ve had the opportunity to photograph them.  Now there is only one left but luckily he has a few more years until graduation.

The most recent of the boys to hit senior status is Nolan.  We ventured out to Kincaid Park on a gorgeous evening that just happened to be a wee bit freezing.  Nolan looked like he survived the cold alright, though, and we captured some photographs that I just love!  My favorites were of Nolan next to a gnarled old tree right as the sun was setting.  Very cool light and great fall colors!

Congratulations, Nolan, on your senior year!