Short Stories Photography

If any of you have ever been to the studio, you know that a lot of the times you are greeted by my guard kitty, Zoe.  She is so much sweeter than she appears.   She is still hanging in there to be with us as she had a nasty bout with a tumor in her nasal cavity last year which ended up being a rare cancer for cats.  She appears healthy and still plays like a kitten!

Anyway, she usually tries to get comfortable on my lap when I am at my computer.  I do get up and down a lot…as well as wiggle around a lot readjusting myself as I am usually sitting there a LONG time.  She gets fed up with my movements and jumps down, only to get right back up when I am settled down again….for a while, until it happens again.

I thought I would help her out and get her a place to be near me but not have to put up with all the moving, jumping up and down and trying to get comfortable again.  She really likes the new place!  She gets up there even when I am not there at the computer.  (Sidenotes: my desk is usually this messy all the time….and my wall is not this light purple as it looks here. I didn’t take the time to adjust that.)  Enjoy.

The entries for the Phat Phebruary contest are due by midnight January 31st. The winner will win a session and an 8×10.  Get an image of  your sitting baby and send them in to me at info@shortstoriesphotography.com to have your chance at winning your own session.  Rolls, dimples, folds, we love them all!

Well, imagine my joy when I opened the door yesterday to see this beautiful set of brown eyes that belong to Mr. “J”.  He was smiley, handsome, sweet, and delightful.  You know, all the things that babies are but then some.  He felt right at home from the beginning.  I think that he will join his parents the next time they go “caving”.  He looked comfortable playing with the gear that mom brought.  He was also stylin’ in his little beret.  Oh, the cuteness!  Enjoy!

I have been battling a bad cold.  One that starts in your throat and works its way through you whole body, new symptoms every day, new locations, new ways to feel cruddy.  One night when I got up at 2 in the morning so that I could let the others in my household sleep while I had my coughing fits downstairs.  I was trying to sleep upright so that the coughing would stop.  Ugh….I got on the computer.   I stumbled across a blog, quite by chance.  It was not a photographer’s blog.  Well, she did have pictures there, but it is not what or who she is.  Turns out, she is quite well known and has been interviewed by the likes of, well,  Barbara Walters,  for instance.  I thought she looked familiar but could  not place her.  I don’t run in those circles of high society and world travel.  But all totally beside the point. Her blog was fascinating.  She is fascinating.  I read pages and pages of things that were as simple as finding a spider in her room, or  owning a dog that was a puppy of the dog that belonged to Sting,  to as fantastic as being involved in the royal wedding.  Life…not passing her by.

Light bulb moment for me.  I have been noticing the tiny little moments in my life these past few weeks.  I don’t know if it was due to the fact that I felt so bad that I allowed my mind to turn into a blank space, not thinking about business, or much of anything really, but it was happening.   I was paying attention to simple things around me, then my mind’s camera would take the shot, then I would think about what that shot meant to me and why.  Some things got complicated really fast. Others stayed really simple.  Those are the ones that I thought about the most.  The simple ones.

I am doing a challenge online to photograph a topic and how I interpret it.  No rules.  Nothing right or wrong.  Just you and how you think you can best represent that one word.  This first word was “Morning”.  There were other images that were cropping up in the challenge that were just gorgeous.  But I was seeing a pattern of certain subjects. I didn’t want to be a follower and do the same thing.  What did morning mean to me?  Think…think…think.  Then there it was…in the morning stupor after spending most of the night sitting up to breathe, there it was, without even thinking about it.  Every morning when I roll out of bed, the first thing I do is look out my bedroom window….to the garden area below.  It is in its winter glory…brown…gray…bare.  Well, there it is, but it is missing something.  It is not very colorful.  It does not really represent what I feel when I see it.   When I look  at it, I remember the sessions I had there, the times I would just go and sit there and enjoy the breeze, the weeding and working and sweating in there.  I see pink.  Beautiful, soft pink.  Pink is happy and makes me feel like the warmer weather is coming.  Pink is what I saw when I went to the grocery store and walked by the flower section.  There is what my garden is missing, and what my “morning” needs!  Beautiful pink tulips…Spring in a flower….happiness in a color.  One of the simple things in my life that was going unnoticed because I didn’t take the time to see it.

Here is this year’s specials and Limited Editions.  Some of my clients have been so looking forward to this list!  There are fairies to photograph and magic to believe, along with mommy and daddy and me specials.  I will add things now and then so stay tuned for more, checking out the blog and my Facebook page, which you can access from the bottom of my blog page.