More Senior Portraits!

Here are our "inland" portraits of Amanda. We decided to walk around our neighborhood to get a few pictures of her to finish up her Senior shoot. Once again we left the house later than we wanted to and I was actually surprised that the spring sun was SO different from my usual fall spots that I like to shoot. It was fun though because it made us adventure more than usual.

Into about ten minutes of the shoot Amanda started yawning and so I did too and then the cold wind started blowing. Then Steve called to tell me my other two daughters just spilled coffee on my white couches at home! That was all it took for Amanda and me to skidaddle on home! 

We like shooting but we do it together so often that we're totally happy to hit it fast and personally, I LOVE what we shot!

 This is my favorite image of the shoot. So Amanda

on every level.

PS The tattoo is a temp that she forgot to take off

so I actually made it look newer here but removed 

it on some of the other images. You know, like the

 ones for Grandmas and stuff.

 This is pretty classic of Amanda when she's in trouble...

Right?! How could anyone get mad at that face?

The rest of these are just me, watching her and 

just hanging out. 

 I like flare and Amanda likes flare so yeah we have

a lot of flare in these pictures. 

That's my middle girl who's getting ready to head out into the big wide world. She has some great plans to go to art school and to make some fabulous stuff with her hands and heart. She's strong and brave and wonderful! Happy Graduation Pandy Bear, I love you, sugar.

Senior Portraits

 My Middle Daughter is Graduating from High School this June. As it did with my oldest daughter, it brings up the event of Senior Portraits. This means going to the portrait studio the school has chosen and getting portraits taken. Both of my daughters have gone through this ritual and it's been fun to go with them. It not only brings back memories of doing it when I was 17 but I like to watch what other photographers do when they're shooting. 

My oldest daughter wore a "metal" band shirt for her senior portrait because she wanted it to reflect who she really was in the yearbook but we never had any intention of buying the images. When Amanda went we still didn't have any intentions of buying them but only choosing one for the yearbook. 

During the shoot Amanda was so uncomfortable and awkward I couldn't help but laugh. I was smiling at her and standing behind the photographer, way behind him jumping, waving my arms and making weird faces at her to try to get her to relax or maybe laugh naturally. I saw her make some smiles that I'd never seen her make before. It was really weird. 

How can you expect a 17 or 18 year old to relax and be themselves in a 10 minute studio photo shoot with a photographer they've never even seen? I knew we had a problem when I made a joke about her doing a "Napoleon Dynamite" pose and he looked at me and said, "Yes we do those all the time" (and not for laughs). At that point I just shut up.

As I looked around at the large portraits I thought about how much I don't appreciate formal studio portraits where they slick the kid's hair down and put a tie on them or wear clothes they would never be caught dead in. It's weird. I was talking to Amanda this morning about it and we thought maybe parents have those images of their children taken because they aren't photographers who get to have professional pictures of their children taken whenever they want to. Maybe this is their only chance to get their kid behind a camera so they put them behind a drum set or hand them a football or make them wear their cheerleading outfit. I'm not sure maybe parents don't know there are other options.

Here is Amanda's Senior portrait that she chose to have in the yearbook. There really is nothing wrong with the image. Personally I think she's beautiful and you just can't get a bad picture of her.

I have no idea who she is by looking at it. She seems like every other senior which is perfect for a yearbook.

When I think of senior portraits I think about catching a glimpse into her world right now and capturing it forever. I want her to look back and remember who she was and what she was like. I want to see if I can grab a piece of her essence and hold it in some images that we can look back on and remember what she was like, how she laughed, and what she loved. 

We talked about where to take pictures of Amanda and of course it had to be at the beach. She loves it, she goes there whenever she can and this summer her great uncle Leo loaned her a surf board so she could start surfing. She loves that board and she loves the ocean so it made sense to shoot there.

Of course the two of us together is ADD city and we left for the beach really too close to sunset and had about 15 minutes to shoot until it was dark. This is what happens when your Mom is the photographer, you get squeezed in when you can.

Shoot I:

 Leaving the parking lot with her board. It's really cute 

watching her carry that thing because it's twice as

big as her.

How can you not include the iPhone? Besides she is

a natural photographer and shoots everything. 

 Yeah, I KNOW this look...

 My daydreamer...

 This is one of my favorites 

I think tonight we're going to shoot some inland photos of Amanda to round out the shoot but I think we covered a lot in fifteen minutes and can't wait to hang out together to get more.

So Cal Wilderness

I realize a lot of photographers are not too hip on the global use of cell phone cameras but if you know anything about me you already know I'm all about taking pictures no matter what type of camera you use. Besides it the photographer, not the camera that takes the picture right? 

Anyway, My husband, baby girl and I went on a hike a couple of weekends ago and I took nothing with me but a cell phone in the pocket of my shorts. 

As we were hiking I decided to take some pictures of the landscape to share what it looks like were I live. One would be more likely to see pictures of the ocean or even vineyards when thinking about California terrain. As a girl who grew up in Southern California there is just something about the wilderness that brings my childhood back to me. I played in this area as a child. I played in places that are now shopping centers or covered with houses. I am happy to say that we still have a lot of wilderness where I live. I love the colors and the smells from the plants and dirt. They're so distinct they flood my mind and heart with childhood memories every time I go out into the wilderness. Nothing changes there. The dry sage smell today is the same as it was in 1975 when I was out exploring and the cactus looks the same as it did when I was using it to protect my forts from intruders. 

The start of this trail head starts about a block from our house. We can park on the street and literally walk off the sidewalk onto the trail head. My husband is a big fan of mountain biking in this area. Honestly, this is where I get a little freaked out. I'm afraid of mountain lions. Yes, they live here, and yes we've had attacks from runners to bikers to people's pets. It doesn't help that you can smell the cat urine in the hills and that Steve has seen big kitties on his bike rides. I guess this is the point where you have to decide that you'd rather hike than live in fear of something. I'm not a fan of fear so I suck it up and go anyway. Steve is very patient with my squirminess until I adjust. 

PS I call my husband Plan B because he always has a plan B for every situation. 

At times it seems a little weird but most of the time it makes me feel very safe just being around him. Notice I said I had nothing but a phone and from this picture you can see he has a bit more than that.

What it looks like up here in the foothills.

 Cactus is very popular up here.

 I love LOVE in nature!

 Wild gourds are everywhere! 

 Great trails everywhere!

They can be as easy or as difficult as

you'd like.

 The area is surrounded by private properties

which I love because it seems the wilderness

wont be lost.

I love all the old fencing and wooden posts.

 Wild Artichokes

 Wild something else... I loved this darling

thing but have no idea what it is. 

Now, these next two pictures make me think about standing there looking out over the valley. When I see this area I can't help but imagine this is what it must have looked like when the pioneers entered California. I can almost see covered wagons coming over the rolling foothills. They must have loved the mildness of California weather and terrain, at least after they got passed the Sierras. 


We were still getting a little coastal fogginess in the mornings that hadn't really burned off yet here. Seemed a bit hazy still.

Here Steve is showing Emma where our

house is. This would be the opposite side

of the ridge from the valley picture.

This is where we live, down there.

 Just over the hills in the distance is the

ocean.

There are so many different types of flowers and shrubs in this area. In the spring the hills are covered in yellow and purple flowers. I love living here and am so thankful I get to play in the same hills I did when I was a child, it's pretty cool.

 Besides Mountain lions and coyotes we have  some rattlesnakes and a couple of poisonous spiders. But other than that we don't really have many bad things we need to worry about out here. Even our tarantulas are harmless. It's such a great area for families to explore. One of our favorite activities to do out here is Geocaching. This is a GPS activity in which you can enter your location and be lead to planted treasure boxes in your area. While we were out on this day we found one and only signed the log. When we looked for our second cache we found this tree. We never found the cache but felt like I found this treasure instead.