Alyssa's Senior Photos

I had the opportunity yesterday to take Alyssa's senior photos. I've been friends with Alyssa's whole family for about as long as I can remember so it was great to spend part of the day with her and her mom yesterday. This was my very first shot at a senior portrait session and I think it turned out pretty well!

Lesson learned from this shoot: if you're taking pictures on a really windy day, find a location that's well-guarded by lots of trees!

Desktop Still Life

Every once in a while something that I'd generally consider ordinary catches my eye and seems for a moment to encapsulate some form of simple beauty. A groundhog making a visit above ground to look for food, the long shadows of chair legs cast by the setting sun through a window, drops of water falling from a showerhead... I don't know if these little moments of visual serenity happen to other people or not, but I love it when they happen to me. I think they help ground me, reminding me that there is beauty even in the midst of the busyness of daily life. This happened last night as I was working on a wedding video. My desk was a bit cluttered and nothing had been placed anywhere for an aesthetic purpose, but warmed by light of my desk lamp, this scene of my work space struck me as a picture of peace, in the midst of my long-work-hour day. Generally, it seems to me that if you try to take a picture of these moments, you can never do them justice, because for some reason, a camera lens just doesn't let you "feel" a scene the way your eyes can. But I tried to capture this one anyway.

Spring is Here!

We are so blessed to have a backyard. It's so amazing to be able to walk outside and have a little square of nature to enjoy on a nice sunny day. Since our new house was vacant for the last couple years, the lawn is a wild mixture of grass, dandelions, little purple weeds, thistles, mushrooms, violets, and a whole lot of rabbits. The funny thing is, I actually enjoy the wildness of our backyard. It feels real.

Avery's latest trick is being able to stand all by herself. She gets so proud of herself and she gets so excited about taking it to the next level by trying to walk. Meanwhile, she still hasn't really crawled, and doesn't really care to.

The New Office!

Our house has been on ongoing project since we moved into it and will probably continue to be for many months (or years) to come. The latest big project was the office. Since the wedding season begins for me this weekend, it was pretty crucial for us to get our work space set up asap. When we first saw the house, this room had padding and tack boards laid down for carpet...apparently a renovation that never got completed. In order to move into the house, we were required to install carpet. Then, since this was the only room that had a finished floor, ALL of our stuff got moved into this space. I wish I had an in-between picture to show this stage of chaos, but you'll have to do without :) After carpeting the rest of the house, we finally cleared this room out, installed shades, ripped out the carpet, installed new flooring, and put our new desks together. Now we have an office!

Before:

After:

Website Evolution

We recently updated the Primavera Studios website and as I was putting the finishing touches on the new site, I thought it would be fun to look back at the history of how our website has evolved. It's amazing how as your skills and creativity evolve, you look back at your old work and cringe at the lack of the quality which you have come to expect from yourself. It takes a little humility to show the image you presented of yourself (or your work) in the past, but it's also fun to see how much you've grown. Check out these screenshots of our website's evolution:

Website #1 - The original! I threw this design together after having only done a couple weddings. Can you believe the images were taken from standard resolution video footage? This design was quickly replaced by the next one.

Website #2 - Progress...?

Website #3 - The final version of the Altair Productions site, and the first design I was truly happy with, featuring a 16x9 dimension ratio to subliminally simulate the feel of film...or something like that.

Website #4 - Kelsey and I joined forces and launched Primavera Studios. Together we designed 5 or 6 different designs in Photoshop and from those, we liked this one the best.

Website #5 - Our current site and first to be completely Flash-based! We decided we needed a makeover, including a logo that wasn't so ridiculously busy. And if you haven't noticed by now, we apparently enjoy using Kelsey's sister in our website images...

Cousins

I like this picture and thought it would be a good one to share. This, I believe, is the first picture taken of all these cousins together. On St. Patrick's Day, Avery and all her cousins were together in Monroe. Even though Easter was almost a month away, cousin Rilian had his heart set on having an Easter egg hunt, which they did, as evidenced by the basket in the picture.

Naked Baby!

Today was officially naked baby day. It all started late last night when we suddenly realized we were completely out of diapers. But I'll let Kelsey tell you the rest of THAT story! Later on this evening, I decided it was time for the naked baby photo shoot that I've been wanting to do before Avery gets too big!

The milestones keep coming for this cute little girl. Yesterday Kelsey made Avery laugh for the first time. It was a quick awkward laugh, but a laugh nonetheless! And today, she said her first Spanish word! Sometimes when I talk to her, she watches my mouth and repeats what I say and today she said "hola"! Only 2 months old and little Ave is already well on the road to becoming bilingual...

I don't know if she was enjoying being a model or being naked, but whichever it was, she wasn't happy after the photo shoot was done!

The Girls

Last weekend, Lauren came up to visit us, in part so she could watch Avery while Kelsey and I shot a wedding together. During her visit, we enjoyed a quick little photo shoot!

This was Avery's second "official" photo shoot. The brisk fall air made it a bit harder for her to cooperate for this one!

Kelsey and I call this face Avery's "old man face". It appears often in two situations: when she's upset and when she's...pushing. This particular time, it was the former!

Thanks again, Lauren, for helping us out! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Avery Speaks!

At some point, I plan to take all my footage of Avery and make a really cool video out of it. That might be a little while in coming, so for now, here's a quick little sneak peek! Recently, Avery has been smiling and "talking" quite a bit, which has made her one very fun baby! Here's a little excerpt from our footage:

Avery Abelle

After nearly 41 weeks of growing in preparation for the world, Avery was ready. On September 9th, Kelsey and I walked to Subway for dinner and then came back and played some Wii. About this time, the contractions started, but we didn't think too much of it, because it was about the gazillionth time Kelsey had experienced contractions. Three hours later, we started taking it a bit more seriously. We left for the hospital around 2:30am, and after Kelsey's epidural, we actually got a short bit of sleep. Around 9:15, Kelsey started pushing and at 9:44am Avery arrived! These first 4 pictures were taken during her first 5 minutes.

Check out that beautiful new mom! After delivery, we all stayed in the hospital for 2 more nights. We enjoyed some postpartum Papa John's delivered right to our room, Kelsey drank about 2 gallons of water per day, and Kevin was so tired that he slept soundly on his pull-out couch. Kelsey was just as tired, but she was more attuned to Avery's cries, so I'm not so sure she slept as well...

Avery is a very energetic girl. She is also very strong and stubborn. She is almost always wriggling around, flailing her limbs in every direction. From Day 1, she was able to hold her head up without any support. She likes to fight sleep, she loves being held, she loves her books, and she loves music - she gets mad when we take either of the latter two away.

Happy baby, angry baby, sleepy baby - Avery rotates quickly between the three personas, and often in that order. Hungry baby also shows up often, scattered among the three!

Avery was about 2 weeks old when we brought her along to Afton Apple Orchard. She liked picking raspberries a lot more than picking apples - probably because the breeze made it feel much cooler around the raspberries.

Our beautiful little girl.