There’s a reason I love to be around and photograph kids. They’re unbridled. Someone asked me yesterday about my favorite fall memory so far for 2009, and this moment from the October 12 mini-session came to mind. I was showing the girls how I wanted them to lay in the leaves for a photo, and then they spontaneously DOGPILED me. It was hilarious. (Many thanks to my assistant Amanda for taking my camera and grabbing a few frames of the action.)

My favorite stylist Tricia just moved from Boston out to Portland and I wanted to make sure we updated her headshots on the way out.

Isn’t she adorable? I love doing lighthearted portrait sessions with such interesting and lovely results… we were shooting at a hotel location and almost got kicked out.

[ Want to see more from her collection? ]

When we were in California for our April wedding, we took an afternoon to hang out at the Getty Villa in Malibu. Here are a few photos:

The past month we have been traveling nonstop – every weekend a new location and a new event! I’ve done weddings in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and California recently. This weekend we’re headed out to Chicago to be guests at a wedding and then we’re off to eastern Europe!

I’ll be back in the office on Monday and Tuesday (July 27 and 28) doing minimal administrative work and finishing the proofing of recent portrait sessions while packing for Europe, then from Wednesday, July 29 through Friday, August 7 I will be offline and having adventures abroad in Bulgaria. Any print orders placed during this time will have an inadvertent extra 7 day delay in fulfillment.

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Now for the really fun part…. a contest! I really enjoyed the “love shoot” promo from February over on the wedding site,  so I wanted to open up another contest for a new england couple.

casting call – calling all adult couples…. { DETAILS HERE!!! }

Sometimes I enjoy taking a step back from technology and kicking it old school with film and a toy camera that does the basics. Success with this type of venture requires an eye for composition, lots of light, and a good deal of luck. Here are a few images from a roll of film that sat on my camera from some travel in January 2009 through a recent wedding in June 2009. I’m still learning how to use this medium to its fullest.

See some holga images from the wedding here.

Ice cream with an almost-3-year-old at Toscanini’s in Cambridge.

I’ve always loved saguaro cactus (pronounced “suh-war-o”). They’re found only in the Sonoran Desert (s Arizona, se California, nw Mexico). According to the WHEREguestbook:

“The iconic plant starts out slowly, growing a mere inch or two in its first eight years, but eventually leaps skyward and, between 50 and 70 years, starts sprouting ‘arms’ — the things that look like they’re waving or saluting passerby.”

Cool, huh?

(x-posted at mergeweddings and decenturbanlifestyle)

Monday afternoon was delightful. Perfect weather (sunny and 73 all day long) and a tea party in the park with my eight year old friend M.

It’s inspiring to watch her explore and create.

On our recent trip to Los Angeles to photograph a Persian wedding celebration, we were also celebrating my 30th birthday. We decided to spend the afternoon at the Getty Villa near Malibu, a site that is v. different from the Getty Museum in LA (free with reservation; $10 parking). The Villa is Getty’s old estate, and the original house to his vast collection. The dude built the grounds to recreate Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, an ancient Roman town. The Greek and Roman artifacts and reproductions Getty collected make a stunning display, and I think we had more fun walking around the grounds with the fountains and lawns and sculpture parks than touring the inside. I have a thing for that architecture.

I usually assign myself a photographic project when I visit a museum that allows photography; the last time I visited Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts I took a picture of the ceiling in every room.  For the Villa, I was noticing the trend to use white marble within a darker piece to give the eyes a more “realistic” setting, which ends up just looking a little creepy. So, my personal amusement on this afternoon was to only photograph creepy things.  Here are my favorites.