Either way, it was a fantastic day. I am finally getting caught up on old orders, loving the new families that are coming to me for photos, enjoying the sun, and my neighbors are having a pig roast. Yes, we ARE vegetarians. So all day the kids were hanging over the porch trying to understand what that whole, almost alive pig was doing spinning on a rod. Wilber? Charlotte’s Web? Yes, very confusing. If only this pig had a spider to weave amazing words for him…but, no. So the kids get a lessen in eating meat. They are not made to be vegetarian, that is just what we are. Elijah will eat meat every once in awhile, meaning, when grandma comes into town he can not resist chicken nuggets from Mc Donalds. My kids didn’t know what a chicken nugget was, and they did not know who Mikey Mouse was, either, and my sister one year threw a fit. Denying them the basic American rights is wrong, I know. But, I think they are not going to eat meat for awhile after seeing poor Wilber, who they so lovingly named him, turning round and round in the fire all day.

So, we’ll see. Maybe I will actually go to a party tonight. Its next door, why not? Doubtful though. My nights look like me falling asleep at 8pm with my little ones lately.

I AM feeling better though. Every day, more strength, more motivation, but still very little eating. I figured out that the quality of my day is directly proportional to how much I eat. So I have been living on Muscle Milks and Ensures.

Ok, lots more to come. I am blogging every day! Yay! I have finally come back around. Feel free to call or email to schedule a family photo session. Boulder is starting to full bloom and I LIVE for this time of year. Lots of beautiful photos, fun families, and doing what I love, which is being outside near the mountains, taking photos of sweet babies:)

xoxo

stacey 720-310-0336 boulderbabyphotography@gmail.com
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Stacey
{Blog} http://boulderbabyphotography.com/blog
{Site} http://boulderbabyphotography.com
{Flickr} http://www.flickr.com/photos/staceypotter

So I am glad I found these, because he was such a happy little guy at this session. I got about 200 photos of him just laughing and smiling-he was in that great of a mood. Here are a just a few of my favorite photos.

Today was a good day overall. I am feeling really healthy and good today, though my doctors are still messing with my meds so who knows? I saw my beautiful friend’s baby Indira today and SO wanted to take photos of her, but realized I left my camera in Boulder. If I could have a session every night, I would be a happy photographer. If my office manager could come back from vacation (only two more days!) then I could actually shoot every day and not go crazy. During the holiday, I actually do end up shooting seven days a week some weeks. Sometimes 10 or 12 a week, it is that crazy in Boulder. So, I just have to be totally healthy by then, and hire a live in maid and nanny and I will be all set.

Hmmmm, what good news to share today? I guess my best news is when I have something to talk about that gives me fire in my belly, and I didn’t have that today. So I would say the happiest part of my day was cooing and loving my best friend’s 8 week old baby. Yeah, babies are good news.

xoxo stacey

So I am feeling MUCH better. Healthy and good and way too thin but that is not the worst problem to have. I tell myself I look like a gorgeous model and that makes me feel better about it.  It is nice in a way, because my illness makes me not want to eat. At all. I have no appetite. It just isn’t there and when I eat I have to make myself, which is not often. So I do a lot of protein smoothies and Green Machines. And the only food I actually like eating right now is oatmeal and yogurt, and that is good for my tummy, so I have that going for me. Seriously, am I a Zen master at always looking at the positive of everything or what? I heard a quote recently by Wayne Dyer:

“Loving people live in a loving world.

Hostile people live in a hostile world.

Same world.”

That’s my motto for the moment.  Choosing the world that I live in. It is a great feeling.

Ok, so I have done a few shoots with this family and it is always fun to break it down with links so you guys can see the photos from all their previous family sessions (and one commercial photography shoot).

1 year of Elodie

Commercial Photography shoot (Holly was totally pregnant for these and you can’t even tell! I gained 55lbs with Amelia)

Maternity Photos (I love these, some of my very favorite pregnancy photos in my portfolio)

Incredibly stunning Elodie (this is from this past family photo shoot-I love the wind blowing back her hair like we staged it with a fan, yet we did not. I am totally serious. No fan.)

Gabriel and Daddy loving each other and having fun (also from this last family session-just a series of the same exact photo yet each photo tells its own unique story about the two of them)

I thought there were more blog posts but it is too late to look for them. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to bed now, at 10:30pm, what do you think of that?

Ok, lots of fun photography family shoots coming up! But the thing I am MOST excited about is a birth I am photographing at the end of the month. Birth photography is such a passion of mine, and I really wish more people valued it. I give a super duper discount for photographing births just because I love it so much. I am also a doula, which I think helps me capture the raw emotion of it all, you know? You should see my birth photos of Amelia by photographer Kim Rodgers, they are stunning.

Maybe more tomorrow, we shall see.

xoxo stacey

Anyways, feeling TONS better now that the weather is sooo nice and that stomach bug I had went away and I have a million beautiful photos to sort through and edit and present to my photography clients. I just love it when they see their photos for the first time and sometimes they call me crying because they love them so much. That is on the top ten list of why I love my job.

There are a TON of gorgeous photos from this maternity/family portrait session, and I WILL post more photos (I always promise that, don’t I?). But really, there is this amazing set of photos with the little girl and her big dog in the mountains.I can’t wait to post those.

But I wanted to put up these photos now because they really exemplify what it is like to have a second baby. You get a moment of peace and then you have a little creature crawling all over you.

Don’t get me wrong, it is perfect-wonderful-magical-amazing to have two children, but that moment of peace you see there in the first photo-that really is all it is-a moment. The love from them makes up for it all, though.

Okay, go out and enjoy the 80 degree Boulder weather this weekend-I heard it is supposed to get down to the 60′s even on Monday in Boulder. I can’t wait! More soon, I won’t let so much time pass between photo posts this time.

xoxo stacey

Ah-but when I move back in to my treehouse I will have air-they are just window units since we have radiant heat in the floors for the winter (which means no forced air ducts push out the central air). But that will be MUCH better than the two fans and the dripping, cold, wet wash cloth on my forehead right now.

This is Gabriel, Elodie’s (from yesterday), little brother. I have been photographing this family from the start, and then they moved away, tried other photographers, and were never happy, so they made sure to book a session with me when they were in town this summer for just a few days.I love them-they are always so good and kind and wonderful to me and I am honored that they want ME as their photographer.

When I post more of their session (and I will because it was so perfect and fun!), I will link to all the sessions back to when Elodie was just turning 1 and learning to walk. I have said it before-one of the greatest gifts of this job is seeing the little ones grow up-to see what their personality is as a newborn and then just knowing how they will be as a 6 month old, 1 year old, 2 year old, etc… After photographing so many babies, I now just know what their temperament will be from the moment I meet them. Yeah, I am awesome. I have a super hero power. So, if you are interested in what your baby will be like in a few years, book a newborn portrait session with me. I will tell you. It is included in the session fee. Future reading. That is how good I am.

Anyways, I am working on getting healthy today, not promising anything to anyone bc that truly does get me into trouble and stresses me out. Instead, I cleaned my office to make my mind clear (it really does work), and I am just going to do one. thing. at. a. time. (I have that quote next to my computer. I might put it on the subway art I mentioned I was learning how to create yesterday. It would be perfect, and I need to remember it so many times throughout the day. One thing at a time. SO simple!

I just wanted to post these four photos together because they really show the joy and love and connection between this sweet baby and his father. These are the moments that I love to capture, and I usually get a little series like this so that it can tell a story.

That’s all for now. Might go to the hospital tonight. If I do, I will let you know, unless I am really sick, in which case I will just stop blogging and you will know.  And, if someone wants to come visit I would welcome you.

xoxo stacey

This is my photographer-mommy-friend in Boulder and her family is the. cutest. ever. And I am so happy they had another baby because she, too, is the sweetest little thing! I did their family photos last year at Wonderland Lake in north Boulder, and they were a gorgeous family then, but now that they have baby M they are complete (or are you going to have more???!).  I love it when my friends have babies because I NEED to have babies around me at all times if I do not have one of my own. If I have one of my own, then forget it, I can only handle that one at a time. I am thinking mostly about my last baby, who was a bit, ahem, colicky, and somewhat challenging, but we made it! We lived through it to the other side and now she is the most outrageous, adorable, little firecracker there is.

So for this family shoot we went to Chataqua, which I have been photographing a lot at lately because it has just been so beautiful with the flowers, the flatirons, that dreamy wonderland-ness of it when the sun is setting. I think it was a great fit for this family, too. The only problem when you start to add more babies to a family is that it IS a little harder to get that family photo where everyone is smiling, eyes open, and looking at the camera at the same time. I personally don’t care too much about that, but I know it is always nice to have at least ONE photo like that.

I am thinking of some family photos we had when I was little that I would come across every now and then and really study. We were library family of the year three years in a row (i know, we rocked), and so they took a family portrait for the newspaper. My parents always bought a few copies and clipped them and that is what I would be looking at. And this photographer MUST have been good at getting people to sit posed, composed, and looking at the camera, because in each year’s photo we were stiff and all 7 of us (yes, I had a huge family) were looking at the camera. We were not happy or anything. It did not show who were really were. It was a good rendition of what we looked like at that moment of time, but it didn’t really tell a story about our love of reading books or anything.

My point is, when you book a session with me I chat with you on the phone to really find out who you guys are-as a family and as individuals. I want THAT to come out in the photo. There are many, many, many photographers out there that can take a good photo of what your family looks like right now, but only a few that can show the connection, love, and uniqueness of who you guys are. I would like to think that I am one of those photographers.

xoxo stacey

The owner’s son is the model here. He does not have kids. I am not sure how many babies he has actually held, but I think I did a good job in getting them to connect. The mom in the photos in a natural. She has four boys of her own (and one on the way!), so she was able to really love on Drew, who is my photography intern’s son.

But-”daddy” did have a really big tattoo all up and down his arm. I had to send them to my amazing, fantastic editor, Heather, over at Dark Room Diva, to work on getting the tattoo removed. If only it were that simple in real life (I don’t have one, but I had a boyfriend once that had a horrendous one and had to have it removed and it was no fun).

Anyways, these teethers are amazing! Just so, so perfect for little hands and little mouths. The silicone (no worries about latex allergies) part is nice but the metal part is so soothing. Check them out at Toofeze.com. Plus they are local, and you gotta shop local, right?

I really do just love everything about product photography, and do workshops where I teach other photographers about how to do lifestyle product photography specifically for babies, children,and maternity products. I just have to figure out how to do that full time, and I will be set. I am happy, too, with all the free products I receive as a result of the photography. It means I need to have another baby to really put to good use the things I receive. So, as of now, it is looking like it might be awhile before I have another baby, but I am still young, right? 32 is youngish, especially since I have already had two easy peasy pregnancies and births. My sister had her last baby when she was 40, so I have some time.

That’s all for now. I will probably post more later:)

xoxo stacey

But, you have to know how to do photojournalistic photography well. And this, I do NOT know as well as I know how to be a portrait photographer. Yes, I can get a beautiful portrait of your little one standing in a field with the gorgeous Boulder foothills behind her, but I have not yet mastered photographing inside and doing it in a really artful, creative, fun way, you know?

Those “day in a life” sessions are so, so special. I KNOW people choose me as their photographer because I capture the connection a family has together, and I capture a child or baby’s true personality (all the quirky expressions and such). So, it would be AMAZING if I could come to your home, and photograph you doing what you always do.Capturing the every-day way you connect and the laughter over spilled blueberries.

One thing I know for sure is that I need a few new lenses. I am not just saying that. In my photography circles, it is a joke when someone blames some kind of failure on the type of lenses they have, but really, I think that is a good starting point. My good friend is also a nikon user so I am going to see if I can borrow her good zoom lens (pretty please kim?) for a few days and practice.

If YOU want a day in the life session, I will price it like a family photo session and discount it by 50%. This is outrageous, bc I am not going to spend an hour or two with you and your family, but an entire day. And you will get A LOT more photos.  So, the first person to email me at boulderbabyphotography.com gets this extra special deal. I am so excited! It will be so cool to just hang out with a family all day, photographing them just being them. And capturing the connection and true interactions they have when just being themselves, versus how they are when they know this moment is going to be turned into a portrait. Don’t get me wrong-I DO get the kinds of portraits where families are connecting and, for that brief moment where i have my intern hit me on the head with my flip flop, I do capture true happiness and joy and laughter. But a day in the life is extra special.

If you are a photographer reading my blog right now and do these kinds of sessions, please contact me, I would love to do one of my own family! I know that I can capture them doing what they do, but I am honestly such an important part of their lives, so I need to be in the photos.

It would be the most beautiful album, something I would want to do every year.

So, I am  moving into my new/old house August 1st. I am going to deck it OUT and make it a wonderland for kids. If you have not seen my pinterest page yet, take a look (I love sharing it with others, it is so much fun).

When the house is all ready and beautiful and cluttered and messy as it is in real life, I will have a photographer come to MY house and do a day in the life session.

For now, here are just a few photos I took the other day of my kids, starting in the car (at a stoplight!) after picking up Amelia from preschool, to right before bed where they are playing in the sand at the park in their jammies. My intention was not to do a day in the life type thing, I was taking photos like I always do of them, but they are fitting photos for today’s blog post.

On an even happier note I did the most beautiful session with a really cute 5 year old today. Sunday I get to photograph some old clients who moved out of town and scheduled me in for the few days they would be visiting Boulder. I can’t wait.

xoxo stacey

ps.  Check out the photo of Elijah in the tree. See Simba up there with them? He has grown into this humongous cat somehow in less than a year of life. Check him out here in a photo shoot that I brought him along with as a “prop” bc he was such a darn cute kitten.

Well, I am making a little progress on “The List.” I feel so discouraged because there is so much to do and so little time to actually do it. I often just sit and ponder about where my day has gone. It just goes.

My happiest moments are still with my little ones, though. I get discouraged but all I have to do is think of them and I MAKE myself have a positive attitude about it all. I just have to. For them. No matter how hard it gets, they are these amazing, beautiful creatures that I get to be around, and I am so fortunate and absurdly lucky to have them that I owe it to them and to the world to keep on going and do it with a smile on my face. It is truly all about how you look at things. I know that is easy to say. I know that, bc it is NOT easy to do right now, and I AM doing it and just have to state it out loud, bc talking about it makes me have to do it.

Anyways, four shoots coming up in the next few days so lots of new photos to post and of course, more things to put on “The List,” but at least they are things I love.

xoxo stacey

ps. 3 months is really the hardest age to photograph a baby-they are at that stage where they don’t quite smile much and can’t sit up on their own or lift their heads very well, so I was amazed that I got a photo of the twins both smiling at the same time. Pure wonder.

I spent the morning with my lovely children, just playing outside and sewing (yes! I am actually sewing again, it is part of the movement to find again the “old” stacey). Then their papa took them to the sidewalk chalk festival in Denver, which looks pretty cool (I am SO all about sidewalk chalking-it is something we do on a daily basis here at the potter house)-I am bummed to miss it but made a commitment to buckle down on old work and am going to stick to it.

So, I have marked off 2 1/2 things off my list. I only have about 200 more to go. I will keep you updated. Enjoy this gorgeous Boulder day! Ok, here I am. Off to work on “the list”.

xoxo stacey

ps. I WILL do a real blog post on this family sometime soon (how sweet are they?!), I am only going to be able to post one photo at a time for awhile while I work on “the list” bc it takes too long to put together my normal blog collage.

pps. You may actually see an influx of photos on the blog over the next few weeks-it IS something I do to distract myself from real work.