Are you on Facebook? Glimpses of Soul is! You can become a fan of the page, leave a review if you’ve got one or just leave some comments. I like fans.

And lest this be another post without a photo, here’s a quick shot of some referral cards I sent out recently. All my customers get these, full of cute photos from their session, to share with friends and family. If you give someone else a card and they book a session, both of you get rewards. It’s good times for everyone!

Okay, I’ve got the newborn baby fever now and I’m ready to photograph some more newborns! So for the remainder of March, I’m offering $25 off my usual session fee ($125) for babies two weeks and under. Expecting? Send in a deposit for your future newborn session by the end of March and snag that discount for later! Gift certificates available, too (and they make a fun shower gift!).

Contact me for more info or to set up a photo session for your wee one.

At thirteen days old, Gavin was the youngest baby I have photographed. He was so cute and tiny…and not sleepy! He just wanted to eat and eat and eat and poop. His mom was looking for photos for a birth announcement - think this is what she had in mind?

Probably not.

What is this lady doing to me?!

So we did some family portraits. I thought maybe I could trick him into sleeping while being snuggled between Mom and Dad while I snuck in some shots. Nope - but look at his adorable face in this shot!

But I warned Gavin that I could outlast him. One of the benefits to working with me is that there’s never any rush. So Mom fed and fed and fed and Mom and Dad took turns bouncing and burping and changing and finally he couldn’t resist anymore and Mom was able to rock him to sleep.

So we snuck him back into the studio.

By that point, I was even able to unwrap his blanket and take off his onesie and diaper. Finally some shots of those cute little naked baby parts!

I didn’t really want to let Gavin go home but Mom and Dad kind of wanted him back and I figured I’d better just stick to photo sessions rather than waking up every 2 or 3 hours all night long. But I’m so ready to photograph some more little ones!

Last summer, I started working with Family & Children’s Service, a local non-profit organization. I attended several of their summer kids programs to photograph them and then they used the photographs for various promotional materials.

Last fall, an artist named Katie Thompson began working with them to design a mural that runs the length of the 55 foot hallway in their Lake Street office. She came up with the design and sketched it on the wall so that volunteers could help paint it. One hundred and twenty volunteers, the youngest being four years old, worked on it and it took them over 400 hours. The most exciting part for me, though, is that the mural is based on the photos that I took over the summer. When I attended one of the volunteer days in the fall to photograph the mural in progress, I could immediately recognize some of the faces and yesterday when I attended the dedication of the finished product, I could recognize a few more. What a fun way to see bits and pieces of your own work!

The final work looks amazing! I have absolutely no ability to draw or paint so Katie’s talent boggles my mind. During the dedication speech, President and CEO Molly Greenman said that they used to feel that if you didn’t come into the building depressed, you’d leave depressed for sure because of the long, dreary hallway. Not anymore!

If you’re looking for a way to get involved in the Twin Cities area, check out Family and Children’s Service. They are looking for help in a variety of areas and they are very good to their volunteers.

I spent four sunny days in Orlando this past week. It was kind of a last minute trip but March is the perfect time to escape Minnesota. I actually went back to the same area I’d visited in January which provided me with two excellent opportunities:

1. I got to have lunch with the super fabulous Amy Smith who I met when I was there in January. She was nice enough to drive down for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and let me pepper her with questions about her business which she happily answered. That totally made my trip. If you’re in the Orlando area and need a photographer, check her out!

2.

I got to eat at Urban Flats again! I had lunch catered by them twice in January and was lamenting the fact that I wouldn’t be able to eat there again when I left. But I could! So once again, I had the roasted turkey, pear and brie flat with honey mustard sauce. If there’s one near you (they’re not very widespread yet), you should eat there. For real.

A few more photos from the trip…

And what was waiting at home….sigh.

Sometimes when I’m on vacation, I don’t like to drag my whole bag of equipment around so all of these photos were taken with a Canon Powershot SD700IS. Handy little camera that easily fits in my pocket. It doesn’t have many manual controls which I do miss every now and then but for something simple, it’s pretty nice.

Now I am off to answer emails and work on photos! Some exciting stuff coming in the next few weeks so check back soon!

Several years ago, at my Uncle’s urging, I started attending the Western Wisconsin Photo Club. At that point, I was shooting with a Canon Powershot G3 (a point and shoot), couldn’t have told you what f-stop or shutterspeed meant and wasn’t really interested in other people telling me what was wrong with my photos. Besides, I had access to that online. But I started attending meetings and began to see the value in actually being able to talk in person with other photographers and not only have my work critiqued but to critique the work of others as well.

But in addition to that, the club was a portal to discovering what an incredible number of active photographers there are in the Twin Cities area. A lot of people aren’t aware of just how big the photography network is in this area and just how many events and activities are occurring all the time. So I’d like to start profiling the photography opportunities and resources that are available in the Twin Cities metro area and surrounding. I’ll keep it to once a week or less though because I know not all my readers are local.

Since I started with a camera club, that’s where we’ll start here, too. There are 15 camera clubs in the area! There are so many folks who tell me that they wish they had A camera club in their area. Fifteen is an astounding number. There’s even a governing council, the Twin Cities Area Council of Camera Clubs (TCACCC). Their website has a list of all the member clubs. The clubs come in all varieties, some are print only; many are print, slide and digital; some are topic specific; some are only for women – check out the list and see which ones meet close to you and then drop in for a meeting.

In addition, the TCACCC hosts the annual Spring Break Seminar (pdf) which is a two-day event with workshops, guest speakers, vendors, animals and other assorted goodies. This year’s event is March 29-30. If you’re lucky, you might get to see something like this.

And an upcoming event:

Photoshop CS3 Creativity Tour with Bert Monroy – Friday March 14 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Class Schedule Includes: Layers and Channels: What it is All About; Pen and Brush Techniques: Making it Real; Compositing and Retouching: Making it Look Good; Special Effects: Your Creativity Unleashed; Filters: The Final Touch. $99 ($79 for NAPP members). More info…

I’m looking forward to this segment of the blog and hope you find it useful!