Here’s my entry for the I Heart Faces weekly challenge: By the Book. This is the first photo I thought of–my now 6-year-old baby when he was only a tiny toddler. What I wouldn’t give to go back to this moment in time! Sitting in his room, stripped down right before a bath (not sure why his socks are still on!), watching him read a book with the sunlight streaming through the window. Why do kids have to grow up??

Be sure to check out the other entries HERE!

December 1, 2011 was a CRAZY day. We woke up at 4:00am to wind that was so bad we literally thought every window in our house was going to shatter. By the time it was all over at about noon, the damage was MAJOR. Houses all around us had lost siding, fences, trampolines and lots more. Trees that had been around for hundreds of years were toppled, along with many semis up and down the freeway.

Crazy, right? We actually faired pretty well. We lost a few sections of our fence, and our patio table was damaged. But inside our house the big south wall in our family room was literally swaying as the wind blew. To say it was scary is an understatement. It was TERRIFYING! It did hold up, but not without some damage. The drywall screws near the ceiling came right through the drywall, and other screws all over the wall were bulging.

So we clearly had some repairs ahead of us. (I say “us” but really I mean Matt.) He spent a couple days patching, fixing, filling holes and sanding.

While he was doing that, I was picking out paint colors, sewing curtains and making some wall art.

(I used a heart punch and cut shapes out of an old book I had–Moby Dick or something, I think–not that it matters.)

And…after lots of work, the room finally came together last night…

So can I just say…I. LOVE. IT. I woke up this morning and walked out into the family room, and it just put a huge smile on my face. I love that we put hard work into it and it paid off.

Now maybe I’ll invite everyone over for a party!

I hope these next few photos are a bit inspiring to you…because they were for me! I love it when I can be inspired by my own photos–and not because there’s anything spectacular about them (or the photographer!), but because I LOVE how these photos document a simple morning in the life of a 20-month-old little girl. How fun for her mom to have these pictures that simply show their morning routine, and show who she really is and what she was like at this age!

I can’t wait to do something like this with my own kids (and should have done it long ago). This is why they call it LIFESTYLE photography–just documenting the simpleness of everyday life. Something that I PROMISE you’ll look back on over and over again (and so will your kids)!

Every morning she sits on the couch, lining up her Elmos and other stuffed friends to watch a little TV before getting ready for the day. Love it.

Next it’s upstairs to get dressed!

Putting together a puzzle:

Playing with toys:

A shot from the crib (which wasn’t her favorite!):

Mom soothing a hurt finger (LOVE this one):

Showing the dog some love:

Trying on silly hats…

…and dancing around:

Riding the pony:

Then relaxing a bit in the chair:

Reading a story:

And ending up in her play castle:

Seriously, have you ever seen anything so cute? Thanks again, Amy. I love your little family!

I can’t even tell you how much I love this little kid. My little niece. Oh my gosh, I could eat her up. She did not stop smiling once during this session. You’ve seriously never met a happier little girl. Of course she gets her good looks from her favorite aunt.

I’m so grateful to Persnickety Prints for providing this information on where and how to print photos! For all of you that frequent the Costco/Walmart/Walgreens photo lab, this is a MUST read! Also, if you’re a professional photographer (or a future one!), this is imperative to know and be able to tell your clients! A special thanks to Devin Peirce, Lab Manager at Persnickety, for writing this up for me!

Photo Finishing in the 21st Century

Not long ago you would buy a roll of film at your local drug store, load it into your 35mm camera, and shoot sparingly. Return the exposed roll to the same drug store, and wait for prints.

The photo finishing industry has changed dramatically just in the last decade. Today, we can snap a photo and view images instantly.

Easy doesn’t always mean better. Film was film, you got what you got. But in this new digital era there are so many different options that can really impact the overall quality of your images. RGB or CMYK? 8 bit or 16 bit, or more? JPG or TIFF? RGB, sRGB, Adobe 1998 RGB, or ProPhoto? DPI or PPI?… and if so, 72, 150 or 300? CS5 or Elements? iso, megapixels, aperture, shutter speed, Nikon vs. Canon?….. you get the point, right?

What’s next? Do the images stay on the memory card? Do you save them to your hard drive only to be viewed as a screensaver? What happens when your hard drive crashes? With advancing technology, what will you do when memory cards are obsolete?

Solution: Print.

1. Printing at home with an inkjet printer. How is that working out for you? Is it archival? When was the last time you actually printed a good number of prints on that printer? Why don’t you do it any more? Because that special paper is so expensive… and what’s that?… You’re out of ink again? Only to find that they don’t sell the ink cartridge you need any more. And what happens if your lovable child spills liquid on that print? Is it waterproof? Will it last hundreds of years?

2. Photographic Printing. Unlike an inkjet print where the ink sits susceptible, on top of the paper, waiting to be scratched or spilled upon, a traditional photo print is exposed by light and processed in photo chemicals just like in an old fashioned dark room.

Premium Printing: Persnickety Prints.

Photographic Printing (see above).

• Your images are loaded into our advanced imaging software, which automatically reads your embedded color profile.

• Prejudging/Optimizing. We look at every single image to determine if it needs to be lightened, darkened, color enhanced or slight contrast added. Other “labs” typically run the images in auto mode.

• Then, the magic happens with an amazing machine manufactured by Noritsu. • Silver halide photo paper (not the photo paper in the electronics department at your local Wal-mart) is advanced from a light-tight container, trimmed to the size your printing, and proceeds past the laser exposure unit where paper is exposed with a latent image. The laser light source literally engraves the image into the emulsion on the paper.

The photographic developer (or just developer) is a chemical that makes the latent image on the film or print visible. It does this by reducing the silver halides that have been exposed to light to elemental silver in the gelatin matrix. As a generalization, the longer a developer is allowed to work, the greater the degree of reduction of the silver halide crystals to silver and therefore the darker the image. The development process needs to stop, otherwise the image would be over-developed. The bleach fix stops that development process. The bleach fix stabilizes the image, removing the unexposed silver halide remaining on the photo emulsion, leaving behind the reduced metallic silver that forms the image, making it insensitive to further action by light.

After taking a bath in four separate wash tanks and drying off in a quick dry cycle, we have a perfectly printed Persnickety Print. It’s absolutely amazing how the Noritsu works! The entire process takes about 3-4 minutes for one print.

Enlargements

Enlargements from 16×20′s up to 30×40 are handled in our dark room (yes, it’s completely dark). We have a similar machine to the Noritsu, but on a much larger scale. It’s what we call our hidden little secret. This machine works much like the Noritsu, except it has a light-emitting diode that exposes the paper and the prints must be processed by hand.

It’s all about Chemistry. To achieve a “persnickety” print, the emulsion in the paper must be tested and balanced to it’s corresponding light source. That same light source must be maintained and calibrated. Even the photo chemicals need to be checked and balanced. With too much or too little paraphenylene diamine in the developer, the prints will never come out with the appropriate color. It is a science.

It is what we do at Persnickety Prints.

We are P e r s n i c k e t y.

This was actually such a fun photo shoot, even despite the fact that it was FREEZING and we were working fast to avoid the coming snow storm. The kids were all great sports though and we were able to get some great shots! Thanks so much J and T for letting me photograph your family again. You guys are great!

This first picture was taken almost in the dark! ISO of 1600!

I love these girls. LOVE. THEM. I literally need them to come over and get pictures every couple months just so I can snuggle them and sigh at their beauty. I also love their mom, who is one of my best friends in the whole world. I seriously can’t believe their 3 months already!

I really love being able to look through some of my old photos each week when the new theme at I Heart Faces pops up. This week is “Autumn Splendor” and this particular picture has been a favorite shot of mine for a couple of years now. I absolutely love the light in this photo, the movement of the little girl running, and those gorgeous curls bouncing in her hair! I love that she’s holding a little bouquet of leaves as well. This photo just really says “splendor” to me for sure!

Check out the other entries this week over at I Heart Faces!

I love so much that I get to photograph beautiful families like this year after year. This family lives on an amazing property, and it’s one of the places I truly look forward to going to year after year. Thank you again, G & R and family, for allowing me to photograph your stunning family again!