Blue eyes

I don't know what it is, perhaps the Italian aqua, but all the children I've photographed so far have been very good and willing to look and smile in the camera. I recently photographed these three sisters, and I don't know if a shoot ever went this quickly. The youngest has the most beautiful eyes. See for yourself

First Italian Shoot

Ever since we've moved to Milan, I've been so busy with first unpacking and then school starting seemed to make everything very busy. I've been very fortunate to have met some wonderful people in our new location and they've made me fall in love with Italy altogether. Last month, I've been slowly starting to get the photography going again. Of course I'm never really without photography, which my Flickr account can vouch for. And although I take lots of pictures of my own children, it's always different to do them for someone else. It almost felt like getting on a bike again after 20 years. Not that I've ever been without a bike for that long, but I can only assume it feels like having to get adjusted initially, but fairly quickly getting the hang of it again. I'd have to say that the children I got to photograph are first of all extremely nice and did exactly as I asked them to and second of all it certainly helped that they are all very good looking and thirdly the girls had the most adoring matching coats in different colours! I'd say see for yourself.

Fun

The fun thing about blogging is, that you get connected with people with similar interests all over the world. Somehow I stumbled upon Susanna. After following a while I noticed her winged messengers and when she offered them to anybody who was interested in putting them somewhere, I immediatly jumped at the change. Soon two beautiful winged messengers were sent my way. I had fun deciding where to put them. In the end I put one and the other in the British Museum in London.


Thank you Susanna, it was fun to participate in this project



Other participants of this project:
Isabel, Shelagh, Robin, Relyn, Megan, Susan, Kristin, Lili, Mo'a, Madelyn, Constance, Stephanie, Leslie, Bonnie, Christina, Gillian, Olga, Elizabeth, Angie, Rachel

Autumn

The Autumn weather here in Italy is amazing. The leaves haven't really started colouring a lot, even though on the picture it looks like we already have a lot of leaves fallen down. If you look around everything still looks very green. With the light we get here, everything looks very pretty

Fair

We're getting quite settled in Italy. Today we went to visit a fair. They had some lovely kids' activities, one of which was repotting a basil plant. Learning about fruit and vegetables. They had all sorts of pumpkins, which are always so beautiful to look at. After all the heat of the Summer I'm quite ready for Autumn to begin.

Treasure Hunt

My daughter's birthday was during the Summer holidays. She wanted to have a party after school started, with all her new friends. I set out a picture treasure hunt for them. They had to find corners in our garden, and near it, they would find a note. On the note I wrote the name of a game and they would play that game, after which I gave them a new picture to find. I didn't want the pictures to be too big, so I paired them, so I could print them on normal photopaper. Being paired, I thought they looked quite neat. So these turned out as little corners of my home.

The favorite game the kids played was "who can eat the most". Everybody takes turns throwing the dice. Whoever gets 6, gets to put on gloves, a scarf and a hat. Then when they are done doing that, they get to eat out of a big bowl filled with crisps. When somebody else throws a six, that person gets the turn to put on the gloves, scarf etc. Most of the times another person would throw a six before the previous kid got to eat the crisps. Everybody gets really excited in waiting for their turn to throw a six.

Enjoy the remainder of the weekend.

Long time no see

How funny that as I decide to write this, it's exactly been a year and a day since I last wrote. I actually tried writing something yesterday, but the internet lost connection. A lot has happened since I last posted. I can't believe baby George has already had his first birthday. First of all I'd like to thank everybody who has done a photoshoot with me in this past year. It has been very fun to do. With sadness I have to say I'm leaving everybody behind, because we have moved from the UK to Italy. With great joy I'm looking forward meeting new people here in Italy. We arrived here in July and the Summer has just been incredible. We've had a constant 28-32degrees celsius. The last two weeks you can tell Autumn is setting in and it has become a bit cooler. But over here 25 is nice and cool, whereas in the UK it used to be considered nice and warm. The kids have been in what they consider their swimming pool (you can't really swim in it, but it makes them very happy) all Summer.




School has just started and all the new people I've met are all so nice. It really is living la dolce vita over here. The fact we had to wait 6 weeks for internet and phone hasn't annoyed me. Our brand new washing machine broke down last week Monday. Somebody came to fix it yesterday, but right after the technician left, it was still not working. I had to wait till this morning to have it fixed again, but that also just seems to be part of life here, and it all seems perfectly normal and not to get vexed about. I'm really surprised about myself that I'm not. The house we found has a beautiful tower room which will be my studio and I'm looking forward to setting it all up. I'll post some pictures of it soon

Baby George

I'm running behind with posting pictures of photoshoots I had. This is baby George, who was just adorable and very awake. Just two weeks old and he was already ready to take on the world.



I'm very much loving the square format. I think I always have and one thing I've always wanted to do is shoot with a Hassie. It will soon become reality, because I've managed to buy one. Just waiting for it to arrive and start shooting with it. It will even take longer before I can post results, because it's an olf fashioned one with film. So expect to start seeing a lot more squares here

Happy New Year

The New Year already seems in full swing, but better late than never with all the best wishes for it, I'd say. 2009 has certainly started good for me. I've reconnected with some old friends by googling their name succesfully. Catching up with what they are doing. Since we've moved countries 3 times, it's easy to loose track of people. So occasionally I get the urge to catch up and try to find out what everybody is doing.

At the end of 2008 I photographed my first wedding as a professional photographer. I put away the images till today and sorted them out and am quite pleased with how they turned out. It was a very small wedding with the bride and groom, 5 guests and me. So no throwing of the bouquet, no dancing till the wee hours (well none for me to photograph anyway), but a very happy bride and groom. Since it was my first official wedding, I have nothing to compare it to, but I was touched that they gave a nice bouquet of flowers to the mother of the groom, who apparently had helped out a lot and also they came by on a later date to give me a nice bouquet as well as a thank you. And they hadn't seen the pictures yet. I hope they are pleased as well. I think they make a beautiful couple and wish them all the best for their future together