We all can use a little Gingko

nom nom nom nom

They say Gingko is good for increasing memory and concentration.  This little guy took that all too seriously.  Talk about baby brain building.  When I showed up at Jeffrey Mansion and Park in Bexley today, I was saddened to see the gorgeous Gingko tree had dropped all of it's leaves.  But then I discovered they were all over the ground, and hadn't been swept up yet.  They had also dropped so recently they were still silky soft and perfect for babies!

3rd session's the charm!  No sickies, happy baby!

And for my third session I had today, a little peek for them below.  Yes, it was the day of gorgeous and amazingly blue eyed babies (and kiddos).  All of their families also had family portraits taken but they are saving those for the holiday cards and gifts.  So I won't show them till after the holidays.

Yes we are just this adorable, thank you.

I also am hoping that rolling around in the Gingko leaves myself that I'll find my concentration boosted and be able to keep churning out proof galleries in time for all of your holiday gift plans. 

I'm looking forward to getting all of 2010 sessions up here on the blog after the busy season dies down, and also to finally launch my website with all of these wonderful photos plastered all over my portfolio galleries.  So it may be a little quiet here till the New Year, but there is so much awesome stuff to come!

Back in the Saddle

The end of summer was a rough one for me personally.  Two children who are friends of ours, died, of pediatric cancer.  One of those children from the same cancer my son has been fighting for 2 years.  The toll both deaths, only weeks apart, took on me was unexpected and exhausting.  Mixed in there my son had his first post chemotherapy scan, the one he relapsed in last year, and it was clean.  Or as we call it in oncology world N.E.D., no evidence of disease.  We are relieved.  My eldest also started kindergarten, and had to have an abscessed molar extracted, all within a week. 

We are trying to settle in to our new routine with school as our metronome instead of oncology appointments.  We are hoping for less surprises.  But life is full of them, isn't it?

My deepest gratitude to all of you out there.  My clients and supporters.  Thank you to those of you who had sessions in July and have been waiting patiently and with an exceptional amount of understanding to finally see your pictures.  Special thanks to the West, Keyser, and Sperling families.  Your proofs are up or will be up soon.  To those of you who helped keep me distracted in August, your sessions will be coming up shortly to the proofing galleries.  I am hoping to have a great week of editing this week.

As far as scheduling for the remainder of 2010, I am happy and sad to announce portrait session bookings are now closed (outside of a limited availability for holiday mini-sessions).  If you have previously discussed a session with me via email or at another session and we have not narrowed down a date, look for an email this week, if you don't receive one by the weekend, feel free to pop one my direction.  If you haven't scheduled a session for 2010, I look forward to meeting your family in 2011!

Back to editing!

Double the Princess Puppy

There will be pictures, lots and lots of pictures on here soon.  I have 9 sessions in my processing queue so it is time to get cracking!

This gem of sweetness was from today.  I was just running through the pictures from today's session as they downloaded, sometimes I just need to reassure myself that I did get all the shots I thought I did, and this one just screamed "share me."

If you are planning or hoping to have your child/family portraits taken with Circle the Sun Photography, now is the time to send me an email (and to the 5 of you who have in the past few days. . .the replies are coming)!  I will most likely be closing bookings for 2010 at the end of August, if not sooner.  Another reason I had to post this picture, how can you resist this double dose of cuteness?

It Depends.

Mommy is HOW OLD?!?!

Happy Birthday Mom!  

Yup, you've got one super husband to plan this photo session behind your back!  Remember that really hot thursday morning you were gone for that conference, yeah, that one.  He did this, and he was awesome, and your boys were just a blast. Many many more to come in a few weeks, but just a few in honor of your birthday!

Hope you like this little sneak peek more than the package of Depends you just unwrapped.

I ♥ Faces Week #29: Over My Head

click on photo to view larger, he's cute

The theme over at I ♥ Faces this week is "Over My Head." And while I was finding a picture for a friend I had the chance to revisit our photos from our recent outing at the splash fountains of a local mall.. I have so many awesome shots of water frozen in the air in really cool shapes above the kids heads, but in most of them the kids, you know, are being kids, and you can't see their faces. And they are kind of sticklers about that at a website called I ♥ Faces.

That's when I found this one of my little man Josh, who particularly loved that the water shot so tall, it went over his head, and would then shut off and splash down.

On top of being fair complected my boy is coming off of chemotherapy and has little resistance to the sun, hence the hat and long sleeves. So I am the crazy woman sending her kid into a fountain almost fully clothed in swimwear, but I have a really cool reason. You should also know I looked even crazier since his sister only had on her swimsuit, no rash guard shirt or hat.

I also love that the goofy frog on his shirt is showing off his face for this shot, but I know he doesn't count, it's all about the humans, luckily Josh is even cuter.

Just Waiting to Say Hello

There's a few adorable people waiting on my computer to show off their cuteness.
Namely-

Anna,


Cailyn,


Micah,


Ella,


Maya,


and Henry.

Picture Summer: Day 7, So Subtle

captured wednesday july 7, 2010 at 3:20 pm. ISO 200, SS 1/1250, f/3.5, lens 50mm f/1.4.
pay attention to the understated blushes of summer and celebrate a more restrained expression of the season today.

we love to go out for a drive, one of our favorite directions to head is towards the local fruit farm, to check on "our" apples. i set off that way today to get yesterday's wide open spaces assignment, and as we drove through the rows of apple trees basking in the sunshine, we could see the peaks of rose starting to seep into the young green skins of the golfball size apples. perfect.

i really love how this photo turned out. and of all the images i took of these same apples in a cluster, this was the one capture i took a moment to breath and savor before i composed it and pressed the shutter. and I shot it from in the tree out, got a little scraped, but worth it.

Picture Summer: Day 6, Wide Open Spaces

image captured wednesday, july 7,2010 at 3:06 pm. ISO 200, SS 1/1600, f/3.5, lens 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm.
sweeping landscapes can sweep us off of our feet, muse over a local vantage point. use a unique angle.

Ok, so the day of this assignment, I made a point of musing over one view only, my own living room. We needed a day at home doing nothing. My daughter is fascinated by corn fields, and they are what most of the wide open spaces are around here. I didn't realize it was this tall already.

I took this from the roof of our minivan. . .with my kids inside. There was a rather lengthy discussion about how mommy was about to do something they shouldn't. Then I handed the girl a roll of fruity mentos, the boy a box of orange tic-tacs, and climbed up on the roof of the loser cruiser.

I think this angle was a bit too extreme, but I did like mirroring the line of the corn rows, but the horizon is a little too tilty. . .but then again I was precariously perched on the roof of my car, so it sort of works.

Picture Summer: Day 5, Tall Drink of Water

photograph taken wednesday july 7, 2010 at 4:55 pm. ISO 200, SS 1/160, f/3.5, lens 50mm f/1.4.
Pay attention to your cool beverage of choice and how it can allow you to study light.

Ok so this one took me a few days. The day of this assignment I spent 9 hours with my daughter, rocking her belated bday photos session mommy daughter day of awesome. We did have lots of cool drinks, but they were all in canteens or paper cups, and I was busy paying attention to her. So I decided to stage this one over the next few days, tuesday I had the kids help me prepare this peppermint and spearmint tea to brew in the sun. We collected the leaves from our herb garden, cleaned, and stripped them from the stems, and then put them in a glass jar to brew in the 90+ degree heat. I put the whole thing in the fridge to cool overnight and transferred it to this pitcher we got for our wedding but have never used, or maybe once.

You can certainly tell that the light was diffused as it was partly overcast. I love the amber color of the tea, the mint is so pungent you can almost taste it just pouring it. I love that this is the first time my kids and I have done this together.

I love the most that my daughter confided in me as we were looking at the water starting to tinge a light yellow in the sunshine, she said quietly, "You know mommy, I've tried the leaves from that tree, and those leaves over there, I haven't liked them really." I've only known one other person who tasted every plant in her backyard because it seemed a reasonable thing to do, and she made mint tea with her kids this week, just like she used to leave lifesavers in a glass of water in her window sill and serve it to her imaginary friends.

I Felt the Earth Move Too

I know, you are all a little scared. Strange things are happening. The blog, it's like up to date.

Do you need a moment?




It's okay.
I understand.
Hopefully the blog will stay this way. I swears, I am going to try.

Below you will find little peaks at all of my recent sessions that I have finished proofing. Also you'll find I finished up all of my Picture Spring photo assignments, all 30 of them. From April, *cringe*. You can see all of them at once, if you follow this link.

Also, I've mentioned it before, but a real bonafide website is coming, contracts are being signed, things will be uploaded. I have to work on narrowing down my portfolio, but it IS coming. It will take a while as I will have to work in between proofing and other projects, but decisions have been made.

And in true nutjob form, I signed up for Picture Summer too. In my defense I signed up like 6 weeks ago, but seriously it is a good learning experience for me, and a great exercise in non-portrait photograph creation. You'll see a couple of those below. I will try to post those as close to the day as possible but I may post a few at a time here and there. You can see them all here.

Picture Summer: Day 4, Summer Traditions

Image taken Sunday July 4th, 2010 at 4:22 pm. ISO 200, SS 1/200, f/2.2. Lens 50mm f/1.4 (Nikon).
Today is a day steeped in traditions. Capture the mainstays or simplest pleasures of your routine today, be it a holiday tradition or a celebration of summer.

We haven't been to see fireworks since Penny was about 5 weeks old, it was Columbus' Red, White, and Boom. We were close, ash fell on us. . .the people with the baby. Maybe that's why she can't hear me tell her no? The next year I was pregnant, we did nothing. The following year we were in Kansas City with family, the kids were tired and it was bedtime, the end. 2008 Josh was bitter about something, we didn't want to go anywhere, your kidney exploding will do that I hear. Last year we were in California, our kids were still on the eastern time zone, so we offered to watch our hosts' baby.

So summary: not real big fourth of july celebrations people. not that we don't like the holiday, or the festivities, just not something that meshes with our scheduled programming right now. . .maybe next year.

Instead I pretended we were some of those non-americans taking the course and went the path of trying to capture something that symbolizes summer celebrations for this family. And if it is summer and we are having friends over, Andy usually grills. And he grills well. It just so happened he was out of his homemade "Mutha Sauce," the base sauce for a lot of his recipes, and was cooking that up today.

Nothing says summer celebration like Andy grilling up something awesome and serving it with a homemade delectable sauce.

Picture Summer: Day 3, Getting Centered

Image captured Saturday July 3rd, 2010 at 2:44 pm. ISO 200, SS 1/500, f/1.4.
Although strong composition often comes from placing the main subject off-center, there's perfect balance and symmetry waiting to be achieved when you place the main subject in the center today.

I had tried a number of subjects and images for this assignment, none with any punch that really hit home. I was sitting at our kitchenette table trying another shot when I saw my son's stamps and just took a shot for fun. In the preview on the back of my camera I saw the reflection in the table surface and the framing/symmetry of the chair in the background across from me. So I opened the aperture as far as my 50mm f/1.4 allows and went with a creamy shallow shot of the stamp. Love how an everyday little item worked so phenomenally.

Picture Summer: Day 2, Splashy

Photograph taken Friday July 2, 2010 at 11:11 am. ISO 200, SS 1/3200, f/3.5.
Stage something splashy and capture your ultimate cool-down routine.

Funny story. Some friends were all planning to go to Easton Mall to play in the magic jumping fountains. They were going to go midday and I wasn't going to go as I thought Josh would overheat. then I got the email assignment for the day, and thought well, sort of have a ready made idea in the wings. So I contacted a friend and found out he and his sons were actually going 2 hours earlier! Score!

Trust me, it was hard to narrow down the field of contenders. But this one won for the splashes suspended in the air as well as the splashes bouncing back up off of the concrete. And for those who may not recognize her, that is my daughter in the floral rainbow bathing suit.

Picture Summer: Day 1, Here Comes the Sun

Photo taken Thursday July 1st, 2010 at 10:53 am. ISO 200, SS 1/100 f/2.8.
Find something , anything at all that says summer to you.

Summer to me is about kids wandering around in the backyard, full of imagination and fun. Finding little weeds and flowers and picking them to bring to momma to put into a glass of water. The best little bouquets I can think of, and every bit of the best of summer, finding magic in all the little spaces.

Everybody was kung-fu fighting

This sweet session was actually at the residential park in the middle of her neighborhood. And the family is moving so this session was also a sweet way to commemorate their time in this house. Hannah was a little under the weather but still was a cutie pie for our session, and then to balance that out, everybody started kung-fu fighting. I love families willing to just let loose and have fun, awesome.

Joy and Sweet Blues

Oh Miss Rachel, how I adore thee. Of course I did sort of take a shine to you when you were like 2 seconds old, so it's been a rather long love affair. I had to beat off the little old ladies who wanted to tuck you in their pocket and take your little joyous self home with them. You were styling today in the blues and greens, gorgeous and fun as always.

I ♥ Faces Week #26: Pets

Don't mess with Shirley.

See more Pets photos in competition this week at I ♥ Faces.



it's been a long while since I entered over at i heart faces, I am just so behind on many things, but my kids and I were looking at this particular photo in my personal/family blog archive, the day before the post popped up in my feed about this week's theme. As I am so far behind on my blog, I'm not entirely sure anyone has even seen this photo. This is my 11 year old cat Shirley, taken November 2009, Josh was feeling nasty from being in the hospital, Penny had H1N1, I was bored, so I went and pestered the cat. Don't mess with Shirley.








actually she was yawning, and I got lucky, but the first story is funnier.

His Way

You may remember, Nolan, not a big fan of the big giant beanbag I brought to his house for the session. So we let him decide what he wanted to do, and rolling aorund on this gorgeous area rug and laughing up at momma, was exactly what he had in mind. I think I like how his way worked out, even 3 month olds can have awesome ideas. And mom says she got the rug at overstock.com.

Pink and Petite

My fabulous little pal Avery. She's 3 now, hard to believe it's been 2 years since her momma first let me "officially" aim a camera at her for my second ever formal portrait session.
Happy Birthday big girl.

Dapper and Handsome

A few from the session with this handsome little man. He is just delectable.