The shoemaker's kds have no shoes, and the photographer's kid has no prints

You know that saying that the shoemaker's kids have no shoes? I tell clients constantly to make sure they print their images, and yet in my home life I am lacking. There is a reason for this though, I am overwhelmed. I take so many photos that I get bogged down when it comes time to print and I have so many favorites it makes it very hard to choose. Plus, where do I put all these photos? I only have so much wall space and so many frames. Well, here is how I solved that issue and get my images off my hard drive and into my home so that my kids can look at them over and over, and that is with photo books. Every year I print my family a photo book. I also will make them after a vacation if I feel it is needed. This year's photo book is a ridiculous number of pages with around 700 or so images. It takes forever to make these books and I try and use the autofill feature to help the book be filled in and then tweak it afterward so that it gets done. This year instead of waiting until March of 2018 to make my 2017 book, I decided to be pro-active and start my book and fill it in once a month as it goes along. I have chosen my favorite images for the month and then uploaded them to my book. This has helped me be way more organized and now I am not dreading making my family's yearbook.

So, what companies do I use for my photo books? Typically I will use shutterfly. While I HATE their prints, their photo books are printed really nicely. The book above was printed by shutterfly. I have also used Artifact Uprising. Their quality is AMAZING and I love the soft covered book I made for my vacation in Ireland. They also have amazing prints. If you haven't checked them out before, you should. I also have used My Publisher, but I believe they may be closing or have sold to Shutterfly, I am not sure. You can see the books I have made over the years.

One year I somehow messed up and you can see I have a blank white cover, no idea what happened but it doesn't really bother me. Also, I am not one of those people who have all their photo books the same size, but if that is something you would prefer you can certainly do that.

Long Island Indoor Lifestyle Photography Session Reyes Family

So I know I have talked about this a lot, and you might not want to hear about it again, but I seriously LOVE doing indoor lifestyle sessions in my clients' homes. Here's the thing, you feel most comfortable in your home, which lends itself to getting more natural photographs of your family interacting and being together. Kids, especially very young children, feel more comfortable in their home. When the children are comfortable the photography session goes really smoothly and who doesn't want a smooth and easy photography session. And since the kids are relaxed, mom and dad become relaxed; win, win, win, I say! I think most people hesitate to do an indoor session in their homes because we all get hung up on the things we don't feel are "picture worthy" in our homes, maybe it's not as clean as you want it to be, or there is an area of your home that you don't really feel is decorated well, or you have messy kids, like me, and your house is always a little bit of a mess. I get it, I live the same way you do, but your house doesn't have to be perfect for an in-home session, I promise you. I tell clients to tell me the rooms that are off limits, for me that is my office, it is so horribly overcrowded with crap, I would NEVER want it to be photographed, but my kitchen can be de-cluttered in about 5 minutes and gets great light. Plus a lot can be cropped out, trust me, that pile of clothes over in the corner of the room gets hidden by the bed. But being at home can be so wonderful because I get to capture your baby carrying her blankey, or that arms up that they do when they want you to lift them out of their crib, or the way they like to make silly faces in the hallway mirror. These are the images you will cherish when they are older and their blanket that they had to take everywhere is now somewhere under their bed collecting dust because they haven't needed it to sleep in 5 years.

Why I embarked on another 365 project

Last year I decided to try my hand at a 365 project, where I would take a picture a day for 365 days. It was actually 366 days since 2016 was a leap year. I started out strong, but by September I had lost steam and gave up all together. My main issue were days where I was not inspired and felt like the photograph was more of a chore than exciting. I also found that it was hard for me to keep up with uploading the photographs each day and editing and posting, so I would let a week go by and then feel overwhelmed. I have learned that when I am overwhelmed I don’t plow through, instead I bury my head in the sand and walk away, which is exactly what I did in September. So you may be wondering why I would choose to do this to myself again. Am I a glutton for punishment? Do I like to set myself up for failure? No, it is because I need to challenge myself in order to stay motivated. This year I decided to take on the 365 project to actually finish it but more than that I want to push myself. I want to try out new lighting, low lighting, new techniques and this pushes me to do that instead of procrastinate. It forces me to see things differently, take my camera with me when I go out, and document our days. Another part of my 365 project is to do a portrait a week project. I am trying to take a portrait of my kids each week. I want to be able to capture all their silly faces, changes that occur, their moods, etc. and this sounded like a great way to do it.

I hope you will follow along with me. It helps to keep me encouraged if I know people are following along. Also, if you are doing a 365 please share it with me. If you have any ideas for me to try send them my way as well, sometimes I get stumped and having some suggestions would be great.

I hope you enjoy my January photos.  I will be updating the blog at the end of each month, and talk about what I learned, what went well, what failed, how I hate myself for doing this lol, you know that kinda stuff.

You can follow along on my 365 project on flickr My weekly portrait project is also on flickr

A beach session to warm you up

As I sit in my office and it’s only 20 degrees outside, I figured I could blog one of the beach sessions I never had a chance to blog yet. I absolutely love doing beach sunset sessions, the light is just gorgeous! I feel myself warming just looking at these.

Family session at Rye Playland

This was my third year working with the Noyes family. As I have said one of my favorite perks of my job is watching my client’s grow. These boys are getting so big and they are so much fun to work with!