I believe the things that inspire us creatively are often passing things, little snipets of our lives that don't necessarily settle in the front rooms of our memory. I took photos of Siena, a beautiful three-month-old yesterday and it brought back a wonderful memory of the drawings of hands and feet that hung in my parents' hallway when I was growing up. You see, my grandparents' neighbor ("Mr. Bob," we always called him) made drawings of the most amazing details of hands and feet and he'd given one of his works to my mother. When mister Bob was growing up in pre-war Germany, his father forbid him from pursuing a career in art, so he became a machinist. He had amazingly precise hands and was very successful - but his passion for art never died. His drawings could look like photographs - but the only ones I ever saw were of hands and feet, studies in the anatomy of appendages. For whatever reason, those images stowed away in my gray matter for a very long time.
I got to thinking some more about it after those childhood memories were evoked, and I honestly think that's why I'm so drawn to taking photographs of hands and feet - those intricate sketches I stared at as a child. A photo editor I worked for at one newspaper once told me that you were never done with a personality feature shoot until you'd photographed a detail of someone's body, as close as you could get, to reveal something about that person the reader could not otherwise ascertain. After all, you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their hands and feet, the things they use to navigate the world...even if those feet have never seen shoes or found an unwanted stone in their path.
When I arrived, little Siena was in a good mood, and pretty interested in the camera. It's really amazing to see a little one so aware of their surroundings! Here she is grabbing the lens hood on one of my cameras.
That is one beautiful, happy baby. This next shot is my favorite, because it takes me back to when Murphy was that small - there's nothing better than holding a giggling baby up in the air...nothing!
Now that wedding season has pretty much wound down for us (two more in December, then we're on to 2009!), we're doing lots of family and "baby" work. We love being able to visit our clients and work with them to capture the moments they see every day with their loved ones. Seriously, we really do think we have the best job in the world. I think Mr. Bob would be proud.
On a side note: Blogging our weddings and portrait photography sessions has been AWESOME for us this year. When we started doing it, we weren't so sure about it - but it rocks, it's been a lot of fun for us and our clients and we're addicted to blogging. So much so, in fact, that we'll soon by doing away with our website entirely to have a custom-built blog that reflects our personality and style......stay tuned, because hopefully we'll have some sneek peaks as our killer web designers work their talented butts off over the next couple of months.
Thanks for reading, and check back in couple days for our shoot with baby Kale!
Labels: Buffalo Baby Photography, Infant Portraits
