Photography Bloom

End of Year Celebration for BuildOn Pa

For the second year in a row I volunteered to take photos of the End of Year celebration for the wonderful organization BuildOn--the Philadelphia area chapter. 11 high schools in the area are involved where students do volunteer work in their communities and hold events to raise money in order to help build schools in other countries.

The kids are so much fun to photograph because they are not your typical teens--they are outgoing, confident, generous young men and women who understand more than their years would indicate. They ham it up for the camera and are all smiles. It is an honor for me to give to them in this small way.

Here's a few highlights from the day. My favorites are the ones I took of them dancing. I uploaded the whole set to the BuildOn Flickr account and they can be seen here: BuildOn PA Year End Celebration

 

 

I'm my own goon squad

I had the distinct honor and true pleasure of heading up to Brooklyn last week to take portraits of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan. The photo chosen will be the lead photo in a feature article on the University of Pennsylvania alumnae for The Penn Gazette.

Ms. Egan was gracious and funny and a true pleasure to work with. She invited me into her home and was competely amenable to trying out one of my unconventional ideas. I had told her I envisioned something during my drive up to NY where she would be sitting in a big chair, posed for a standard sort of portrait, but there would be papers flying all around her. Since we had no assistant, she tossed those papers up into the air for me and my camera over and over again until we had some good shots from which to choose. I was most grateful and am very pleased with the shot chosen for the article! Before I left, she signed a copy of her book as a present for me.

I share one of the others here for you, plus another simple portrait of this lovely woman. Thank you again, Jennifer Egan!

 

Olivia

The day we had scheduled turned out to be cold and pouring down rain, so we postponed for a week and were gifted a beautiful, brisk morning with some passing clouds. Ana had contacted me thanks to a referral from a family I shot two years in a row who have since moved away (thank you, Stephanie).

We agreed to meet at a playground her and her husband frequent with their 16-month old daughter in Philadelphia. Olivia was a delightful child, so happy and fearless on the playground, and her parents were lovely people with beautiful smiles. I knew they were going to make my job easier, and they did---fun to shoot and fun to chat with! Here are a few highlights from the session:

 

Spring has sprung!

Sorry to be missing again for a bit online. Well, that's not quite right. I've been online a lot, just not representing as Photography Bloom as much as I should have been. So busy promoting and working on the art side of things as well as writing work to make ends meet and supporting a new venture my husband started (a little site called Timelychef.com you could check out...it's a totally new approach to cooking).

It is most definitely springtime here after a few false starts and even an April Fool's Day show of snow that got everyone all riled up! I am slowly starting to book some portrait sessions for families and musicians but that will pick up soon, so please get in touch if you are thinking of commissioning my services.

Meanwhile, here's some lovely photos of one of the loveliest girls I know...my daughter. :)

Diamond Dog

After a few scheduling snafus, we were finally 'a go' for a long-planned shoot on Wednesday. I was given the OK to share a few images from the day, as long as I don't give you any details about the artist or the label (yet).

We were going all-out for the urban rapper vibe with this shoot and had a lot of fun with it. The artist brought all his friends out to pose with him on the street corner near where he grew up, he was adorned with plenty of diamonds, and they brought in a bright red Ferrari on loan for the shoot. Then we headed to the recording studio where they work to take shots of the artist at the mixing board and the mic.