Very Important Ducks

Just a few rubber duckies

One of the perks of my job is getting to meet and work with great organizations in the area.  Last summer Designing Spaces did a makeover for Kids In Distress so I got to know and become friends with some of the girls who work there.  Well after they jumped into our project last week where we made over Joy Stewarts home....you can see that story in....
 The Huffington Post    (she says all casual like it wasn't one of the bigger hits of my career)....I got to hang out with them again.

Thats a lot of ducks

So yesterday they had their annual fundraising event the Duck Derby, and luckily for me it happens on the New River right in front of my building!  Just the view alone would have been cool, but the girls at KID put me and my family and a few friends down on the list for their V.I.D. tent.....making us Very Important Ducks!

It was a blast.  Food, drink (the alcoholic kind of course), music, a petting zoo, games and a couple thousand rubber duckies released into the water.  Now while the monkey and the lady bug are still a tad young to appreciate it, its just fun to get outside around other families and enjoy the beautiful South Florida winter day.

The monkey man is pretty mobile these days and climbing stairs is his new favorite thing.  Lucky for us there are several levels of stairs in front of The Broward Center of Performing Arts that he could climb again, and again.....and again.

A few of my snaps from the day.

Follow me Zia - for the 5th time

Well come on.....

Ms. Prim just chilling by the river

Next up today - the Kite Festival at Haulover beach in Miami!  I do like South Florida in the winter.

Oh how they grow

I've been missing my friends in California lately.  My little friends, who are not all so little anymore.  I am sad that I am missing so many of them as they grow up - beacuse we all know how quickly they grow!

So I found myself going back through old photo shoots and picking out some of my tried and true faves and doing a little re-editing.  (My post production skills have grown a bit since these shoots)

 you lookin at me?

 and THAT's my final word on the subject!

 anyone who knows me knows this is my favorite!  She is my business card for goodness sake!

 my old next door neighbor Seven - she was SUCH a model! 

She LOVED being a test subject for me - I must have shot her half a dozen times at least!

Then there were the family shoots.  This family I am biased in my love for as they have been part of my close circle of friends for well over a decade - pre-marriage, pre- kids and I can't BELIEVE I am missing these monkey's as they grow!  :-(

 What a good big brother.  Jackson and Ryan

 Action Jackson - this kid was hard to shoot as I had to chase him all the time!

Mommy and Ryan

And then my favorite.  The Belly shots followed by the baby a few months later.  I am getting geared up for doing that with my sister in the next few weeks - if it would just stop storming here in South Florida every evening and killing our plans!

 Mom and dad getting ready for the new arrival

 And then comes baby Kaya!

Those little feet are going to be 2 years old soon!  I can't stand it!

I guess I was in a nostalgic mood today - missing my little friends, their parents and southern california.  Sigh.  

Working on getting gigs to shoot little ones here!

Popsicle Art

I shouldn't play favorites - I know that...but you can forgive me knowing that this little ray of sunshine is my first and only God-baby and her equally beautiful siblings all share a special place in my heart.

I shot these in their backyard on a beautiful sunny afternoon in NJ. The mood and the feeling invoked by the sharing of popsicles inspired me to do some creative editing on them - beyond the normal B&W.

The light seemed to want me to soften the colors they wore into this pastel magic - and I couldn't say no.

Little brothers

Another set of beautiful children that I have been lucky enough to have seen from the times they were born. Jonas is almost 4 and his brother Christian is almost 2.



Kids are tough - but little boys are even more challenging to photograph as sitting still is not a concept they yet grasp! I had to chase them all over the beach and the playground - making it a game - but in the end it was lots of fun and worth it!

Family of Friends

Ahhh my little Raguse babies are growing up so fast! I love shooting my friends families - watching them grow and change. Mom and I were remembering when Jackson was born and now he just turned 4! In addition now he has his beautiful sister Ryan to play with!

Family portraits are a tricky thing because you are at the mercy of children and their ever changing temperaments. We had a few moments of light before the clouds completely blotted out the sun and the cold wind picked up - making it un-ideal for our youngest subject - but we did capture a few.


Jackson is such a sweet older brother to his baby sister Ryan. We got to play for a few hours which was so wonderful! Then we got some of these wonderful family moments.




I felt a little sad during this shoot. We plan to do another in the next few weks - but knowing I am moving away from LA and will no longer see them on a regular basis - to watch and photograph them as they grow saddens me. I guess I will just have to come back and visit as much as possible!

Guerrila Shooting

Sometimes you have the best light, the best weather/conditions, a totally mellow baby and all the time in the world to shoot. Other times you have 20 minutes before the sun sets, chilling air with gale force winds and a beautifully dressed mom and babe with the babe all about doing anything but staying still! Regardless you have to work with what you get and sometimes it is this "Guerrilla" style shoot (as coined by mom) that you can get the best real life moments.


In the end - I may not have gotten the photo I had envisioned in my head - but I did get some wonderful candid moments of mum and daughter having some girl time during the sunset at the beach.

The best part? Mum LOVED the outcome - and is willing and excited to do more.

To see more of this shoot - visit my website and look at LuLu in Client Galleries.

Family Matters

So on Friday I did a photo shoot of the largest family I have worked with to date.

Always a challenge to work with more then a few people and when you add in all the children and a 10 month old baby - wow! Almost 100 shots to get a handful where the MAJORITY (never all) of them are looking at the camera. However "perfection" is not all that is important. to me some of my favorite photos don't have every single person looking directly at the camera with perfect smiles pasted on their face. A Family is never perfect - it is full of all sorts of different personalities and my goal is to try and let those individual personalities shine through wherever possible.

I really enjoyed working with this family, but as
always my biggest joy is working with the children. The three girls in red live in my neighborhood and the girls in white are their cousins. The girls know me by sight as I walk by their house with Asher a few times a week, but until the day of the shoot they really had no connection to me. As always with kids - they start off a little shy, a little unsure, and sometimes more then a little annoyed at having to "sit still" and smile for a stranger. When working on family portraits , it is always a challenge to get them to settle in, which is perfectly natural, and also why I love to let them run and play and try to capture them in action. It doesn't take to long before they are having FUN with the whole process and of course those are the moments where the best photos come through.




One of the lovely girls even became my "art director" when it was her idea for them to pose for this next photo.














Some people may not be happy that all 5 girls are not looking at the camera and smiling in perfect unison. But as I said - that isn't family, that isn't life. Instead the natural beauty of all of their individual personalities shines through in this, and I believe that is what makes a photo special.

To me it is important to let the kids feel involved and when they come up with ideas or poses I always go for it, because the more fun they are having the bigger the smiles. The bigger the smiles the more genuine and beautiful the photos turn out. Natural life, my favorite way to capture such beautiful children.

Family Portrait Time

Well I have been busy the past few days - reading, studying, practicing. Photography is something you never stop learning about. A marriage of art and science, beauty and technology. There are certainly times when I feel secure with a shoot, set-up etc, and others where I second guess myself every step - or make rookie mistakes that remind me how much there is to learn.

Fortunately my technical/scientific side of my brain has always somewhat dominated the artistic and creative side - because although photography is such a mix of both, the best intentions and artistic eye can be derailed quickly by the technical elements. My left side of my brain is always running through F-stops, exposure, lighting and berating myself for how much I don't know yet. Then my right side has to fight through the noise to think about the artistic quality of the shot - how to find the beauty in the subjects and show it the best way I can, to let my eye do what it needs to do to capture the moment.

It is a learning process that at times can be frustrating and lead to sleepless nights....but at others when I come across a great shot I re-connect with the joy in the whole process. While working on my most recent Family portrait ( a multi-generation family of 13 - including a 10 month old) I came across this one and worked on it first.

Mom loved it - and THAT is why I do this!

Baby Smiles

I wonder is there anything sweeter then being able to make a baby smile?

I am helping a friend out watching her beautiful boy a few hours a week and I swear, just spending 2 hours with him, making him smile and having him fall asleep in my arms was mood altering.

I know I know, it's all fun and games when it isn't your baby and you don't have to be up every few hours or be a 24/7 mom, and someday I will get my due - but for now......



ahhhhhhh.......