The birth of Peter Martin

So you’ve already seen the sweet result of this labor and delivery, but I wanted to share with you the slideshow I presented to mom and dad last week of their son’s birth. Tracy is a dear friend and I asked her if I could shoot her delivery. She and her husband agreed and we talked before hand about what she did and did not want. Mostly we wanted to keep the photos tasteful and full of emotion. I was very inspired by this woman’s birth photography. I knew I too wanted to do all black and white for the slideshow. And here it is:
 

The birth of Peter from Amber Garrison on Vimeo.

 
(click over to Vimeo to view in high def—trust me, you want to!)
I’m not sure what Tracy was expecting but she love, loved, loved the results and that made me so happy. Her husband said that they had to do this for the next kid too. The crazy thing is Tracy has next to no memory of me taking pictures! I faded into the background like I was hoping to do. The photos of the clocks and things she kept saying, “I don’t remember you taking these.” Or, “how did you get that?” I can tell you this was my all time favorite thing to shoot. I loved getting all the details, the hand holding, the comforting. I loved seeing baby Peter being born and capturing those wonderful first moments. The joy in the room, the exclamations as he was measured and weighed. It was all so wonderful. A few of my favorites:










I am working on a package for birth photography but I’m definitely going to be limiting my sessions. Mostly because I will never know exactly when/how long they will be. But also because I do not want to overlap and risk missing a birth!  I’m planning on serving Salem Hospital, Silverton Hospital, Belle Vie Birth Center, and home births within a 25 minute drive.
What do you think about having a birth photographed? The reactions I get from people are usually, “you want to do what?!?!” I just don’t think people see all the beauty in the little things that come before and after the big moment. I love the photos that Sciarrino took of me in labor mainly because it’s impossible to remember as it really was. There is so much emotion. I would love to have a slideshow and album to look back on every year. And I bet children who have their births photographs will revisit the images through out their whole lives.

She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes…

Tuesday has been sleeping through the night for almost a month—hooray!
Tuesday takes up to 3 hours of back patting, rocking and singing to to fall asleep—boo!
In my songs-I-know-the-words-to repertoire everything is feeling a bit old and I’m really digging deep for some new material. In some cases that material is actually being dug up from some dusty place in my brain from when I was a child. The last week or so it’s been non stop coming ’round the mountain. I made the mistake of interjecting a few “choooo choooo”s in between verses while I was dusting off cobwebs and before I realized it was actually “yee haw” I should be saying. So naturally Tuesday is very excited we have another train song and I get to sing it on repeat (kill me). In case you’re unfamiliar here is a YouTube link to an old school version (note: I usually leave out the kill the old red rooster verse). The thing I got hung up on was the damn chicken and dumpling verse.
“oh we’ll all have chicken and dumplings when she comes”
Tuesday started signing chicken (she does the bird + peck) when she wanted me to sing that one, which was often. People there are only so many times you can sing chicken and dumplings and not want chicken and dumplings more than you have ever wanted anything in your whole life. Seriously I never had a craving like this in pregnancy but man, I WANTED CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS!!!
I decided I was actually going to make it, like from scratch (side note: I do not cook). I started pulling out cookbooks in order of release date and worked my way back to this gem:

In this case my mom is the “lovely granddaughter” and the cookbook is a Pillsbury Flour one with a nice worn cover.

When I walked into Bj’s office and asked him to please cut a whole (raw) chicken into littler pieces for me (because I’m too dainty you see) he was like, “um, what?” Then he came into the kitchen where I had fished all the bits out from the inside and washed the chicken all off. It was sitting neatly on a board and I had ingredients piled around the cookbook. I’m pretty sure he thought I was going to tell him I wrecked the car or needed $1,000 to pay off a bookie or something.
But he did gallantly cut the chicken for me (with scissors, which was so freaking funny to me, he did want to ruin one of his precious knives). And get this: I DID THE REST! On my mom’s advice (calls made during dinner prep = 3) I rubbed the cut up chicken (it was in six biggish pieces) with olive oil and a little bit of salt and pepper. Then I put it in a roasting pan and stuck it in a hot (450) oven for 30 minutes. The chicken was pretty much cooked then so I could use the speedy recipe shown above (not shown the recipe on the facing page that would have taken me a week). I started in on the recipe at the “add celery” line. I used a vegetarian bouillon because that’s what I had.
The best part was using one of the onions Tuesday and I picked this summer with Neighborhood Harvest. Late fall I dried them all and put them up for winter, did I ever show you this?

Ah such beautiful onions. A few sprouted on me, but most are doing fine in the cold garage.
I digress. I made a few changes. I put the carrots in at the beginning (quite on accident, but a happy mistake) and halved the salt. I could have quartered the salt, man was it salty! And that’s saying something coming from me.

It was pretty much amazing! I wish I would have added three cups more water and a bit more bouillon so that we had more saucy broth. I made notes to do that next time in the cookbook. My mom does this and I love the notes, so helpful. Yes, I used my fine china. When else am I going to use it? An added bonus of my meals is that I plan so poorly the household is starving by the time we get to eat and that only helps things on my end.

Tuesday set the table with  a little center piece of dishes she explained where full of, “budder”. She likes to put this pretend butter on everything with a giant wooden knife.
I love my little family. Man that was a fun night. I guess cooking isn’t so terrible after all.

Classic Newborn

Yesterday was my dear friend Tracy’s birthday. To celebrate she asked that it be the day she viewed slideshows. I recently (2 weeks ago) shot the birth of her son, Peter. What an amazing experience. I was honored that she let me be there, and that she wanted the slideshow to be her special birthday event! I loved her reaction, and her husbands. I’m hoping to share the slideshow this week, but I have to figure out music licensing and the best way to post it. For now I want to share with you a few of the classic black and whites I shot for her son’s newborn session (at ten days old). Details below the photos.







I shot all of these on location. I love to use furniture and rooms in houses for real slice of life shots (and I did that for Tracy’s maternity shoot). Sometimes though it’s nice to do classic photos like these black and whites and not worry about what the house looks like (for example if you have a ten day old and a two year old!). I always bring a backdrop with me, and here I’m also using the poof. I always select what goes in the frame, no matter where I am, but it would have been funny to pull back on the last shot. Tracy was holding up Peter’s head under the blanket and Tuesday (my lovely assistant—no she doesn’t usually come with me!) was trying to crawl up the beanbag! Photography often amazes me, but the last shots of the morning reminded me just how wonderful it can be. Lachlan only wanted to be up there for two minutes. I took five photos of him and I love everyone of his changing expression. The tiny sliver of time (1/125 of a second) can be perfection in chaos.
So my footnotes for today are:
1. Don’t be afraid of in home photo shoots. They’re fun, you’re more relaxed, and a change of clothes is always nearby.
2. I can take out baby pimples and the like, but I love that Tracy wanted to embrace Peter’s flaky skin. “It’s only like that for such a tiny amount of time,” she said. So true.
3. Peter slept like a dreamy little munchkin not only durning this shoot, but today while his parents watched the slideshows. That’s nice and all, but looking at photos of little squish-able babies all day and then not getting to hold one? TORTURE!!!
4. More from this shoot on Life in Color’s facebook page.

Basement play-space: the reading nook


Ever since I stumbled upon her site I’ve been so inspired by Meg from Sew Liberated. In addition to a great blog she writes some awesome patterns (including this one that I’ve made multiple times). She trained as a Montessori teacher so I’m always looking to her blog for ideas about activities and environments for little ones. I was so happy to see her new play room for her children. As soon as I saw that beautiful silk canopy I knew that was what the basement needed. So I talked to Erin about dying one for me, she has an etsy store full of hand-dyed things (ok right now it’s full of vintage Pyrex, but convo her for dying details).

I don’t think any picture of this silk could really do it justice. It is so shimmery and beautiful. I had Erin dye it with a gradation from light pink to a deep magenta color (I used a piece of silk 108×78 inches. The top is a 40×40 inch square that was dyed in the same bath, but for a shorter amount of time). Here you see how I attached the silk to the hoop I used (a 14″ diameter quilting hoop). I knew my sometimes messy stitches would be hidden, so I didn’t worry about them too much. The short edges (the opening to the canopy) are selvage edges so I didn’t have to do anything to those. The bottom edge probably should be hemmed, but I’m going to see how it wears since hand rolling a hem doesn’t sound that appealing to me.

I did have fun working on this though, while Tuesday played trains and we chatted. I really want to make up baskets or bags of handiwork projects that I can tote around where ever she is playing. Tuesday hates me on the computer, but work like this she doesn’t mind. As long as she can come check on it every once in a while.
Back to the construction. So I hand stitched the silk around the hoop then I used three strands of fishing line to hang it from a cup hook in the ceiling (Bj and I agree, four would have been better). I took the three strands one at a time through a needle and pulled them through the middle of the light pink silk. This is a slippery tricky business. Then I made a knot, looped it around the cup hook and had Bj tug and twist the hoop straight while I pulled the fishing line taut and double knotted it. He thought the top silk piece should be up nice and high, “Amber it looks more like a castle that way.”

The bottom cushion is a 5″ thick piece of foam (24×34) covered with some super soft material and then a fake sheepskin. And what does Tuesday think of it? Well she’s not too sure yet. She likes pointing out that it is very pretty, but hasn’t tucked herself in there for a read… yet.

How about a night out?

If you’ve been reading my blog for long you’ve heard me talk about CASA. Well I was introduced via a friend to another organization that helps foster kids. This one aims to reunite siblings for one week in the summer at  a special camp.
Bj and I talked a few years ago about what we were going to “champion” in our lives. There are so many things to get behind, but for me helping foster kids is what I’m drawn to. I hope someday we can be foster parents, but until then I like to help where I can. Camp to Belong has an auction coming up and I donated a package from Life in Color Photography. I’m also going to go and have a date night, which should be pretty fun. The auction is at a winery called Stoller Vineyards. I told the very hardworking volunteer camp director that I would post some info up about it. Here is a an excerpt from a letter they sent out about the auction and camp:

  • We are requesting contributions and donations of goods and services, which can be auctioned at this event to raise funds for this year’s camp.  In recent years, we have been fortunate to receive items from awesome local vineyards; Oregon Artists; NFL Hall of Fame- Dan Fouts; Portland Trailblazers sports memorabilia; Oregon coast hotels; Dining, hotel and recreation packages; well being items, gift cards, jewelry, and more!
  • As a business or an individual, make a huge difference as a sponsor for a sibling group for camp! It costs $ 500.00 per camper to go to camp.  Consider being a corporate or individual sponsor and send a child or a sibling group to attend camp!
  • Consider joining us at this event on April 9, 2011. Come and have great wine, great food, and enjoy shopping at the auction and finding items that are unusual and fun to purchase!

Lots more info on their site: Camp to Belong Northwest. And a few facts from their info sheet: Of the almost 9,000 youth living in foster care in Oregon today, 75% are separated from at least one sibling. 1 out of every 4 youth in foster care in Oregon live away from family. Since 2000 Camp to belong NW has served over 450 Oregon foster care youth. I’m looking forward to visiting camp this summer and meeting the kids while I take sibling portraits and hopefully some fun candids as well.
Hope I see some of you at the auction. If you’re not local Camp to Belong is a national organization (just checked their site they also have camps in Australia), check to see if there is one in your area.

The Poof

That’s what Tuesday is calling beanbags these days, poofs. I decided to make a giant poof for my sweetest littlest clients: the newborns. Originally I thought the big FatBoy bean bag we got would work, but it’s just too floppy and not filled enough. Plus Tuesday adopted that for her room. I looked into buying something but once I realized how silly easy this was to make I jumped into the project.

I found a tutorial on a photography forum website I belong to (Clickin Moms). But now that I’ve made this I can say you really don’t need a tutorial. It’s two big circles of material (a fabric backed vinyl) and a long rectangle piece for the sidewall (you can piece this, I did). You can see I added a handle since I’ll be taking this around and hid the velcro by folding over an edge of the material. There is no inner bag.

Mine is huge and took 4.5 bags of “beans” that flew everywhere and static clung to everything!  This is about 43″ in diameter and 15″ tall. A note about the material. I chose a supple kind of vinyl but I’ll caution you against this if you’re just going to use it alone for a bean bag to play on. I think it could get torn or scratched easily. I chose it because I need to be able to clean off baby messes and I knew I was going to cover it. I have a bunch of blankets I use, but I just couldn’t resist and had to make this as well:

A big baby posing bean bag poof of happiness is what this is! A mom I worked with this weekend told me she loved the colors she saw on my site and I was inspired to come up with something fun for her newborn’s shoot. I used a wedge shape from this Amy Butler pattern (using a little math and a muslin pattern piece I tweaked it to fit). The bottom has a simple casing and some elastic.

I don’t know what to do about the middle, ideas? I guess I wasn’t paying too much attention to the pattern after all. It doesn’t matter for shoots since baby covers the hole, but I think I’ll leave the cover on when it’s out in the basement. A huge beige blob just isn’t my thing. Reinforcement might be nice.
And I haven’t been doing sneaks, but a cute baby really does take this to the next level…
The baby this weekend tipped the scales in my uterus. Seriously. It was like, “maybe you do want another baby?” And I was like, “okay… maybe I do.”
(hey grandparents: I SAID MAYBE!)

Help me to do it myself

I’ve been reading a lot of Montessori books lately as I work on fixing up part of the basement to be a sort of preschool learning area for Tuesday. The phrase, “Help me to do it myself” comes up a lot. I love the idea of it, but we’re having trouble with the implementation over here. I know it’s normal to have whining and fussing and such, but oh man does it get on my nerves. I don’t understand it either because if Tuesday simply asked me for say, her sweatshirt off because she was hot, I’d take it off no problem. But instead she just starts freaking out and squealing that she is HOT!!! And ripping at her sweatshirt (like seriously out of nowhere). I don’t mind helping her with things but she tends to be happier when she figures out how to do them. So how do I encourage this?
I’ve tried showing her over and over how something works. That does help some. I feel like really explaining why we are doing something helps. Mostly I just try to be as patient as possible when she freaks out. I found myself starting to count to three the other day and totally took a step back, whoa. I’d love any other ideas for patient parenting through this (I’m assuming normal) part of toddler hood.