Natalie and Alex

Want to know how to make yourself really nervous and feel like you might end the day thinking nothing but how badly you SUCK? Take pictures of a professional photographer. Seriously. When Nat proposed the idea of me taking some candid shots of her with Alex, (While I was honored that she thought I'd do a decent enough job) I was excited for the opportunity and seriously nervous all at the same time. She takes awesome photos and does this for a living! I didn't want to screw the entire thing up! I think I take SOME semi-decent photos...esp. after I have played with the colors in Photoshop...but these are usually of my dogs or of nice walls with peeling paint, not ones where people could move and cause a blur or where people are on the other end of the camera possibly wondering what in the world you are doing! Julie and I can spend hours out and about taking photos and I will end up with about 5 of them I truly love and would put up in my old Photography class for critique.

Even now, the thought of those critiques makes me want to dry-heave...they really could be that bad. It was rough...not only having your own butt reamed for some awful creative choice you made, but having to blankly stare while you agree or disagree as someone else's feelings get hurt. All the while just wanting to be coddled and told you don't suck and life isn't that bad after staying up to 5am because you couldn't cut a straight line on your matt-board to show up at the critique with it at 8am. Thank GOD those days are over. Back then I was by far NOT my worst critic, whereas now I probably am.

I took almost 400 photos in a span of two hours at Nat's house...came home and checked them out---liked less than 100 of them. That is why you take a lot...so you can at least like a handful of them, for sure. It was fun though, after warming up. Julie grabbed Nat's camera and took some as well, so it felt like we were the paparazzi or something. :) Nat probably felt just as out of sorts at times because of being on the other end of the camera! By Alex's nap time, we had squeezed more activities in on the poor kid than he probably does in the span of a couple of days! I'm thinking he was ready for rest after all the beeping of cameras in his face. Julie jokes that she got a bunch of the "money shots" which is probably true...as long as Nat likes at least ONE of the ones I took better than all Julie's PRO shots...my self esteem will eventually get back to a "normal" level! :)

Alex was so loving to us while we were there, a very pleasant, sweet kid. He hugged us a bunch and would jump off of things into our arms, a very snuggly cutie-pie. I'm wondering where he gets all that sweetness from! HA!

I haven't had time to play around with any of the photos, just did some cropping for the ones I'm putting on here...but here are my very favorite ones from the day.