The Princess Tea Party

 
Three little girls 

Were invited for tea.

Their fairy grandmother 

Had planned it with glee.

  She made them all wait,

And close their eyes.

They came in holding hands,

And found such a surprise.

Crowns and glass slippers,

Wands and three dresses.

They spent the afternoon

Becoming princesses.

The make-up was out,

The curling irons hot,

The girls squealed with excitement

As they all found their spot.

 The girls helped themselves,

As their mothers stood by,

And only once,

Got glitter in their eye.

When the princesses were ready

They sat down to try

The tea Grandma made

With their pinkies held high.

They posed for some pictures

And tried on some shades

 

Cinderella and Merida,

And a red-head mermaid.

A Good Old-Fashioned Family Album

We usually spend Thanksgiving on the pool deck in Arizona, but this year we kept it a little closer to home.  It went something like this....

 

And it was good.....

Backstage At Competition

It's been  24 years since I've been to any kind of competition.

The pom poms are smaller.

The hair is flouncier.

The moves are scarier.

But the work and prep and intensity and fun and camaraderie are the same.

 

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me backstage to capture these moments.

Double L loves you!!!

Let's Do 52 ~ Week 33 {Guilty Pleasure}

My guilty pleasure is photographing people who are photographing themselves at a Gilligan's Island party

when they don't know that I'm photographing them, too,

then messing around with the picture in Photoshop,

then putting it on the internet so everyone can see it.

MMMM-WAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA!

Okay. No.

Really, my guilty pleasure is chocolate, but food photography makes me gag.

But this post seems really short, and I feel like I should say a bit more about my guilty pleasures.  So, here are a few more of my photographic guilty pleasures:

1.  Sports the way that I want shoot it.

     Not worrying about faces or focus.  Just that perfect moment of action that becomes art.  I love that.

2.  Black & White

     Because I love it and I don't care what anyone else says.  Nothing tells a story like black and white.

3.  Natural Light

Not really a guilty pleasure, but I hate flash light so much that I'd rather not take the picture than use it, so I have been guilty of taking/posting/handing over/talking up slightly blurry images because natural light rules and flash light drools. 

4.  Feet

Boy, have I taken some shit on this one.
"We don't want feet."...."Where are the faces?"...."Why is she taking pictures of people's shoes?"...
Well, guess what?  Feet tell a story that faces don't.  You can fake a face, but you can't fake the shoes.  It's a different angle.  A new perspective and I'm doin' it 'cause I can and I'm the one with the camera.
You wanna' piece of me!?
Sorry.....sometimes I get a little defensive.  My art is me and all that....

5.  Accepting the picture the way it is and not trying to adjust it or fix it.
There are moments when I just don't care about white balance or overexposure or distortion.  Sometimes I just want it the way I want it, no matter how technically incorrect it may be.  My brothers always used to give me a really hard time about that...and when I say "used to" I mean every, single time I see them to this day....

"Ohhh, Lis.  Gotta' have it the way you want it.  Big princess.  World revolves around you.  Can't have it any other way than the way you want it."

What's wrong with that?  Wouldn't everyone want it that way?

I mean, who wants it NOT the way they want it?

I think you see what I'm saying....which is that they're dorks and I rule all.

But, we can save that discussion for next time.

Go Flack Yourself

I took a bit of flack recently about some images that I did in black and white.

The person giving the flack basically felt that black and white sucks the big fat one and should never be used on anything ever, then they asked me to surrender my camera, my lenses, my memory cards and my broken tripod so that I could never inflict this kind of infectious torture on another image ever again.

The person receiving the flack (that would be me), pumped out her fists, squared her shoulders, narrowed her eyes and growled from deep in her gut,

"You wanna' a piece of me!?!  Bring it!"

Okay.  Okay.  I'm just joshin' with ya'.  I don't actually growl from my gut.  It usually more of a throaty thing.  

I did take some flack, though.  That part is true and real and actual.  I've come to realize that people have very different opinions about black and white images.  Some people really love them.  And some people really don't. 

For me, a lot of photography is about form and light.  The shapes.  The lines.  The story.  Taking the color out of an image can help you see that more clearly sometimes, which is what I was trying to explain to my flack-giving opponent,

who did indicate that he thought that when he looked at my images.

I didn't mind it.  I felt confident in my black and white choice.

Anytime you put something out there, people are going to have opinions of it.  It's just the nature of the beast.  You can take it to heart and get upset and defensive.  Or you can roll with it and realize that it really has nothing to do with you and everything to do with how they have chosen to interpret the work.

People are free to voice their opinions and I, in turn, am free to nod,

look interested

and then starting wondering when my new True Blood disc is going arrive from Netflix.  It's been at the top of my Queue for, like 2 weeks.  Come on, already.  I'm needin' me some Eric.

Then I nod some more,

through in an "Mmm-hmmm,"

thank them for their input and interest in my work, and excuse myself to go shove my head in a case of wine.

No problem.