beautiful Lacey's sexy boudoir shoot!

(Caveat: these are not totally work safe, if you think your work might be shocked at artistic photos of a half-naked (though pretty much covered) beautiful woman!)





I'm so excited to share these photos - albeit a limited, relatively modest selection. I am so lucky in that my gorgeous friend Lacey let me use her as my first "boudoir photography" model, and doesn't mind me going public with some of the images. She's lovely and amazing, and really shines in this shoot!





Boudoir's just a fancy word for bedroom, as you may know, and it's a new trend in portrait photography - kind of a modern take on cheesy old glamour shots, often taken as a gift for the subject's partner, but also just when a girl wants to feel pretty and attractive.





Lacey is a member of the local roller derby, so we had fun with her skates. She also has the craziest collection of vintage slips and undies that were perfect for the sort-of pin-up/ retro feel I was going for. I can see a bit of Marilyn and Bettie in here... just what I wanted. Hot mama! Can you believe she has two kids?!









The shoot we did was more like burlesque than anything raunchy - playful, seductive, sensual and fun. However, knowing that my parents read this (!), and since the blog is such a public place, I am sharing the more demure images. I have a slideshow of all of my favorites (regardless of how much skin is showing), and my hope is that those of you who are interested in seeing what Lacey and I came up with will email me so that I can send you the link privately. Whether you're curious about possibly doing a similar shoot of your own, or just want to see what I'm talking about (it's really not that scandalous), please email me and I'll send the link to you!









Lacey, thank you again SO MUCH for doing this. I love you for being so brave and beautiful! (don't worry, I love you for your mind too...)





I'm working to finalize the images from Jacqueline and Gregory's wedding, but I'm also getting ready to leave for NYC this weekend, so I am on a week-long blogging hiatus, and you will hear more for me after the 15th.

British Columbia and Washington trip, Day 5

As we prepared to leave Vancouver on our last morning, to drive to Seattle to come home, we stopped at a beautiful beach (I forget where - South of town I think?). There were these cool chairs with inscriptions somehow firmly stuck in the sand, and I loved how they looked against the blue water:







Love the graphic elements of this sign:





And now on to the border! Luckily we left hours and hours early - we thought the US Border would take about 15 minutes, and it ended up taking more than an hour and a half to get to the guard. YAWN. I got out and wandered around while the cars idled, and wondered at people who lives just metres on one side or the other. Apparently you can also rent "Peace Arch Park", which is the park that you see as you wait to get up to the border. I have no idea how you access it without having to deal with international crossing, but there were sign saying "for rent", so I take them at their word.





There are a few odd things that make me feel patriotic (mostly bureaucracy, oddly, like going to vote yesterday!), and I totally choked up when I saw this arch (even with the gas station in the background). Children of a common mother!





The US sign really needs some gussying up - the Golden Gate Bridge is all faded and green?



And then: back in the US!



Thanks for bearing with me as I share my vacation photos (I'm hoping they're not dreadfully boring, but in any case I have several fun shoots to share coming up). I promise not to overdo it next week when I'm in New York!

sopmething that I love (and miss) about my hometown

My hometown of Petaluma is only about 20 miles away... and while I go to visit my parents often like a good girl, they live outside of town, so I don't make it into the actual town of Petaluma very often. Also, it's changed enormously since I was little, and even in the last decade, with lots of development and a population boom. So, I'm allowed to miss it (even though it is less than a 30 minute drive away).

Today I had a fabulous, exhausting and exhilarating collaborative shoot day with my friends Jude and Paige, which I will post more about as I have time to edit the photos. What was exciting and new was that, for most of the day I was the model! We are all three wanting to push ourselves to produce more stock shoots, so we decided to try assisting and modeling for each others' visions, and I think it went really well. Modeling was SO fun with two very encouraging women, and I went from feeling shy and self-conscious to just basking in the limelight. Regardless of what Tyra tells you, it's really NOT that hard to model - it's fun!

Anyway, there were several small-town things that happened today to remind me of the beauty of living somewhere for your whole life:
-my photo friend Jude lives right across the street from the house I was born into and lived in for the first 6 or 7 years of my life!
-currently living in said house is the woman who I used to take pottery classes from when I was young; who also used to be married to the teacher of my very first photography class!
-when I was looking at my new photo friend, Paige,'s blog, I realized that her fiancé is in a band with a woman that I went to elementary through high school with!
-I learned today that my very first boyfriend now works for a company that my dad has been doing business with for decades!
-while at a salvage yard that I had never been to before, I bumped into my cousin Morgan! He doesn't live in Petaluma either, making the coincidence even more random!

Even when things get really cheesy, and somewhere between the yuppies and the hicks, I do love my hometown (though I hated it in high school and wanted to get FAR away from it). I guess I am a Sonoma County girl through and through.

Okay, more pictures tomorrow. For now, here is a very random one of a bowl of spaghetti I dropped months ago and have had no real reason to post. So there.

British Columbia and Washington trip, Day 4

On day 4 we took an even bigger ferry from Vancouver Island to outside the city of Vancouver. We enjoyed the beautiful sights as we wandered through the Straight of Georgia, with its myriad of islands, and pretended that we were on a long trip to Alaska. It was COLD but beautiful, and just blue everywhere we looked.







Once we made it through to the city of Vancouver, we stopped at Granville Island to peruse their amazing indoor farmer's market. I have never seen such a fabulous food court, which made choosing what to eat a big challenge. Even on this cold day, the market was packed, so I got a few photos but mostly ate (fresh sushi, carrot ginger juice, and even donuts!).







The views were gorgeous and reminded me of San Francisco's waterfronts:



There was a lot to see on the little island, and it was definitely a highlight of the trip. Besides food and flowers, there was this beautiful yarn:



as well as lots of machining shops that had survived through Granville Island's sort of yuppification (ahem, I mean, "modernization"). We had fun peeking in the windows of all the funky old buildings. Very cool!







There were some wonderful murals as we searched for the highway entrace:



Next was North Vancouver for the Capilano Suspension Bridge! Almost a tourist trap, it was one of my favorite things. Scary but so exciting!! Somebody made a cute totem pole:











We went back to Vancouver for a mediocre dinner, and stopped to see the sunset near Stanley Park. I forgot how the sun sets later the further north you go - it was comforting to have more daylight even in the cold weather.









And then - collapsed in exhaustion back at the hotel!