No words are even needed for this session! I had the great fortune to photograph this gorgeous senior’s portrait this weekend. We had a great time going from location to location, starting at the local high school and eventually down to the beach. Lately I’ve been photographing families with little children so this was a refreshing change of not having to bribe my subject with candy or chase her around! I wish her the best in her very, very bright future!

Have you ever seen such fancy shoes catch so much air?

And from a tree in front of their yard. According to the D family it is the “cherry-less cherry tree”. If it blooms like that I guess I’d be okay with having a cherry-less cherry tree in my yard too!

A client ordered this canvas from a session last summer and it is now sitting on my mantel awaiting pick up. I don’t think I’m ready for it to go yet. It is kind of weird to have a custom canvas of someone else’s kid prominently displayed in your house though, isn’t it? And the dark hair is such a giveaway that she isn’t a Kleitsch kid. Will have to order a canvas of my own to replace this gem when it is gone.

I appreciate all the great families I get to meet while being let into their homes to photograph them. The C family is no exception. I wanted to stay and hear more about their time in the Peace Corps and how they met in Bulgaria. Not to mention stare into their little guy’s blue, blue eyes for a few more hours! I tried out a new camera as my Nikon D700 is in the shop. The Nikon D3S lives up to its reputation as “it is a BEAST!”… but a beast I’d like to own for certain. When dealt lemons (camera in the shop), make lemonade (rent fancy camera)!

Once again I’m apologizing for not posting more. The good news is that I have been traveling! And if you know me, you know that makes me very, very happy, especially when it is to a foreign country with girlfriends! I must say I’m feeling blessed this 40th year of my life. The bad news is that on my trip my camera broke. Really broke. Like won’t turn on broke. Now I’m going a little crazy. Yes, I will admit that I expect to see some foam coming out of my mouth very shortly if I don’t get some sort of gear in my hands soon! I have a shoot scheduled next week so I will be figuring out how to manage that one without a camera! My film camera is also in the shop for focusing issues so there is no back up. And now it is very apparent to me that I must have a back up camera! Living without my camera is almost as bad as living without electricity. Well almost.

What are these photos I’ve just posted? These are some images I took for the school auction to use for the marketing materials. I used some of the images myself in this video I created. If you watch the video you may recognize a few. Speaking of the video, I had so much fun creating it. I had an inkling that if I ventured into the “movie making” end of things I’d be opening a new can of worms and indeed this appears to be true. The slideshow was created using iMovie but if I had a spare month or two on my hands where I could lock myself in my basement (insert laugh track) I’d dedicate myself to learning Premiere and AfterEffects and more about movie making… and audio. I hear multiple cans of worms opening as I type!

I’ll stop my rambling now and embed the said slideshow:

Untitled from Jana Kleitsch on Vimeo.

Another project I created for the school auction was this canvas piece for the class project to to be auctioned. I didn’t even find out who bought it or how much it went for, but that is okay too. I love this heart design and will add this template to my client offerings once I launch my new website. (Disclosure, remember that laugh track for the extra time to devote to things like this? Insert here too! I’ve been working on my new website for about six months now and it still needs a solid week of me pounding at it to make it presentable to you.) Stay tuned!

Beautiful house, beautiful family, not much more a photographer could want in a session. Once again, candy was used for bribery purposes and lucky for me the candy hearts ended up making fun photos too just in time for Valentine’s Day. Totally not planned. One thing to note is that parents worry that their children are too energetic but really that makes for the most fun photos in my opinion. I just sit back with my camera and capture the magic and personality of a fun family interacting. These sessions end up being my favorite.

On another note unrelated to this post, I plan on adding more watermarks to my photos going forward. I hate to do it but after reading this article yesterday regarding photographers finding their images on websites I’ve decided to be more proactive in preventing photo stealing from happening. I think it looks terrible though so I am going to tread lightly and not watermark through faces as I’ve seen other photographers do.

In my last post I promised “beach photos coming soon”. I meant from my trip to Mexico but alas those are on hold as I have some newer! more exciting! photos to post from a session with a very special one year old and his sister this week. I am trying something new on this post. I’m adding a music button so you can listen to music while you look at the photos. Trying this feature out on this particular family’s photos makes a lot of sense too because this little guy’s dad is a very talented musician. In fact, that is how I first met the Dad — back in the days before diapers when he could still tour!

This was a fun session. I will either be popular with the neighbor kids (I used a pack of Skittles I found in my camera bag to bribe during this session) or they will hate me… when they are old enough to care about their cute little baby butt shots being taken by me. I’d better stock up on the skittles I guess.

My camera was starting to rust this January so these photos make me really happy — especially because there is a lot of love for this family. (And look at their cute new beach house! Love!)

I fell in love with this town and the Gata Gorda Inn. Andy, my husband and I had road tripped through Baja in 1994 for 3 months and we developed a love for the country. That said, we hadn’t been back to Mexico since 2004 due to the perceived “danger” of the drug cartels. Fortunately we found this little beach gem of a town seemingly untouched by the drug wars (read this article for more info). The town was a haven for surfers, artists, hippies, gringos, expats and mexicans alike — and they all intermingle. My idea of heaven — and I immediately started thinking, how can I retire here?

All right, enough with this prelude! Let’s get on with the photos of COLOR! And seriously, I mean color. No monochromatic gray of everything in Seattle. Did I mention I was in heaven? Indeed. (Part 2 will be beach photos, I promise.)

My photo session with the L family was bittersweet. For one I was really happy to see my former neighbors who have since moved to the midwest, and see how their daughters have grown. And I was really honored they’d hire me for a photo session on their vacation. But then sad part was that it made me miss them! We had a fun time at the Normandy Park Cove which worked great because in the background of many of the photos you can see their old (and my current) hood of Three Tree Point. Their mom described the girls as Tomboy Princesses. I love it! They are ready to jump, leap, explore and play in the sand — but always wearing a tutu! Awesomeness. I found I edited many of the photos in black and white because you know, Seattle is GRAY. Why not play up the gray with more gray?

Of course the session ended with a non-waterproof pair of Uggs wading in Puget Sound.

Hope to see this family again before the girls are really grown up!