Thursday, July 31, 2008

Slacking off

Yes, I've been really bad about posting this week. But this week and the next couple of weeks are going to be crazy busy for me. Grant is attending two weeks at the Sheldon Institute at the college in Oswego. He went last year and had a blast, and he was very excited to go again. This year he got to pick his own classes, and he is taking Intro to Physics (his favorite class), Exploration in Painting, another art class called "3-D Adventures" and a life science class about predators called "Nature's Bad Guys." I'm glad he's enjoying it - and actually learning something in the summer! - but the schedule is wearing me out. We all have to get up extra early (lord knows I need all the beauty sleep I can get) and then there's the twice-daily trip to Oswego to drop off and pick up. In between trips I've been swamped with doctor and hair appointments, Griffin's swimming lessons, grocery shopping, processing client orders, returning emails... I need a nap! :)

So yeah, it's been a bit busy around here and I haven't had time to do much "leisure photography." But I do have a session scheduled for tomorrow morning that will be a bit different, so stay tuned for that. For now I'll leave you with my favorite picture of Grant from a couple of weeks ago, converted to black and white. A 16" x 20" of this image will soon be gracing the wall of my living room.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

More Bubbles!

Yup, the boys were outside playing with bubbles again today. They love them. But really, is there anyone who doesn't like bubbles? I don't think so. And if I come to your house to take pictures of your children, there's a very good chance I'll be bringing some bubbles along with me. :)





Saturday, July 26, 2008

Christmas in July

Well, I broke my streak of posting every day this month. :(

Unfortunately yesterday was not a great day for finding time to post. I had a very ... challenging ... day with my boys. Let's just say I was mentally exhausted by the time I got them to bed. Is it time for them to go back to school yet?????

Speaking of that, does anyone remember the Staples commercial that showed the father jumping around in the store aisles, gleefully gathering all of the school supplies in his cart, while his miserable-looking children trudged along beside him, all to the sountrack of "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?" When I used to work full-time I thought that commercial was amusing, but never fully understood the message. After this, my second summer home with the kids, I totally get it. :)

Anyway, the other thing that kept me from posting yesterday was that I was busy designing these! Here is a sneak peek at the line of holiday cards that I will be offering this year. Cards are 5" x 7" and will be available as flat, postcard-style cards, or as folded, greeting-card style cards. Both can be customized with your family's holiday greeting on the reverse side or on the inside. More samples and full pricing information, as well as holiday order deadlines, will be posted in the coming weeks.


Thursday, July 24, 2008

Skipping Along

OK, this rainy weather has just got to go. We haven't even left the house today! I was hoping to get up to Beaver Lake with the kids sometime this week. Tomorrow's forecast looks promising, so maybe we'll end up going.

For now, here's a photo of Grant from 2006, which also happened to be that year's first-prize winner in Beaver Lake's annual photography competition. It was the first time I had ever entered a photo contest, and I was floored when I found out that I had won! It was very cool to go the the Golden Harvest Festival that year and see my picture up on the wall with a blue ribbon hanging from it. And Grant thought he was hot stuff when he saw it printed in the Post-Standard. :)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A Door in the Woods

This picture was taken two summers ago, when Grant's Cub Scout pack went fishing at Gulliver's Pond in Palermo. The fishing was ok, but the location was wonderful. There are a ton of old abandoned things out there, all rusty and crusty and decrepit.

I don't know what this little building is, but it seems to stand as a guardian of the woods. Or perhaps it is like the wardrobe that leads to Narnia.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Fort Stanwix

Recently I've been scouring my various hard drives (I have three, and will probably need to buy a fourth relatively soon) in search of what I call the "lost images." These are pictures that I took for one reason or another, and then never did anything with. They just sit there in their own little digital graveyard, never seeing the light of day. But I know these images meant something to me when I took them, so I'm determined to bring them out of hiding and show them to you.

These were taken in October of 2006 on a trip to Fort Stanwix in Rome. The kids had fun exploring the fort and I enjoyed the rustic feel of the place.


I love the reflection in the rain barrel...

Monday, July 21, 2008

Sweet Corn Memories

Have you ever had one of those "sense memories?" You know, when a sight or a sound or a smell will take you back to some other time in your life. I get them a lot with smells. There's a certain smell that I associate with my paternal grandmother's house. She was very ill for a long time, and her kitchen always smelled like pills. She took a zillion pills for various problems, and now that medicinal smell will always send me back to her house.

I had another scent memory hit me the other night. We had our first sweet corn of the season. I was standing there in the kitchen, tearing the strong green husk off the first cob, and a wave of that corn smell hit me and carried me off to my maternal grandparents' house in Fair Haven. It's something I hadn't thought about in years, probably not since I was a kid. I spent a lot of time in their house when I was young, and I ate a lot of corn there in the summers. My grandparents had a small vegetable garden up on top of the little hill in their backyard. I believe that they grew corn in that garden, though I may be mistaken on that point, it's been so long now.


What I do remember is my grandmother bringing me out into their breezeway with a big armful of corn. We would sit side by side and she would show me the proper way to prepare the corn. Take the husk off a little at a time, don't try to get too much at once. Don't break off the ends, Grandpa will trim them up with a knife so that they're just the right length. I remember she was very meticulous about getting every last piece of silk off. I try to be as diligent about that now, but I never seem to be able to get it all.


And then there was that seemingly endless period of time while the corn was boiling. To pass the time I'd help set the table, pausing now and again to look out the dining room window and see if any birds were perched on Grandma's feeder outside. Then it would finally be time to eat. Slather on the butter, a little sprinkle of salt and then the first bite. Heaven on a cob. Sweet and juicy and gone far too quickly.


Then as soon as the memory had arrived it was gone, and I was back in my kitchen, standing over my own little pile of corn. I thought about calling to Grant or Griffin, maybe teaching them the fine art of husking corn. But they were busy with Legos and Transformers and other little-boy things. Maybe another time. For now, I'll just close my eyes and enjoy being back in that house on Lake Street; a little girl with a smile on her face and butter dripping down her chin.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

New Policies for Portrait Orders

The following is a change to the current procedure regarding the ordering of prints from online galleries and will become effective immediately:

Portrait clients will receive an email when their online gallery is active. Orders for prints and albums should be placed within 30 days of receipt of the email.

If an order is placed within those 30 days, the gallery will remain open for an additional 30 days to allow time for re-orders. At that time the gallery will be locked. All images will be archived for two years from the date of the portrait session. There will be no archive retrieval fee for orders placed during those two years.

If an order is NOT placed within those 30 days, the online galley will be locked. All images will be archived for two years from the date of the portrait session. Any orders placed after the online gallery is locked will be subject to a $20.00 archive retrieval fee, due at the time the order is placed.

This will apply to portrait sessions beginning today, 7/20/08. Online galleries for all prior portrait sessions will still be locked after 30 days, but there will be no archive retrieval fee applied to orders from those galleries.

If you have any questions regarding this new policy, please feel free to contact me.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

My Grant

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this little boy? He is my sweetheart, my lovebug and even at nine years old he still loves to cuddle in my lap. He's brilliant, handsome and, as you can see in some of these pictures, a future candidate for orthodonture. :) I can't believe that in a few short weeks he will be starting 5th grade. Where does the time go? It seems like just days ago that he was my little peanut, stuck in a box in the newborn ICU, fighting so hard to stay with us while we prayed that he wouldn't leave us so soon after coming into our lives.

Now he has left that struggle behind him, with little trace of the prematurity remaining. His asthma is gone. He is growing like a weed, and hopefully his stature will soon catch up with that of his peers. Or at least get him tall enough to keep his little brother from passing him. For now, he is just a nomal nine-year-old boy. He loves his video games, and his Legos, and his silly TV shows. He is a swimmer, a self-proclaimed "mathlete" and a future engineer.

And he loves to spin. Yes, spin. He loves to be dizzy and silly. So that's what we did yesterday. We spun around...

...and around...

...and around...

...and around...

...and then fell down.

I do love this boy so much. I love him when he's silly...

...and serious...

...and happy...

...and just plain handsome.

And I love those eyes!!

And most of all, I love that he loves his Mom so much. :)

Friday, July 18, 2008

From the Archives: The Fair

Today I've been busy dealing with bickering children and trying to clean my house, so we'll have to settle for a dip into the archives for today's picture. I was talking with a friend of mine a little while ago, and she mentioned the New York State Fair, which will be coming up next month. It reminded me of a series of images that I did from last year's Fair. This was one of my favorites from that series...


Of couse this reminds me that I have once again missed the deadline for entering the Fair's photography competition. {sigh} Maybe next year.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Run Aground

I have a few more random pictures from our camping trip that I may or may not post, because although they are decent images, they aren't really all that exciting to me. I do like this one, though.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

A Saturday in Sabattis: Evening Light

Saturday evening brought us a nice little sunset over the pond. Nothing like an Oswego sunset, but just enough color to make everything look pretty. The first thing I noticed as I was walking down to the pond was the way the light was reflecting off these boats...

Such nice silhouettes and reflections...


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A Saturday in Sabattis: Onward and Upward

Or, Who Says Fat Chicks Can't Climb Mountains?

Saturday afternoon brought blue skies and plenty of sun. It also brought the dreaded hike. Just as I'm not a fan of camping, I'm also not fond of hiking. I'm always afraid of twisting an ankle or some similar catastrophe. But being caught up in the spirit of the weekend, I agreed to go. Our fearless leader (the pack's Cubmaster) assured me that it wouldn't be a bad hike. He told me that the trail only goes about a mile out, although (and this is the important part) "it gets a little steep at the end." Uh, huh. Sure.

See this pretty picture? Lovely trees and lake, beautiful mountain view, right?

It was taken from here. Yeah. When he said "a little steep at the end" what he really meant was "We're going to climb a mountain." I kid you not.

Really.

We're not 100% sure which mountain it was (we only know that the trail was called "Duke Rock Trail"), but as near as we can figure it was Graves Mountain, elevation 2,313 feet. Not the biggest peak in the Adirondacks, but much higher than I ever thought I'd go. Or could go.

But it really was a beautiful view. I'm glad I was tricked into going, even if I did think I was going to die at various times during the climb. :)

The boys made it up the mountain with no major problems. Griffin tripped and fell on his face twice on the flat part of the hike, but managed the climb without incident. He's weird like that.

This was taken as we came back down. I need this little reminder that yes, fat chicks really can climb mountains.

Oh, and the really bad Photoshop crown is so you can't see how horrible my hair looked after all the sweating I did along the way. :)

Monday, July 14, 2008

No Bears!!

As I mentioned, this past weekend I went with my family - and a couple dozen other people from Grant's Cub Scout pack - to the Adirondacks to go camping. We stayed at Camp Sabattis near Long Lake, which is our Council's Boy Scout camp. Now normally I don't camp. It's just not something I enjoy. I consider myself to be allergic to tents, sleeping bags, latrines and mosquitoes. Especially mosquitoes. My idea of "roughing it" is a hotel room without a good cable channel selection on the TV. You get the picture. But this time I was promised bears. More precisely, pictures of bears. I was told that black bears are always wandering in and out of the campsites there. So I agreed to go on this trip, figuring that it would be a nice inexpensive family weekend and that Griffin would have fun on his first camping trip (which he did - mostly). And that I would get some pictures of bears. But I didn't. Not a single one. No bears at all this weekend. {pouts all day}

But aside from the no-bears thing, we did have a good time. We arrived late Friday evening and left right after breakfast Sunday morning, so most of my pictures were taken on Saturday. We had beautiful weather that day, sunny and low 80s. Though I would have liked it to be a few degrees cooler in the afternoon, for reasons that will be clear to you when you read tomorrow's post. But in general it was a lovely day...

A Saturday in Sabattis: Morning Mist

Just down the path a few yards from the camp's dining hall is a little pond. Since I'm not a good tent-sleeper I was up at dawn, before almost everyone else in camp. I threw on my sweatshirt, grabbed my camera bag and headed down to the pond to see it in the early-morning light. I was greeted by a sleepy morning fog. I love fog. It just makes everything seem so peaceful...





Coming up tomorrow - part two of A Saturday in Sabattis: Onward and Upward. Stay tuned!

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Tigers and...

Why do these big cats look so hungry around me?? :)

Also taken on our February visit to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Lions and...

If it hadn't been for that glass wall, I would have been lunch. Taken at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo back in February.

Friday, July 11, 2008

The Boys at Beaver Lake

This trip into the archives brings us this picture from last summer, from one of our many family trips to Beaver Lake Nature Center. I love that place. There's always something new to explore, and Grant loves going to summer camp there. On our walks you will usually find the boys running ahead, scaring away any nearby wildlife and generally acting crazy. But for this one brief moment they were calmly walking along the trail, hand in hand. A rare sight, indeed. :)

Thursday, July 10, 2008

First Day of School

This entry from the archives goes back to last September, on Grant's first day of fourth grade. He looks so much older here than the little boy that he is and always will be in my mind. And you must take note of the shoes. They were his favorite part of back-to-school clothes shopping because they were Converse and because name of that style was the "Grant." :)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Griffin at the Fort

Things have been quite hectic this week in the Marriner household. It's our busiest week of the summer and I can't wait until it is over. Griffin has soccer camp each morning, and both boys have swimming camp in the afternoons. To top it all off, we are getting ready for a camping trip to the Adirondacks with the Cub Scouts this weekend. Needless to say, I've been running a bit short on time to find new pictures to post here. For the next few days I'll be dipping into the archives for some of my favorite pictures from the past year or so. And don't worry, I'll schedule posts to be released this weekend while I'm gone as well. :)

Today's archive photo was taken just over a year ago at Fort Ontario. At that time I had just scheduled my first (of many) portrait sessions at the Fort, and as I usually do with any new location I went there a few days ahead of time to check on lighting and to get some ideas going in my head for some of the shots I wanted to take. Grant was in school at the time, so Griffin was forced to come and be my model. And it shows in his "Are-you-almost-done-Mom???" expression. :)

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The Rose

This picture is to prove to my dear husband that yes, even flowers can be beautiful in black and white. :P

He thinks I'm a little obsessed with black and white photography, and that I'd probably shoot a rainbow in black and white if given the chance. He might be right. :)

This rose was originally red, and is one of the many that are currently blooming in my rose garden.