New camera

After 2 1/2 days of indecision, today I bought a new camera. I tend to be financially conservative so I surprised myself by upgrading my camera instead of just replacing it. I totally waffled because my 40D was a fantastic camera, I loved it. But having the 5D could be an advantage, and upgrading when the insurance is going to pay for part of it just seemed like too good of an opportunity to miss. So I've been playing with this beautiful new camera all evening. It's so fun! I don't have a great lens - I still need to replace my favorite one that was stolen, but even with what I have I'm really happy.


I love that she is still very happily wearing moon boots on April 30th - on the wrong feet no less.


What's amazing about this is that it was taken at ISO 2000. I think the 40d only went to ISO 1600. And the high ISO settings on the 40D had a lot of grain.


This is just a un-retouched crop of the previous picture. Amazing clarity for ISO 2000! And hardly any grain.


I put this in because my husband never appears in pictures (he has a problem with photographers :) ), but he was helping me test out the new camera. I think this is meant to be his new facebook profile picture.

A sad day for Pam

We are having a hard time here at our house - a.k.a. Etherdox Photography - our home was burglarized and my camera and laptop were taken. Matt has also had a bunch of tools stolen from the garage. It's upsetting to us - the burglars forced a window open and were in the house while I was being "parent helper" at the preschool yesterday. Very disturbing. That said it could have been a lot worse - my desktop computer is still here and that's where all the pictures are. We are grateful to be safe and that we weren't home & in any danger. We have already done some major fortifications to the windows and the rest of the house. Even though we were being careful just in general, obviously there was more that should have been done.

So this post is my tribute to my last set of good pictures from my beloved Canon 40D. I still have my backup camera, and my backup lenses, so I can still take pictures (another blessing). But I will miss that 40D very much - and the lens that was on it.

I saw some pictures like this that another photographer did for a bar mitzvah, and I loved the idea of using scriptures like this. The kids loved it too, they were perfect models (they even loved the flash going off in their faces).

More preschool portrait favorites

I am finally finishing up my proofs for the preschool pictures, and oh wow, I love some of these! I had to add a few more... :) What darling kids!!! Maybe you can tell that I love the climber pictures. :)


I love this one because the kids LOVE the preschool's dramatic play areas so much - they have to take turns & they're always SO happy when they get their turn! (When I was taking pictures in there it was a big disappointment because they couldn't actually play!)


I did NOT touch his eyes with Photoshop. It's real. Wow.


Something about this one I especially love. How sweet is she???


And these two twins - could there be cuter boys??? I love the connection in this one.

First Communion Portraits

I met this beautiful girl just a short time before her First Communion, and it was such a pleasure to work with her on these gorgeous portraits! She is sweet & bubbly and so much fun. As a photographer it doesn't any better than a beautiful girl in a beautiful gown, especially when she has a great personality to boot!

They were also so kind about me having 2 of my kids along - which is never my preference, though they did behave nicely. The funniest mom-moment was that my 2 year old (who mostly rode happily in the stroller) wore her "hop-hop slippers" and I forgot to bring real shoes along. Oops. She is a character and has also been wearing her moon boots a lot (warm weather notwithstanding) so it's not that big a stretch to wear bunny slippers out & about.

Anyway my thanks to this great subject and her very nice mother too - it was a really fun session!

Toddler photography

Okay, to start with, I love high-key portraits (that's light colors on a light background). And this little girl had so much personality that she just sparkled! I loved having her here for portraits. She was super-good even though we did these in the playroom, with big piles of toys just out of her reach, and my 2 year old was right there playing with them! (They actually got a couple of minutes of playtime together afterwards & they were so darling.)

I also loved that she loves shoes - my youngest daughter also loves shoes, especially "church shoes" and any that she can put on herself (that means the tying shoes are never worn). How could you not love her beautiful shiny red shoes??? And now I really want swimming suit pictures of my kids too!

Portraits at the park

This is the nicest family - we met at the park one sunny morning for pictures with their little boy. I saw him last fall and he's grown so much! It's always fun to go to parks for these sorts of pictures. I imagine these little guys - suddenly the very center of attention of all these people saying "look here!" "Smile!" "Oh wait, stop at the top of that slide!" "Do you want to feed the ducks? No, don't eat the bread yourself!" He was the funniest with the ducks - I was totally nervous that he was going to run right into the lake, then I realized I needed to step back & not be a parent, just be the photographer.

(He didn't fall in.)

Preschool portraits (Albuquerque children family photographer)

We decided to do "custom" portraits this time around for the preschool portraits. I had so much fun with these! It took a little longer, but to me these are a really nice change from the normal posed school portraits. In the morning I had a nice shady spot that worked really well, but when afternoon rolled around the light was more difficult to work with. So I decided to try using the jungle play area inside the preschool - and I loved that too. To me it would be really special to have a portrait in one of the amazing dramatic play areas at the school, so I hope people like them. (Although there tends to be a giraffe looking over the kids' shoulder... I kept moving it & it kept ending up over their shoulders... I guess that's what happens in the jungle!)

Baby wonder! (Albuquerque baby family photographer)

This little guy is so special... his mom (my amazing friend) had a really difficult pregnancy, and he was born at 33 weeks. He's totally a trooper, came home from the hospital after not even 3 weeks, and is putting on weight like a champion. He looks so good! He is right about at his due date now. What a privilege it was to take these pictures. Not only that but I also got to hold him for awhile :). His brother was so much fun too!