Out-takes

If you visit ATP you will find some beautiful new photos of Sare. These are her not-so-great shots, but very telling of her personality! She's not always sweet and beautiful. :)

last post of the night

I promise.


I love to read Tara Whitney's blog. She's a brilliant photog in sunny Southern Cal. Anyhoo, they did an interview here and it totally blew me away. Seriously, this woman is enormously gifted and she still struggles with insecurities.

My favorite question they asked her:

"Me: What is the best thing about your job as a professional photographer? The worst?

Tara: Making people feel beautiful. That is totally the best thing for me. Allowing a family to see themselves from an outsiders perspective - all of those little connections and quirks. I also love the high I get while I am shooting. That's pretty fun too. And the worst: constantly doubting myself, never feeling good enough, and proofing. NOBODY LIKES PROOFING."

I totally freak out after every session. Until the client calls/texts/emails I'm a nervous wreck. And good grief, if they never call/email/text!

I feel better. I'm mostly normal. At least a little bit. I could relate to most everything she said, especially about the 'high' she gets when she shoots. I get down right giddy!!

Well, I need to get to bed, I'm so excited for tomorrow! Hope I can sleep!

Va-Kay Photos + Reflection

(warning, this is a ridiculously long post filled with crazy, unrelated pictures)

ENJOY!

A fun photo of Sare I took while set up at Lori and Jay's place. She's such a stinking ham!


Hmmm. I wonder where she gets it from? Rob took this one of me and I'm loving it! Thinking it would make a neat profile picture, but I'm pretty sure my last profile picture flaunts me wearing the same shirt. And I truely don't even wear it THAT often. :)

This is the restaurant that Rob and I would sit at until 3am drinking coffee and tea every night while I was in college. We literally had our own booth. Being in Sioux City for our tenth anniversary brought back a lot of really wonderful memories. Our first date was at this place, and it was snowing big thick flakes that stuck in our eyelashes. It's one of my all-time favorite memories. It was late, like 10pm and we were in the parking lot standing in the snow, laughing, and it was quiet and dark and lit up with the magical glow of street lights reflecting off of the snow and I remember thinking that every date should be like this date.

Oh, and it was a Sunday night, of course. All good things start on Sunday, just so you know.
This is the sign that has greeted us on the interstate ever since we moved to C'ville back in '88. It glows neon red and blue when it's dark, pretty cool.
These are my beautiful kids risking life and limb at the Sargeant Floyd Monument overlooking the Missouri River.
See, I told you! :)
Look at that sass! Overlooking a field by the monument, it was so much early spring when we were up there, crazy because we came home to TX for full-blown summer. (it's 10:30pm and my air is running right now!)
Our kids with the Camiolo clan. These children have pretty much hung out together since birth. It's crazy how big they are getting!
Such a beautiful photo, I love these two!!
Lori and I sitting on the steps of the building that we met in back in 1997 during our oh-so-horrible sociology class. It was at 7am and the professor spoke in a complete monotone voice. Let's just say my 3am trysts with Rob didn't leave me perky at 7am!!
Hanging out in front of the dorm that I lived in at M'side.
We all went for a big family walk the last night. Lori snapped this picture. I was excited because we took one like this years ago when Sare was still in the stroller and it has always been one of my favorites.
Sarah was scrapbooking with Mom and I.
Rob was entertaining us on the keyboard.
Lori snapped this pic in front of a beautiful old Presbyterian church in M'side. Would it be wrong to change denominations purely for architectural reasons?? (jk people, jk)
I was playing in photoshop today and altered this fun little photo.
This is probably my favorite picture from the entire week up North. It's so us, just chillin together, being a family. I love, love, love this blue fence Lori found!
Eli, hanging out at my parents. This is literally how he reads a book or plays video games. I guess he can think better when all the blood flows to his head!


Ok, I know I look like a giant nerd here, but I still like this photo. It's pretty typical RobNAnna, Rob looking cool and casual and me loping a camera and being a general dork. Oh well, at least I'm comfy behind the lens, that's enough for me!

Shoveling Out Again

I have just been buried lately! It's been crazy. Part of it is that I'm working on launching a new ministry (realife) at our church, so that's been a little time consuming. I've also had 4 shoots this week (after tomorrow am anyway) and that is exciting, but just takes time to post-process. Sarah had her end of school year program this week, and we entertained until 12am last night. It's been fun though! I am (as usual)_ so excited about our life! My cousin Sara and here family are in Galveston-ish this week so we are really looking forward to seeing them in church on Sunday and then taking a few days off this coming week to play on the beach, camera in tow, of course. It's been a long time since I've done beach pictures, so I'm pretty psyched about all of that!
Work was fun today, super intensely busy, but I kind of love it when it's like that, the day goes fast and I feel all accomplished and what not.

I've got some fun photos to share from our vacation that I just hadn't gotten to yet, so I'm hoping to do that now. I need to help get the kiddos off to bed first though. It's getting crazy late for them. And I have to be in Deer Park at 7:30am for a photo shoot, yay! so no late night for me, right??

I hate the blogger I've become.

This blog used to be so high on my priority pole. And I promise, even though it doesn't look like it, it still is! I love to pour my heart out on here, you all know that. I've just been so busy since we got home from Iowa. Wow. I thought I would slow down a tiny bit, but nope, not at all. It's good, but I know that I can't keep this pace forever. I'm actually looking forward to the kids being home for a couple weeks between school and summer fun, cause it will force me to change my pace! Hopefully people will be understanding.

Today I got to scrapbook. It doesn't seem to be a priority right now, but it was with the ladies from church, so that was pretty awesome. I finished three pages, they are ok. I can tell I'm out of it though. I had done a couple pages in Iowa that I'm pretty proud of, I need to take some photos and share here.

Well, I'm still working on my to-do list, but I wanted to take a moment and breeze in and say hi. There will be more to come. I promise. :) Till then, have a happy happy Sunday!

A Very Exciting Find

I splurged today. I guess we could call it a late birthday gift. I was going to get a hipster camera strap from Etsy but just hadn't ordered it yet. But today was flea marketing for a some new props for the biz and I spotted this lovely piece, it had to come home with me. I also found an antique rope ladder in a lovely shade of green, he wandered my way too.

I could just see pictures with this bench. I can't wait to drag it out into a field somewhere. :) Maybe tomorrow...

Giving God 29

[so much bouncing around in my brain today- you may have to hang on for the ride.]

So today I'm playing catch up. It's amazing how very behind a body gets when you transplate to your home state for a week. Funny too, because I thought I was so organized and ready for my trip, but really, I'm a mess. :) We all knew that, though.

God is good. So good. Let me start there. I've been praying for about the past two weeks about the decision to 'give God 29'. This idea occured to me one day during my bible study. I've been specifically asking God for a particular thing in my life for the past twelve years, and was pondering why it hadn't happened yet. I realized that maybe I just wasn't pursuing God the way I did when I was younger. It gets a little more complicated when you throw kids and churches and life into the business. Believe it or not, high school and then college are a lot more straight forward than this being a grown-up nonsense! Anyhoo, I decided that this is the year that I'm really going to live out loud for God. I'm going to be expressive and intimate in my faith, and let my passion for Christ shine through everything I put my hand to. I'm really excited about it in case you can't tell!

So put feet to this. What does it look like? I'm so glad you asked because I've been really thinking hard about how to move my life from 'working' for God to 'living' for God and I think I've come up with a few ideas. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has revealed them to me, letting me in on God's big plan for my little life.

First off, I'm committing to putting God first every day. I've started a more rigorous bible study then before. Starting with rewriting a Psalm (wow, that's been blessing me!) from my NKIV, doing my P.A.R.T. (journaling - Praise Admit Request Thanks, then I read out of the Message for a a chapter or two, writing down my reflections as I read, and then I wrap up with a christian life book for a chapter. I'm about halfway through Wild Things Happen When I Pray right now. I'm not trying to brag here, I just know that there a lot of people that want to get closer to God, but maybe they are like me and just not sure how to do it. I work really well off of a schedule, a list to check off and this is working for me. I'm posting this here, so that I can witness to you, my reader but maybe even more importantly, you can hold me accountable in this new found excitement.

Secondly, I'm trying to weed out where I'm spending my time. I'm learning to tell a few people 'no' once in a while and trying not to feel too terribly guilty about it. Sorry if you are one of those people, I'm just learning that I can't do everything for everyone and I have to put my God and my family first, and let the other stuff fall into place. I spent a good chunk of our Iowa trip reading the Essential Enneagram and one of the 'statements' within my personality type was something like "I seem to be sick more often than others, but I suppose that's because I often run myself down helping the people around me." Ouch. That is so true. I have had NINE sinus infections since we moved to Texas less than a year ago. I think I need to tell a few people no once in a while. Otherwise I'm going to be unhealthy, physically and spiritually/mentally. So now I'm trying to ask myself why I'm doing whatever it is that I'm doing, if it falls under my purposes and if maybe it could be delegated to someone else.

Thirdly, Anna Thoreson Photography has taken off. Now, I just want to take a moment and give God the glory for every shoot I've done. It is His creativity in me that allows me to see what I do and capture the beauty that He has created. I have made a pact to give back to God out of every photo I take. Currently I'm tithing, but as soon as I pay off my equipment I'll raise that percentage to 20% and upwards from there. My eventual goal would be to live off of 10% and give God the rest. I know this sounds a little ridiculous, but I read the blog of a photographer in southern Cal that charges $1200 just for a shoot!! God is good, He's big, and He's able. I want to honor him with my business in every way I can.

Which leads me to my next point. You'll notice some changes coming to Anna Thoreson Photography in the next few days. I'm working on a vision statement and a decency clause. This is because I want my work to honor God in every sense. I would never want a photo I take to cause someone to stumble or lust. I think God delights in my work every bit as much as I do and my clients do. I'd like to think Jesus could sit with me and look over my shoulder at my Mac as I post-process and I wouldn't be embarrassed. Now I know that this may cost me some business, me being open about my faith, but I firmly believe in my heart that God will honor it because I'm choosing to honor Him. Another fun little change is that I've started praying before I go out to each shoot, asking for God's blessing and even His anointing as I work.

So you can see, I'm pretty psyched about 29. I'm only 3 days in, but I'm already super blessed! I'd so love to receive any feedback. Thanks to all of you, my faithful readers. I'm convinced that you have made Anna Thoreson Photography on the forefront of people's minds.

Big Boy

Eli lost his third tooth tonight. It was funny cause we didn't even know he had a loose one, but he was enjoying his corn on the cob tonight (it's Iowa) and he pulled it away from his mouth and his tooth was stuck in the cob. He was pretty excited about it. I'm trying to figure out how the tooth fairy is going to visit him successfully when we get on the road at four am. Off to bed now.

Iowa-ness

So have loved being here the past few days. I love driving down the road and seeing the HyVee truck, I love seeing people I know at the mall, I love the smell of lilacs in the spring. It has been amazing to spend time with family and friends.
I'm sharing just a few happy moments from this week, but keep in mind these are only highlights. We really enjoyed our time here, every day was a new adventure and memories were made.

Oh, and random funny. The gal I photographed today told me "You move like a Spider Monkey when you take pictures."

Correctionville

Well, we are live posting from Correctionville, IA today. No, it's not a prison town, just a place where they made a mistake when they were laying the roads and they fixed it right here in this little town. Anyhoo, this is the town where I spent the last ten years of my childhood and there are definitely some good memories. I went for a walk with my folks yesterday and took this adorable photo of Sarah.

Sioux City Happiness

Whoever said you can't buy happiness didn't shop at Younkers.

yep, you heard me right. Younkers is one of the distinct Midwestern delights that I totally missed. I didn't buy a lot, but it was still really fun to browse. Lori and I really enjoyed our day, we took a bunch of photos this morning (like 351) then went to Taco John's (yum) for lunch, shopped at Younkers, went for pedicures and made our hubbies an amazing anniversary supper of grilled steak, moonlight salad, sauted mushrooms, and Sunkist Bakery picnic cake. It's been a really good day. Here are a few photographic highlights. Off to bed now, I have an eight am photo shoot. Pray for our weather, we are expecting rain.





PS - I should mention that today is me and Rob's 10 year anniversary. And some of these cool pictures were taken in the hall of my college dorm room, where we spent hours talking, praying, and yes, kissing. Keep in mind, it was in the winter of 1997 and that hallway was unheated. We were pretty crazy in love, keeping our hands in each other's coat pockets to stay warm. Anyhoo, this hall in Dimmit was known as 'the secret hall' because it was always locked and you had to have a key to even get to that part of the building. It was some crazy coincidence that it happened to be unlocked today and that was pretty stinking cool! Lori took these shots.

We Made It.

For any of you that were wondering whether or not we survived our 17 hours in the car with Sare, we did. :) Barely, but we did. Sarah probably threw 4 major fits between Texas and Iowa, but we survived it. And yep, it cost a fortune in gas. Not quite as much as I anticipated, but we started the trip with a pretty full tank. It was a crazy long drive and I can tell that 30 is pushing in on me, my knees were really achy this time. We had a lot of good talks though, and listened to some great music and did a lot of reminiscing. The lengths of time when Sarah wasn't freaking out were really pretty swell.

So we are glad to be here. Anxious to start taking pictures, the Camiolo family is up first. Praying about the weather too, I have two shoots scheduled and as of last night it was supposed to rain all day Saturday.

Can't wait to hit Younkers and HyVee, the major luxuries in life.

So Glad to Blog.

Man, it's been forever. Life has been so crazy lately, I'm totally unsure where to even begin! But I feel this overwhelming need to blog, to sort out my feelings and thoughts and just to express thanksgiving! God has been soooo good in our lives lately and sometimes I feel like writing it in my private journal is so not enough, kwim??

Ok, so last week was insane. Kim was here and it was awesome. She has such a great way of bringing me back to base. She always pulls me back down off of all the things I'm doing and says, "I know what all is going on around you, but how are YOU doing?" I love that. :)

So we had three days basically of shopping and eating and churching and running around. It was pretty awesome. These pictures are from that, one taken at this amazing mall we discovered, The Woodlands. There's a super neat water way that we walked around and we enjoyed Cheesecake Factory for lunch - if you split something it's not that bad! We hit New York and Co. for some cool photographer clothes (all black) and walked the mall. We also took Kimmie to Kemah, which is always a fun experience.

Then Pastor Craig came in on Friday afternoon and we got to fight Houston rush hour traffic, so that's always a blast. But he did a mini-conference and it was such a huge success. Everyone in our church is talking about what he had to say on Sunday morning too, it was very exciting. I had a photo shoot that afternoon and it was really fun. Oh, and we ate at Baytown Seafood, which is always an experience, to say the least! :)

Wow, this little post is pretty link-heavy, but I think that's fun, right?

I'm so loving our life right now. It was really cool to share it with two very dear friends this week. I'm totally in awe of all that God is doing. Life group was amazing last night and I'm really wowed by the way we are growing, in numbers but more importantly relationally.

So we are getting ready to leave for the great trip North. I'm looking forward to the open road and the hum of the engine at 72 miles an hour cause I'm wierd like that. Rob and I love the long stretches and conversations that take place on the open road. We have always loved to travel together, it's only slightly harder with a three year old, but we'll make it! I'm of course taking a pile of work with me, books to read, coupons to be sorted and filed and discarding the expireds, lots of fun things. We are really enjoying What's the Deal With? so that will probably make it into my bag too. And I'm working on a new music list with iTunes. What's a trip without some new music to set the stage for you. Every major trip we've ever taken has a theme cd. Our Colorado trip was Pathways, man, every time I hear that music I think about cruising through the Rockies with Cousin John at 90 miles an hour. I can still remember when our ski's flew off the roof (just too much sustained wind at that speed) and we all had a good laugh about the 'road rash' on Rob's skis. hee hee. Yep, every awesome road trip needs some great music to trigger your memories in the years to come. I just happened to receive my iTunes gift card from MyPoints, so it's perfect timing. I'm open to suggestions people, unless I already have it. I'm kind of a music junkie in case you hadn't noticed! I'm totally psyched for new music. I'm seriously contemplating the PS I Love You soundtrack - it's cheaper on iTunes of course.

Rob and I are doing amazing. We are creeping up on our big day here on Friday. Can't believe its been ten years. I'm still thrilled to snuggle up with him in bed at night, that is an amazing thing folks. He is so the best thing ever, gosh I'm blessed. I haven't quite figured out what I'm giving him for our anniversary. I'm leaning towards Mario Kart for the Wii, but he'll get to play it this weekend so we'll see what he thinks of it. Yeah, I know that's an immature gift, but he'd probably really love it. Hey, and the couple that plays together stays together, right? and prays, that's vitally important too. I've also thought about Wii Fit for him. Don't worry, he doesn't read this. In his words, "I don't need to read it, I live it!" hee hee. gotta love that man.

Well, I'm pretty much droning on and on, but that's ok. I'm uber excited to scrapbook with Lori and my mom this weekend. I've been stockpiling new product apparently, too busy to bust it out and play. I am packing a bag though, and Elsie's new book/box is traveling with me, so that should be pretty stinking inspiring.

Time to snuggle with my hubby and a carpet picnic. this is our fake anniversary dinner. catch you later, peeps.

Tired As Snot

Wow. It's been such a long and amazing week. First off, I've taken like zero pictures, at least not since Monday pm. And secondly, I've been a terrible blogger. But don't worry, I've kind of stunk at everything this week, so it's not personal!

Kimmie has been here, it's been amazing. I do have photos to share, but they are on her camera and unfortunately my card reader won't work with her sim card. So we'll have to wait for now. But we've been having a blast tearing up Houston. I've missed her so much and it's been awesome to just soak up here friendship for a few days.

I've been really sick. I lost my voice on Tuesday afternoon and I just mostly got it back today. But we sat outside Starbuck's for an hour and a half with Craig and Kim talking over innerstate traffic, so it's on it's way out again. Oh well, totally worth it.

We picked up Craig from the airport. He's awesome. He gave an amazing talk this evening, like we knew he would. I can't wait for tomorrow. Ok, I can. I have to get up at 5:30am to take Gibbler to the airport, but I love her and it's totally worth it to have her here for four days.

I crunched my car today. Yep, it's a long story but I backed into a gate at the car dealership. Sick about it, but I'm pretty sure Rob forgives me and such is life, right?

Amazed with my life today. How can you crunch your new car and still have a good day over all? Only in my crazy world. God is good. peace out peeps.