pascale wowak photoblog

Design your Life!

Well, it's officially out!  I was quite honored (to say the least) to have been selected by Redbook as one of their ten finalists in their very first Annual Design Your Life Awards.  The article is in the March 2008 issue of Redbook which is out on the stands right now!  Attached are a few pictures I quickly snapped tonight to post here.  You'll also note the snazzy little "Design You Life button" on the upper right column which will link directly to the article.  For now, you can read the entire article online by clicking this link:

http://img2.silpada.com/public/scene/print/redbook0308article.pdf

A very special thank you to my good friend Liz Depuydt who took the above picture of me and managed to not only produce an image of me that didn't make me cringe, but one that I actually liked! No small feat I assure you.  There are several reasons why I am BEHIND the camera and one of them is because I absolutely HATE having my picture taken due to my pervasive unphotogenic-ness... :)

I do want to share my thoughts and feelings about this concept/idea of Designing Your Life.

Quitting my job (which was my "original" lifelong passion) when my son was born created a huge upheaval in my life.  And although I most certainly appreciated the gift (and privilege) of being home with my son 24/7, I must be honest and admit to feeling alot of loss and disruption in my sense of identity/self.  It was though I was going through some sort of adolescent identity crisis all over again!  Plus, as a very independent and usually highly productive person, I was dismayed by the sense of accomplishing so very little in a 24 hr period (other than dealing with an almost inhuman amount of poop and nursing for hours on end, if that counts...) and feeling so incredibly emotionally wrapped up in this motherhood gig.  I had tremendous guilt anytime I got so much as 5 minutes to myself (not that that happened very much!).  Not to mention losing my financial independence was another blow to my sense of self.  So, although I very much enjoyed the time at home bonding with my son, I did struggle with certain aspects of being a SAHM.  That said, I was unable to even conceive of going back to my previous (exciting and fulfilling yet dangerous and exhausting) 50+ hour workweek career.  Fortunately, life with my son was fun and I really focused on enjoying my time with him.

But things changed again. My daughter was born 2 yrs after my son and within days I knew that I would not be a happy mommy if I didn't find some balance in my life and get in touch with something that was "just mine."  Creating life with my children and watching them grow and participating in their development is certainly rewarding in so many ways.  But something was still missing.  I needed a hobby, some little thing to be passionate about that did not have to do with me being MOM.  So, I decided to really (as in seriously) get back into Photography, a previous hobby of mine that was resurrected with my son's birth.  And the rest is history. 

I can attribute my decision to take that blind leap of faith and launch my own photography business on a certain personality trait of mine.  I hate the idea of "regrets".  I don't mind taking risks.  I firmly believe that since you only have one life to live, you might as well live it to the fullest and make the most of it.  (This may explain why I try to pack so much into one day....)   I figured: "what do I have to lose?"   Sure, the initial investment in equipment and advertising was a financial strain and worrisome at first and I am grateful for a very supportive husband who, although not particularly interested in photography, was willing to say: do what you have to do, we'll figure it out.  Eventually I made enough to cover the ads and then as word of mouth exploded, I stopped the ads just barely 5 months after launching the business.  I had made an agreement with my husband that my salary could go to camera equipment and gear.  We had managed for the past 3 years to cut corners and live on a tight budget so we kept doing what we had been doing and I was able to reinvest my income in lenses, creating a website and photo editing software etc...  I slowly built the business taking it one day at a time.  Plus I am fortunate enough to be able to schedule shoots on the days my husband is home to watch the kids.  This allows us to save on childcare expenses and keep the kids at home with us.  Essentially though, I am still a SAHM as I am home with my little ones most of the time.  The majority of my work is done late late late into the night long after they have gone to sleep.  I do sacrifice loads of personal sleep and "me" time but I know it's temporary as one day they will both be in school during the day and I can spend that time doing my editing and business related activities.  So I just keep plugging along knowing that it will only get easier to manage and maintain that ever elusive balance.

The best part of this arrangement, besides the flexibility it allows in my family life and the fact that it permits me to work AND be home with my kids, is that it is a situation I created for myself.  I took ownership of my life and designed a solution that best met my needs, my interests, my personality and my life.  That's the part that makes me proud.  And honestly, there is absolutely nothing really particularly special about me!  I'm just like you.  It just took me being highly self motivated and stubbornly persistent about deciding I would make this happen one way or another.  If the photography gig hadn't worked out, then I am sure I would have come up with a plan B!  This is part of the reason why I am always actively doing everything I can to support other mommy owned and operated businesses.  I buy their  products, I send them encouraging words of support, I help out in any way that I can.  I know how hard it is to run your own business AND be a mom at home with your kids all day. It's not easy.  It's a major commitment.   It takes alot of discipline and incredible work ethic to keep a little business going strong. 

My clients are hands down the best ever and they are the reason why I have not needed to do any marketing whatsoever for the past 2 years.  I've developed incredible friendships with many of them throughout the years and it's just so very fun to help chronicle their lives for them.

Granted, this job is alot of work.  After all, all working moms feel pulled in about three thousand different directions all at once.  Just goes with the territory.  But ultimately, this is, by far, the most perfect solution for me and my life.  To be able to make a living doing something I am utterly and completely passionate and crazy about... well, there are no words to do it justice.  It's just a really amazing thing.  I could not possibly be more grateful.    :)

Thomas Bradford

This little dude was only 8 days old and just barely 6 pounds.  TEENY tiny little guy.  When they are that small their skin is really loose (wrinkly!) and their heads are pretty big compared to their little skin and bones bodies and honestly, it just makes these pictures so meaningful because when he fattens up in a couple weeks he will look like a completely different baby!  Thomas was so mellow and easygoing too.  Everytime we changed his position he just looked at us like: "ok, ladies, do what you have to do, i'm cool."  He never protested!  So sweet!    I just loved the color of their front door so we had to get some stork delivery pictures too.  Heather, try to enjoy every moment with your little angel, they grow up so fast!

The Snow!

I posted this on my personal family blog but thought it might be fun for some of my long time readers to look at too. I didn't have time to resize all the images to make them fit nbicely here so they are really small but I'm just really backlogged on my to do list so I had to do a quick cut and paste job here.  Hope it still works!  In fact this past weekend was the first weekend I've had with my family since we went up to Mendocino last October.  I obviously work weekends and so we rarely get a chance to get away as a family.  This trip to the snow was a much welcomed, much needed and much appreciated 3 day getaway.  Besides, this was our first time at the snow since we last went with Gavin when he was about a year old, nearly 5 years ago!  So this was Ellie's first time and Gavin certainly felt like it was his first time.  Very exciting to see the wonder and curiosity in their faces.

The first day we got there just after noon and the kids immediately (of course) wanted to play in the snow so off we went!

I really quickly built a little sledding track right outside the cabin and they just started sledding their hearts out.  Ellie really loved it and kept asking to go again and again and again not to mention faster and faster please.  Gavin was a bit more cautious in his approach and kept asking how he could slow it down "just a bit."  They are so different those two.  So after a few runs he decided he just wanted to make snowballs and throw them so that's what he went off to do and Ellie and I sled together about a hundred times before my butt was just too frozen to handle another run.  I lured them inside with the promise of some hot chocolate which I had conveniently packed in my purse to ensure quick and easy retrieval when the time came.  I then unpacked all the bags and groceries as they happily sipped their hot cocoas.  Life was good.  :)

Here are a few of the first time sledding.  I am really happy with how well my camera handled the cold weather.  The metering was really tricky and I had to do almost spot metering to make sure that the whiteness of the landscape did not throw off my internal meter.  And their little sled run was right in the middle of some very splotchy light so I had to choose to meter for the shadows rather than the highlights due to the variety of light as they passed through.  I had never worked in the snow conditinos so it was really interesting to see how beautifully the snow caused perfect "fill light" on their faces, opening up shadows and really creating a fairly easy situation to work with.  The only issues were really that it was requiring alot of re-metering and recalculating every time they went frmo shade to light to patches to backlit to frontlit because the snow is not forgiving and can cause seriously overblown highlights if you don't constantly check your metering.  A good exercise for those wanting to leran to meter and adjust exposure on the fly!

The next day, after coming back from visiting the town of Murphy's Ellie walked in, plopped herself down the floor and promptly fell asleep.  She didn't even have the energy to take off her shoes poor little pumpkin!  This kid never naps, never stops moving, never ever just plops right down on the floor and falls asleep. Clearly it had been a long day.  You can see my knitting and photography books I had brought up and was able to enjoy reading at knitting at night.  So wonderful to get away from the computer for a few days!

After her little catnap (she only needed 10 minutes!) we headed out for some snowman building before we ran out of light.  The kids had so much fun with this.  I just loved the look on their faces as they were really concentrating so hard and putting so much ove and care into "their" snowman.  When he was all done Ellie kept hugging and kissing him, proclaiming : "he has cold lips!"

So, this is how Gavin looked all weekend.  It's no wonder the kid kept getting pummeled by snowballs, he looked like a sheepdog!  Where are his eyes!?  I told him he could wear a beanie instead but nope, he liked this hooded jacket.  All I kept seeing was this great big smile and not much else!

And this folks, this is just the funniest thing ever. 

Ellie:  Daddy, can you make me a snowball?

Dad: Sure honey.

(makes snowball)

Ellie takes snowball.

Ellie: "Thank You Daddy!!"

Dad: "No problem."

Ellie then immediately proceeds to wack dad with said snowball!! 

And the best part of it, the true love part, is that he continued to give her snowballs three more time knowiing full well what was coming each time!

Gavin HATES having his picture taken.  With a passion.  But he very begrudgingly allowed me a couple.  I can't help myself.  I will practically beg and plead with him to let me because the kids just melts my heart with those blue eyes and long lashes.  And hello? Where's my baby? He is so tall and lean and all those rolls upon rolls of chunky baby fat are totally gone nad he is FIVE, FIVE!!! A Kindergartner... and it really struck me this weekend just how big he has gotten adn how much he has grown up and how sad this makes me!  And it breaks my heart that he will usually look away every time the camera is out.  If I do catch any shots of him they are candid distance shots and I used to take so many close ups of his face, his perfect little face.  Waaaah. I just want to cry.  They really do grow up way too fast.  Look at those eyes and tousled hair.  He melts my heart.

Then a few indoor shots during lunchtime.  The kids just had so much fun.  Such a great weekend!

Yeah, more "don't take my picture stuff going on there" with Gavin :)

Then we hit a bit of traffic on the way back home, naturally, being a three day weekend an all.  But I read books to the kids and they colored and etch-a-sketched and so on.  They did remarkably well during the car ride both ways and I even snagged a few "stuck in a carseat can't run away" shots cause I'm evil that way.  Ellie was more than compliant as she always is when it comes to photos.  Gavin, by some miracle, was actually totally letting me take pictures of him this time.  These are the first close ups of him smiling and laughing that I have managed to take of him during the past six months.  So it goes to show that you don't always need great scenery and cute clothes and perfect backdrop to get great shots.  You can get them just driving along (as passenger, not the driver naturally!) with your kids strapped in their carseats when they can't escape you! Ha!  I just love these.  This is just so Gavin when he is cracking up about something.  For the life of me I can't remember what was so funny but man, he was just laughing so genuinely hard, it was making me giggle!

A very special thank you to my brother in law and sister in law for letting us use their cabin.  This was a super duper mini vacation!

Ellie's Poofy Pettiskirt

My good friend Michelle bought this adorable super poofy blue pettiskirt for Ellie and she absolutely fell head over heals in love with it and calls it "my really poofy one."  I just HAD to get some shots of her in it.   I actually did two separate sessions because the first one was limited by time (I was heading out the door for a photo shoot).  I was really pleased with the first series but she was just so serious in them that I needed some fun shots to help balance it all out.  So the next day I did the next series of images.  And here is where it all kinda gets a little bit funny.  I decided to commission her big brother to stand behind me and act silly to get some smiles (lately Ellie has much preferred to be 'see-wee-us' (serious) during our shoots together.  So I get Ellie set up in a shady spot and tell Gavin to just "act silly and make her laugh, I don't care what you do, just make her laugh" and turn my attention and focus on her and my camera.  I suppose those instructions were possibly a bit vague for your average 5 year old but he's used to these requests and usually does a great job (when he's in the mood) to help me get some really good smiles out of Ellie by making silly faces and acting silly behind me.  So he starts doing his thing, whatever it is, while I face Ellie and take photos of her.  And she starts totally CRACKING up.  I mean big laughs, gutteral laughs, just great stuff so I'm snapping away and yelling to Gavin: "GREAT JOB GAVIN! KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING!" and she's just falling over herself laughing and smiling and I'm getting my shots so I'm happy.  After a couple minutes I turn around to tell Gavin he can stop now and what do I see?  I see my son with his pants and underwear down at his ankles and his bare bum facing me (and Ellie) and he's shaking his booty doing this little 'I'm mooning you" dance routine...  After I gasp and proclaim: "What in the WORLD are you DOING!?" he nonchalantly pulls up his pants and says: "you told me you didn't care WHAT I did as long as I made her laugh.  I made her laugh.  Can I go play now?"  And of course I'm just dying.  I didn't even know what to say other than a very confused "thank you?!"  I then get a few serious shots of Ellie and ask Gavin to come back but this time I decide to try something new.  I wanted to get some shots of her smiling and looking up at the camera but it's hard to smile naturally at a big camera lens and if I pull my face away from behind it and just press the shutter, I risk having framing and focus issues (but I'll do it if I really really need to).  I figured I'd try something new and put Gavin on my back piggyback style and had his head poking out from behind my head.  I let him give me bunny ears and make faces all the while he is on my back and she is looking up at him (ergo at me and my camera as well) and she is just loving it.  Big smiles.  Lotsa laughter.  Fun images!  Now, I can't necessarily recommend this little technique unless you have a really steady hand because the movement of balancing him on my back and getting a focused shot was tricky but I did get some real winners!  Anything is worth trying to get that great shot! 

Later that night I spent alot of time really playing with these images in Photoshop and trying out new techniques and new actions and doing multiple variations of the same image.  I really enjoy playing around in the post processing side of things when I have the time to do so and the latitude to just be totally creative and funky, which is something I fortunately can do with pictures of my own kids.  So it was a treat to just spend several hours trying out different looks for these images.  I have so many I just LOVE!

Thanks Michelle for the awesome tutu!

It started out with the whole "why are you doing this to me" look though....

 

Carly & Kevin

I had so much fun during this shoot and soon you'll understand why.  Carly and Kevin came to the shoot open for anything and infectiously giddy.  This was very good because the spots that I usually use at Natural Bridges were off limits due to a very high tide and huge crashing waves.  So we just had to totally improvise.  They were game!  Kevin in particular seemed even MORE excited about the whole thing than Carly!  That's a first!  Plus they did an amazing job of interacting with each other (they actually couldn't take their eyes off each other! how cute!) and ignoring me and my big lens which meant I was able to catch alot of emotional connections that really capture their relationship as I see it.  In fact, their love was so palpable and electric that when we did the silhouettes at the end I positioned myself in such a way as to get the sun flare to be right at the spot where their lips met when they kissed to insinuate those sparks.  Kevin was so funny because he was just so jazzed about his baby being born soon that he could barely keep still!  At one point he was running around Carly doing airplane circles and I had to capture it because it totally represented how he was feeling: he was (quite literally) soaring.  At the end I decided to just channel his energy and we did the last series of shots I posted.  And, naturally, because I'm quite evil that way, I had him do several takes... :)  I was just having so much fun seeing how great these shots were turning out that I kept pushing him to jump HIGHER in order to get that "one" shot that would be the killer shot.  And I got it.  Those last few images, to me, represent his enthusiasm for this huge transition that they are about to go through together.  I wish you both the very best and a very empowering natural birth.   Can't wait to meet the little one! :)

 

Heather's Pregnancy

Heather is due in less than two weeks with her first child.  It's such an exciting time in a woman's life.  And as happy and excited as her husband is to be expecting their first child he was perhaps not QUITE as excited about having his picture taken.  I must add that about 90% of the men I deal with are most certainly reticient if not reluctant about the entire photo taking process... :)  But he pulled through amazingly well!

In fact, they were both incredibly easy to photograph and looked like old pros within about 5 minutes so it was a piece of cake.  Heather has the most photogenic smile and is, despite her protests to the contrary, very very much at ease in front of the camera.  Just look at these and see for yourself: perfectly stunning.  Throw in that maternal glow and you're good to go! :)

I'm looking forward to meeting the little dude in a few weeks!

 

Jamie Rae Hats - Part Deux

We had our big Jamie Rae Hats photoshoot which consisted of five babies ranging in age from several weeks to about a year old, plus their mommies of course!  That said, considering how many babies and outfit changes (and the fact that there was only one of me), it's pretty remarkable that we managed to do the entire shoot in one hour!   Plus, my own two little rugrats were running around too as we did the shoot at my house but miraculously they totally stayed out of the way (probably because their good friend Emma, big sister to baby model Sophie, was there to play with them!)  All in all it went remarkably well and I am truly delighted with the results, especially considering the tight timeline.  We didn't have much spare time to help the babies warm up to everything and we wer moving at a very fast pace and so it was kinda a Lucille Ball conveyor belt skit where it was 5 minutes with one baby and then "NEXT!" and the next mommy/baby couple ran up and then so on and so on!  Pretty funny I'm sure but the moms were awesome about knowing exactly what I needed from them, getting their babies all settled and ready and decked out in their respective selected outfits and hats... So fantastic!  I tried to make sure I was getting a good balance of images that really showcased the hats and headbands while also throwing in some images in there that were "just for the mommies." I really tried to mix it up as best I could in the 5 mn per baby per outfit I had assigned myself! :)  And without further ado....

Happy Little Emma

Lovely Luci

Sweet Sophie

Adorable Abby

Stunning Stella

Thank You to all my  models and their wonderful mommies for helping me get these images for Jamie Rae.

   

Valentine's Day Cards!!!

I just purchased these rockin' Valentine's Day Cards.  They are soooo cute and can be used as quick and easy school cards or special cards to send to family and friends.  Of course, I can personalize the text on them as well.  Check them out and see for yourself.  Absolutely Adorable!

As a special thank you to my wonderful clients who keep up with this blog I will create and design your card for you for a flat rate of $20.  This includes putting the card together with your image and the personalization as well.  COPYRIGHT NOTICE: The image you select has to have been taken by YOU or ME.  If it was taken by anyone else, I will need a release from that person authorizing me to place the image in the card for you. I then send you the 5X7 sized JPG file which you can upload to Bay Photo's online "press printed card" site to have printed out pronto.  I also include a very easy to follow instructional worksheet on how to use Bay Photos online site to order your press printed card!  Sooooo convenient and fast!  Voila!