pascale wowak photoblog

Emily & JT

I'm so specialized in dealing with the wee little ones that I rarely have the pleasure of photographing the older set.  Emily and JT were pretty much as easy as they come!  Beyond being incredibly attractive, they were the most delightful, charming, sweet "kids" ever.   Mom was there as my super duper reflector holder and it was so fun for me to watch the interaction of mom with her adult children.  Their bond was so natural and easy and just the way I picture, ideally, my relationship with my kids when they grow up.  If my kids turn out half as wonderful and well rounded as these two then I will be one happy camper.   Lili, I hope you and your husband love these images!

Mom said she has a picture of them when they were younger standing like this together.  Of course, back then, Emily was taller than her brother being the oldest child... look what a few years can do!

 

Quinn & Reilly

This family was one of my very first clients when I launched my photography business three years ago and they've seen my little endeavour grow and my skills dramatically improve over the past 3 years.  I love working with them and it's been such an honor to chronicle them as their family continues to grow.  I first shot them when their first born Quinn was just a couple weeks old!

We had to change the shoot time because of a storm moving in and a high chance of rain in the late afternoon which is when I usually schedule my shoots.  I never shoot at noon because it is the WORST time of day to take pictures but with the overcast, cloudy skies and diffused light I knew it would be ok.  Unfortunately, the sun kept peeking through and so I was constantly adjusting my settings and trying to find shade which is nearly impossible when the sun is directly overhead!  Still, I managed to work with the lighting conditions at hand and find some sweet little pockets of good light which I worked with my reflector.  It also doesn't hurt that the family is positively gorgeous... :)

As always, it was wonderful seeing you all again!  Enjoy your images. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How much do you love your mommy Quinn? SO MUCH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found a pillbug for Quinn and he was very enamored with it!

 

 

 

She reminds me of a little Angelina Jolie! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy & Nicole

I had the distinct pleasure and honor of being the photographer for Jeremy and Nicole's beautiful wedding a couple weeks ago.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day in the most lovely setting with an awesome couple.   Jeremy and Nicole are two of the most down to earth, nice, easy going and GENUINE people you will ever meet.  Their love, affection and respect for each other was evident from the first time I met them.  They were both so relaxed on their wedding day!  Nicole didn't even freak out when the vows and rings were temporarily misplaced (doesn't that sound better than lost?!). She was all zen and smiles.  She single handedly kept everyone cool and collected by being so calm herself. :) 

When I narrowed it down to my list of "favorites" to post I couldn't get it lower than 100 images... And my little blog here can't handle that big a post without wigging out.  So, I took the extra time and put together a slideshow of 200 images (out of 700+).  I only included a very small handful of the formals because there were so many of them. 

As you can see Mission Springs was such a great location.  It also has alot of meaning to Jeremy's family as they have a longtime connection with its inception and history.

What I loved most about the day was the amount of joy and laughter!  A fun time had by all. :)

Jeremy and Nicole, I hope your honeymoon was delightful and that you enjoyed coming home to this slideshow!  I wish you both the very best and thank you for including me in your very special and fabulous day!

To view the slideshow click here

Family Reunion

I have known some members of this family for a while now.  I have posted images of the twins (Emma and claire) many a time.  It's no secret how much I love photographing twins and these two in particular make my job so easy it feels like I'm cheating somehow.  And it goes without saying that the teenagers were a breeze.  I am so used to babies, toddlers and preschoolers that I forget how incredibly easy it is to photograph any child over the age of 8!  Basically, this large family reunion shoot went off without a hitch.  Seamless.  Everyone was there to honor the matriarch of the family, grandma Maureen.  We even managed every possible configuration you could imagine and that was no small undertaking!  Thanks everyone for being so awesome and making everything go so smoothly, it was a piece of cake!!

Also, I am making great progress on a wedding I shot last weekend and which I am hoping to post this coming weekend.  A TON of images... I may take the extra time and do a slideshow if I can remember how to use the software I purchased last year that allows me to do that! :)  Great stuff so stay tuned!

Maureen, you have a pretty amazing family.  You know I'm partial to your "favorite" daughter though....  JUST KIDDING GUYS!!! :)

 

 

I don't know...

*updated below*

whether to scream or cry.   As I sit down in front of the computer tonight to work on post processing a ton of images my computer totally crashes on me and when I reboot everything and get into CS3, all the custom personally designed actions that I have created over the past 3 years to give my images my own personal look and feel are gone. GONE.  Vanished. POOF.  These are actions that I created by playing around with various elements and toning and sharpening.  Things I have NO CLUE how to recreate exactly as they were.  Not to mention SCORES of actions I had created to resize my images and add my personal copyright borders for when I post them on my blog or resizing actions to make my images smaller and which I can then send to my commercial clients in large batches....  Action upon action, hours upon hours that I have spent designing these things from scratch.  I also had numerous actions that I had purchased over the years which will only take a minute to reload so those I don't care about those, besides those are not the ones that I used the most.  The ones that I had created were so near and dear to my heart.  I am sitting here in stunned disbelief.  I have no idea what happened or how it happened and I just am in total shock.  I will be spending the rest of the night "experimenting" with some images trying to get everything recreated and my action screen re-organized somewhere close to how it was before.  It's really not the end of the world. Totally do-able but the next 4 hrs could be much better spent working on images from shoots I want to get done for my clients instead of trying to recreate what I spent 3 years creating through hours of experimentation.   I am so depressed right now.  Sigh.

It's been a long week for me so any kind thoughts sent my way are greatly appreciated, this is a setback I could have really done without...

Ok, enough whining, moving on...off to go do some creating... and you know what, that Mac computer is going to be coming much sooner than December after this little fiasco, let me tell you!

*updated: I was up til the ungodly hour of 2 am getting everything recreated, redone and reorganized, this after teaching an all day photography workshop...grrrr. Long day.  But the good news is that I no longer have actions that I rarely used anyways cluttering up my screen.  I feel 'cleansed"... ha!*

I'm thinking June (for my birthday) would be a good time to get a Mac.... :)

Courtney Courtney - Part Deux

You may remember last month the photos of Ellie in her adorable Courtney Courtney Seahorse dress? Well, I did a shoot for her yesterday with some items she sent over.  The shirt was custom made for Gavin with his age on the front and he couldn't stop talking about how "Courtney made it JUST FOR ME.  It's a FIVE.  I'm FIVE!!" like - how did she know!? Hilarious. 

I wanted to so something really colorful for Courtney to play off the bright colors of her clothing line so I took the kids to the Capitola Beach.  I don't usually take them there because:

1) It's always packed on a hot day and the kids and I hate feeling crowded at the beach

2)  It's not the cleanest of the local beaches

But, the surrounding downtown Capitola with all its bright and colorful buildings were a perfect backdrop so that's where we went.  The beach was unusually stinky, full of seaweed, crowds and biting flies.  We didn't last long there and it was blazing hot AND the sun was just too harsh for me.  I don't like taking photos with that kind of light. 

Plus, I wasn't getting much cooperation.  Gavin wanted to be in the waves, Ellie wanted to be FAR away from the waves, they both wanted to be far away from the seaweed (there was a ton for some reason) and so no matter what I suggested, it wasn't happening.  Finally I asked them to just hold hands and skip together and they happily complied.  Those two love skipping!

Then to get out of the harsh light I put them on the shaded side of a perfectly white and blue colored lifeguard tower.  The rays of sun kept peaking through and messing up my focus and throwing off my meter but I still got some cute ones.

Then off to the buildings.  Gavin stayed behind with dad who had arrived to join us for dinner out.  Ellie and I went off to find a pink house.  It didn't take long and she happily danced, jumped and twirled in front of her colorful doorways.  I definitely got some keepers there.

Then off to a totally unhealthy dinner at the ice cream parlor.  Not a vegetable to be seen.  My kids were in heaven of course, as this is not our usual fare...  And yeah, mom got an ice cream too! Ha!

If you get a chance go check out Courtney's Etsy store here.  The clothes are uber comfortable and perfect for any occasion.  Plus Courtney is just a super nice gal.

Enjoy!

Here Ellie is just having a "moment"... it passed relatively quickly.

Above was her Dr. Jekyll and below is her Mr. Hyde.  All within nanoseconds...

The natives were growing restless waiting for their chicken nuggets...

I'm BORED!

Yeah, so Gavin has this THING he can do with his tongue... it totally grosses me out so anytime he wants me to stop taking pictures he does it and then he cracks up at the look of disgust on my face.

Yes, they BOTH chose the bright pink ice cream....  I, of course, had my old standby: mint chocolate chip.  This set was all taken with one hand on the camera, the other holding a dripping cone so bear with me ok?

Toady is supposed to be another scorcher... Man, I wish we had a pool!!!

Featured

My fellow photographer, and friend, Natalie Norton writes for an online Digital Photography School website.  I was one of the featured photographers in her latest article on Photographer Blogs.  Go check it out here.  Natalie is a total sweetheart and mama to the three adorable little boys.  Another busy mama photographer!  So, albeit a couple days late, in honor of Natalie and ALL the mom's out there who should be treating like queens every single day and yet still manage to wipe poopy butts with all the dignity in the world and manage everything they do: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!  Moms rock.  We really do. :) 

Just another day in the Wowak household...

Yesterday, while I was working in the home office and my husband was watching the kids (or so I thought, turns out he was actually sleeping on the couch) the kids decided to give each other haircuts, aka: chop off each other's hair.  I am not kidding when I use the word chop.  Gavin's was so bad that the hairdresser just had to give him a tight buzz cut to put an end to the madness that was his new 'do.  And Ellie, my precious little girl with long luscious wavy hair and perfectly trimmed sweet bangs... well the entire front of her head is now hacked down to the scalp.  All gone.  And the entire left side was chopped off at ear level.  Apparently Gavin thought she'd look swell with the new asymetrical look that is all the rage....  Except of course, it doesn't usually involve one side that is down past the shoulders and the other side now cut off at ear level.... and the back has big huge missing chunks.  HUGE.  And along the top too just for good measure.

First I shrieked, like scary movie shrieking scene kinda shrieking.

Then I screamed at them: "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!" WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??!! ARGH!!!"

Then I cried.  (Yes, I was very mature during this whole scene, can you tell?  No, I am not the zen chill mom who laughs it off and goes "nice haircut!"  That would so NOT be me....

Then I made appointments for Supercuts.  They could only do Gavin that day (by just basically making him look like he is ready to enter the military - Jason is secretly happy as he has always wanted Gavin to have a matching buzz cut but won't admit it because he is afraid I might kill him, and considering the results of his deplorable "supervision" he's already watching his back) and then the haidresser basically told me there was nothing she could do to save Ellie's hair, can't really "put it back", can't give her extensions!, and even a chin length bob would look ridiculous with all her chunks missing from the left side.  We ended up getting it "fixed" the next day.  By fixed I mean, we took everything to the shortest point which is her EAR level.... And she has NO BANGS at all.  Nothing.   It's very "modern"....

Ellie asked me last night when the dust had settled, and I was a bit calmer, when she could get her bangs back, that she was ready to get her hair back now, she was ready to be good and not cut it off anymore so could I please put it back now, thankyouverymuch.  Like she thought I could just magically make it come back somehow. 

The front is not even long enough for me to stick it up in a little barrette or anything.  Just a total hack job.   I couldn't even take pictures until dinnertime last night.  I was still too devastated everytime I looked at it. :(

Recap of what she looked like 2 days ago:

Eventually I realized that, as painful as it was for me to look at, I'd regret not having evidence of their "wonderful" little idea to give each other haircuts so I finally took some.  Here is what it looked like about 3 hrs after the "incident".

As you can see the bangs that went down to her eyebrows are completely gone.  The entire left side of her head has a new hairline that ends at her ear level and the right has a few salvaged stringy masses left over going down to by her shoulder...  She so has the look of a child who is in big trouble...

But then she gets over the "I've been naughty" state of mind and starts goofing off saying "OOPS!" to me and cracking up... great.  I was still not laughing.

And here it is this morning, looking EVEN BETTER might I add...sigh.  The only difference is that at this point I couldn't help but laugh because it looked so incredibly ridiculous it was starting to be a little bit funny.  Not funny haha like "oh, this is so funny, why don't you do it again soon!?"  Not quite.

Oh yeah baby, now THAT is morning hair.  Chopped off butchered morning hair.

And then here is the result after a trip to the hairdresser 24 hrs later.

She's really lucky she is so darn cute.

Dave & Kristy

I need to preface this post with the fact that Dave is a really good friend of mine, we go way back!  Dave, my hubby and I all attended a fire academy together about 8 years ago (OMG, EIGHT yrs... has it been that long?!) I don't remember anything really important about those few months other than being in the best shape of my life and laughing so hard my sides would ache every night.  That could also have something to do with the 100 lbs of hose I was lugging up staircases over and over again but I think it mostly had to do with the fact that Dave and my future husband had me in stitches most of the day.

Dave and his wonderful future bride Kristy came down for an engagement shoot this weekend.  I will have the honor and pleasure of shooting their wedding later this year.  I may be biased but they are the cutest couple ever - well, Kristy is the cutest thing ever, Dave is just cute by osmosis when he's next to her. 

I have to admit that I tried my very best to mess with Dave throughout the shoot suggesting (with a straight face mind you) all kinds of kooky things and darn it, the dude is so impossibly in love that he did not once look at me askew and ask WTF?!  Now THAT, that people, is true love because I know Dave and he did everything I told him to and I must say, I took great pleasure in bossing him around.  Not that I'm controlling or anything... :)

Basically, we had a total blast.  We even included their fabulous bulldog Bullet in some shots even though it meant waiting 20 mn for him to ever so slowly make his way from the car to the shooting spot!  Bullet has the most hilarious expressions, I was laughing so hard!

Kristy is perfect for Dave in every way and he one lucky dude to have her in his life.

Dave and Kristy, I love you two to pieces and cannot wait for the big day.  If you all think Kristy looks unbelievable now just wait til we get to see her in her wedding dress.  I, for one, cannot wait!

Much love.  Enjoy your photos!

and this next one was the very last shot I took and remains my favorite of the entire session.

Nadya & Ilya

Funnily enough Nadya tried to convince me that she was not comfortable in front of the camera.  I would have guessed she was a model in a former life but, hey, you be the judge!  Pregnant with their first child (a girl!) and just the cutest couple ever.   Nadya was GLOWING.  It didn't hurt that the light was this absolutely lovely pinkish warm tone, almost creamy, and postively perfect.  We did so many clothing changes (Nadya is quite the fashionista!) that I lost count but we certainly had fun with all the different outfits.  Nadya was particularly fond of the "bridges" at Natural Bridges so we made sure to feature them in many of the images.  She was also partial to B&W so I was sure to feature a good amount of the B&W imagery.  It was a pleasure meeting you both.  CONGRATULATIONS and enjoy your images! :)

 

Wilder Ranch

I took the kids to Wilder Ranch this week on a day off to play - and take photos!  I know, here I am with a day off and what do I do...take photos of course.  It was actually a 'scoping out' mission to see if this location would be a good place for me to bring my clients.  Turns out it is a photographer's playground.  A gold mine.   I dressed Ellie in one of her Matilda Jane dresses.  I didn't think about what Gavin was wearing because he never ever lets me take photos of him anymore.  Of course, that would be the one day that he actually was totally letting me do my thing - figures!  I didn't care, I was so happy just to have some recent and nice photos of my sprouting boy.  He may only be 5 yrs old (he'll be six this summer) but he is growing so tall so fast that he is already at my chest level and I'm 5'8.  Seems he grows another inch every month.  And my 'baby' Ellie, at three years old, is really not a baby anymore, I think I need to come to grips with that as well.... sigh.

Anyways, we had a blast and ended up being there two hours just walking around and exploring.  There is the world's GREATEST climbing tree down by the Ranch area and it was hard to pull them away from that but I eventually tempted them away with the lure of chickens, goats, horses, and abandoned cabins!

Ellie is my little tree-hugger.  She goes around hugging trees and saying "thank you for the air I breathe."

She's also my little monkey.  She's not yelling in this one but making "oo-ooh-ooh-aah-aah-aah" sounds.

Then suddenly a "don't take any more pictures of me!" mood came about.  So I stopped.  After getting in two quick last shots of course...

Before long she had granted me permission to start back up... Here she is doing her version of an Arabesque ballet move.

I *love* this face!

Here she is doing her "oh where oh where did my little dog go?" dance routine from her ballet/tap classes.  She LOVES her class and her fantabulously (I know that's not a word) amazing teacher Annie.

And my boy.  My love.  I think he's gorgeous.  Total mama's boy and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So then we hiked down the trail a bit to this abandoned cabin.  I was so excited about the next series of pictures when I saw them on my LCD but when I pulled them up the indoor ones were terribly noisy.  Which really, really bummed me out.  My ISO was 640, my aperture wide open at f2.8 and SS at 1/200 because they were moving around and dancing.  I'm not sure why they were so noisy except that the meter was definitely thrown off by the backlit one little tiny window in a dark cabin setting and it messed with the camera and messed with me too.  But still, noisy at 640?  Grrr.  So these are not printable quality but still so much fun.  The kids had a blast dancing in their "spotlight" on the cabin floor.  I plan on coming back to this location and bringing either a reflector to bounce light back on them or an external flash for some very slight fill.  It's on my to-do list...

Gavin, who usually dances kinda sorta alot like Elaine from Seinfeld was actually busting out some serious dance moves.  It's possible I never appreciated his 'gift' before! :)   I just LOVE how the dress is beautifully lit up by that window backlight and poofs out perfectly as Ellie spins with it.  Magical.

 

It was sooo crazy windy the pinwheel tops blew off several times!  In this next shot Ellie finally notices that her brother has both his and HERS.  She is screaming "that's mine!" and running towards us at Mach 3 speed.

And with this last shot my memory card read "full."  The End.

Maggie and Conor

The last time I had the pleasure of photographing this family, Conor was still in mama's belly.   He ended up with the same remarkable piercing blue eyes and crazy long lashes that his sister also has.  Just amazing.   Poor little Conor was not his usual effervescent happy-go-lucky self but we did manage a few big toothy grins here and there.  My favorites are actual the very first set of images we took because I crack up every time I see the somber expression on his face compared to his sister's exuberance.   I love how you can see mom and dad smiling in the background even though the focus is on the little ones.  I'd been wanting to do a shot like this at this particular spot for a while.  I'm glad it turned out exactly as I had envisioned it.  Spectacular weather, gorgeous light and a beautiful family = great pictures!   Sweet.

Maya & Family

Maya is so full of life she is practically bubbling over with positive energy!  Just a really happy, loving, sweet little girl.  There was no "warm up" period required as she was holding my hand within seconds, but I suspect that had much less to do with me and everything to do with her effervescent and social butterly personality.  The one thing she was not interested in was sitting still - and who could blame her when there is so much to explore out there in the world!  We did the shoot at Quail Hollow (where her parents had gotten married!) and I just worked with her 'on the go' exuberance... and in turn got some really fantastic images!  I am so happy with the results, I think they really capture Maya's personality perfectly.

It was a pleasure meeting you all, enjoy your images!

courtney courtney

I took some photos for this mommy run company called courtney courtney.  The mama makes little outfits out of recycled clothes which I just LOVE and totally support of course!  check out this way cute little number on Ellie.  Sadly my little boo was not herself during this shoot and although you can't really tell in the pictures because she is such a trooper and was so excited about her new dress, she actually spent the rest of the evening with a massive stomach bug.  :(

I should also mention that in her haste to put on said dress she actually put it on backwards and that it was not until halfway through teh shoot that I even realized it was on backwards! Ooops!  It really looks just as cute either way, but if you were wondering, because perhaps you notice those sort of things, yes, the first few shots have a backwards dress on!  But she's still just as cute as ever my little 3 year old "model"....

Go check out Courtney's site!

 

To Mac or not to Mac?

That is the question!  I've used PC's for as long as I can remember.  I'm at a point now where I feel very comfortable with my PC and can manage most things on my own.  It's taken a while  for me to get to this point but I'm pretty much (generally speaking!) at ease with my operating system. 

And then every year I learn more and more about Mac's and I think: "WOW.  That is really neat.  It sounds so user friendly and so intuitive"  And no viruses!  But then I also hear horror stories of Mac's totally crashing and losing EVERYTHING and freezing up constantly and OY! I don't need THAT headache...

Naturally the system I would need is heavy duty and ergo the cost is totally prohibitive right now and well outside our budget so the big question is: Do I start saving now so that I can switch everything over in 2009?  Or just stick with what I've got and hope my old 'puter doesn't bite the dust...  The thought of having to totally switch everything over - reload all my many, many, many programs and applications and UGH, it makes my head spin just thinking about it.  That said, I do plan on taking 3 weeks off in late December into January so that would be the perfect time to do it if I do decide to go ahead and we are able to save up enough in the next several months.  Besides, there's no way, with my current workload, that I could attempt a switch right now anyways...

So, I want to hear the truth!  If you are a Mac user and had issues, please let me know!  If you are a Mac user and NEVER had a single solitary problem, I want to know that too!  Any particular system configuration you recommend for a professional photographer who needs several external harddrives for back up?  And how long is the transition learning curve of going from PC to Mac, is it something I could potentially figure out in about 3 weeks?

My current system has three external 500GB hard drives, two of which are completely full already.  The third one is 1/4 full.  This covers all my work since I started my business 3 years but I started shooting RAW in addition to JPG about a year ago and that takes up much more space.  I need lots of memory and RAM and space and speed.  Am I crazy for even thinking about switching over? Thanks in advance for any advice/guidance!!! 

Hakone Gardens

About a month ago I took the kids to Hakone Gardens to go see the cherry blossoms in full boom.  I'd never been there before so I ambitiously brought along my camera in the hopes of being able to take some really nice pictures of these beautiful trees (my favorite) and the surrounding grounds... Well,  the kids were too busy running ahead of me on the marked paths and I had to take each shot literally on the fly so there was no sitting down and soaking it all in and slowly deciding up one's composition... nope, just click and chase, click and chase.  Ellie (who dressed herself I might add if you were wondering about the sparly shoes, blue socks, hippy dress and nice white sweater combo...) was for some reason really gloomy and not a single smile came accross her that morning.  I'm not sure why, although it was the day before I was scheduled to leave for San Diego for my workshop and I *suspect* she was giving me the cold shoulder...  Regardless, I did grab a few images that I didn't delete :)

I am not sure if the Cherry Blossoms are still in such a gorgeous blooming state but if you have the time, go take the family on a visit to Hakone Gardens in Saratoga.  The kids could have sat and watched the koi fish for an hour.  Ellie found a little spot and just sat there watching them twirl around by her feet as well as keeping a watchful eye on the little turtles all piled up on the rock suntanning.  It's a really lovely, quiet, peaceful place.  Too bad I wasn't able to get into my zen groove with my rugrats in tow...maybe next time I'll go alone!