Here’s another one of my little neighborhood friends.



He and his mom stopped by for a few minutes while Bradley’s birthday cake was in the oven.



I’m supposed to be shooting his family (photographically speaking, of course) on Monday.



But he fell off a swing a few weeks ago and banged up his nose pretty good.



Can’t tell, can you? (Some quick photoshop magic!)



We had lots of fun walking around.



Even though it was high noon.



You probably can’t see it, but he’s making dragon noises!



I love the colors. That’s a sugar maple tree, by the way.



Bradley was a dragon the year he turned 2. Or maybe it was the year he turned 3. I can’t remember now.



OH NO! THE CAKE!!!!!!!

This is one of my all-time favorite pictures!
Thanks for dropping by!
Have fun trick-or-treating! (Word to the wise: don’t eat all your candy at once, little man!)

Click the picture
— or click here —
for the quickest slide show I ever made.



So quick that I these pictures aren’t really “juliefied,” meaning I didn’t photoshop out Sophie’s tag, and didn’t make any of them in my warm black and white style.



I just wanted to get them up fast!



Aren’t the girls so cute?



So glad Beth wore coordinating clothes!



Jan freaked out thinking trick-or-treaters had come to her house so early. (It was around 9 a.m. when we were shooting.)



But, second to late afternoon, that’s when you get the good light.



(And fresh faces!)



Ha Ha! Love the paws!



Have fun trick-or-treating, Isabella!

Blog readers, stay tuned because I’ve got lots more Halloween pictures coming later today!

By the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRADLEY! I LOVE YOU!

For the best Halloween photographs, here are some easy do-it-yourself ideas.

PHOTO TIP #1 — First, you need an almost-13-year-old boy willing to do all the decorating on a budget. I gave Bradley $40 and one rule: “No burning down the house.”

He pocketed most of the money, and spent a good part of Sunday digging things out of the basement making his own decorations. In case you can’t read the tombstone he made out of plywood and Sharpies, it reads:

R.I.P

Rosalind Rigby

She left shamefully.

But she did save
a bunch of money
by switching
to Geico.



(That kid cracks me up.)



He hung white flowy ghosts from the linden tree. He got those from the basement, originally made out of white kitchen trash bags by me the year he turned 7. (For those of you who don’t know, Bradley will turn 13 this year — my little monster, Halloween baby born in Room 13 — is now, as of tomorrow, officially a teenage werewolf.) Those flood-resistant trash-bag ghosts have lasted quite a while, don’t you think?



Children throughout the neighborhood anxiously await the annual appearance of Elvira along the railing above our garage. Here’s where Bradley spent his money: $2.99 on a string of purple lights.

PHOTO TIP #2 — This is a cool picture partly because of the COMPOSITION of it. Graphically speaking, it has lots of angles and varying textures, as well as interesting contrast and shallow depth-of-field. I waited all day to get this picture, waiting for the light to give me a bit of an eery darkness and a glow to the trees. Tree fans, note the background of the shot. The tall yellow one is the black cherry tree behind our shed. It’ll be bare soon. Once the leaves start changing on that tree, they don’t hang on very long. The shorter green one is one of the Bradford pears next to the backyard swing. That one will still have leaves in December. Ugh. I hate raking when it’s 30 degrees out.



This happy ghost has been in our family longer than Gregory has!



The “dancing ghosts” have haunted our yard (and basement) for nearly a decade.



This scrapbook photo from 1999 shows the ghosts the first year they magically appeared underneath the linden tree. This year, Bradley banished them to what he called the “family friendly” side yard and underneath the Aristocrat pear.

Happy, dancing ghosts live in the “family friendly” area, he says, making room for his sinister, oozing graves and bleeding storm troopers that haunt the main yard. (There’s almost always a Star Wars reference in Bradley posts, ever noticed that? Wait a minute: aren’t storm troopers robots or something? Blood? I’m SO Star-Wars-challenged.)

PHOTO TIP #3 — It’s supposed to be a nice day here this Halloween. Take pictures in the early morning, when the sun is throwing long dark shadows and casting a deep orange glow, or in the late afternoon. When taking photographs of groups of children, make sure they stand really close together. Make monster faces and snorting noises. (Remember, it’s about the MOMENT. We like natural smiles, not cheese smiles.) Take a look at the background of the picture. Shoot for something pretty, like a clump of colorful mums, or some glowing jack-o-lanterns. Turn the flash OFF, and move the children so that the sun is not directly in their eyes, ideally so that it’s shining on roughly two-thirds of their faces. If half of one cheek is in shadow, your picture will have interesting contrasts. Think of the great artists and how they use light in painting. Click here for an example and a discussion of “Rembrandt Light.”

Ever watch Grey’s Anatomy? Rembrandt light ALL OVER THE PLACE! (I love that show.)

If your point-and-shoot camera has a “portrait” setting, set it on that. If it has any zoom factor at all, stand as far away as you can and zoom all the way in. This just might give your picture that nice shallow depth-of-field that my clients LOVE in my pictures.

Or, as an alternative, you can find me in my neighborhood. I’ll be in my mamarazzi costume (mom with a big camera) following all the neighborhood children and enjoying every minute of the family fun of trick-or-treating in my sweet New Jersey town.

Oh, and if you stop by my house, don’t be afraid of Elvira. She’s perfectly happy in her perch. And that storm trooper by the door? He’ll be your candy man. Probably a good idea to leave something in the bowl. Something milk chocolate. For Elvira.



Till next time,

Peace,
jules

Click the picture
— or click here —
for Anissa and Kenny’s engagement pictures.

The picture above is a clue to today’s contest question. Get it right and you will win Anissa and Kenny a free 8×10 print! When the slide show is finished, it will jump back here where you can keep reading to find the question buried in the post. Have fun!



I don’t know what Anissa was doing but it’s so cute!



They seem so perfect for each other and so happy to be together!



Sweet nothings, or maybe something, I don’t know.
They were whispering.



Their first-date-restaurant, in their favorite town.



Love the colors!



Kenny wanted a picture with just Anissa in it. Beautiful!



So we did one with just Kenny for Anissa. How adorable is HE?
This was just after coaxing him to give us a “GQ look,” which made Anissa laugh, which brought out Kenny’s “I know where you live” look. LOVE it!



LOVE the ring shots!



Love this one too.



What’s the name of that park?



Not that many parks have carousels. Standing on a moving carousel backwards while balancing a camera bag full of lenses and a big camera all the while trying to adjust the manual settings so as to keep the subject in focus but let the background look like it’s zooming by is not the easiest thing to do. If you’re a photographer thinking of trying this, my advice is DON’T LOOK DOWN.



This one’s not in the slide show. Anissa, check your e-mail in a little while for a notification about your full gallery, from which you can pick your free 8×10, assuming somebody gets the answer right.
Hint. Hint.

I had so much fun that day! Thank you both so much!

Click the picture — or click here — and turn up the sound for a sweet little slide show from last night.



This was the view of 40th Street from the window behind my desk.



The night staff at The New York Times got a rare window feast.
Ok, not really. Most of us watched for over an hour and a half while they put the crane together. THAT was exciting (rolls eyes).

It was around midnight when the crane crew arrived to start
THE GREAT TREE HOIST.



Seven paper birch trees were delivered here from New Jersey, to be planted in the garden atrium that is surrounded by the Times newsroom.



The trees are big, or at least they look HONKIN’ big in the middle of 40th Street. At 25 years old and 50 feet tall, once planted in the garden, they will rise to the fourth floor windows. (Admittedly, the scale is hard to see, but the little orange road cone might give you an idea.)



That’s my window across the street from Popeye’s.



This picture might help a little with scale. Those root balls are the length of a car. The crane men are standing only about 15 feet away from the trees, so it’s not really a tricky photograph.

By the way, the night was a bit like the opening scene in Jurassic Park: misty rain, dripping wet trees, artificial flood lights, men in yellow construction rain suits, lots and LOTS of shouting. I was half expecting a raptor to jump of the back of the truck and start eating people.
Then this guy — he looked just like the guy in Jurassic Park who got eaten — walks up to me and he says, “How long you staying?”

Me: “I have a train to catch.”

Guy: “You need to stay all night, cuz one of them there tees is going through one of them there windows.”



I didn’t stay long enough to see a tree actually being lifted over the building and into the courtyard. But I did learn something new: crane assembly takes a REALLY long time.



Like I said, I had a train to catch.



But somebody was watching.



Check back next week for some courtyard shots, assuming the trees made it safely to their new home.

Click the picture — or click here — for the slide show from Claudia and Anthony’s day-in-the-life session. Scroll to the bottom of the post for a TREE-RELATED contest question and be sure to leave Claudia and Anthony a comment!

I love the image above — natural smile, beautiful background, rich colors in the dress and wonderful texture too, the headband flower — oh yeah, and SHE is beautiful too!



I usually get the best pictures of children looking right at the camera when mom and dad are preoccupied with something else. In this case, I took the older girls on a little walk around the duck pond.



Love this one.



In these shots, we are standing under an old train bridge in the middle of the woods. Not sure which element shows more “attitude,” the graffiti, or my model who took direction so well, but I really love the images! Notice how in the bigger picture, I’ve shot it so that the graffiti blurs out on one side for a seriously off-center picture. I do that because it makes a more interesting composition than a centered picture sometimes, but it can also add options to album designs. Since Claudia and Anthony booked a day-in-the-life session, they’ll be getting a coffeetable album. I was thinking of using that blurred background with another picture (or two) on top of it, sort of like I’ve shown here.



In this sequence, the little girl was watching a train go by, and blowing a kiss to all the commuters. How sweet.



If you didn’t watch the slide show yet, there’s a sequence around this shot that cracks me up. (She was looking for birds.)



Claudia, I TOLD you you looked beautiful! Remember when I was saying, “Hold it! Hold it! The light is PERFECT!” Here you go — proof!



I got a lot of pictures of Anthony playing with the children, but I love this one best because it’s such a real, unposed moment that shows connection and love.



I can’t resist the baby bottle shots! That moment will go away before you know it.



Sometimes when I’m shooting into the sun, the diffused flash can really make a difference in being able to catch both the sun and the child’s face. I love the sparkle!



She loves the monkey bars!



TODAY’S CONTEST: You can win Claudia and Anthony a free 8×10 print of any image from their full gallery by naming the kind of tree my model is sitting in. I’ll give you a hint: the splotchiness on the bark is not just from dappled shade. Have fun solving the mystery!

One of my all-time favorite clients booked me for a new family session this fall. Their pictures are coming soon, but I just had to share this one from Spring Lake Beach. I LOVE the clouds, the water, the calm ocean, the depth, the light, the motion, and of course, the red bucket. Nice, huh?

If you haven’t checked out my galleries lately, be sure to go to my main photography Web site and click the links under “lifestyle” for lots of pretty new fall pictures that don’t necessarily make the blog.

By the way, I get to call John and Paige “one of my all-time favorite clients” for a very good reason. Besides the fact that they have adorable children and are TOTALLY into the lifestyle photography mindset, I lovingly refer to them as my “Six Degrees of Separation” family. The vast majority of my clients can be traced back to the word-of-mouth referrals I got from their first session in summer of 2006, and the word-of-mouth referrals that I got from the families John and Paige referred, and so on and so on. I think the degrees might be up to more like eight by now, but it’s still happening! And then a new client came along for maternity pictures, Beth, who started the process in a new web of referrals, so now I have two diagrams, with pretty much every single client tracing back to either John and Paige or Beth and Isaac.

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE documenting the American family through the photographic essay?



It’s a happy Monday!

Gregory approached me the other day with his hands balled up. “Close your eyes, mom, I have a present for you.”

This is a scary proposition when a 7-year-old boy commands it. Could be a spider or a frog, not that there’s anything wrong with spiders and frogs, it’s just that I don’t want one put in my hand when my eyes are closed.

Still, I obediently closed my eyes. I’m a dutiful mom. “Cool!” I said checking out my brand new Lego photographer mascot. “I love it! I will cherish this gift as long as I live! You are SO sweet!”

Warning: never take pictures while riding a bike.





A few minutes later, Gregory approaced me slowly. “Can I have him back?”

So much for forever.



So I begged for the opportunity to at least photograph my little photographer friend. Gregory said I could keep him as long as I needed for his very special photo shoot. Yay!



But during our photo session, Kaptain Karl got really jealous of the use of his window sill.



Silly cat. There’s room for two.



Or maybe not.
Ok everybody, that’s a wrap!

Finally, my e-mail is back up and running. If you e-mailed me in the last few days and haven’t heard anything back, that probably means that I didn’t get the mail you sent, so please resend! Thanks for your patience! —jws

Just wanted to let everybody know that my e-mail has been down since Monday — no access to any of my saved files or incoming e-mail at all. My host says it should be back up soon, but in the meantime, if you need to reach me, call or send e-mail to me at jwsphoto@gmail.com. Thanks and SORRY SORRY SORRY if you e-mailed me in the last few days and haven’t heard anything back! Believe me, I’m going nuts not being able to get into my mailbox! —jws