I posted one of Kate’s headshots the other day. Here’s a few more from the series.
Beautiful light in Kate’s home for portraits! And no special attention was paid to de-cluttering because it wasn’t needed. This would be contrary to the de-clutter frenzy I hear about for most of my family sessions. I love hearing the de-clutter stories because then I know that people will love me whether or not they love their pictures because they got a clean house out of the deal!
I still can’t decide whether I like the white shirt best, or the red turtle, or the blue v-neck. They all work on different levels. Which one do you like best?
Kate’s cat is a champion portrait poser!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 8:10 pm
Click the picture, or click here, for Meaghan and Mike’s slide show!
Happy Father’s Day, Mike!
The photo session was a gift for Meaghan last Christmas. I think she looks a lot like Andie MacDowell in this picture! Beautiful!
This was the baby’s first glimpse of me. He was waking up from his nap, and there I was. That’s got to be weird!
But he was only freaked out for about 10 seconds before the face of great expressions began! What a cutie!
Here’s that off-center thing I do again. I never did explain why I do that sometimes, so here goes: THIS would make an excellent beginning to a spread in a coffeetable book. The left side would be the left side of the spread, as is, and the right side would be the backdrop colors for an overlay of a storyboard of two or three black-and-whites (or color images as long as they all have the same basic color palette). For a framed print, this picture can easily be cropped as a vertical, cropping out the right side. Cool, huh? This would also work great for a Christmas card. I’d make this whole picture the inside spread of the card, and I’d put the message on the right over the reds and greens. Pretty! See how versatile that one image is? And all because of some creative in-camera framing!
Here’s another one that would make a really cool album spread all by itself. I love pictures that get me to stop and think about something. Maybe it’s just me, but this picture draws me in and I can’t help staring at it and thinking about how big those tiny feet will be someday.
Meaghan, was that a great Christmas gift or what? I think it’s so cool that the timing worked out for your slide show to go live on Father’s Day. It’s a gift for both of you! Er, uh, all three of you!
BONUS IMAGE and CAPTION CONTEST!
Post a comment caption for the image above relating to Father’s Day! Meaghan will get an extra print credit bonus in her store gallery for each comment posted and the first commenter to make me laugh will get lots of blog praise! (One bonus credit per IP address through June 30.)
It’s my birthday month, so that means I give out lots of gifts in June!
Happy Father’s Day to all my blog-reading dads, and especially to MY Mike — a great dad to Bradley, Gregory and Lauren! We love you!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 6:28 am
This is my desk at The Times. I have lots of pictures of my family on my desk, but as you can see, there isn’t a lot of space. Today, I have 3 new mounted prints I want to add to my collection.
Probably the single most common question I am asked is, “What is a mounted print?” Simple! It’s a regular print that is permanently attached to a flat surface, usually mat board.
This is a 5×7 print of one of my latest pictures of Gregory. I love the picture, so I want to put it on my desk. It would fit in any 5×7 frame, but I don’t want to take up any more space on my desk, so I’m just going to prop the print up on a makeshift easel.
This is my easel, a standard paperclip.
All I have to do is bend the paperclip…
…get a piece of tape…
tape the paperclip to the back…
…stand it up…
…Voila! A durable photograph displayed with no hassle and virtually no expense except what it cost me to purchase the mounted print. I get prints in various sizes for variety on my desk. 5×5, 4×6, 5×7, and sometimes I put up 7×10’s. That’s the other cool thing about the paperclip stand — I don’t have to worry about finding odd-size frames!
I love looking at pictures of my boys having fun!
Oooh! Little tip: be sure to write the date on the back of the print so you don’t forget when it was taken!
Even though all my prints are coated, I keep prints that aren’t covered with UV-coated glass away from direct sunlight. When they get dusty, I gently swish the dust away using a lint-free cloth.
With a little caution against bumping, paperclip prints should last for decades!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 10:11 am
We got a new bubble making thing the other day at the street fair.
As long as bubbles are flying in the air, my sons will chase them. I love bubbles.
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 4:15 pm
The other day, Mike spotted this deer standing in our neighbor’s front yard. I subsequently followed the deer, along with a police cruiser who was trying to entice the deer into the woods or back towards the direction of the swamps. I know it’s common for people to spot deer in suburban New Jersey, but it’s not something you see everyday here on Main Street. He eventually disappeared into the woods.
This little robin is living in a nest in my arborvitae with two other little robins right outside my front door! They’re so close to the door that you can watch the mommy robin feed her babies. It’s TOO CUTE! (Coincidentally, deer LOVE to eat arborvitae trees. Arbs are like candy to them. Fortunately, the deer in my neighbor’s yard didn’t make it anywhere near our little nest.)
There’s momma!
She won’t fly up to feed them if I’m standing outside, so this was taken from inside the door, hence the bad contrast. Plus, she literally drops the worm into the baby’s mouth, then flies away. It all takes a split second, then she’s off to search for more worms. It’s kind of intoxicating to be so close to a little family right in my front yard. Next project: find the bunnys’ nest.
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 10:34 am
If you know Mike and Tracey, email them for the link to their slide show. This is their sweet puppy. I love the reflection on their beautiful hardwood floors.
This is their sweet baby girl.
They’re such a cool family.
As would be expected, Mike is totally head over heels for that little girl!
I think he’s head over heels for both his girls! Aren’t they beautiful?
The baby’s room is adorable!
Here’s another angle. Brown and pink with TREES as the main theme! I LOVE IT!
LOVE that tree decoration!
I love to document the scale of the baby with some special object that will remain the same size as the baby grows, but will always be important in her life — mom’s and dad’s wedding rings.
I absolutely love this image! Thanks Mike and Tracey. I’ll see you again in the fall!
Peace,
~jules
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 11:33 pm
Imagine if you didn’t eat anything from noon today until dinnertime tomorrow — that’s a long time — 30 hours without food. According to World Vision, 30 hours is about the length of time many people in struggling countries have to last between meals. And even then, it’s not as if the meal those people have is particularly satisfying.
This past weekend, members of the youth group at my church held a 30-Hour Famine, fasting for 30 hours to get a sense of what it might feel like to not eat for that long.
If you’re a member of the church, or a youth who attended the event, and you didn’t see the slide show yet, please e-mail me and I’ll provide the link and password.
At the start of the event, each teen was assigned an identity within a tribe. Most people in the tribes had some sort of disability they had to deal with for most of the weekend. The few who had no disability had to pick up the slack for everybody else, carrying things for people, and taking care of those who had a hard time moving around.
For example, she was blind.
Blindness can be caused by a vitamin A deficiency, just one of the hunger-related problems the youth learned about.
Throughout the weekend, we were only allowed juice and water, but, as in many areas where starvation is a problem, the juice and water was not necessarily distributed fairly. (Even so, our young people had plenty to drink.)
To learn about the difficulties faced by communities that don’t have enough water, the water was turned off in the church building. Each tribe had to fetch their water from three long blocks away. And they had to be careful about how much water they used, conserving their precious commodity, and protecting it from other tribes.
The water they carried over in jugs was used for everything from brushing teeth and washing faces to flushing the toilets. That was challenging, and it was a good lesson for all of us to think about how much water we use every day.
The water outside was turned back on Saturday morning for a car wash. On empty stomachs, the youth worked from 9 until noon scrubbing cars and raising money for a Habitat for Humanity mission trip later this summer.
They even made their own t-shirts, decorating them using stencils and fabric paint. The one above says, “I starved so others wouldn’t.”
From home, each person brought ingredients to make stone soup. They worked in the kitchen in shifts all afternoon preparing the meal from scratch that they would eat later that night. It was torture to smell the food cooking. Sampling was not allowed.
To get a sense of the sheer number of people who die from hunger and hunger-related illnesses, the teens placed 1,200 crosses, each one representing one person who had died of hunger in the last hour, in the church pews. The kids had to keep going back to re-space the crosses in the pews, making them closer and closer together, because the boxes of crosses kept coming. Eventually, the walkways outside were also lined with crosses since they wouldn’t all fit inside.
By Saturday afternoon, energy levels were at a major low.
Once we blessed our food — and what a blessing it truly was — most of the food was gone in minutes! That was the best stone soup I’ve ever tasted!
People who came to church on Sunday morning had to move the crosses in order to sit down, and Pastor Curtis Lane Paul II, the organizer of the Famine event, used the experience to tell the congregation about the weekend.
The visual of each person holding up a cross representing someone who had died of hunger in the previous hour was very powerful.
If you meant to donate, but missed your opportunity to sponsor one of the teens, you can still send a donation to the church.
The best news is that all donations are being matched FOUR TIMES by the U.S. government, so if you were to send in a donation of $20, a total of $80 would go to help feed people in struggling nations. Make your check out to “World Vision” and mark “30-Hour Famine” in the memo field.
Please send your donation to
First Presbyterian Church
270 Woodbridge Ave.
Metuchen, NJ 08840
Special thanks to all the youth for making the commitment to work towards ending hunger. What a truly admirable thing to do. I am so proud of you all!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 2:07 pm
Memorial Day in Metuchen
is dedicated to the honor and support
of United States service personnel,
past and present,
especially those in harm’s way.
Click the picture above, or click here, for a slide show from the 2008 Metuchen Memorial Day parade and ceremony. Turn up the sound! When the show is finished, it will jump back here where you can leave a comment showing support for the troops, and thanking the parade committee. They did an excellent job!
I challenged myself this year to think of ways to capture the full spirit of Memorial Day in small-town America. Above, the names of New Jersey residents who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, are displayed at Freedom Plaza. According to memorials here, a Revolutionary War battle was fought in the area as well.
In my attempt to capture that Memorial Day spirit, I got out really early and walked around town, ending up in the old Colonial Cemetery where new flags had been placed by the tombstones of Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers. I also noticed the addition of a beautiful new memorial marking the cornerstones where the first Metuchen Meetinghouse was constructed in 1717.
Children young and old were decorating bikes all over town.
That’s Justin Manley, above. Justin is running for Borough Council and was helping children with their bikes. I used those shots, plus pre-parade shots of scouts, as the slide show introduction. So many children are involved in the Memorial Day events here, that I thought it was a realistic segue into the images of troops and veterans. It is my hope that we teach our children to appreciate the sacrifices that have been made for our freedom, including the freedom of a democratic process of elections.
I love this shot of the Metuchen High School band.
It was a beautiful day, yet difficult for shooting because of the full sun. I sought a few shady spots to get lots of variety in my pictures.
I love this one!
A float in the parade listed the names of troops who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. That can’t have been an easy float to make.
Cdr. John A. Rizzuto, left, watched last year’s Memorial Day slide show while on duty in Afghanistan with the U.S. Naval Reserve. I still have the email he sent telling me how meaningful it was for the troops to witness small-town-America from afar. Welcome home, John. We’re all glad you are safe!
Capt. Frederic Primich, of the U.S. Naval Reserve, was the Reviewing Officer and speaker at the ceremony.
Girl scouts were putting flowers on all the memorials at Memorial Park. As a mom, I can hear my mom-voice freaking out thinking, “Don’t get in front of the procession!” But my photographer-voice was jumping for joy. Photographers LIVE for photographs that tell a story. This one is a story of juxtaposition, and a moment that wouldn’t happen on any other day.
The flag-folding ceremony always makes me cry.
Youth in the Lincoln High School JROTC have participated in the Metuchen parade for years. Their dedication to their organization is obvious and I applaud them for setting a high standard for leadership and commitment.
The Metuchen Memorial Day slide show would not be the same without this face.
There were a lot of dogs in this year’s parade, escorted by members of the Metuchen Environmental Commission. This particular puppy was hanging out at the American Legion Hall after the ceremony. When I was taking the picture, the owner was saying, “It’s ok, he won’t eat your camera; he just ate 5 hot dogs.” Thus, I was not afraid!
Vietnam veterans salute their fallen comrades with the playing of Taps, following by the sacrificial pouring out of their beer.
There are a few pictures included in this year’s slide show that I took in the evening at Cloverleaf Memorial Cemetery in Woodbridge. It was an interesting way to end my Memorial Day — all alone in a cemetery. The wind was blowing thousands of little American flags by the gravestones, giving the grounds an eery sense of life, and the reality of the thousands of lives lost. I went there on the advice of one of the veterans at the parade. Thanks for sending me there. It really was beautiful.
I love how those Cloverleaf pictures add a sense of drama to the end of the slide show.
Memorial Day is a highlight of living in Metuchen. Presented by the Metuchen Area Chamber of Commerce, the parade and ceremony requires many volunteers and many hours of work in preparation.
If you have a moment, please leave a comment below thanking veterans and their families for all they have sacrificed for our country. And be sure to thank the Memorial Day Parade Committee for all their hard work!
May God grant us peace and protect our troops,
~julie
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 5:30 pm
Click the picture, or click here, for Jennifer and Derek’s wedding preview slide show. Turn up the sound!
The reception was held at the Highlawn Pavilion on a beautiful evening! Wow!
HUGE special thanks to Matt Richman for hanging out with Derek and the men-folk before the ceremony. Matt, you did an amazing job. The picture above is just beautiful! Nice composition, exposure, contrast and detail. LOVE it!
This is another one of Matt’s pictures. He also captured Jennifer’s limo entrance for me and shot with me during the ceremony. Matt, you are a true professional. I’m really looking forward to working with you on my future weddings!
To Jenn and Derek’s family: just wanted to let you know I’ll be out shooting the Metuchen Memorial Day parade and ceremony on Monday (so I won’t be answering emails). Your full gallery isn’t quite ready yet, but be on the lookout for that, coming soon!
Congratulations again, Jenn and Derek!
Enjoy your slide show!
Peace,
~jules
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:07 am
Click the picture, or click here, for a fun slide show of MY family! I’ve been really busy lately, and missing my boys so much, that I took lots of pictures of our day.I have to admit, I was following my family around like serious paparazzi, using the flash like lightening on continuous burst shooting. The picture above is THE MOST PERFECT “MAMARAZZI” PICTURE EVER! I love it!
I was trying to prove to a photographer-friend that sometimes a little fill-flash is just right. In the slide show, almost every single picture I took outside used fill-flash. Not all of them are perfect, but keep in mind, every picture shown is straight out of the camera with no tweaking in photoshop.
Take this picture, for example. The flash is set so low it barely makes a difference. It looks perfectly natural, and yet, there’s just a bit of sparkle on the plum. (That plum came off our purple leaf plum — the one that some people swear is a fruitless variety. Uh huh.)Tree fans — also note that there’s a new picture in the slide show of a zelkova at Borough Hall. We lost one last year, but the remaining 13 are looking great this year!
Here’s another great example of a picture that benefited from fill. It was about 3 in the afternoon and the sun was very bright. Without a subtle flash, the shadows on Bradley’s and Gabe’s faces would have been much darker. The fill lightens them up just a tad without making the picture look like it was taken with an on-camera flash.
Speaking of Bradley, he won the Memorial Day poster contest for the 7th grade! Yay Bradley!All of the winning posters are displayed in the window of the Metuchen Savings Bank downtown. Bradley’s is a detailed split screen drawing, war on one side, Arlington Cemetery on the other.It says, “From war… to memory. But something never fades.” (His poster is hard to see in the window because it doesn’t quite fit the window opening.)I’m so proud of him!
Bradley’s friend, Gabriel Francobandiero, won the contest for the 6th grade. Gabe’s was chosen as the overall winner! Congratulations, Gabe! His design will be used on the cover of the Memorial Day Ceremony program.If you’d like to come to Metuchen on Monday for the parade, here’s some details:The parade starts at 10 a.m., rain or shine, at the Pearl Street parking lot. It travels north to Middlesex Ave, then turns right on Main Street, right on High Street, and right on Lake Avenue. The parade ends at Memorial Park, and will be followed by a brief ceremony.By the way, I fully recommend Memorial Day events in Metuchen. It is a highlight on our calendar, and puts us on the worldwide map as a small town that won’t forget the sacrifices that give us so many freedoms.
We love downtown Metuchen! There are so many fun things to do. What’s the Scoop is our favorite place for ice cream.
Variety Village is our favorite place for just about everything else! In case you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a new owner soon.I was in the store today and Tommy (the owner, always smiling, above) was telling me about the expected changes. Tommy, I know for a fact that my kids will never forget the joy of walking downtown to go to Variety Village. It’s so sad that you’re leaving, but I wish you well on your new adventures, whatever they may be.
Back at the Shaver yard, here’s another “mamarazzi” picture. I love it, fill-flash and all!
Speaking of fill-flash, this picture simply would not have worked without it. When you’re working with children, you have to be prepared for anything! And believe me, they don’t give you very many second chances if you miss the shot the first time. (Well, at least my kids don’t.)
Gregory took this picture! Didn’t he do a great job? This one is a prime example of a picture taken at the worst time of day — high noon in full sun with half the subject’s face in shadow. Yuck! But, thanks to Gregory’s subtle flash, the picture isn’t a total loss. I get precious few with me in them, and even fewer with Bradley actually smiling! Thanks, Gregory!
See ya’ll at the parade on Monday!
Peace,
~jules
P.S. The fun day you see in my family Memorial Day weekend slide show was created entirely on foot. I did not spend a dime on gas or get inside a car except to look for my missing flash.
I LOVE LIVING IN METUCHEN!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 12:01 am
