The official announcement

Wow, sometimes it is still hard to believe I am a mom! It has been almost 8 weeks since Josephine arrived. It is so hard but all worth it when she smiles, laughs, and even farts her little head off! We are truly smitten with her. In the last few weeks, we have been able to get out of the house a bunch and meet-up with other moms in the neighborhood and even venture into Manhattan for a playmate / photo shoot with an October 2009 bride of mine and her new daughter Meghan! (Pictures from that shoot to come!) I love wearing her in a wrap and she usually falls asleep pretty quick. (She is in it right now, looking so peaceful!)

I’m also excited to have been accepted into WeDo, a new networking group of wedding vendors in New York. The first meeting of the new year is next week and I’m in the process of finding a sitter. Almost wish I could just take her with me, but that might be a little unprofessional. :)

Here are just a few images from the first 8 weeks.

Professionally, I’m shifting my focus to weddings in the New York area. While I have loved returning to my hometown so frequently, having a kid will make that much harder. Not to say I won’t do weddings in New Orleans, but I imagine it will be less frequent. I’ve also been flirting with the idea of adding children’s photography to my business as well. (I always said I wouldn’t do that until I had one of my own!) We shall see what 2012 has in store!

For now, I am looking forward to photographing my first post-pregnancy wedding in February in New Orleans during Mardi Gras!

Our Christmas present came a little early this year! It has been a wonderful holiday season getting acquainted with our little girl and spending time with family and friends. Josephine is named for her great, great great, and great great great grandmothers! And also to honor her late paternal grandfather, whose middle name is Joseph.

Growing up in Louisiana hurricanes were just something that happened. They were a bit exciting and everyone loved missing a few days of school. Then, there would be the damage tour around town in my Uncle Charlie’s big truck. We knew the areas likely to flood and it was always interesting to see how bad it was that time. I never remember being scared about a hurricane, we were prepared and didn’t live in a flood prone area. And those who chose to build in areas near the water built high up and knew the risks. It was just part of life living in South Louisiana.

I don’t remember many of the storms specifically until I was in college. Hurricane Georges messed-up my first few weeks at college in 1998. I recently found some photos I took of my family camping out in the house during the power outage, my grandmother Granny and Uncle Chris too, and the disaster tour that followed. It wasn’t too bad in our neck of the woods that time, save for a neighbor getting a tree hit and the usual flooding on the Lakefront.

After graduating, while working at the Times-Picayune as a freelance photographer, we had two hurricanes back to back, Hurricanes Isidore and Lili in 2002. These both threatened to be big storms, but Isidore hit Louisiana as a tropical storm and Lili as a category 1. The usual areas flooded, I got some great pics and generally had fun wading around the in affected areas shooting the storm surge and aftermath. That’s when I shot the photo above up top of the guys swinging as Lili’s surge came in along the lakefront of Lake Pontchartrain. Most of the houses along there were raised enough to not suffer much damage that time. Some businesses built on ground level, like a coffee shop I loved, were filled with several feet of water. But they eventually recovered.

Don’s on the Lake was a very popular spot to watch the storms and surge roll in. Business as usual despite the water. Katrina was a different beast. Everything inside Don’s was swept away.

Katrina came in 2005 (exactly 6 years ago!), just weeks after I returned to the US following a year in Germany. We evacuated and for the first time, I was kinda scared. I was living with my soon to be husband in Houma, a low lying area with many waterways and some serious flooding potential. We got the heck out when we saw it went to Cat 5. The evacuation ended-up being the worst part personally for us. It took all day to go what normally would have taken 2.5 hours. We were lucky because the path it took was far to the east of us and we didn’t have any damage to our apartment in Houma. So we drove back and both went to work for the The Courier documenting the conditions which were surprisingly not so bad there. But I did get to witness first hand the damage to Grand Isle when I flew over it for the paper the day after Katrina. (To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t keep copies of those photos. Better forgotten, I guess)

Of course, other areas were far less lucky. I’ll never forget watching as several delivery trucks for the Times-Picayune arrived full of staffers (friends of ours too!) escaping the rising waters of New Orleans. They stayed at the Houma Courier office and produced and printed a paper from there. It was so surreal.

My parents decided to split up, mom evacuated to Memphis and Dad stayed with my grandmother Nonna (ailing and really confused at this point) and my brother at their home in Mandeville. And a good thing too. They were there to save what they could as seven giant pine trees snapped like tooth picks and fell on the house, including the newly built wing for Nonna. We were able to bring building supplies, gas and food to them in the days and weeks after the storm. Dad was already repairing what he could and had two generators going. It took months for them to recover and sadly my grandmother had to be placed in a nursing home because they just couldn’t take care of her and rebuild. She died the following January, luckily never getting to see what had become of her beloved New Orleans.

One didn’t have to go far for a disaster tour this time. When I finally got to see the lakefront area, houses were completely gone! Just steps remained. And what happened in New Orleans, well, that was just horrific. The whole aftermath was so traumatic for so many people all around the Gulf Coast for months and even years to come. It was nothing like the previous storms, not even in the same universe as them.

Lakefront home, swept away by Katrina.

Don’s bar, totally gutter by Katrina’s storm surge.

Nonna, staying cool on the patio following Katrina

Dad, working to repair the roof and save his house from further damage

Didn’t you always want a skylight in your bathroom, Mom?

I can safely say were it not for Katrina, I’d have never moved to New York. And so now I find it especially crazy we are about to get a category 1 storm here! I thought my days of dealing with hurricanes was over! I especially never expected to have my first ever postponed wedding shoot because of a hurricane in New York and NOT New Orleans! But I’m not worried, even though we are in zone B, literally across the street from the zone A mandatory evacuation zone. Let the hurricane party begin!

There’s no hiding this belly any more, we are expecting! Baby is going to be an early Christmas present, due to arrive around December 7th. We are waiting to see gender until birth. (I really do love green anyways…) Getting pregnant wasn’t initially part of my plan for 2011, and to be totally honest the first few months, ok, 4.5, kinda sucked. I had a few weddings too near my due date I had to regretfully unbook and I just felt plain awful about that and the morning, no, ALL day sickness. But having your life turned upside down is just part of preparing for a little one’s arrival. Now I’m 6 months (24 weeks) into this whole adventure and things are going well and growing well too! I’m sure December will be here before we know it.

Between now and then, I have 7 weddings! Needless to say, this fall season is going to be lots of fun and will certainly bring some additional challenges. But I am preparing a great team of assistants and second shooters to help with things. Today I bought my official “pregnant photog” wedding outfit, including a support belt and compression stocking! (Luckily, no one will see those parts of the outfit, but they might be the most important! ) I’m use to being incognito and I pride myself on guests commenting to me how they “didn’t notice me” and such. Hopefully my belly won’t give me away too much. :) (Especially if it is moving to the music, as a friend told me her baby did!)

That said, I am no longer accepting weddings for 2011. But please keep the 2012 inquiries coming. I hear babies need lots of stuff. :)

Top photo by Ryan Chatelain (aka, the baby daddy), bottom, self-portraits.

Java Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

More here.

ISES

Since moving back to New York over the summer, I’ve been learning about the wedding and special events industry in New York. Quite a daunting, but exciting, task! I finally decided to check out ISES, International Special Events Society, and attended a networking event on Wednesday at the Helen Mills Theater with my new business cards in tow. It was such a great event. Should I have been surprised? The speaker Andrea Nierenberg was excellent! She even emailed everyone a list of tips after the event so we could better focus on what she was saying. A few things I learned:

• One should wear nametags on the right, not left, so when you shake hands it can be easily seen.
• Listen, more than you talk!
• Write Thank You cards. Just one a day, or a few extra emails a day can keep you on someone’s radar.
• Follow-up! Ask people what their preferred form of contact is.

The food by member Paul Neuman’s catering company, was delicious. (A reason to join right there!) I somehow managed to get the last cheesecake lollipop which was awesome. As were the mini lobster rolls, gruyere and mushroom pizzas and addictive flaky cheese sticks at the bar. Not that I had much time to eat, given all of the talking!

A yummy chocolate covered strawberry by Neuman's

Needless to say, I joined. I met lots of really interesting people and look forward to more events (with awesome food!) and meeting others who love what they do as much as I do. Somehow David Fletcher of New York’s Best convinced me to sponsor the next event in February!

Now to see what other gems of past workshop advice I can put to good use!

Oh, and the Moo cards were a hit!

First off, I am dedicating the year to sharing. I want to share more of what I have learned about the “business of getting married”, especially when it relates to photography, with my clients and other couples as well. Secondly, I want to share more of what I know about digital photography with my fellow pro photographers and amateurs as well.

How? Using this blog. I’m in the process of changing it a bit, but the goal is to have it be a distribution point for regular content on topics that I think will be of interest. (Hint, regular will be the challenge!)

Why? Because it feels good to help others and I believe in karma. So much so, that I have it tattooed on my lower back. (no, really!) Let the sharing begin!

So that is my resolution for 2011. (May I not look back on this, embarrassed, at the end of the year…. :)

May you have a fantastic start to the New Year!

Kristy

Ryan get his bubble on!