Time flies!
I returned home to the US barely 12 days ago and have already completed an absolute wonderful wedding photography workshop (again) with world top wedding photographers, Bambi Cantrell and Jerry Ghionis, and got my 3 children all situated with their first day of school today (big successful day for all 3!), let’s not even talk about the loads of laundry and the scary huge pile of mail waiting for me after 7 weeks out of the country (although my husband did a great job of paying bills on time).
This last workshop took place in Boston, Bambi and Jerry both hold some very impressive photography curriculum and are today’s wedding photographers icon. Their teaching was excellent and covered so many areas of the business, from marketing , photography technique, understanding of light, equipment, editing, to the photographer’s social skills… We had some beautiful models to pose and photograph in the streets of Boston, and I met some extraordinary talented photographers who came from all around the USA.
Here are a few images I took during those memorable 3 and half days:

Coming up soon, some baby pictures and a couple weddings I was fortunate to attend to in France, in beautiful country side.

Following are a few pictures from a beautiful family.  Caroline’s parents are good friends of my parents, they’re some of the sweetest people and always so much fun to be around. Unfortunately, the dad was out playing tennis when I took the pictures. The yard is just amazing, typical of the south of France, with gorgeous flowers and lots of little areas, a paradise backdrop for a family session.

The 2 boys,

Their dog, Jack, thinks he’s human, once while sitting at their dinner table, I saw him jump on a chair and stay there ready to eat with us.  Here, it seemed he didn’t want to be left out of the family portrait.

The youngest didn’t care much to smile at my camera, she’s so cute, she really didn’t need to.

We managed to have the grand mother in a few shots.

The little girl is eating melon under Jack’s stare, and although she knew to be careful with him around, he still got the last bite of melon.

This new blog is an exciting tool, and I find myself up late at night editing pictures and uploading new images or surfing the net to view everyone’s blog!
Well, these are probably my last images to show, of the fabulous week in Paris under the teaching of acclaimed wedding photographers, Scott Robert Lim (http://www.scottrobertjournal.com/) and Kim Nodurft (http://www.kimnodurft.com/flash/main.swf), let me recommend their workshop to anyone interested in seriously improving their photography.  These two will deliver.  They love their art and will teach you all their knowledge with no bounderies.

I couldn’t resist showing you this beautiful castle in whole, some of my dearest memories are right there on the graveled terrasse, I’m so fortunate my parents agreed to hold my wedding reception in this fairy tale chateau.

In the next few shoots, Brandon quickly caught up with Rachel and was twirling her around.

A few more pictures from Montmartre and in front of the Moulin Rouge,

We bought so many tickets to each get a ride on the carousel, and take several pictures,

Our last big “field trip” was to go to Versailles, unfortunatly we discovered they have rigid rules and it would have been impossible for us to use our cameras, beside the tourist flow would have been overwhelming.  Instead we went to Maisons-Laffitte’s castle, which isn’t all that popular, although magnificient, and we had the place just about to ourselves.  It was a beautiful day, and for me very special since 12 years ago I was married to Henry in that very castle, the place was full of wonderful memories…  

Our reception dinner was in this grandiose room, our table in front of the huge mirror,

We each had 10 minutes with one of the models in the castle, again we prepared our session by practicing on other students, Chryssy (http://www.xanga.com/creativediva) helped me out a lot, I love this picture of her.

That evening, Scott taught us a few tricks with a secondary light, again Chryssy helped with the demonstration,

It’s exciting to have so many images to process, but it seems a never ending task!

Back to Montmartre,

Looking down to Paris from Montmartre,

More picture of my super models,

Boy, does she have a killer smile!

I’ve been in France for 6 weeks now, and it’s time for us to return to Henry, we all miss him terribly.  I’m very fortunate to have had a long visit with my family.

That’s it, I’ll enjoy having these when I return to the US, I probably won’t get to see them for at least a year, my brother and his family live in Africa.

These beautiful girls are my niece, blond, and her friend, brunette. After the Paris workshop I can’t stay “tranquil” and I’m constantly looking around for subjects to photograph, so I hired Jess and Pauline for some practice, they did great and I had fun.  Here are some of my favorites,

My mother dressed Jess with a tunique brought back from a trip to India,

It seemed at first that Jess was a little camera shy, but she quickly warmed up,

Pauline, on the other hand was much more comfortable in front of my lense,

She looks so “reveuse”,

 I think they’re both beautiful!

More pictures to come from Paris.  Yesterday I took a break from the blog and spend all day in Aix-en Provence, it is so nice for me to walk in the streets of my home town, to anyone who desire to visit France you MUST stop and spend a few days here, it’s “la joie de vivre” in France!

Sherry and Rachel on the steps of Montmartre,

The day started with some rain and when we arrived to our destination the skies cleared, we have been very lucky with the weather through the week.

We took these close to the top, and again attracted a lot of attention among all the tourist. We stayed very conscious of pickpockets and as we took turns taking pictures we would watch each others back and never ran into any problems.

One of our assignment was to photograph each other, one challenge being dealing with non-models, how to make the subject at ease, direct a good pose, and also to know what it feels like to be on the other side of the camera.  It was a good exercise.

We were surrounded by beautiful architecture and sights and I felt a little disoriented to pick a good spot for taking a picture of Hassan, but he stayed very patient with me, thank you.

A few more pictures from our day at the Eiffel tour,

This is the “male” group of the workshop, with Scott Robert in the front. This picture was taken after a nice dinner in a small restaurant in the quartier latin, at about 10PM, it stays bright pretty late here.

Kim Nodurft had brought with her a lens baby, and was encouraging us all to try it, this is the picture I took with it, so I’ve added the lens baby to my long wish list. I really appreciated the opportunity to try new equipment.

Leaving the Eiffel tour we found a tree alley where we continued shooting.

We spend the 3rd day around Montmartre.

Day 1 was quite intense, after a portrait in natural light lesson at the hotel, we all (20 of us) went to the Louvre and on to Notre Dame. We provided a good bit of entertainment with our heavy equipment, we appeared as paparazzi following 2 Hollywood celebreties! and the locals didn’t want to miss an opportunity to meet our stars!
Rachel, our beautiful model. Rachel and Sherry posed for us endlessly with always a beautiful smile and grace, thank you to you both.

Sherry in front of the Louvres, we didn’t really know it but you need special permission to shoot “professional photography” there, so we were kicked out pretty quick by a security guy on a bike.

A little romance.

One of the very geometrical “pond” in front of the Louvre

In front of Notre Dame, unfortunatly we arrived too late to go to the top.

This man was a pigeon magnet.