mila | portraits . the berry's

who do you wish you were more like?  the answer to that question for me has been kari b.  she's either rolling her eyes right now or covering her grin in disbelief.  i bet she never knew how much i looked up to her positive personality.  we used to work together back in our retail days.  she was such a down to earth, super honest, super duper easy going, positive person.  don't get me wrong... she's totally normal.  she can cuss like the best of us (yes, i said us).  but her sunshine puts a sparkle in everything even the bad words.  


we caught up yesterday.  she's pregnant with her 2nd!  i met her first man brett who is perfect for her and her 2nd man blake who is everything a kari baby would be.  they are the ultimate pottery barn sunshine family and they are fo real!  anxiously awaiting the arrival of the newest member whose sex they opted not to find out, we went ahead and took family pictures and maternity photos.


i'm frowning coz i worked on an awesome slideshow but my website is under construction and i couldn't upload.  booo!!!  so just the stills for now.


p.s. blake had these killer froggy boots that i could totally rock!  i just need to find them in my size.... and convince curtis that they would look kool on me.

mila | portraits . yap family

nixie and i go back to high school days.  we were in the same group through the last two years of high school and we both did ballet.  we lost touch after i left but found each other again sometime after college when she moved to the states.  now she's happily married to vince (adventure guy and avid diver) and  they've travelled the world together.  some people like to collect mugs or magnets from their travels, these two collected tiles.  they've got a beautiful new home with a wall full to share.  

adding to the family, they now have 2 adorable children nikki and enzo.  enzo is a bundle of energy and serious camera poser.  he's got silly faces and mad ideas for the avid photographer.  little nikki i'm thinking is his biggest fan.  you'll see her imitating everything he does.

for our short little portrait hour enzo was our posing guru.  he dictated what everyone else did.  watch out for mom and dad imitating the little guy =)

family pictures with the stolks

when i get hooked on something, i get really hooked... as in ... obsessed. last year it was my space. i don't know what it was, maybe i was spending too much time in the office burning brain cells over software development that at night i would need to interact with others and myspace provided a convenient outlet for me. i would spend HOURS online, sometimes losing sleep over it. doing what exactly? i don't know. just reading about other people i guess. at some point i was getting too much spam and meeting too many fantasy personas that i got burnt out. i pulled a 180. i got so turned off in fact that i refused to consider joining any other online communities.

having left the country in my teens, i really lost touch with all my old friends from school, the few that i did maintain kept talking about facebook. the photographers i looked up to made some mention of it in the workshops i attended. my friends were maintaining communication thru it all around me. my curiousity got the best of me, i broke down a couple of months ago and looked into it. when in rome....right? pfffftttt, i'm back on the online crack.... curtis groans. my old neighbors, classmates, family, people i admire, people i know, they all seem to be in there and for once they were real people! i just can't get enough of it.

sylvia lorenzo as she was known back in the day was my 4th grade seatmate. we shared a little trapezoid shaped table for almost a year. the relationship was a rocky one. she was a mess and i was always a neat freak. her stuff would cross over to my side constantly. it annoyed me so much that i laid down the law. i drew a line on the table with a pencil and defined the rules. anyone crosses the line it's a 25 cent fine! i was a brassy 9 year old, who didn't sit like a lady. my legs used to find themselves on her side of the table all the time. so she evened the score by extending the line to the floor. the classroom was divided and we were at war.

we found each other on facebook just recently. all scores aside, we can look back and laugh at the children we were. she invited me to her home this last weekend to take the family portraits and have lunch. we had a blast! i'm pretty sure that if the whole line drawing situation never manifested we would have been really good friends. i see a lot of myself in her. she's got the same type A, no holds barred, down to earth personality i've got. maybe we were too much alike and just didn't know how to deal back then.

sylvia and her husband chris are an incredibly dynamic couple. they met in a college in boston some 15 years ago. you can't help but get caught up in their energy and enthusiasm. their "first born" kishor, is a giant lug of a loveable dog. kiel and gabe, their two sons, are a couple of green thumb entrepreneurs who maintain a garden of vegetables and herbs that they harvest and sell... back to mom! i just love that! and then we have sweet, squeezable reese, all of 4 months and a calm, happy, easy to photograph baby. we really had a blast! she has an amazing family. curtis and i spent the entire day (just about) with them. we had so much fun, we're heading back there for thanksgiving and schedule permitting, we might hit the beach in march together. hurrah to finding old acquaintances and making new friends!

... few of my favorites from the family session.