Honest, authentic, unposed and timeless coverage of milestones in our lives

Desiree’s 8th Birthday Party

December 18, 2014

I recently covered Desiree’s 8th birthday party. A majority of the birthday parties I shoot tend to be for children celebrating their 1st or 2nd birthday; so this shoot made for a pleasant change.

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An interesting thing about this party was that it was a “party with a cause”. Desiree’s mom, June, in an effort to teach Desiree compassion for others, had convinced her to support a local charity where instead of receiving presents for her birthday, party guests could make a donation to the chosen charity. The charity selected was Club Rainbow (hence the rainbow colours on Desiree’s birthday cake above). Club Rainbow provides emotional, educational, social, financial and informational assistance to families of children who suffer from major chronic and potentially life-threatening illnesses.

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The guests were extremely generous and $510 was raised for Club Rainbow. Many guests still bought presents for Desiree in addition to their donations.

The party was held in their home and Desiree’s parents did a fantastic job decorating up the place.

Desiree-8th-BD-Party-02 Desiree-8th-BD-Party-03 The party featured a picnic theme and green carpets stood in for grass in the living room.

In the weeks leading up to the day of the party, Desiree and her younger brother Darius hand decorated and assembled picnic lunch boxes to be used by the guests. Guests were also able to let their creativity shine by making their own customized lunch boxes during the party.

The party was attended by Desiree’s friends and family. I think everyone really enjoyed themselves.

After the picnic lunch, the kids had fun playing various board games and toys and enjoyed a couple of rounds of charades.

The whole atmosphere of the party felt like a fun day out with close friends and family. Overall it was a really enjoyable and memorable shoot for me. It was very heartening for me to get the following text message from Desiree’s mum after she saw the photos:-

“Hi Derrick, the photos r marvelous! I like your style! And it’s amazing that u took sooo many photos without us realizing it :)”

Tags: Birthday, Children

“Wonderland” by Jason Eskenazi

August 25, 2014

“Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith” by Jason Eskenazi is a book that I enjoy browsing through once in a while.

Wonderland features 77 black and white photographs Eskenazi made in the former Soviet Union or USSR from 1990 to 2001. The publisher’s blurb for the book:-

“The story of Communism is the story of the twentieth century. For many, the Soviet Union existed, like their childhood, as a fairy tale where many of the realities of life were hidden from plain view. When the Berlin Wall finally fell, so too did the illusion of that utopia. Wonderland is a photographic exploration that portrays both the reality beneath the veneer of a utopian USSR and the affirmation of hope that should never be abandoned. And like all fairy tales try to teach us: the hard lessons of self-reliance.”

Wonderland is 5″x7″ in size with 224 pages sandwiched between 2 pieces of thick cardboard which act as the book’s cover. The B&W photographs run across double spreads which usually are a source of irritation for me due to parts of the image getting lost in the gutter of the double spread. Thankfully, the design and construction of Wonderland allows the viewer to open the book flat so that nothing is lost in the gutter.

The photographs in the book look like a mix between documentary and street photography. Wonderland somehow feels to me like a companion book to Carolyn Drake’s Two Rivers which I recently wrote about HERE. Both were photographed in the former USSR and though Drake’s photographs are in colour while Eskenazi’s are in B&W, they are tied together by the common thread of a feeling of melancholy that runs through them.

There are two excellent interviews with Eskenazi that can be found on the web; one on the A Photo Student (APS) website HERE where he talks about his journey as a photographer and another one on Eric Kim‘s website HERE where he talks more about his photographic process. Both are highly recommended reading for all photographers.

“Wonderland is about nostalgia, choices, missed chances, the search for life… the finding of love and the loss of love. For me it is the metaphor of the Soviet Union.” ~Jason Eskenazi (from the APS interview)

Wonderland is the first of a trilogy of books. The next book The Black Garden is currently still a work in progress that has been crowd funded through Kickstarter. Both print runs of Wonderland are sold out with some new and secondhand copies of the book selling for a premium on Amazon (see HERE). If you can find a copy at a reasonable price, it definitely is a recommended addition to your library.

Tags: Books, Documentary, Jason Eskenazi, Review

Beth’s Head and Face Gear

August 16, 2014

In November last year, I did a blog post that featured the hands of my daughter Beth (see HERE). Beth is now 2 1/2 years old and I wanted to feature another set of her photos which cover her first 2 years. Looking through the photos I have taken of her, I found quite a number of photos with her in different head gear (e.g. hats, animals, bags, etc) as well as different face gear (e.g. sunglasses, masks, etc).

The following are a selection of photos from Beth’s 1st month all the way to her 24th month featuring her sporting a variety of head and face gears. The photos are sorted from young to old and it is definitely easier to see the subtle changes in her features when looking at a sequence of images that are captured over time.

Tags: Baby, Children, Documentary, Family, Photojournalism