I've moved!!

I have moved over to my new website! This new website has my blog in it and so I will no longer be updating my blogspot blog. Please come over and join me at www.annachipman.com!

Taking control of our lives

I have just discovered Marie Forleo and watched this video of her interviewing Chris Guillebeau, the author of The $100 Business Start Up. I am intrigued by his book even more so after listening to his interview. He has some really great thoughts and sounds like a great way to live life. One of the quotes I really enjoyed, which Marie did as well since she made him repeat himself so she could tweet the quote, was: The choices we make now affect the opportunities available to us in the future. So simple but so very very correct.

Check out this video and let me know what you think.

What I am up to...

I have been rather quite lately. I am finding that being a full time mom is a much bigger job than I ever realized. I love my job so much and I am having so much fun with Myles. He just turned two last weekend and we are approaching our year anniversary of me being home with him (it is really about a month and a half away but eh, who is really counting.) We have been taking a painting class and it is great to see the transformation from the first class, where he was afraid to get paint on his hands, to the last class where he was getting more and more in to all the paint and tape! He is a really funny guy and keeps me going all day long every day!

Anyhow, I know that hearing about Myles isn't the only reason you come around to read this blog...right :)

Besides hanging out with Myles I have been taking an online business class with The Right-Brain Business Plan and, man, have I been learning about myself! I hope to be able to put these practices to work in a much more efficient way both for myself as well as my viewers. So this is the reason I have been so quiet! My days are spent with Myles and my nights are spend working on "homework". I must say that I love being a student and I love learning new things!

I don't wanna leave you high and dry for images so I am including one of my "new" roses. It is "new" because I it is one that I took when Bryce, my husband, and I went to the Berkeley Botanical Garden a couple of years ago. I just recently opened this one up and fell in love. I fall for flowers a lot! This image hasn't been named yet so I am totally open to ideas...

                                                  © Anna Chipman

My logo

Just wanted to upload my logo so that:
             1. You could see the logo in colors of my logo. I always have my logo on my images but   
                  it's never in color.
             2. I can work on my branding more.
             3. Show off the work of my wonderful husband.

Jiffy's bouquet

Dusk Rose

Sunset Rose

Parting the Veil

As I said in my last post, how has it already been two months, I have been working on flowers that were from bridal bouquets. I finally worked my way back, after photographing a beautiful 13 day old little girl, to the flowers from my best friends wedding. I tried out two different colors with the first rose cause I was just having so much fun with it....which do you prefer? I have a hard time choosing because Dust Rose was the original color of the bride's flowers and Sunset Rose was a color that I just couldn't resist.

I also took a departure from my typical color images with a black and white. It was really fun to try something new with my flowers.

This has been really fun taking this photos for my friends and I am now in luck....my sister-in-law is getting married next April and Becca, Jiffy's sister, is getting married in March. So many fun weddings to look forward to next year!!!

Bridal Bouquets

I have mentioned, at least on FB, that I have been clearing up space on my hard drives. I have found some really great images to work on, images that are copied on two or three places and lots of stuff that just needs to be recycled. One of the folders that I found was from my brother-in-laws wedding back in October in 2010, just month and half after Myles was born. I had taken a few abstract images of his bride's, Kayla, bouquet. She had a lovely bouquet of sunflowers and I have to say that I just love sunflowers.

Here are a couple images from her bouquet.

My Phoenix Flames

 

 

Sunset Caviar

This past Easter weekend was my best friend's wedding out in California. She had a beautiful bouquet of a mixture of white flowers, which I am now sorting through and plan on sharing with you guys in the coming weeks. I will share more info about this wedding and set of photos when I post them. Maybe even sneak in a bit about our after wedding Disneyland trip!

I haven't been to too many weddings recently but am finding that photographing the bouquet is something fun for me to do. Then it is a unique remembrance I can give to the bride.

Every parents nightmare

Earlier this week I read one of the saddest stories I have ever heard...any time a family looses a child it is the saddest story. A story that after reading I had to get up and check on my son who was sound asleep in his bed. A family in Illinois had a three year old son that they lost on Sunday. They don't know the cause of this loss. They had put him to bed and they checked him once in the morning, he was fine, they when they checked on him again a short time later he was blue and gone. You can read about it directly from them. http://bit.ly/wM7289

This Friday, March 10, there is going to be an auction to help raise money for his funeral. I have donated two images to this auction to help raise money for the scariest thing that can ever happen to a parent. Here is the link to the FB page that is going to have the auction. Please take a little bit of time and check out all of the items up for sale to help this family out. http://www.facebook.com/AuctionForElias

Thanks for listening to me in these moments of sadness.

Alameda tree blooming

I have been working on these images from the tree was outside our house in Alameda. Each image has a different feel to it...a bit of texture and testing out different colors. I loved watching this tree bloom and I would be lucky sometimes and be outside when the wind would come up and blow some of these beautiful flowers across the yard. I am really going to miss my tree blooming this year.

A little more personal

I'm pretty sure I am the luckiest girl alive...you know why? A year and half ago I had Myles who has changed my life in so many ways that I can't even count them all. I was just sitting and making a list in my head of all of the wonderful things about my life...and you know when you sit down to write them all out they just kinda fly away.

-I haven't had a minute alone, not even in the bathroom, in I don't even know how long. If I am in the bathroom alone that means that there is a little boy standing outside the door saying, "Mommy" with his hands under the door.
-I don't typically get to work on photography until Myles goes to bed at night...but I am home with him every day and it is a dream come true.
-Probably haven't had a whole week where I have slept through the night in well over two years...but you know you can actually kinda get used to that.Coffee helps!
-I have learned more about myself than in the 30 years I had all to my self before Myles. I have also learned a lot about the things that my parents did for me. Amazing how much time and energy they put out raising me and my sisters. Being a parent is true love.
-I fall more and more in love with my husband everyday watching him dive onto the bed to cuddle with Myles.
-I am so lucky to have a kid with a great sense of humor. How does a one and half  year old know to do some of these things? Like today, I was trying to show off all the words he can say, so what does he do? He decides "Hat" is the word to say, I say, "say Myles" and he says "Hat". "Say Mommy" - "Hat", "say camera" - "hat" and then bursts out laughing. I swear we did that for 15 minutes and if I stopped I hear "hat" coming from the back seat.
-We read a lot and I have read Road Work and Little Blue Truck so often I don't even have to read them anymore, I know parts of them by heart.
-We watch Curious George, Caillou and Shawn the Sheep and it is so cute hearing all of these shows being said by name by a little boy who says the names between gibberish.

Like I said, I had a whole list of things that I was thinking about writing down but I just can't think of everything now. I hope that this glimpse into my life was kinda interesting. Sometimes I forget to let other people in on what is going on all around me and just focus on all the photo stuff on here cause it is about the only time I get to talk about photography...anyhow rambling.

Myles and I heading out on a photo adventure.

© Anna Chipman

Thaspia Villosa

Thaspia Villosa

© Anna Chipman

Typically I don't name my images after the actual plant but this time it already had such an interesting name that I couldn't help it!

When I saw this plant I thought, "my goodness this is gonna make some great photos!" And I have to say that I agree with myself. I have a few other even more abstract views of this plant and maybe next week I will post them for you to see as well, which would mean that I need to get working on them.

Show at Mama Java

Some of my Intimate Abstractions are showing at Mama Java in Phoenix right now. This is such a cute coffee shop that I just had to get my work in there! So many coffee shops you go in now are loud and play loud music. The whole time I was there today I kept thinking how I could relax with a book there.

Here are a couple photos of some of the work hanging there for the month.