I am off to Sydney for a weekend of shoots and a workshop.  Then next week is The Digital Show in Melbourne – a fantastic 3 days of everything photography.  I will be speaking at the Seldex stand at 1pm everyday.

Hope your day has been special.  Happy Mother’s Day… xo

]]> http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/05/for-mothers-day/feed/ 1 http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/05/client-post-st-kilda-family-photography/ http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/05/client-post-st-kilda-family-photography/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 03:22:36 +0000 Angie http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/?p=3866 The weather has been pretty miserable in Melbourne over the last week, so blogging photos of these darlings on a dreamy St Kilda morning has brought a little sunshine to my day.  Hopefully yours too x

]]> http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/05/client-post-st-kilda-family-photography/feed/ 0 http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/05/instagram-and-other-things/ http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/05/instagram-and-other-things/#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 09:26:39 +0000 Angie http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/?p=3854 And then it was May.  As the days roll by so quickly, I have fallen in love with my phone camera even more.  Photographs help my memory, and at times when I don’t have my big camera with me, I am still able to capture fleeting moments of ‘anything’.   I am also loving following along with so many photo lovers on Instagram.   A fantastic free photo app for sharing and enjoying photos.

Here is some recent phoneography from my Instagram feed (angiebaxter).

Also,

The Digital Show is in Melbourne this year.  Three days of exhibition, seminars, talks on all things photography, and imaging and digital entertainment! Friday, May 25 to Sunday, May 27 — Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.  Friday is Industry Only, and Saturday and Sunday everyone is welcome.  Register online now for free entry!

You can hear my talk, “The Art of Interviewing Children”, at the Seldex Artistic Albums stand at 1pm, every day.  I would love you to come along and say ‘hi’ if you can make it!

And Jazzy working out her tie yesterday morning — so gorgeous

I am mostly disappointed with kids menus.  Fish and chips, nuggets and chips, margherita pizza, and pasta with napoli sauce?  Why is this the standard?  If I found a restaurant that offered an awesome kids menu, we would go there often.

We like the kids to order their own meals and make eye contact with the waiter.  Jasmine does.  Will and Imi are usually playing or getting into mischief, so miss the moment.

I always order a bowl of chips.  I really just can’t resist them.  And I feel happy if they are thick cut awesome chips.  And then if I’m trying to be really good I won’t order the chips and then when walking back to the car I will say, “I can’t believe I didn’t order chips!”   Dave will just nod or something.

Dave often wishes he ordered what I ordered.

Everytime a restaurant hands out a special “kids activity sheet”, I always dream about creating a “kids activity sheets for restaurants” business.

I don’t enjoy Eye Spy one little bit, but will happily play other kids games at the table such as hangman.  With Eye Spy, I know that if I guess their item really quickly, they will change it in their mind and say, no, that’s not it.

Anyhow, after our last dinner at St Kilda beach we watched this glorious sunset before heading home. x

There is so much I love about this family — but mostly I think it is their “take us as you find us” attitude.  The Veldhoven door is always open, love and generosity flow in abundance, and I’m very lucky to be their friend. x

Liz is a wedding and portrait photographer, and her first two exhibitions are personal projects that are being shown until the end of April.

“a part of me – the light within” and “hear my heart”

I don’t even know where to start.  I want to say — please just go!  Take an easy drive (2hrs) from Melbourne, and be gifted by her work.  With so much of our art consumption being viewed digitally these days, seeing it in the flesh is such a treat!

We made a fun day trip of it — lunch at Letizia’s (which is where “a part of me – the light within” is showing), ice-creams, fantastic children’s park by the river and then home again!

This is Liz – such a truly gentle and gorgeous soul. (please excuse the restaurant lighting!)

And here is her happy face in front of the ‘a part of me – the light within’ exhibition.

I adore the way Liz has approached this project and the sentiment behind it.  ”A collection of documentary style images of teenagers in their bedrooms, from a diverse cultural background within the Goulburn Vallery region.”  Liz wanted to celebrate teenagers and the space that they call their own — the room they decorate, listen to music in, do homework in, chat with friends in — for many, the space where they spend a lot of their time.  The diversity of the teens photographed is incredible too — some who have been challenged too much already, some who have a hard journey ahead, and many who have a room just like mine was as a teenager (minus the Bon Jovi posters).

I felt such an affinity with this project.  It reminded me how precious our teenage years are.  Dave and I ( and the kids!) were absorbed by each individual story told in each photograph.  They are photographs that you want to stand in front of, for long minutes — my favourite kind of photo!

Each person photographed then wrote about their favourite things underneath the image.  The sample above is Liz’s own daughter!

And then we moved up the road to see “hear my heart”, which is a brave journey of women who have suffered or are suffering abuse.  This project has been part of their recovery — follow this link for more information on Liz’s collaboration with Relationships Australia Victoria, as I feel my commentary cannot adequately do it justice.  In addition to the gallery of framed images, there is a book to look through that photographically tells the story of the work these ladies went through.

These exhibitions are both so inspiring and are exhibiting until the end of April here:

Letizia’s Restaurant, 67 Fryers St, Shepparton

David Stradling Framing, 90 Fryers St, Shepparton

Love you Liz!! xo

And then her idol came on stage and she was mesmerised.  x

March has been a super busy month for me with workshops in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide.  I have been so thankful for some gorgeous reviews from Bloggers who have attended.  Jen from Lovely Living, Sonia from Life, Love and Hiccups, and Gemma from My Big Nutshell.

New dates are being released soon, so if you are keen on learning how to improve your photography, register your interest here and come along to the next workshop!

With this in mind, my exercise strategy has changed as well.  Usually I would go to the gym, at random times to do random workouts.  Mostly I would just mooch about working up a mild sweat.  I changed that drastically this month and am now looking for bang for buck.  With only ‘x’ number of hours available to exercise in a week, I want them to be high calorie burning, strength building workouts.  Welcome high intensity cardio and strength training to the point of making embarrassing ‘working-out’ noises.

And… some photos from February.

We visited my brother and sister-in-law and had a picnic.  We were at the park for hours, and Imogen wore her helmet the whole time?  I find this very funny.

Then the kids rocked out with my brother in the garage.

We went for a drive down the coast.

The kids swam.

Will made dinner all by himself.  Crumbed Zucchini and Eggplant Fritters, and Pasta with Tomato and Garlic Sauce.

While Will cooked, Imogen drew a picture of Tango Baxter – we don’t know who that is.

]]> http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/02/client-post-suzy-jan-and-sebastian/feed/ 4 http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/02/free-download-creative-photo-wall-layouts/ http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/02/free-download-creative-photo-wall-layouts/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:53:21 +0000 Angie http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/?p=3625 It was my birthday yesterday — the big 39.  Yikes!  Thankfully frequent bouts of immaturity are keeping me youthful.

So, being my birthday I thought I would give a little pressie to all my blog friends.

Creative Photo Wall Layouts

This is a three page pdf document that you can download for FREE!

There are quite a few photo wall idea sheets floating around, however I wanted to create my own document that:

a. incorporated the common print sizes I use (i.e. 8×12″ instead of 8×10″),

b. incorporated popular collage sizes,

c. gave clients an idea of how much wall space would be required for each layout, and

d. put together fun layouts of my own

I have recently started using these with clients and they have been so helpful for them, that I thought you might like to use them too.

Who is This For

1. Photographers who want some great ideas for yourself and your clients

2. Anyone who is putting together a photo wall and needs some inspiration

3. Anyone who is not putting together a photo wall but just loves looking at this sort of thing

Sample page

To receive the Free Download, all I ask is that you share your new find on Facebook and the Download Link will become active immediately.

Some ideas on how to share:

“Thanks Angie for the Free Download: Creative Photo Wall Layouts”

“I’m downloading Creative Photo Wall Layouts for free – you can too!”

“Follow this link for some new Photo Wall ideas”

“Angie, you don’t look a day over 21″

Thank you friends!  Enjoy x

It would seem quite ludicrous to say to a child, “just be yourself!”  Don’t you think?  It wouldn’t occur to them to be any other way.  x

The big girl has started grade 5 at a new school and the baby girl has started prep.  Poor old Will has been overshadowed by his sisters — but we all can’t have our important moments at the same time, and he’s taken it just fine.

In a lot of ways I have marked the start of the school year as the beginning of the year – so Happy New Year.  For the last two years (or so), Dave has been a stay at home dad as my business was just getting to a point of ‘busyness’ that something had to give, and we didn’t want it to be the kids.  So he has been home, helping me, helping them, and generally being a fab guy.  We share pick-ups and home stuff, and it all works really well.  And now, we have three at school, and he and I are ready to take on the world between 9 and 3.30pm.

The first thing we have put in place is a rotating fortnightly schedule (based loosely on Tamara Lackey’s weekly plan that some of you may have come across).  We spent a few hours putting it together and it will be organic and flexible, however for now, to say we are the most organised we have ever been is an understatement.  It incorporates my shooting days, allocated time for business development, processing, marketing and other fab business things.  We have the kid’s extra activities, our gym time, who is picking up who and when – you name it, it’s scheduled and it feels fantastic.  Already, we are finding more time then we had before!  I highly recommend it

Here are our beauties starting school.  Their three different personalities demonstrated so well in this pic!

And then a bit of extended love for the baby of the family on her first day of big school – complete with crazy hair and left over Australia Day tattoo on her arm. x

I used to always feel sad at each of their birthdays.  Lamenting how they were growing too fast.  Longing for their chunky babyness to remain.  Another year older marked the perfect time for me to drown myself in old video footage from the years before.

I have always referred to Imogen as “my baby”.  Calling her “my best baby” to differentiate her from Jaz, who is “my best big girl”.

So at her birthday dinner when I called her “baby girl”, she said, “I’m 5 now, I’m not a baby anymore.”  Historically this would have sent me into a weepy decline.  Now I would definitely be dragging out baby videos when we got home??  But I felt just fine.  I have wanted to get my head around their inevitable growth .. to feel good about it.

For me, the key to this acceptance is not feeling regretful about my parenting.  There is no, “I wish I had done more of this… or less of that…”   I am an engaged, happy parent most of the time.  And for the many times that I am not, I don’t beat myself up about it.

Now Imi is 5 and starts school next week.  And I just feel thankful for her 5 glorious baby years and am ready for the next stage.  No tears required.

As I tucked her in after a long day of picnicking, bushwalking and celebrating, I tested… “goodnight baby big girl.”  She seemed content with the new title, for now…

Jaz and Will pressing a finger in each others back to help them up the hill.

]]> http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/01/melbourne-family-photographer-2/feed/ 0 http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/01/goodbye-bed/ http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/2012/01/goodbye-bed/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:15:24 +0000 Angie http://blog.angiebaxter.com.au/?p=3530 So, these were the last photos taken in our bed, yesterday morning.  Dave got home from the movies last night, hopped into bed… and the whole frame collapsed.  While I suggested that was probably one choc-top too many for him, he made arrangements for sleeping on the floor.

The end of an era for our bed of a million years that has housed all our children (I was a lover of co-sleeping when they were small).  Let the bed shopping begin (time to hit Pinterest for some ideas I think!)

N.B. That pile of books and magazines on the bed-side table is my current reading material.  Does anyone else’s bed-side look like that?

My toes in socks at the office door facing the balcony.  And the rest… from my window.

I hope I can convince Dave to light a fire tonight.  I wonder how it looks from where you sit. x

They are so gorgeous, so in love.  Tony loves gardening and cooking and makes mum laugh without trying.  And Mum loves reading and history and laughing at Tony.   Tony bought mum an iPad for Christmas and is calling it her “Toy-Boy” because she’s always hiding off in another room with ‘him’.

And this photo is my absolute favourite photo of them of all time. x

Stunning!

The ceremony had to be moved indoors — the room was gorgeously rustic, and dark.  Lit only by candles and a few small windows.

Arriving in a downpour, but still cracking jokes and barely any nerves.

Rain stopped for a few minutes.

And just before the light left us and the reception started, the boys had time for some Nerf war.

Imogen climbed into Will’s bed so he could read to her (from his Xmas set, Diary of a Wimpy Kid).

Hours and hours are being spent in the water.  Their swimming is coming along beautifully – in the last few days Will has learnt to dive and somersault into the pool. Imi has learnt to swim from one end of the spa to the other under water and then scream out, “did you see me, did you see me!” every time she emerges.

What I haven’t photographed are images of them fighting  –  oh the joy of being together day in, day out.  Our strategy at this point is to lock them in a cupboard…, I mean, separate them.  The next step will be to record their arguments and then force them to watch it in it’s entirety to see if they find it as annoying as we do

Happy holidays