So Pilster Photography has officially started it's maternity division. With the documenting of our pregnancy we are showing my wife's changing body every couple months. These stages will only be a glimpse in our memory as our life changes forever. She is so beautiful when she's pregnant and it's exciting to realize that there is a life growing inside her.
Photography has always given me an opportunity to experience something in life that I may not have otherwise, this is why I am so passionate about photojournalism. I love life experiences. There is only so much I can live through the lens of a camera though. I am definitely jealous that there are some things during a pregnancy I will never know about. This only means that I need to take every opportunity I can to be close to my wife over these 40 weeks.
Cheya, our older dog, always loves to get in on our photo shoots.
So once you find out your pregnant, what's the logical next step? Well for a photojournalist it's to start documenting it. I started out by capturing some photos of my amazing wife while it was still early on.
In the next few weeks we had some big decisions to make. We decided to use a midwife and were so lucky to find Michelle and Kaleen at the Heart 2 Heart Birthing Cener in Sanford. They've been so friendly and helpful. They spend a ton of time with us on every visit, they answer all of our questions and really make sure we understand everything.
One of the biggest reasons we did decide to go with midwives is that they are an advocate for you and your baby. Even if you do end up at a hospital, these women will be there to explain the information that you need to know and help you make the best decision. This is a time that even Google may not be fast enough to answer a question, so it's great to have a highly knowledgeable person right by your bedside.
A great documentary that we saw that really helped me move from being about 40% sure of going with a midwife to 90% is The Business of being Born. I highly recommend it, although you still should do your own research after watching it.
So after meeting with our midwife, we had our first chance to really find out there was a new life growing in my wife's belly. We had a chance to hear our baby's heartbeat! It was a beautiful and amazing thing!
Since we started going to the Birthing Center, they've moved. The first times we went it was at an antique style and older home. It had a gorgeous feel to it.
A few months ago we found out some amazing and exciting news. It's going to be life changing and we can't wait. I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to really share. I hate to throw it all out there at once, so I'm just going to start you out with the same preview we sent our families....
My wife Liz and I have many favorite things, but two of our favorites are food and traveling. So we try to combine them both when we can!
We haven't been out of Florida except to visit relatives and go to weddings for some time. I wanted to surprise her with a trip, so I told her we were going somewhere, but I wasn't going to tell her where until we got there.
Liz loves to figure out surprises and every chance she had she would ask me something to see if I would slip up. I apparently did answer enough questions for her to figure out where we were going. She has wanted to visit Savannah for a long time now and by telling her that it wasn't on the beach and within less than a days drive pretty much gave it away. I still tried to act like it was a secret until we were on the road to going there.
Since she uses Facebook and not Twitter I put a couple pleas out for help. Thanks to all of my friends on Twitter and a bunch of research, especially Trip Advisor we did some of the must do things in our whirlwind trip. Three days and two nights made it a quick trip, and limited some of what we might of been able to do.
We stayed at the McMilllan Inn, which was rated as the #8 bed and breakfast on Trip Advisor and was it great! It is a historical home built in 1888. For the two mornings we were there, breakfast was served at 9a. This was not your typical breakfast either, the food was straight from the south. Some of the highlights were bananas baked with some orange juice poured over them. Amazing butter and cream filled pastries, of course grits (which I am not usually a big fan of) which were mixed with something to actually tast good, and many more treats that tasted great but I am not entirely sure what was in them.
Our room was awesome.
The first night we didn't arrive until a couple hour before dinner reservations at the Pink House. Parking is horrible in this town, so either walk where you are going, give yourself enough time to park or open up the wallet.
The southern cuisine was awesome here! Both of our meals came with grits, and I'm not a big grits fan, but these were actually pretty good with dinner. I did hear that if you order a non-southern dish at the Pink House, it's not as spectacular. But then you need to ask yourself, why are you going there if you aren't going to order a southern meal?!
Our bed and breakfast was a little ways from the waterfront, so we did have to do some walking.
The second night after we hiked back into town, Liz was exhausted. Neither of us have ever ridden in a pedicab before, so we grabbed one back to the Inn. It was fun!
Even the bathrooms in this town were cool!
On our journey that first night we had heard about a new hotel that just reopened called the Bohemian. This hotel was completely opposite of everything Savannah. The building was historic, but inside it was contemporary. It was gorgeous and cool!
One of the greatest things on this trip was the Catholic church. I have never seen a church as amazing as this one. I was in awe when I walked through the doors. If anyone needs a wedding photographer to get married at the The Cathedral of St. John The Baptist, let me know, because I would love to take more photographs in this place!
The people in Savannah are just as cool as the town!
The architecture and historical buildings were phenomenal! Most of the days we just walked around and ooooohhed and ahhhhhed at the amazing buildings.
Sooooo many red doors in this city, how can you go wrong?
And the gardens were awesome too!
Did I mention we did a lot of walking?
After dinner one night we decided to try and find ourselves some jazz. We ran across this club with a great blues band in it.
And amazingly this couple dancing is from Orlando! What a small world.
I have to give a shout out to my amazing friend and CPA Travis.
After many years of being a sole proprietorship I formed Pilster Photography, LLC. I had a ton of tax questions for him. I'm also sure there was a bit more work on his end besides our household's usual taxes and the occasional freelance job. So I owe him a lot of thanks!
If the name sounds familiar you might remember that I photographed his daughter's first birthday this year. His kids are adorable and the rest of the family is as awesome as he is. If you have any tax questions or need a CPA in Florida, I highly recommend him!
If you remember back at the end of October (boy time flies) I put up some Halloween photos. After a VERY busy November I have finally finished toning the rest.
We have over 200 kids come to our house on most Halloweens. We love to see their costumes and hand out candy, plus we hate to be the spoiler house that turns out the lights for trick or treaters. We love getting dressed up too, so why waste it. We threw a party for our friends!
I have never setup a photo booth before and I thought Halloween would be a good opportunity. I brought out all of my lights, put up a drop cloth, tossed the camera on a tripod and tethered it to my laptop. I tried a bunch of things I have been meaning to experiment with to see how they all work.
Things not only worked, but they worked awesome! At a couple points I just had to pull the camera off of the tripod and get the great action shots of the characters my friends were portraying.
A witch, a horned yoga instructor, an African drummer, eyeball soup, a lion tamer (Or is she a ring master?), a horned Sarah Palin (Gotta love an Obama sign as a prop when you have Palin on set!), a black angel, our two little devil dogs, and a remote wielding photographer. Enjoy!
It's not often that I get a chance to go to a wedding on a rooftop during the sunset. Some of our good friends, Kurt and Tressa, just got married and had a simple wedding on the roof of their apartment complex, The Wall Street Lofts, in Daytona Beach.
Their were a few clouds in the sky and the sunset played off of them with beautiful pink, yellow and orange radiance.
Kurt and Tresa wanted to pass on some of their love of discovering new wines to their guests, so they asked my wife to put together a tasting of under $20 wines. Liz is so passionate about wines and fell into job with such ease. She spent time looking through the many wines that she is already very familiar with and the hard job of trying new wines. She came up with 9 amazing wines to recommend.
If you are looking to do something different at an event, add a wine tasting. Liz has decided that she enjoyed this so much that she wants to do it for others. She is talking about the selection of wines for this wedding on her Don't Spill Your Wine blog. Maybe you might find a surprising wine or need some help planning your own tasting.
I'm hitting the rewind button here. I've been so swamped with stuff that some photos have fallen through the cracks. I just downloaded my card with pictures from my last day at the Daytona Beach News-Journal. It was on June 23rd.
I've talked about the day before. To recap, nothing was told to us but we knew something was up. I pulled out my camera and documented as much as I could.
It wouldn't be a documentary of my last day if I didn't have a shot of myself.
What a wonderful day for layoffs....
They were very welcoming...
The room of doom...
It helped that everyone, even those staying, had to clean out their desks. It's really too bad that there is no bureau in DeLand anymore, there are a lot of great stories and no one to do a decent job of covering them.
Ronald Williamson is the man! This guy is one of the greatest writers around. He can take you from place to place with his words. You won't know quite how you got there, but you'll know it was one of the greatest rides you ever had.
I just started this and I'm about a million postings behind already. Creating a business has taken a ton of work and there are a million things I want to talk about, but first I'm going to back up a couple weeks.
Friday, August 15, 2008 - A week and a half before I arrived in California to help my dad move to Arizona. The past five days have been non-stop unpacking of boxes. We only stopped to eat and watch the Olympics before going to bed.
I finally took a break and took up an offer from James Gregg, an amazing photographer who works for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, on a trip to Mexico. I had grown up in California, but in 20+ years I had never ventured over the border. I love new things and I love adventures, and this was both. James kept asking me what I wanted to see, but everything was new to me and in a world of new, everything is interesting.
We started out touring around the Arizona side of the border. James showed me the wall that has been so much a part of the news. He said that rocks are constantly thrown at the border patrol over this thing. Drugs are also tossed over.
Flooding has become a major problem because the grates in the wall are so thin that debris gets caught and then the water backs up. It has caused whole streets on the Mexican side of the border to be under water. Through this hole in the middle of the street you can see where the water flows underground. This is some of the water that floods into the streets. I find it crazy that there are just giant holes in the street. I wonder if cars ever end up in these? This is one of the guys trying to fix the flooding. They are putting pipes underground to reroute the water. Unfortunately they don't have certain pipes they need, such as corner pipes, so they are having to be creative. They are laying down rocks and concrete to turn the water.
James making some of his own shots. I can't wait to go back to Nogales and shoot some more. I was so overwhelmed this first time.
We had planned to get to Nogales around noon and eat lunch. Unfortunately time flew buy and it was about 3p before we ate. We were starving. James knows his way around Nogales. We cut through this little bar to find an amazing restaurant on the other side.
I had never heard of a Mexican dish called brochette, so I tried it. This is Pollo Brochette w/coconut and it was amazing!
This is a bar in the restaurant we ate at.
And while we were eating, they decided to pull the curtains. I definitely have to go back to this place. This is going on my places to remember for portrait shoots!
Oh, and the on there thing. The restaurant is built into the side of a mountain!
More gorgeous light...
Even the bathroom was cool!
We did a little more wandering after lunch. Back in Arizona we had a chance to see the Border Patrol and their pups at work!
Thanks James, the trip was amazing. I hope to be back soon for round two!
