Happy Earth Day

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American Proverb

Make a pledge to do something small each day for the next year to help save our earth for further generations. We celebrated Earth Day on Sunday at Balboa Park at EarthFair 2008.

Mother's Day Mini-sesions Schafer Photgraphy - San Diego

Here's some info on upcoming Mother's Day mini-sessions. Email us if you need more info or want to reserve your spot.

DATE: Saturday, May 10, 2008

Fee: $200

Mini-Session includes 25 min session (plenty of time to get some great images), 15-20 images on your personal online gallery AND a full resolution disc with your complete digital gallery. This includes a release for you have the images printed, email, blogged, or whatever.....

Session times start at 8:30 am.

Making memories- Schafer Photography

I found this article the other day on another blog. The text is below.
I absolutely love to see the photographs of my parents and our family when I was younger. They are "dated" and certainly show the styles of times, but I love them. I hope my kids enjoy looking back on this time in their life through the images that we've created, as much as I enjoy looking back to my childhood.

Here's the text:
Note To Self Get Professional Photos of Your Children
I’ve never forgotten an invaluable piece of advice that I heard from an older friend right after my first child was born. She told me, “One of my greatest regrets about my children’s childhoods was that I didn’t have more professional pictures taken.”
“You didn’t take many pictures?” I asked.
“I took tons of pictures,” she said, “but the fact is, professional photographs are so much better than even the best snapshots.” I absolutely agree—professional photos are better. And keeping her advice in mind, ever since my daughters were born, I’ve been zealous about getting their photos taken professionally at least once a year.
While it’s a lot of fun (and also a pain) to take pictures myself, it’s terrific to have some pictures that are truly excellent. These photos don’t take the place of the on-the-spot pictures that I take myself—I still take scads of photos at birthday parties, first days of school, on the slide, with a popsicle—but these pictures memorialize my children’s childhoods in a different way. Plus they make great family gifts. I can never figure out a good present for the grandparents and great-grandparents, but they always love to get a really great photograph—especially the relatives who don’t often get a chance to see the girls in person.
Also, research shows that one way to boost your happiness is to reflect on happy times, and looking at photographs helps keep memories more vivid.
It’s a splurge, of course. Professional photos aren’t cheap.
However, I figure that the money I spend on these photographs will strengthen family bonds, enhance happy memories, and capture the fleeting moments of childhood. They give me more pleasure than practically any other purchases that I make. That strikes me as pretty good happiness bang for the buck.
A friend’s family had another great photography tradition. For her whole life, at every milestone, her parents took a picture of her and her brother sitting exactly the same way on their front stoop. It’s fascinating to see them change through the years. Along the same lines, the artist Nicholas Nixon took a photograph of his wife and her three sisters once a year for 33 years. The collection of these photographs, The Brown Sisters, is riveting.
Getting professional photos take is a great example of the tiresome fact that happiness takes thought and effort. These photographs are easy to arrange; in the scheme of things, not terribly expensive; contribute greatly to our family happiness—and yet it probably never would have occurred to me to do it if my friend hadn’t suggested it.

Japanese Friendship Garden

We did some recent pictures with two of my favorite little girls. The Japanese Friendship Garden was the perfect place to capture their beautiful smiles.

tiny dancer

Today was the big ballet recital. She'd been practicing for months with Ms Angela from Niesha's Dance Academy. She was a little nervous about going on "the stage", but she seemed to have a great time and loved all the attention.

No More Monkeys...

She absolutely loves jumping on the bed, couch, whatever. (I got this idea from fellow San Diego Photographer Melissa Koehler blog.) Since I don't have a remote for my camera, this was done with a timer. Anyone who has ever used a timer know that it involves more than "one take". See below for more outtakes. We laughed and laughed! "Let's do it again, Daddy!"

"Now I'm going to jump by myself!"

Schafer Photography Blog Welcome Video

Here's our welcoming committee for today!

new Schafer Photography Blog Header

We're going to do a new Blog Header every month for the Schafer Photography Blog. Since our son took the photo of us from the old header, he insisted that we put it up on the site somewhere. Here's the original header.

morks from ork

He told me that this was the best way to watch TV.

to the park

Hi,

So we haven't been great at keeping up with the blog. From what I read on other photo blogs, this seems to be a strange phenomenon among photographers lately. I'd love to have a great excuse, but we don't. Here's a few recent shots from a trip to the park.