We've Got a Swell New Look

Well, it's been a long process, but we've finally changed our name, made it legal, and are raising a glass of champagne!

I used Jane Eaton Hamilton Photography when I started out because I already have a great reputation as a Canlit writer (author of six books), and wanted the name recognition to carry through. But it's just too darned hard for folks who aren't hooked in to my reputation to remember, so thanks to some prompting from my youngest, we're now the snappy and bright Jane Photo! Officially! No more long-winded addresses to type! It's tons easier for us, too.

With the new name, we needed a new logo, so we're brand spanking new there too. We got out our design pens and went to work, and we love the new colours, blue and brown, the new packaging (yum...polka dots and stripes) and the the new splash page on our websites. We're introducing a custom customer service site over the next few weeks too, so stay tuned. When you book your session, you'll be sent to your own personal site that has tons of groovy stuff to help you keep unpuzzled and organized regarding your experience with us.

This time of year is when all the backend work of running a photography biz happens...the site updates and so on. We all take a close look at what is working, what could be improved, and get moving on the latter. So look forward to more sweet new changes as the new year clicks over and brings us more winter with a bright new 2008.

This is also a big thank you to all our clientele for allowing me and my team to be there to photograph the important moments in your lives this past year. For many of you, couples from Florida and Texas and Japan and Singapore and England and France, and lots of locals, those were ecstatic--weddings, birthdays, capturing just an ordinary day in your life--and for others those were tragic--couples who lost babies whom I photographed for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep--but none of you were less than cherished on my end. I don't think photographers tell you enough, so let me say it: It is truly a deep honour to be in your lives during their important, heartfelt passages.

A special thank you goes out to those whose infants and toddlers I photographed this year, just because, well, because as you all have figured out by now, I'm kid-crazy. Totally over the moon with babies. I am not sure why babies charm me so, but it is, I think, mutual--they seem to know and respond to the warmth. It is like the late and great Jane Rule once wrote, and I only paraphrase: They reach in and wrap a string of lights around my heart. It is a delight beyond measure for me to be able to spend time with your kiddos, and to make great art of them to hang on your walls. I want to see their images even bigger in '08...30"x40" or 24"x30". The canvases, especially in black and white, look so flipping awesome. Each one of your kids struck sparks in my heart in '07, and I have melted, and smiled, and laughed out loud, more times than recordable. How can I even thank you for the joy of that? I look forward to seeing many of your babes again this coming year, and to meeting the many new ones who will charm my cockles in '08. You have no idea how excited I am! I've got great new props and ideas and lenses and talents, and I look forward to many fulfilling sessions in your homes and my studio.

Little sweetie-pie

We were so pleased to photograph our first winter fairy this week. She looks so wonderfully mischievious that you can just imagine that with a wave of her wand, Vancouver will be covered completely in snow.

Ahhhh, so that's what's up tonight as the white flakes fall outside our window...

These photographs display a few wonderful digital matts used in our wall art, along with a couple more definitions:

"play: frolic, imagine, a child's pasttime

delightful: causing great pleasure, charming, wrapped around one's finger"

Snazzy new 20"x20"!

'Kay, this is totally yummy new wall art!

Love this so much. The simplicity, the design, the definitions.

I've died and gone to heaven

Oh my goodness, the pleasure of all these babies!

Here are some recent captures...cutiepies every one.

Cool New Blend

Here is a blend of two little fellows I made portraits of in May. Isn't it beautiful? I just love this. Avaiable as a 16x16 or 20x20.

Below is a birth annoucement I've been working on in a movie format. Love this, too, though it couldn't be more different than the one above.

Happy Father's Day to all our dads out there!

People ask me what I mostly photograph, and I really photograph love.

I did a family shoot last weekend out In Richmond with a great family of four--mom, dad and two of the spriteliest kiddos, an 8 year old girl, and a 6 year old boy. As I made my way through their images this week, preparatory to creating a slideshow for them, I kept smiling, and I know I grinned over and over because of their transparent love for each other. Love and happiness are infectious--it's hard for humans to see other humans having fun without smiling ourselves. And that's what happened to me. They infected me with their adoration and high spirits. Wouldn't it be cool if this virus spread?

Speaking of being infected with love, the studio hosted our second Studio Portrait Party yesterday with ten families. We had a terrific, expressive group of families, with a whole lot of infants, and while it will take me a couple of weeks to finish up with the photographs, I can already tell everyone that there are many, many great shots. Joy, Meg, Greg and I are very pleased and proud of the results.

I will attach a few here, with a special sounding out to the dads in attendance who are celebrating what is, for many of them, their very first Father's Day. Congratulations to you all. Thanks again to everyone who helped make the day such rollicking good fun, and so fulfilling, for us all.













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The Studio Portrait Party pix are up!

Hey everyone!

Good news! The party pix are finally online--but for one week only!

You can view them by navigating to my website and going to Portraits/Online Proofing and finding Studio Portrait Party 1. There is no password.

Meantime, here is a sample birthday card I designed for those thinking of invitations, announcements etc.

Studio Portrait Party!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, moms!

Meg, Greg, Joy and I were so pleased and happy to host all of you in our premiere Studio Portrait Party yesterday, May 12. We heard tell it was sunny outside, yet all of you took the time to truck down to my studio and trust me and my crew with your precious children. Thanks to each and every one of you, moms and dads too, who made the effort.

I've got the pix downloaded now, but that's about all. I just spent a couple of hours proofing an image from every family so you could celebrate just a little piece of Mother's Day by visiting my blog, so here they are!

Can't say when I'll have the pix up online for you, but as soon as humanly possible, and hopefully this week sometime. I'll be back in touch when they're up!

We're having another Studio Portrait Party June 16, so let your friends and family members know the date. We ask that no one who attended yesterday returns for another 3-6 months depending on the rapidity of the change in your child/ren, but you are surely welcome to pass the opportunity along to others!

And we are building that waitlist for Home Portrait Parties where we bring the studio to you!

Cheers everyone, and smell a lilac for me,

Jane

Shhh! We've got a secret!

We're happy to announce our very first

PORTRAIT PARTY!

Saturday, May 12, 2007

by appointment only

Fifteen minute slots, one per family, beginning at 9 o'clock in the morning until we fall over from exhaustion! No session fee, and no obligation to purchase. 10-20 images will be posted online at Pictage (www.pictage.com) for a period of one week during which time prints may be purchased. After a week, all images will be purged from our system.

Love portraiture of your children? Put yourself on our waiting list to host a Portrait Party in the privacy of your home! Get together at least 8 families on a Saturday morning, and earn valuable print credits! Contact us to ask for details!

Isaac at five months

I've made a slideshow of Isaac, the preemie baby I've just re-photographed at five months. It's up on my site under Portraits/Slideshows which links from over on the right side here. He's such a dreamy big monkey now...just as sweet of temperament and cuddly as ever, and while undoubtably his cheeks are the same remarkably adorable cheeks as I shot umplumped shortly after his autumn birth, it's hard, mostly, to catch the tiny vulnerable preemie in any of the current shots. His parents have shots from our first session all over their home, and I just stood before them, familiar as I am with them, and stared at how tiny Isaac was to begin with. Back then, worried about Isacc's fragility, no one but his parents could hold him, and he almost disappears into enfolding arms.

If ever I had a question about whether it is worth commemorating a child's birth and new days in pictures, Isaac, newborn, answers it. He is so different now after just a few months, that without pictures, good, artistic pictures, much of that early vulnerability would surely be forgotten. I know one can't quite recapture such states even with photographs--even with video that captures sound and movement--but oh, when the pictures are lovely, it is quite a pleasure even to try, to stand before a photograph of him tucked tight into his parents' arms and marvel at his size.

Besides finding Isaac himself remarkable, I found his mothers' happiness compelling. These are women who waited a long time for their son, and perhaps their joy at his arrival is to be expected, but still, palpable delight absolutely leaks from them, and when you leave their presence you can't help but to leave grinning, made just a little happier by knowing this small simple unit called a family is there behind you, loving each other.

Baby Isaac: how he has grown!

I stopped by baby Isaac's home recently to take more photographs of this bouncing five-month-old baby, and to grab a shot of the wall art his parents purchased in February commemorating his arrival. It is sure stunning up on their yellow wall. The matts are incredibly thick, setting the artwork off beautifully. It's funny seeing and shooting Isaac now. I am so ultra familiar with him because I've spent so long editing images of him, and so completely a stranger, too. Do I recognize him? He is huge now--nearly 20 pounds. Sometimes I'd look at him and see someone completely new, he's changed so much. But then in the next moment I'd spot that tiny preemie newborn and his adorable cheeks poking through the big boy he's become. He loves to cuddle; loves to laugh; is clearly just so delighted to find himself alive.

One thing's for sure...if he was loved the day he came home from the hospital, he's loved doubly now. His parents just exude happiness and joy. It's a pleasure--and an honour--to be around that kind of blissed out mama-love.

I hope to be able to post some of the images from our recent session soon!

April Special!

April Special!

Surprise Mom with great pix of the kids!

We're happy to offer special Mother's Day portrait rates April 1-April 15.

One mini-session (15-30 minutes) and one 11"x14" print for a record-shattering price of $199.00!

In our studio or a favourite park or beach. Or? You name the place.

Look at baby Leif now!

In the midst of Vancouver's cold snap and 2 feet of snow, we got together with Leif, the little tot in my book "Becoming Leif." Look at this little pike now! He's almost 20 pounds at 4 months old and just as cute as a button.

Leif's doing all that cool older baby stuff like tracking people as they move, focussing on his hands (as if trying to figure out how to get them to do his bidding), and well, drooling a lot. He's even sitting up a bit on his own. We couldn't believe how much he loves to laugh, and how good his parents Tricia and Brian are at making the giggles rain out. They're good at getting the laughs, but not so good, apparently, at catching them on film.

I was one proud photographer tonight when I caught this shot.

Baby Isaac

Wasn't I lucky this week getting to shoot baby Isaac? Beyond the visual, there's an entire aural symphony with a newborn--all his squeaks and coos and grunts--and I had forgotten how encompassing it is. How do we reconcile, as our children grow, the loss of such basic but extraordinary sensory pleasures? I know I often wished, as our girls grew, that there was a pill to take them temporarily back to that luscious, impossibly sweet size. On my own behalf, because I wanted to brush my lips across the top of a new little skull and its downy cap of hair, but for their sakes, too, because of the comfort a mother so completely offers to them at that age before they grow and we, inevitably, disappoint. Ahh, that age. All its sounds, yes, but all its crazy good smells, too, the milk and the baby powder and the subtle smell of fresh laundry. I was swept right back to the mesmorized maternal rapture that comes from watching a thousand fleeting expressions cross your baby's face, listening to his panoply of noises. Isaac has an incredible amount to say about his world, and plenty of it was grumbles about the photographer--all that hard black camera and the need for him to put up for a few minutes with being laid down unswaddled, when what he craved was the womb-like and endless dreaminess of his mamas' arms.

Baby Isaac arrived early at 33 weeks, a preemie, and he's just home from the hospital. His mamas are so incredibly smitten and proud and stunned. They wanted to remember Isaac just like this, just a bit over five pounds, still in preemie diapers, a trifle baggy-skinned. It's a good thing because, as this photograph I made attests, XS Baby Gap socks that ride up the thighs like hip waders won't look quite so big for long!

I went back twice to shoot Isaac this week, and I found myself wishing this is how every shoot was arranged. A first shoot just to get to know how each of us interacts, to size up expectations and soothe nerves. Then the real shoot soon after. Like an engagement shoot before the wedding, sort of.

It is such an honour for we photographers to be with our clients at such special times in their lives. We really have extraordinary access. I want to thank Isaac's moms for trusting me, and say to them: Your family rocks!

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Started by co-founders Sandy "Sam" Puck and Cheryl Haggard, the US non-profit organization Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep provides photography for infant bereavement sessions. We photographers volunteer our services in order that parents might remember their new little sweethearts through fine art photography long into the future.

If you know of families needing the services of a NILMDTS photographer, or of a hospital where you'd like to see the program start up, please pass along the web site link, where local photographers are listed, or if the need is for someone in Burnaby or Vancouver, have them leave a message for me at 604-435-9581.

From the NILMDTS website:

"Pregnancy and Birth is a miraculous journey. This amazing time of life is full of mystery, anticipation, joy, hope, and wonder. Feeling the powerful energy of birth and new life, watching as a new family is born unto each other. These things humble and amaze. These are the things that we celebrate when a baby is born

But there is another aspect of pregnancy and birth. There is an unexpected place in this journey where some families may find themselves. When a baby dies, a world is turned upside down. There is confusion, sadness, fear, and uncertainty that cannot be explained. There is sorrow where there should have been joy. During this time, it might be impossible for families to know what they might need in order to heal in the future.

This is the place where NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP gently provides a helping hand and a healing heart. NOW offers a vital service to our community. For families overcome by grief and pain, the idea of photographing their baby may not immediately occur to them. Offering gentle and beautiful photography in a compassionate and sensitive manner is the heart of this organization. The soft, gentle heirloom photographs of these beautiful babies are an important part of the healing process. They allow families to honor and cherish their babies, and share the spirits of their lives."