I have been getting a lot of inquiries these days for gift certificates. Many out of town family members (grandparents/aunts & uncles) wishing to give the gift of professional portraits to their family members in my area. Yes, I do sell gift certificates for portrait sessions and prints. I can get them in the mail the same day if you are looking for a last minute gift idea for the holidays! Not sure if your relative lives close to my studio? Here are some of the towns that I service (plus more of course): New Canaan, Wilton, Westport, Ridgefield, Redding, Darien, Norwalk, Stamford, Greenwhich, Riverside, Weston, Fairfield, Southport and many towns in Westchester County as well. Portrait gift certificates are also an amazing gift for baby shower or new baby gifts! I even do PET PHOTOGRAPHY! A studio session is $150 and an on location session is $250 in my area. Prints start at $55 for a 5 x 7 and $60 for an 8 x10. Email me or call to order yours! I take Mastercard and Visa as well as check!
My son Derek turns 2 tomorrow! Where did the time go? It is so true, that first year (or two or 18) fly by! My oldest daughter is 6 1/2 and my other is 4 3/4 (as she likes to remind me).It seems like just yesterday I was taking this photo of my milk mouthed 4 month old baby! It really does! It is for this very reason that I know how important photography is to my clients and their families (to all families). These images become our strongest memories.
Here are three images from my most recent Precious Moments Club Newborn sessions. Common, can you believe how sweet and precious these images are! Welcome to these adorable little babies! You are the greatest gifts your parents have ever received!
This little guy below belongs to my dear friend Catalina, who helped me raise my little ones for the last four years! She is now blessed with the opportunity to be a mother (an amazing one at that) to this precious angel! He is just delicious and I love him!
And Happy Birthday to my son Derek! You amaze me every day and you will never know just how much I love you! Here is Derek coming home from the hospital!! Now THAT is a precious memory!
I am feeling like such a bad mother. I have spent very little time with my children (or my husband) in the last three months and the next four weeks are not going to be any better. I can tell they are all feeling a little neglected and really starting to need some mommy time. Balancing time with them and my work is just about impossible this time of year, at least with the commitments that I made and need to fulfill.
Not only have I sacrificed time with them but I have sacrificed my health. I don't sleep much at all and my only exercise is my Thursday morning tennis clinic. It is a miracle I have not pulled a muscle in that clinic being that I am so sedentary all week! All I do is sit at my computer working (and unfortunately snacking instead of eating heathly meals). Bad mommy!
So, I have decided that I will dedicate an entire month to just being mom, taking care of my family and even myself! So, the studio will be closed from December 21st to January 24th. Of course I will be chcking emails and doing some "business housekeeping" when my kids are in school but I am not "officially open".
My au pair is leaving on December 20th and my new one arrives on Jan 22nd so this works out perfectly. We are even going on a much needed and well deserved carribean vacation for a week! I am SOOO excited, well not about putting on the bathing suit! The kids and my husband will have me all the time and we all can not wait!
I LOVE what I do. I feel so lucky to be doing work that I am passionate about. It's funny. I never really feel like I am "working". I love almost every minute of it but my family really needs me and I need them and some time off!
THANK YOU to ALL of my clients that have blessed me with this problem! Too much work is a gift that I am VERY THANKFUL for!
You probably think I enter this contest all the time but this was just the third image I have entered in almost two years! I could not resist sharing this image with www.thecutekid.com community. The images has graced my homepage for the past month and now it is the Toddler category winner for October's CuteKid contest! This puts him in as a finalist for the Cute Kid of the Year! Too funny! This and the world series! Daddy is a proud man! Congratulations to Derek Topalian AND Derek Jeter!
Check it out! http://www.thecutekid.com/monthly-winners/2009/october/photo-contest-winners.php
I have to say that photographing hundreds of other families for their holiday card makes me feel a little preasured to have that perfect image for my own card! I always try to get it done early, this year was no exception. Today was a holiday so the kids were out of school and I did not have any scheduled sessions. I hesitantly placed my own children on my schedule for their holiday photo shoot! Outfits purchased weeks ago, hair cuts too (although they still look messy somehow). The ground was wet so I decided to start in the studio. personally I like both studio and outside so I was happy either way.
Here are a few out takes. These are NOT the good ones, just funny to me! Of course I will not reveal the final images for the card!
I have to admit that I love photographs of my children I just really don't like taking them! Don't get me wrong. I love taking snapshots of them with my little point and shoot mommy camera that I keep in my purse.I also enjoy individual portraits. That is pretty easy! But when it comes to the yearly holiday card session and getting that perfect shot of all three kids! Oh boy! It is not my favorite day! Somehow they must know this is important to me and decide that they are going to give me a hard time!
This days always brings back memories, some fonder than others! My very first holiday session when I just had Olivia was amazing. With just my point and shoot digital camera I made the most adorable portrait. She was about six months old and barely sitting. I propped her up on a chair in front of the tree in a boppy covered with a blanket. One hand reached out in case she fell, and a camera in the other, I somehow got this with nobody helping!
The second year we dressed her up to go see Santa but she was too scared to take a photo wtih him, so I chased her around the mall with my point and shoot camera and go this at build a bear store:
The next year I had another baby AND a new SLR Camera, took about 250 images (no joke) and got this keeper:
That next Spring I started Moments by Andrea and in the Fall I photographed over 120 familes (my first season!) but still managed to have my own photo session with my kids and got this with (believe it or not, with my old point and shoot camera) when we were apple picking. Working endless hours with my professional camera I just didn't have it in me to lug it on our apple picking trip. The light was perfect so the point and shoot worked great!I also used a few other cute shots on the card!
Then the next year we had Derek on December 5th so I used images from a Spring session to send out an early holiday card of just the girls. Not knowing if I would have time to send one after Derek was born, this went out the day after Thanksgiving:
After Derek came I did a holiday themed birth announcement with this image. It arrived at peoples homes the week of Christmas so everyone thought it was my holiday card eventhough I had sent another one out earlier!
Last year I wanted the beach scene for our holiday cards but let's just say with the six month old eating sand the entire session it was less than productive! I did a second session in the early fall in the same white outfits and got more comical candids, more looking down, this time playing with grass. My third session yielded this beauty (after about 150 shots):
So, my advice for other moms! Save your sanity, let a professional photographer create your holiday card images! I do! Sometime I just wish it were a different professional photographer! It is just not the same for me taking pictures of my own kids. It is MUCH HARDER when they are mine! The good news is that I survived another one and I am done! Now I just have to design my card and go through this again with another 150+ families!
Trust me, it is MUCH easier doing this for other people! I have much more patience and I actually enjoy it 95% of the time. Plus, kids usually behave better for "the photographer" when it is not mom or dad! I often have moms ask me how I can be so patient and I say "Easy, they're not my kids"!
oments by Andrea is a professional portrait studio located in Wilton, CT in lower Fairfield County, Connecticut, near New York. Owned and operated by Andrea Topalian, a professional portrait artist specializing in family photography including maternity portraits, newborn and baby photos, high school senior portraits, as well as candid portraits of children of all ages. Andrea’s Precious Moments Club is a popular baby portrait club that documents the important stages of a baby’s growth: newborn, six months and one year. 