Theme: Happiness. 
I love their smiles here. These are the faces of two genuinely happy gals. And wouldn't you be if your friend came to your wedding in Indiana all the way from Alaska?!  This entire wedding...both party and guests...was FULL of personality. I do believe everyone was truly happy for Crystal and Matt. They have some seriously rockin' friends and I am so honored that I got to spend their big day with them and capture little moments of that happiness for them to hang on to.

       I have lots of black & white images of adorable children, stunning brides, and drop dead gorgeous seniors. They're all beautiful... they really are. The shot I chose for today's challenge is perhaps only beautiful to me. And I'm ok with that. This is my grandpa. I treasure this photo which was taken at breakfast recently. Having always lived at least an hour away from most of my family,  I missed a lot of breakfast table conversations with grandparents. 

        As a kid, I loved spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I remember waking up early (man, they are early risers!) and making a bowl of Grapenuts cereal in their kitchen, which hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. We never had an agenda. We usually spent the day looking at old stuff packed away in storage and talking about the way things used to be when they were kids. I guess I can thank my grandparents and their stories of rural Southern Indiana life in decades past for my love of history and ancestry. I think, perhaps, their stories of hardship and tenacity also taught me a little something about life. Hearing stories of the hours and effort this man put in to support his wife and children taught me what it means to provide for your family. Life isn't easy and anything worth having must be worked for. And I'm not talking material things.

      The tenacity of one man to give his children a solid foundation to build on reached beyond his own kids. It reached me. And it's my hope that it reaches my kids, too. It brings me joy to consider how lucky my kids are to know their Great- Grandpa. Experiencing nine decades of American life and passing the wisdom he collected over the years to his child, his children's children, and his children's children's children has to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever been witness to. And that, my friends, is why I find this image beautiful. 

Find more Beautiful Black and White images at:

The teme of the week over at I Heart Faces is "The Letter L" which gives me the perfect opportunity to share Lydia's adorable little face! How insanely cute is this child??!! Love her! To see other L ideas, visit I Heart Faces by clicking on logo below.

There's been lots of voting going on!!!! So here we have our very own little Super Bowl of images....Who is going to win? I'd be pleased as punch if ANY of these images won. I love them all! So here's the deal. Round one voting ended last night.  "Hannah & Maggie" took a whopping 42.7% of the votes from Group 1!  "Elias" in Group 2 claimed 29.5% of his group's votes. In Group 3, we ended with a tie!  "Jillian & Jared" and "Jen & Charley" split first place with 17.8% of the votes each. And little miss "Reagan" closed out Group 4 with 29.1%.  Each of these Group winners now become finalists and move into this last vote. Whoever claims the most votes by Tuesday, Feb 7 @ 11:59pm becomes our winner! Winner will receive a $25 gift certificate from Jaime Fleming Photography, which is good towards a new session in 2012 or an order for prints or fine art items. Certificate must be redeemed in 2012 and is not redeemable for cash. 

Send grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, co-workers....heck, get your dog groomer to vote!

Ready....
Set.......
GO!

2011 was my 2nd year in business. And let me tell ya, a great year it has been!  I want to thank everyone who invited me to photograph their child, their family, their senior, their wedding, their event, their homestead, their real estate property. Each session has been memorable in it's own way. I have enjoyed getting to know you, my clients, and I look forward to an exciting year full of sessions and laughs in 2012. 

I've divided the images randomly into 4 groups. The image with the most votes in each  group will be placed into the final vote. The client associated with winning image will get a $25 gift certificate to Jaime Fleming Photography (not redeemable for cash) to be used toward a session fee or toward a print purchase from their own session or from the Fine Art Images gallery. Voting for round 1 ends Friday night at 11:59pm (eastern).

This is just a small sampling of the fun accessories off the website! To shop or browse, please visit www.bamboopink.com/jaimefleming. And if you need any assistance, feel free to contact me!

2 days ago i was alone, reading The Help and listening to my favorites playlist on spotify completely unaware of the realization that was about to occur. 2 lines of Blackbird. 

that's all it took. 
there was a tiny spark of a familiar feeling. i tried to expand it. tried to recreate it. tried to draw it out. nothing. i realized my current state of numbness and wondered how long i had been an inhabitant there. life for the past few moths began to flash quickly through my mind...scrolling backward through time. 

i don't know where i lost my hunger. i don't know where i lost my desire to lean. i don't know when i lost the very aspects of me that i prided myself on. the ones that drove me for 2 years to stop trying to 'discover who i was' and instead create it. the ones that tell me who i was at a core level and allow me to build life around them. 

gone. 

i had forgotten what it felt like to be desperate to know something. anything. desperate to be stimulated by a thought that caused action to occur. desperate to hold on to a single idea for longer than the fleeting moment it takes to create it and ponder it a while. desperate to crave something again. to have a desire to be different. from others. from myself. from expectations.

have i lost my lust for life? where am i going? how do i get that back? what have i done? what causes one to go from mind blowing hunger for newness to completely numb? how did i end up on autopilot again? how did i come to this place of complacency? how do i get home?

the way i felt after the brief spark of hunger the other day has left me aware of my own hollowness. i suddenly realized how deep within myself i am and how long my intellectual and emotional vision must travel to even get out past my own head. tunnel vision. watching. simply an observer. like watching the world happen from inside a cave. inside where nothing can hurt me i suppose. and here the numbness is create and grows and expands and consumes me. 

i want out.

i want nothing more than to go back to that place of misery. the place where my hunger for knowledge and thought and soul stirring made me miserable. I long for that sort of insatiableness. nothing takes me there anymore. nothing drives me anymore. and all i can do is wonder where i went wrong.

Super sweet family I am entering into this week's "Family Fun" challenge. I am so excited to see all the entries this week so I can take mental notes on fun ideas for family sessions. I always like the ones where it looks like the fam was just hanging out together and.. Oh! There happens to be a photographer here today! lol...anyway, That'll be my goal this week. Check out all the good ideas and draw inspiration from them. Head over to I Heart faces and see the entries for yourself!