I had the joy of  being able to photograph this little cutie this weekend. Her name is Lauren, and she will be turning one year old this week. Her mother and I got onto the discussion of kids photography a couple of weeks ago while I was visiting her office for a work function. Anyway, this naturally allowed me to shamelessly plug my website.  The weather cooperated on Saturday and allowed us to go outside for a few shots too. I must say, one of the things I love the most about children photography is capturing moments of kids being kids. Clearly it wast too tough with Lauren!

I’m working on a small “to do” list for my website. One of these tasks was to get a photo of myself on the “about me” page. This is easier said than done, considering I’m usually on the other side of the lens. I wanted something quirky, fun, slightly awkward and made people say, ” you don’t see that every day”. So, I decided to grab three random products from the grocery store this evening, set up the studio lights and let my wife photograph me trying to juggling them. I taught myself how to juggle the summer before I started third grade. We were building our new house that summer and I would stand in what would one day be my room and try to juggle peach pits. (our property was located on an old orchard). By high school I was fairly good. Though I could never juggle more than three items, I could juggle large or odd shaped things. The key is selecting three items that are similar in weight. Now, I would like to tell you that I didn’t put a lot of thought  into selecting the items, but that would be bold face lie. I knew I wanted SPAM because the concept of canned meat is just odd. The other two products were the result of some serious inner debate. I kind of knew I wanted a fruit or vegetable because I didn’t want to put off any vegetarians out there with the can of SPAM. ( Hey, I’m starting my own business, I cant afford to lose any potential customers) First, I selected an ear of corn because I thought It could be a good representation of where I’m from, the Midwest. But I quickly determined that A corn dog might better represent where I’m from. (I would have bought a box  but my freezer is full) I ended up with a pineapple for a couple of reasons. First, its fun!  Second, Its awkward! Remember what I wanted to accomplish with this shoot. It turned out to be a bad selection though, I’ll tell you why later. The third item wasn’t difficult to choose. I asked both Hank and my brother and they suggested beer. I went with Pabts Blue Ribbon because its classic.  PBR and Schlitz are considered by many to be the Red Soxs and Cubs of the American Brewing Industry. Maybe I should say the Red Soxs and Brooklyn Dodgers since Schlitz really isn’t around much any more; of course neither are the Cubs…  The juggling proved to be more difficult than I was anticipating. The SPAM and PBR were easy, but the pineapple was tricky part. I dropped it a couple of times causing it to drip juice.  However, the big problem was that I didn’t have much room to work with. To get everything in the frame meant I couldn’t throw the items very high.  That’s tough to do considering a pineapple weighs a couple of pounds! Overall, it was an interesting yet surprisingly rewarding evening. I know some of you may be wondering if I drank the beer after the shoot… You bet your ass I did!

If you want to see the shot I used on the website go to www.hauserphotograpy.com and select the “about me” link from the “info” tab on my home page.

It’s been a fairly lackluster month here on the old blog. Trust me, I haven’t forgotten about it. I’ve been busy building my website! As of last night hauserphotography.com has a nice little piece of real-estate on the World Wide Web. Feel free to go check it out and let me know what you think.

www.hauserphotography.com