"A Streetcar named Desire" from New Orleans

Once again I am participating with many of my photographer colleagues around the world in a blog carnival. We are planning on doing these on a regular basis, to stretch ourselves creatively and to remember to shoot something for our own imagination and just for fun. This can sometimes be hard to find the time to do when running busy photography businesses. So by participating in this blog carnival with other professional child photographers on a regular basis, we are making sure there is a little bit of time for our self and to have a creative outlet.

Cotton Blooms

This month the challenge is alternative camera. I chose my alternative camera to be my iPhone. I use it all the time for quick on the go shots when I want to document something but did not bring my real camera with me. I am sharing a handful of my iPhone images in this blog post.

Spring Flowers in my garden

Please follow my circle of friends and this blog carnival by clicking on this link:  Chicago Children’s  and Family Photographer to my colleague  and great photographer Marianne Drenthe to see her take on this topic. She is a Chicago Children’s and Family Photographer . She will also have a link at the bottom of her post linking to one of the other photographers participating.

The reader...

If you would like beautiful photographs of your children and have an idea of what you want, then contact me to set up a time for your session. You can see samples in my previous blog posts and on my website of what my work look like. You can setup a time for your session by calling me (Anna-Karin) at  (225) 284-6354 or by filling out the contact form on my website. I look forward to work with you!

Tangerines

Little Boy and his best friend!

Meet sweet and adorable little G.  He is a baby planner of mine and this was from his six month, sitting up session.

Handsome Little G

To this session , little G’s parents also brought along their family dog. It was actually very sweet to photograph them together. You could tell little G loved having his best friend there.

I loved to see how the “boys” even had matching outfits!

The R Family

This was such a great session and little G was so happy the whole time. His happy mood was very contagious and brought smiles to all of our faces.  All the photographs turned out beautifully from this session.

Holding Mom & Dad's Hands

These are only a handful of the many beautiful portraits captured from this session. There was so many to choose from that turned out well.

Sweet little G

His parents purchased my digital collection to make sure they would have access to all of their files and I know they wanted them all.

Yummy thumb!

Bath Time

If you would like beautiful and contemporary portraits of your child like these. Then contact me ( Anna-Karin) to set up a time for your session. You can do so by either filling out the contact form here on my blog or the one on my website. Or by calling (225) 284-6354

Little G is very stylish!

My beloved camera bag!

I am part of a group of great photographers from all over the country and we have all decided to participate in a blog carnival where we write an article about something that is related  to our business and working with a professional photographer. At the end of this blog post article I will link to another one of my collagues who has great article for you to read and learn about as well. I have chosen to write about how to safely travel with your photographic and camera equipment.

I  love to travel both for work and on a personal level. Every time I travel I of course have to bring my photography gear with me. The few times I have chosen to not bring gear with me I find all these fantastic things to photograph and I am creating images in my head instead. So now I never go on a longer trip without a camera as my companion.

With my family overseas we do travel quite a bit and especially by plane. So my article is going to be about how to protect your gear when you travel.

In the hustle and bustle of traveling it is easy for a camera bag to get dinged and your gear can get damaged. Over the years I have gone from just sticking my camera and a few lenses in a back pack with a sweater over them to a to small camera back where parts of my gear would almost fall out of it. I have now finally found a bag that I absolutely love and it is so easy to use. My bag has rolling wheels so I don’t have to carry  (drag) the heavy weight of the bag on my shoulder. It rolls nice and easy down through the aisles of the airplanes to the cobblestone streets in Europe. My bag even has an insert for my laptop so I can fit both my photographic gear and my laptop in the same bag.

My best advise is get the best bag you can upfront where your gear will always be protected. Learn from my mistake and your gear will never be compromised when traveling.  if Start your packing with packing your photography gear in a good camera bag made specifically for photographic gear.

Give your self a little extra time when you are  at the airport and about to fly. Sometimes when I go through security and especially for international  flights they want to go through my whole camera bag. I have to open up the cameras and all lenses so they can see that I don’t have anything I am not suppose to have in there. This is a little bit time consuming but as long as I am aware of that these airport security people may go through my bag it is fine.

When you choose a camera bag find one that fits the international standards of fitting into the overhead bin’s on airplanes. I would hate to have to check my camera bag and loose sight of it while in route to my final destination. My favorite camera bag that I now take with me every where both when just traveling in car or internationally by airplane is the ThinkTank Airport International rolling camera bag. My gear is now so safe and secure and is not going anywhere. It also has a combination lock to both get into the bag and for a cable that is attached to the bag and can be safely secured to something if I am concerned of it being stolen.

The inside of my camera bag!

Another very important aspect if you are a photographer and like to travel, always pack a backup camera with you.  I will admit when I was first starting out, I was in situation when I flew to France to photograph my brand new niece and my lens broke. I ended up having to pay a lot of money and time to ship over one of my other lenses from home to there. Now I always travel with at least a backup camera body and extra lenses just in case something will brake while on the trip and that I then still can capture beautiful photographs.

Also, a must for a photographer is to make sure you have your insurance up to date and that all your gear is insured. This way you can safely enjoy using your camera and gear and know that if something where to happen you are still protected by the insurance on your gear and can get replacement.

Good luck with planning future travels and hopefully by reading this you are now a little bit more prepared to travel with your photographic gear in safe way.

Be sure to check out my colleague Julie Tauro  with Julie Tauro Photography -

She is writing a great article about choosing clothing to fit your teenager or senior’s personality.

http://julietaurophotography.com/blog/

I know many of my clients go to the beach for summer vacations. This is something me and my family enjoy as well.

This year we will be going to Orange Beach and if you would like a photosession while on vacation contact me to setup a time for your session. Here are just a few of my boys from our trip there last summer. I am available for photo sessions in the Orange Beach area from July 20th to 26th this summer.

Contact me (Anna-Karin) either by phone at (225) 284-6354 or by filling out the contact form on my website. I look forward to hear from you!