El Verano de Maria: July 2011

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

If He was Your Nephew, You'd do the Same

I can't guarantee that the rest of my posts for the summer won't be all about Noah.

Noah doesn't like his Dad's 'stache

Noah thinks anyone with an upper body and arms can feed him. Poor guy.

Grandmamas

Hope you're sleeping well tonight buddy, I love you :)

Monday, July 11, 2011

Noah Christopher Klefsaas

On July 7, 2011, Meghan and I were on our way back from a little shopping with my mother when I get a text message from my cousin Tara. Of course I was freaking out from excitement. Meghan and I, cleaned up and got ready and waited. At around 12:30am or so I get a call from my aunt that they are all on their way to the hospital. Naturally Meghan and I were out the door in the like less than 5 minutes. We drove that 15 minute drive to St. John West Shore rather quickly. We found our way to the correct room and sat in the two chairs right outside the door and again waited. We slept in and out but were mostly just on edge to see the baby. We kind of heard everything, which made us rethink childbirth, but nonetheless, both cried when we heard the baby cry for the first time.

Noah Christopher Klefsaas was born at 4:52am on July 8, 2011. He weighed in at 8.6 pounds and was 20 inches long. After about an hour of cleaning Noah up and cleaning Tara up we were allowed in to see them. He was more beautiful than I imagined. I've never been to a birth or anything like that, let alone I've never had a nephew. Needless to say I've been incredibly excited for this baby for quite some time. (For clarity, yes technically Tara is my cousin, but her brothers and her refer to me as their little sister, hence making Noah, my nephew) Holding Noah was pretty magical, he was just about an hour old when I was holding him. He has just learned how to breathe, eat, etc.

He got a little camera shy at the end of my photo shoot, but Noah Baby, you're gonna have to get used to me and the sound of a shutter. I keep wondering what he will be like when he grows up, what kind of personality characteristics he'll have. I know that what ever I have in mind, God has something much much much much bigger and better planned for Noah Christopher. (It has seriously crossed my mind several times to quit school and photograph him.)

Failing My Own Project

It's always kind of embarrassing to realize that you are failing your own project, your own plans for the summer. I'm not exactly sure what happened this summer, but I have not been doing the things that I wanted to do. I'm leaving here in about a month. I do have enough time to get my butt into gear, but that just means that I actually have to do that. Here are some of my goals that I had in the beginning of the summer

Shoot 50 street portraits
Do an Ohio project
Make some kind of contact with the Plain Dealer
Read a Photog Business book
Go to a local hospital and photograph physical therapists and their patients
Find photo stories
Contact Facing Change
Read newspapers

This is what I have accomplished thus far

Make business cards
Take senior pictures
This summer blog
Redo my résumé

I really couldn't tell you what I have been filling my time with, I haven't even hung out with people that much. I did finish a book, one book, out of my stack of like 15.

So I need to have a plan to actually accomplish some of the things on my first list. I think the main thing I'm going to focus on is the street portraits, I'm not 100% sure if they will all be street portraits, I might just take portraits. We shall see. Therefore in order to get all this work done as well as pack for school and find furniture I need to quit my internship. Honestly, I wasn't learning anything there anyway. I'd like to say it was good experience, but it just kept me from being bored. I liked that they gave me photo responsibilities, but other than that...bleh. This should hopefully be my last week, I'll have to talk to my boss obviously. So we will see.

Thanks for reading my rant/list of not doing what I'm supposed to. So if you run into me feel free to ask me if have shot any portraits, etc. I need some kind of accountability.