Another year has passed.  On the eve of turning ONE.

A Year Later.

I have already told you about my plans to team up with Rebecca for Darling Art starting this summer.  Well, we are also getting the wonderful opportunity to work with the incredibly talented Anna Jones of IndieArt Photography for a day or two of mentoring workshops this July in Utah!  Like most professional photographers, we field daily requests for mentorships and lessons.  It is about time we pooled our resources and gathered all these requests together, all in one place.  Here is what we are thinking:

A day of mentoring in Salt Lake City on either Tuesday, July 21st or Wednesday, July 22nd for people wanting to take their photography to the next level.  Participants will get a chance to watch (and participate in) a photo session and learn post-processing techniques from each photographer as well as ask all the questions they can think of.  The cost for a full-day of mentoring with all three of us would be around $500.

What we are hoping to find out is a) does this sound interesting?  b) what date works best for you (July 21st or the 22nd)?  and c) is there anything else you’d be interested in learning?   We would really, really love to hear from you.  Please leave your feedback either in the comments section at the Darling Art blog or email info@darling-art.com.  Only serious inquiries or feedback please.

I spent some time on Anna’s website this morning hoping to pick 1 or 2 favorites to share with you here.  Well, after nonstop TWO hours of ‘ooooh’  and ‘aaaaah’ I had finally narrowed it down to a list of 30 and was still going strong.  I adore the work she does with teenagers and adults and her magical use of light and color.  Check it out:

Here is a small sample of some of my favorites from Rebecca’s website.   Gorgeous as always.  Her subjects always seem so natural and at ease in front of her camera.

To even things out a bit, here are a few of mine.  I am taking this opportunity to bring back some older favorites that may not be found on this blog.

We look forward to hearing from you very soon!

xo

dena

You will never never ever ever ever guess where I held this session……

hmmmmm, could it be in an alley?  Popular venue isn’t it?  What my American readers need to understand is that our city is FULL of alleyways.  I imagine the whole of England is full of alleyways.  Instead of city blocks, our roads are very long and narrow and lined with houses.  Most of the houses are ‘terraced’ (attached on both sides) or ’semis’ (attached on one side.)  Then the homes back up onto another long road of homes and inbetween all these roads of houses are…you guessed it, alleyways!  So nearly every two roads share an alleyway. They were used to deliver coal to the homes for heating way back when.  The extra cool part for me is that everyone’s back garden has a different fence or wall onto the alleyway,  so it is a very textural and colorful place to shoot.  Plus, all these ‘tweens’ think it is cool to hang out in the skinny little alleys.  Now you may have just learned something new about my enviro.

Okay okay okay, Ruby.  RUBY!  She is the youngest of one of my favorite local families.  You’ve seen her before, you will definitely see her again.  She photographs wonderfully and has a lot of fun while doing it.  I photographed all 3 of them recently but am going to spread out their sneak peeks over a few posts.  Being 3 siblings, each a year apart tends to lead to a b*i*t of competitive behavior.  You guys know what I am talking about….

Ah, here’s a bit of healthy sibling rivalry and competitiveness…I do believe these were intended to be Ruby’s shots.  Nope, not any more.  I do love what they gave me though!

notes: Canon 5D, anything funky looking is  either from the lovely 90mm tilt-shift or Kodak Duaflex Ttv.

My quiet lazy Sunday morning…

is no longer quiet or lazy.

I have exciting news to share!  You really can’t read my blog without hearing about Rebecca, for example here or there or here or a bazillion other places on my blog.  Well the good news is that for the last few years everything we have been working toward is about to come together.  We will be working together {finally!}  We have some exciting projects to be unveiled soon and will be doing sessions together in Utah starting in July and will be booking for October sessions in Boston.  And this is only the beginning of our venture.  You can read about our story on the Darling Art blog.  I only hope the world has enough chocolate to sustain us both at the same time on the same continent.

A year ago my monkeys and I spent our holiday with Rebecca’s monkeys and following are some of my favorite photographs taken by Rebecca during our stay.  I love her simple, pure, clean and classic approach to portraiture.  I think our work will compliment each other very well!

Cheers! to the beginning of something wonderful.

xo

dena

Learning to draw.

He has been sitting in this chair in every spare moment of the day, intent on his drawings for 4 days straight.  I could wallpaper my bedroom with the amount of paper he has decorated.  It’s his new ‘thing.’   And I love it.

Finally, Sydney brought India.  And India brought Me.   Then we broke out the fish-eye lens and partied in the alleyways and by-ways of Leigh–like only 7 year old girls can do.

And then the town woke up and became a buzzing place, so we went home– completely giggly and oh so tired out.  This was so much fun I do believe I will have to start booking more ‘Girlfriend’ sessions in the future!

xo

dena

And Maia brought Sydney!

And Sydney worked the alley on her own, all pretty and funky in pink.  Oh it was a busy morning!!

More to come soon!

xo

dena

Remember Valley Girls??  Well, these are the ‘Alley Girls.  I believe they thought I was nuts to bring them down this alley…until they discovered how much fun it was to run up and down at top speed in the rain, more on that later.

So, Anna brought a friend!  Here is Maia.  I don’t know if you can see it here, but Maia has the most gorgeous eye color ever.

On to my necessary black and white…

hmmmm, but who did Maia bring??

Until next time.

xo

dena

……

I

kind of

sort of

really

really

REALLY

like

chocolate.

Just thought you should know.  How about you?

xo

dena