Beth's Boys

Goldie

Bally and Buster Brown

My Three Sons

Walker Evans on Photography

'The real thing that I'm talking about has purity and a certain severity, rigour, simplicity, directness, clarity, and it is without artistic pretension in a self-conscious sense of the word.'
- Walker Evans

Brae

Solo

Lulu

We're hosting a dog portrait fund raiser for Best Friends Animal Society, so I'll be live blogging our dog portraits all day today!

Tootsie

Solzhenitsyn

"In all the time he had spent in camps and prisons, Ivan Denisovich had gotten out of the habit of worrying about the next day, or the next year, much less how to feed his family. The fellows at the top thought about everything for him, and it was kind of easier like that."

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

Floating

Mr. Baby

Sign to Celebrate

Returning home from the hospital last week, we were surprised to find this beautiful custom stork (almost 7 feet!) in our yard. It was a gift from one of our favorite Sprout Club members, Ms. Karri Hobson-Pape. Karri and her lovely daughter Sierra starred in one of our most memorable portraits.

With the help of a talented designer, Karri has started a very cool new business called Sign to Celebrate, with creative yard signs to celebrate birthdays, new babies, twins and more. Be sure to check them out and keep them in mind for those special days. They even have "Sibling Stars" to get big brothers and sisters excited about their new siblings.

Thanks, Karri!

Kids say the darndest things

My son Walker: "Dad, in the morning, can we have pancakes in the shape of George Washington's head?"

The War of Art

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write."

Stephen Pressfield "The War of Art"

Calder Weston Smith

Born Friday, Feb. 8, 2008 at 7:18am. He is 9lbs-1oz (our smallest!) and has a 15" noggin.

Portraits for AFLAC, Flashes of Hope and Children's Healthcare

Here are a few images from today's session (on location at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Eggleston) with AFLAC CEO Dan Amos and some of the wonderful patients from the AFLAC Cancer Center.

The portraits are for the AFLAC annual report, and CHOA will publish a few select images in an upcoming book.
Many thanks to Amy and Jane at Flashes of Hope, and Diane and all the tremendous people at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

Baby Name 1.0

Kristin and I have, through many hours of negotiations, finally settled on the name for our third son.

He will be named Calder Weston Smith.

Calder is taken from the artist Alexander Calder, who somehow gets lumped in with Dadaists and Surrealists, but was neither Dada nor Surreal. His mobiles express a delicate, whimsical beauty, a lightness of spirit and a fine sense of humor.

Weston is the last name of one of the 20th Century's most influential photographers, Mr. Edward Weston. His two sons, Brett and Cole, have also been world-class photographers.

Calder Weston Smith is expected to arrive the morning of Feb 8, 2008.

Three boys! Is it okay to panic?

The newest member of Sprout Club

Potent Quotables

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.
- Elbert Hubbard