August 9, 2008

I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter how old you are or how old your child is, you’ll still fight over clothes and hair. My darling daughter Katie ( Katherine Willard Flanagan) is 27 1/2 years old. She literally travels the world on her own ( just returned from 4 weeks of travel to Viet Nam), is an incredibly responsible young adult working for a great organization called the Leadership Academy in Brevard, NC working with high school kids. Katie is about as good a child as you can imagine. I’m very , very lucky to have her as my daughter. But we’re still mother and child- no matter what our age!

Katie was home this past week from her travels before she heads back to her school this week. There was only one thing I wanted to accomplish while she was here- to have our pictures taken professionally by the absolutely amazing photographer, Christine Hall. This is something I never did with Katie growing up, I have tons of pictures of her that I took with my little disposable Kodak camera, but never by a professional . The past few years I’ve seen in various homes of young famlies here on Tybee truly spectacular professional photos of their families. I don’t yearn for much in life ( having pretty much everything I want and need) but pictures of a happy family are something I did envy. You saw Christine’s work with the picture of Danny the cupcake eating dog titled Pure Bliss. You’ve hopefully read my earlier blogs and if you’ve been to her website, you’ve seen the family, wedding and portrait work she does. She finds a way to capture the essence of your family or whoever she’s taking a picture of…. She’s also Paula Deen’s family photographer of choice and there is one picture of Paula with her grandson , Jack that is just so precious on her website.

So… Katie agreed, but wasn’t very excited about the pictures, but said yes because she’s a good daughter. And the preparation began- I wanted Katie to be herself, but also wanted our outfits to not clash.. Katie is a true bohemian and the first outfit didn’t work. Not a happy camper. Then we had the hair “discussion”. She had taken these gorgeous antique hair clips and twisted her hair in the clips. Would have been great for a night out, but not for a picture with her middle aged mom. So we “discussed and discussed” the hair and she took out the hair clips making her feelings known very strongly. I told you- doesn’t matter the age, you and your mom are still going to fight about what you’re wearing, how your hair looks and yes, even the make up!

We loaded up the dogs and drove down to the location for the shoot. We are in the south, in the dead middle of summer and 100% humidity… You figure it out. Hot and sweaty. Christine was professinal, wonderful and took some amazing pictures! Even Katie agreed it was a very fun experience . Christine has a blog on her website and blogged about us on her Monday August 4th blog. You can see some of the pictures and see more of her photography go to http://www.christinehallphotography.com/ and then go to blog. The above picture is one of the pictures she took. Isn’t this a gorgeous picture of Katie?

Thank you Christine for EVERYTHING! We can’t wait to see all the rest of the pictures from the shot. And to any of you looking for a memory to last forever, contact Christine for your own pictures!