I am so honored to be the photographer for this family. They are from Singapore (dad is originally from the Bay Area) and they come back to San Jose to visit every few years. I photographed Hugo when he was just a little guy and now he is so grown up! And his little brother Felix has since been added to the clan and boy did we have fun. Gotta’ love those cheeks!
This little guy is just too photogenic-seriously! He just worked it for the camera and I had such fun capturing his cuteness. His mama told me that she chose the evening session because it is his “best time” and that was obvious. Little brother was a little less enthusiastic, but pretty darn cute himself.
Host your own Short & Sweet Session
August 14th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, Events, General, Promotions | 2 Comments »If you have been keeping up with my blog you know that I recently set up a Short & Sweet on the porch of one of my client’s homes. We ended up booking it solid- with all of HER friends! Which led me to this new offering: If you can show me some great spaces in YOUR home and open it up to YOUR friends (a minimum of 5 friends) who wish to book a session, we will hold a Special Short and Sweet at your home and your session fee will be complimentary. You will also receive your $25 referral credit for each of your friends that books and is new to Images by Anna. Give us a call if your are interested in hosting a Short & Sweet event in your home!
Digital Negative Collection now available.
August 13th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, Promotions | 5 Comments »Over the years we have been asked, now and then, if we would consider selling the digital files. We have finally found our answer. As a creative imaging company our main goal is to provide our clients with amazing images of their children, ready to display in the most unique and delightful way. We have tools and tricks to help you design the ultimate wall display, fantastic storybook or amazing greeting cards featuring your images. We are able to take advantage of the finest professional labs to provide the best possible prints and products. We will continue to provide this excellent service and we are sure that you will all continue to look to us for design inspiration and to fulfill your beautiful print orders. But many of you are looking for just one thing more; you want to own your negatives, most often as a safeguard for the future. We are now making those negatives available to you in a most exciting way. Our new “Digital Collection” includes all of your session images as full resolution digital files (negatives) and 25 of your favorites as 8×10 prints (4×5 image on an 8×10 digital mat) with delightful titles in a amazing custom box with imprinting. These are simply gorgeous! Not only will you have these beautiful prints to enjoy in their lovely box, but you can frame, share and display them as well. You can even set up a sweet wall gallery and change out the images from time to time. It is an incredible value and a beautiful product we are sure you will be clamoring for. These are priced only as a set with discounts available with collection purchase. Visit our investment page for more details. This collection is available on any session from 2007 and on.* Isn’t it exciting!?
*If you had a session with Anna in ‘04, ‘05 or ‘06, contact us for special pricing.
Things have been so busy around here with vacation, no school, and two parents working from home while juggling four kids. I can’t believe how small my house gets when they are all home all day, EVERY DAY!! They had a lot of commitments this summer, trips to Minnesota, vacation to Washington, so we didn’t do any classes or camps. That made the last couple of weeks really long . . . I hate to say that I am looking forward to school starting! Don’t get me wrong; I love summer. I love my kids having long, lazy days. I am just craving some structure! So, all that to say: sorry, my blog writing has been sparse. But I am guessing that you are all running around “doing summer” as well. So here is a few from a recent session with two sweet babies. Brought back memories from our season with two kids, just 18 months apart. Exhausting and exhilarating! Enjoy!
Sweet Maria is the adopted daughter of our good friends, Chris and Theresa. She had a pretty eventful start to life, being found abandoned at just a few pounds in her home-country of Guatemala. She survived and was brought to a local orphanage; the same orphanage that her future older brother, Victor spent his early years. Theresa and Chris had already adopted from this orphanage and were really feeling complete as a family with their two boys, Victor and a biological son, Samuel. But God had other plans and through a social worker they were presented with a photo of little Maria and asked if they would consider taking her into their home. They didn’t hesitate, despite her cleft palate and lip, a trait that makes her “difficult to place” in a world where people look to the outside for perfection. They quickly made plans to visit her to begin to establish their relationship, knowing that it would be many months before she would come home. Once they held her in their arms, she was theirs.
Adopting from Guatemala is a long, difficult process. Theres and Chris know this from adopting Victor four years earlier. But the corruption had increased since then, and Guatemala was threatening to close down adoptions to the US. After waiting for many months, and believing that their day to take Maria home was coming soon, last July they got a frantic call from Maria’s orphanage, informing them that men had broken into the orphanage and abducted Maria and three other children! The assumed purpose of the abductions was to sell the children on the black market. This put Maria in peril, as they may have snatched her in the dark, not noticing her cleft lip/palate, which made her “worthless”. Many here in the states prayed fervently for the children’s safe return. Days passed while we all waited in anguish, wondering if we would ever know what became of them all. But a journalist had been in the country working on a story about the corruption in the adoption system and with the help of local police, they were able to put pressure on the kidnappers. Miraculously, all of the children were abandoned by the criminals, unharmed, and returned to their orphanage. Chris and Theresa, along with their family and friends, rejoiced. But a new sense of urgency set in. It would be many MORE months before Maria would come home.
I don’t know how they kept themselves sane during those long months of waiting, the frightful abduction and then more waiting. But their wait had a beautiful reward. Maria is a very sweet, smiley little one who has stolen my heart in the short time I’ve known her. Here she is, today. Happy and healthy and home safe; finally! Thank You, God!
Day one of our rail vacation . . .
August 1st, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, My Family | 5 Comments »so. . . trains, unlike cars, vans and airplanes, they wait for NO ONE! We had quite the adventure getting on the train on Wednesday night. For starters, I waited WAY too long to do the packing. Note to self: start packing for week-long train trips with four kids more than four hours before departure. :-) And then when Brian started to carry our bags out to the van he discovered a totally flat tire . . . um. So we called in our wonderful, trusty neighbor, Jen, who also has a big family and thus, a big vehicle. She could take us, but had to be to work shortly. Suddenly, I had not 45 minutes to finish up my packing but 15 minutes!!! Yikes! So I scrambled about, tossing the last few things in a big canvas bag and off we went. We made it to the station with plenty of time. We settled in and the kids excitedly explored the station. Train stations are one of the coolest places; the buildings are often large, ornate and beautiful.
Isaiah stared at the ENORMOUS American flag for several minutes. He was awed.
But our relaxing wait changed in a moment, as we realized that we forgot Lydia’s medication at home. Our friend was gone and we had 35 minutes to go before our train was to depart. We went round and round about what to do and finally, Brian hailed a cab and headed home. But while we were anxiously waiting for him the conductor announced the arrival of the train. Brian was still several miles away so I ran up to the counter and asked what I should do. She smiles and says, “He’d better hurry. Trains don’t wait. ” Crap! So the kids and I made our way to the platform and waited anxiously for Brian to join us. He came at the last moment and as I stepped aboard behind the last child, the train pulled away from the station!! They really just don’t wait!!
Once everyone was all settled in, big old grins on their faces, I relaxed and breathed a little prayer of thanks to God for keeping us together and working with me and my last-minute-ness. 
After the little ones were sleeping soundly I sat in the quiet car and watched the cities go by. It is extremely fascinating to see the world from the perspective of “the tracks”. The parts of town we saw were very different than what we would see by car. I loved every thing about it. Very cool. Tyler and I were still awake when the moon came up over Marina, CA. It was the biggest moon I have ever seen. I wish I could have captured it, but my camera was under the feet of my sleeping toddler and I just couldn’t do it. I will just have to savor the memory.
Our night was long and not so comfortable. Lydia didn’t sleep very well and was up at four am. Here she is, just after sunrise. I am sure she was enjoying the beautiful view of Northern California while I enjoyed the view of her beautiful self. Man, I can’t even type how much I love my children. They are more beautiful than the awesome nature we took in on this trip. . .
Yay! Our family vacation is finally here! Every year for the last eight summers we have spent our vacation time and money heading from San Jose to Minnesota and Michigan (with some rendezvous in Wisconsin) to visit our families. We so adore that time and love love love staying connected with our loved ones. But this year, due to our big life change (Brian and I working together and making one income “work”) we decided that a big trip to the mid-west was not a wise choice. Instead, we sent our middle two as family ambassadors, and planned to do something fun at home. But then, our wheels began to turn. What if we head up the coast and visit our friends in Portland and our family in Washington? That would be fun. So we spent a Sunday afternoon looking through camping and travel books about HWY 1 and the beautiful coast. But “Houston, we have a problem!”; we sold all of our camping gear last fall to make room in the garage for Brian’s office. Well, okay, hotels then, but suddenly, our plan cheap road trip plans were adding up. Hmmm. . . thinking outside the box, or van, or airplane . . . what about a train?? Within a few days of coming up with our brilliant plan, we had six round-trip tickets on the Coast Starlight, Amtrak’s flag-ship line, up the coast of California, Oregon and into Washington. Now, how cool is THAT? Best part? The tickets were $100 each way per person!! Um, wow! So there you have it; the Mayer family adventure is about to begin. I am excited and a little nervous. Four kids on a train, in the dark, in the rain . . . wait, I am waxing Dr. Suess. Anyway, it should be a blast, and of course, there will be MANY photos to prove it (or show how crazy it is). Who knows, maybe I will convert you all to rail travel! See the rest of this post »
Now open: our September Short & Sweet location!
July 16th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, Events, General, Promotions | 6 Comments »TAKE NOTE!! ONLY ONE SPACE LEFT!!
This is a very special location on loan to us from a very lovely family I have photographed. They have a rare and wonderful wrap-around porch on their lovely home. When I did their little man’s shoot I just drooled at the gorgeous light!! A few weeks later I joked that I might borrow their porch for a shoot and they said, “Great! No problem!” So we have secured a sweet wrap-around porch and that delicious light for you! Molly, our gracious host, says she will have muffins and tea. Can it get any sweeter than that? Here are some images of their super-cute little man on that beautiful porch.
These session will take place on Thursday morning, September 18th. Check the blog for available times.
My favorite beach to shoot at is the Capitola city beach. It is usually not too crowded on the north side, where I like to shoot, it has a great pier that provides shade when it is too sunny and it is facing just the right direction for sweet light at sunset. (for you photographers, I am not a huge fan of sun-lit sunset images, so I mean sweet “open shade” type light). We like to head for the beach as a family whenever I have a shoot there in the summer, so we can hang out before and after the session. Saturday we headed up from San Jose to meet a most adorable family. After their shoot it stayed remarkably warm at the beach after sunset and we hung out for an hour and a half, just enjoying the beauty of it. My daughter, Layna, just can’t help herself and ALWAYS gets wet when there is even a puddle. She doesn’t even seen to notice the cold, but jumps right in. She cracks me up. Here are a few snaps from our hang-out. Isaiah was trying to demonstrate “the crane” move from Karate Kid, LOL and Alayna just has to make a silly face when the camera is out. These were all shot with a wide-angle lens (16 mm) just for fun. Soon I plan to get a true fisheye, to really crank up the distortion, but for now. . .
We have decided to open up a few spaces this summer!
July 12th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, Promotions | 2 Comments »Things are moving along nicely this summer (even without a nanny LOL) and so we have decided to open up a couple of spaces for our clients wishing for summer sessions.
We were fully booked for the summer, but we have opened up three new spaces in August for full sessions. Contact Rachel right away, as they will be booked before you get organized.
Also: We have one opening this week in our Los Gatos Short & Sweet at 8 am. This is a perfect opportunity to sneak in a session to capture your child before he gets any bigger! Hurry, though, not much time left.
We have just three afternoon spaces left on August 9th at Blue Sky in San Francisco. This is such a cool location.
Look at these adorable “summer girls” . Could they be any sweeter?
My ridiculously adorable neices and nephew . . .
July 7th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, My Family | 8 Comments »In April I had the pleasure of heading off to Minnesota to visit my brother, Mike, and his beautiful family. They had recently added a new member to their growing family and I (of course) needed to capture her! Lydia and I had a great visit and I took a whole lotta’ pictures. So here are some images of my super-duper adorable nieces and my too-cute nephew and their slideshows, too:
this one is my most favorite from the whole session, I think. My brother has become an old pro at fatherhood and the way he is holding Jenna and just doing his thing really captures that.
and I love how beautiful beth and jenna both look here. . . so classic and timeless.
I have a special love for photo shoots at home. Especially with the young ones. They feel so comfortable and happy in their own environment and the best part is that we will have captured their little world forever. When they look back on their album of images or their custom storybook they will remember the love and comfort of childhood and of home. How cool is that? This little guy was totally in his element and we had a great time together.
Unfortunately, we experienced an email outage on our main server for about the last 24 hours. The problem has been resolved, however, we have no record of any emails that were sent to us during that time. That includes all emails to Anna, Rachel and Brian, as well as inquiries submitted from the contact page of our website. If you sent one, you probably received a “mail deliver error” message back. Please resend any message that you sent to us from 10am yesterday until 10am today. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we are working with our hosting company to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
A fun little “play date” with an adorable little lady.
June 30th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General | 13 Comments »I had so much fun playing with this little sweetheart. She just loved showing me all of her things and feeding her babies cupcakes and Popsicles. Her mom was worried that she wouldn’t warm up to me, but she didn’t take more than 2 minutes to be my new friend. I can’t wait to show mommy all of them, but for now, a little taste of what we captured . . .
Oh, I just love my job! Who has a better one, really? I mean, I get to capture the joy and essence of childhood forever for countless families and I even get paid for it! Love it, seriously. Being a children’s photographer really is an awesome thing. I had some fun with one of my favorite families in San Jose recently. They have to coolest bathtub! And we added LOTS-O-BUBBLE-BATH to get these fantastic bubbles!
It is time for a post with my wonderful clients!
June 27th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, My Family | 6 Comments »Things have been pretty crazy around our house/studio lately. Our nanny went home for a visit and didn’t come back (um, okay . . . ), leaving us with three young children home from school for the summer with no childcare. Wow! And we are considering some big changes around our house, we’ve been shopping for daycare for Lydia and trying to juggle the other two young ones while we work from home (craziness, seriously) and Brian has been working on pursuing a different career path. To top it off, Lydia has been sick and last night, I got it too. Perfect, I only had three photo shoots today . . . But, we “just keep swimming” as the wise Dory recommends in Finding Nemo. (By the way, I say that in my head ALL THE TIME, to keep me putting one foot in front of the other when life is crazy, which for us, seems like all the time!)
Oh, the reason for this post. So I peeked at my blog as of late, and although I am super busy with clients, my own kiddos have been stealing the show! So it is time to share a few from some of my recent sessions. Here we go!!
First, a sweet little lady enjoying a summer day on the swings.
Our Lydie-Bug rides her “bike-a-sole”
June 20th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, My Family | 16 Comments »Our youngest, Lydia (or “Lydie-bug”) went out with Daddy recently to buy a tricycle and came home with two! Can you say “Wrapped around his little finger” ? Well, they were off of Craigs List, but none the less I had to smile at his indulgence of his Lydie-Bug. Last night we were all playing outside and I just couldn’t take how adorable she looked all dirty and messy on her “bike-a-sole”. Enjoy . . .
San Jose’s new skate park is “sick”!!
June 11th, 2008 Posted in Blogroll, General, My Family | 12 Comments »California’s largest skate park just opened right out our back door! You can imagine my little skater’s excitement. Apparently the park is “wicked” and “sick” And I have to admit, even I was wide eyed at the sight. Check out my super-cool skater testing the bowls, rails and half-pipes.
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