And the Winner Is...

Riann Doyle! You won a $20 Starbucks Gift Card for posting on my blog about my Big Announcement. I used Random.org to generate the winning number. Here are the results:

Random Integer Generator
Here is your random number: 1
Timestamp: 2008-08-30 15:20:02 UTC

Congratulations Riann!

Don't forget that there is still another contest running until next week. You can't win if you don't enter!

It's Here!

I can finally release it...the thing I've been working on for months-My Brand New Website!

The hardest thing for me was the process of deciding the over-all look of my site. There are some incredible website companies out there, and the longer I looked, the more overwhelmed I became. I started looking at the websites of other photographers that I love, trying to decide who has the best presentation, the easiest to navigate, the most elegant, or personable.

I also got caught in in trying to figure out what my brides would like best, and then the next day I would think that maybe it should appeal to families with kids. Maybe it should be colorful, cheerful and bright. No, it should be sophisticated, and slick. Modern. No, timeless. AAAHHH! It was so hard.

Well, it was hard until I attended the Free to Succeed Workshop in Austin last month. There, in the course of four hours, I learned EXACTLY what I needed to do to create the perfect website. I learned that I didn't need to look any further than myself. That the key to finding the perfect website, the perfect marketing materials and the perfect brand for my business, was ME.

Thinking back to that night, I can almost feel the earth shake as my entire BRAND suddenly gelled in my mind during the drive home.

I'm not slick, or especially colorful. I'm definately not the most modern woman. My house isn't perfect, I'm uncomfortable in super-slick houses. So none of those things would work for my brand.

So, who am I? Well, I'm kinda messy, a bit scattered, but with a decent amount of flair. I love texture, things that are handmade, not perfect. I love black and white. I have a busy schedule, but I'm fairly laid back. Art, in many different forms, has always been a part of my life.

At the workshop, we had to come up with 5 words to describe ourselves - my five were:
Not slick
Natural
Organic
Simple flair
Classic

Then we expanded on this, thinking of things that we like about the stores and restaurants that appeal to us, and I wrote:
Texture
Artisan
Soapstone
Torn edges
Quiet

And BOOM. I knew how everything should look.

I was incredibly impatient last year, when I wanted to put the site together but couldn't for several reasons (mostly because I needed more images). Now I am very thankful that I didn't do it sooner. It wouldn't have reflected me, it would have been a copy of what other photographers have done. Now, today, I can connect the dots, and I am very happy that I didn't do this sooner.

So here is the link:
EverAfterbyLeah.com

Take a look around and let me know what you think!

Christina: Quinceanera Portraits

Sometimes I get to photograph the most amazing kids. You might already know this, but I really love to do sessions for teenage girls. There are so many different reasons, but one of the things that I always marvel about is how different they all are, even when they are the exact same age, as is the case with the Quinceaneras I've done lately.

So this girl, this soon-to-be young lady, had an inner glow, a sense of peace, that I know for sure I didn't have at that age. She was so innocent, sweet, and loving, especially toward her mom-who I happen to know has put many luxuries aside for herself , in order to give her daughter a solid foundation.

Mother-daughter relationships are so hard sometimes, but these two made it seem easy, so natural and in particular, incredibly beautiful.






Her Quinceanera is less than a month away, so the last minute details are being taken care of. I recieved a shot list from them a couple of days ago, detailing every image that they want to ensure that I take-Christina with her escort, her grandparents, at the altar, with the girls, the boys, etc. Two pages of shots, two pages of memories that they are looking forward to.

I'd like to add one more shot to the list, one that trumps all the others as the image that sums up the entire event. I plan to get a very special portrait of Marie and Christina, mother and daughter, to record the incredibly special bond they have, and to represent the perfect love that they have.

Marie, I know that you are focused on making the party perfect for Christina, but make sure you doll yourself up-the camera will be on you, too!

Big Announcement Coming Soon!

I can't give away too much, but this is something I've been working on for months. It's almost ready...I can't stand the suspense, but tomorrow is the big day!

How 'bout a contest to celebrate? I will give a $20 Starbucks card to someone that I randomly chose from all those that post a comment either today or tomorrow (Friday) after the BIG REVEAL. The winner will be announced on Saturday.

How 'bout another contest? The prize-a FREE Lifestyle Family Session. To enter, send an email to me at LeahGodfredson@aol.com with your Lifestyle session idea. I'm looking for the most interesting session-for example:

We want pictures of our family while we fish together at Lake McQueeny.

or

We would like you to photograph us during the Halloween season while the kids pick out pumpkins at the Bracken Pumpkin patch.

or

I'd love to have photographs of my daughter at one of her soccer games.

The key to a successful Lifestyle shoot is that your family needs to be engaged in an activity together, it can be something exciting and fun, or relaxed, but the thing I'm not looking for is posed pictures at a park or in your home.

The activity needs to take place within 25 miles of San Antonio,and can occur anytime within the next six months. You will get a free session and a CD of all final images, to print anywhere that you choose. This is a $300 value! The contest will run for one week, so get your Lifestyle Session suggestion to me by Friday, Sept. 4.

Keep checking back for my Big Announcement, and don't forget that there are two contests going right now!

Hey, Cuz'

My good friend Lisa called me recently, with a small request. She wanted me to photograph her kids together with their cousins-all ten of them!

Well, I took on the challange but I knew it wouldn't be easy. We chose Landa Park in New Braunfels for the setting, mostly because of all of the things the kids can do there-feed ducks, throw rocks into the river, run, etc.

Here is the whole group. This tree is a fantastic "anchor" spot. Most kids love to climb trees so there is no problem getting them up there. It's a little dark in this area, so we grabbed a few and then moved on to find a brighter place.

I don't think I'll ever forget this kid. He spent the first 10 minutes screaming his head off, and the next hour being the most adorable thing I'd ever seen

It was very difficult to capture all 10 at the same time, so I divided them up into smaller groups:

And then I took some individual shots:

I don't think I'll ever forget this kid. He spent the first 10 minutes screaming his head off, and the next hour being the most adorable thing I'd ever seen:

We got a few fun shots (my favorite!):

As well as a few posed ones:

Thanks for spending time with me, guys. It was so much fun!

Sleeping Dry!

I am way behind in blogging right now. I have so much to say, so I'm going to do a bit at a time and try to keep them coming all week.

OK, so here goes. the biggest thing on my mind is the wonderful thing that is the Dry Sleeper Excel. Got a bed wetter in your house? I did, two weeks ago...But not anymore! I've used this gadget before, with astounding success I might add, to train my child to stay dry all night.

The instructions guarantee that you will be sucessful within two months. It took less than two weeks for my first child, and less than one week for the second. It costs about $80, but it is OH SO WORTH IT!

Here is the link.

Just follow the instructions, and call me if you have any questions. I'm kind of an expert by now. I purchased the Excel model, which has a cord. There is also a cordless model, but it costs quite a bit more, and isn't really necessary. The cord simply goes under their clohes, and it is pretty short so in my opinion there is not a choking hazard.

Make sure you spend the extra $15 or so to get an extra cord. You'll need it in the middle of the night-I kept one ready at the bedside so that we weren't fumbling around in the middle of the night to get him hooked up again.

More tomorrow!

My oldest son G took some fun pictures of me and M in the backyard the other day. I'm posting them even though I look like dog poo so that my kids have some record of me in the years to come.

Early this morning, I stumbled across a speech by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005, at Stanford University.

One part in particular resonated with me, actually brought me to tears-the part about connecting the dots, and that you can only connect them looking backwards. I thought about those words, that solitary idea, for several long minutes because there have been times of my life that I wish I could erase, and yet I know that if that were possible, I wouldn't be where I am or have the life and family I have. And even more profound, to me at least, is that there are things about my current life that I wish would disappear, things that I can't understand why I have to go through, and yet I can be stronger now because someday, I'll be able to look backward and connect the dots to something good.

There are other people who really connected with different sections, like the points that he makes about death, and so I wanted to share it because I think everyone will get something different from it:

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course."

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.

It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

Then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.

I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much."