Magical Ages of Childhood Contest 2007

And the winner is . . .
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The results are in for the children’s contest!

The People’s Choice award goes to Lindzee Schaeffer of West Salem. Her mom, Kristina, chose the theme “Rain, rain, go away” and put her in a rain slicker, boots, and umbrella. The forecast that day was for rain but we got sunshine!

Some people have the idea that all the wonderful images we display are of children who are very cooperative and will always do exactly as we say and will sit still for long periods of time. Hah!

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Lindzee, shown here, had a mind of her own and was running all over the place. What she wanted to do and what we had in mind were usually two different things. We discovered that she loved our dog, Katie, so we had Katie running around and found we could get good expressions just by asking, “Where’s Katie?” By getting into the flow of what she wanted to do, I feel we really captured her spirit.

Madison Applebee of Salem was the winner of the Artistic Merit award. When her mom, Nikkie, came in for a consultation she told me that her parents had sheep and she really wanted to do a “Mary had a Little Lamb” portrait, but how did I feel about a live lamb in the studio? No problem. In fact, I had used the idea before in the award winning image “No Lambs at School” from the contest several years ago.

Madison’s grandparents own sheep and were more skeptical. They were sure the lamb was too wild to have in a studio. I, on the other hand, was sure we could make it work. (The secret is to close all the doors to the camera room and keep shooing the lamb back into the set.) Oh, and lots and LOTS of paper towels to clean up the inevitable messes.

The Children's contest was really fun this year and the panel of photographers clearly had a tough time choosing a winner. Our thanks to all who participated.