From the Haugen Heart

I have always loved the red embossed cover of the little photo album my mother started for me when I was a baby. It has roses on it and I love to run my fingers over the design. I picked it up the other day and opened it. There was a picture of me with my favorite doll. Her name was Connie. She had plastic hair embossed on her head and a little hole in her pursed lips where she could take a bottle. We were inseparable for years but I grew and became careless with her over time. One day I left her outside overnight and found that the dog had chewed off her little hands! Sigh. I don't have Connie anymore, just the memory of her. Just like that little five year old girl with the toothless grin is only a memory now. This photograph has huge meaning and emotion for me because it shows me holding Connie. She is an emotional symbol of that time in my life. Here is what I would like you to take from this: As you plan your next portrait session, think about what is meaningful in your...

So you want to get better photographs of your own children? I would love to photograph every milestone in your child's life but realistically I can’t be there every moment and I want to make sure you have the best photographs you can. Here are some tips that can help: 1.       First of all, if you are going to some effort like driving to a special park with the idea of getting some great photographs, choose a time of day when they are going to be at their best. How about just after a nap rather than when they are starting to get tired and grumpy? Morning tends to be best for most kids but think about your child's schedule and temperament. 2.       Bribery is ok! This is not the time to be worrying about good parenting. If the promise of ice cream or a trip to McDonald’s is going to win cooperation in the moment, do it! Take into account the development and attention span of your child when choosing t...

I got everything set up. The kidlets were in the cute outfits I had picked out for them. I had the lighting and background just right. I had checked and rechecked the settings on the camera. Ready, set, ACTION !  Ok, so action was not really what I wanted. I just wanted beautiful, story telling images of my children in this great studio setting I had created. And that required my children to be on the set, not dismantling my camera. I discovered how difficult it can be to photograph your own children. Other people’s children LISTEN to me and they don’t cling to me...they may cling to their mom but I am not trying to pry their fingers off of my skirt.  With a few bribes and threats, I managed to get the kids to do what I wanted and Neil just told me the image below from this session is his favorite that I have ever taken. He swears it isn't prejudice! Do you want to know how to get better photographs of your own children? I will be...

Babies completely blow me away!  Each one is a miracle, so full of promise. It is a fresh new life evolving into a tiny human being. There is no greater experience that a person can have than to become a parent and watch as this new life unfolds. To guide, love and care for this little one can be incredibly difficult at times and we are forced to become selfless as we endure sleepless nights, rashes, ear infections and the like. The reward comes when that tiny baby looks up into your eyes, an enormous smile erupts across its face and the cares of the world melt away. I love being a part of babies’ lives and watching them grow and change and capturing every moment in photographic images. In fact, I can’t get enough of it! That is why I am so excited to be offering our new “Year in the Life” Program. How “ Year in the Life ” Works Every month you bring your baby in to the studio for a session and pay only $65 a month. At the end of the year, I...

Twelve years ago, I went into the hospital for some surgery. Neil was there as they were prepping me and bouncing Lars who was six months old at the time and nursing full time. I never did get him used to a bottle so he had to stay pretty close to mama. You probably think I am crazy but Neil and I both agreed that it would be easier for all of us if he and Lars stayed in the hospital with me rather than saying home and trying to get Lars to take a bottle. I was nervous about the anesthesia and I remember the nurse trying to reassure me that it wouldn’t be much different than when I had my baby. I had to tell her that I had had three babies and had never had any anesthesia of any kind so, no, it was going to be different! In walked Dr. G, my anesthesiologist and he was very gentle and reassuring. As we chatted, Neil and I mentioned that we had a photography studio. Dr. G said that he had two little boys and would need some portraits. (I tried not to be embarrassed, but there I was ...

My camera is an extension of my eyes, of my heart. A portion of me is in every single image I make. It documents, not just what is in front of my lens but what is inside of me. These are some of the images that are speaking to me today. What are they saying?

I have been photographing Dylan since he was two. He is sometimes quiet (for the first 5 minutes of any portrait session and then he gets silly. His mom is Autumn and is the best all around employee for the studio I could ask for. Naturally, his mom and I are always conspiring to come up with something new and creative for his portrait sessions and pushing his patience to the limits. For his sixth birthday, Mom wanted to do outdoor portraits. It is January so my first thought was, "Really? Are you sure about this?" Temperatures were well below freezing but it was sunny the day she called. I checked out the forecast and it was supposed to stay cold and dry for a couple of days before the rains returned. I looked at the choice between cold and dry and cold and wet and decided that dry sounded really good to me! The Filbert Orchard I had been driving by a filbert orchard a few days earlier and loved the starkness of the bare trees, the blanket of soft brown leaves on the ground,...

Neil affectionately calls me the Queen of Chaos. My brain does not always work in a straight line. It is more of a zig-zaggy, jump here, then leap there, kind of process. It can be very annoying, particularly to my dear husband and particularly when we are photographing together. Here is how it goes: we are at a wedding and in the middle of it the light bulb goes on. I have an idea! The problem is that I can’t really explain my idea to him in any way that makes any sense to him in 20 seconds or less. So, instead I splurt out some chain of consciousness thing, he looks confused and I just charge ahead with my idea. This is how my brain works. It is like I have this pile if index cards laying around in the back of my brain with snip-its of ideas scribbled on them. I start shuffling them around and throwing aside the ones that don’t fit the current situation. I grab an idea that I have been wanting to try, I see a spot where the light will work and I go for it. This is when I am at my mos...

If you read my last post , you know that I went to Cristy's home recently to hang 16 prints. I had worked out an arrangement in Photoshop and showed up at her house with hammer and level in hand. They all needed to be level and straight or it was going to look really bad. Now keeping things straight is not my strong suit, as Neil will tell you, so I knew I was in trouble! I usually hang prints with picture wire on a small nail and I know that if you use two nails a distance apart, the frame will stay in place much better than with one nail in the center. Then I looked at this project and thought about putting 32 nail holes in the wall. I knew that the 32 holes would quickly become 64 (or more!) as I found that the position of some of the images wasn't quite right. Yikes! I am just not that patient! My solution was to use one nail to hang each print. I double checked the spacing and look of the arrangement as I went along (I did have to move a couple of nails). Then I whipped ...