When my friend Paul asked me to take pregnancy pictures of his good friend Kathy, I was more excited then I could describe. I’ve been wanting to do them for such a long time, but no one knows that I do them, so I hadn’t had a chance yet. Paul said Kathy was very pregnant, and I knew that her belly would be really good for the photos (that way it is sure to look like a baby and no one can mistake it for lack of diet and exercise). She came to the studio for the shoot because she wanted partially nude black and whites, and it’s better not to do those outdoors. She brought her cousin with her and was very comfortable and fun to work with. She had pictures of what she wanted, which I thought was really nice, and we did some shots that I had planned, too. Kathy, it turns out is a top of the line make up artist, so I plan to call her in the future for that. Here are two that she liked:

One of the families I shot photos for really liked a shoot they saw of Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and baby Suri. I, regretfully had not seen these photos before, but they described one shot to me very well. This is the result. I like it very much. We took this outside on the left side of the Griffith Observatory, in Los Angeles. The sky made for some really neat shots that day.

I just liked this one myself.

I even made them do the cheesy pics with the Hollywood sign behind them. I just couldn’t resist. Baby M wasn’t into it as much.

This face was a fun treat!

This was her first time in the grass.

I saved the best for last…

Lan and I picked up this little girl at Petsmart yesterday as a Valentine’s day treat. She is a Russian hamster, so we have fittingly named her Nastia, pronounced NAW-stia. The name Nastia translates as “ressurection”, which makes since, since Lan’s favorite hamster passed away last month from a cold, and Lan thinks of Nastia as a replacement that reminds him so much of our little Robodog1. I met a lot nice of people in Russia named Nastia, and the name has sort of grown on me.

Nastia is a lovely hamster. She is very clean and, surprisingly for her size, she is not a pig! I like that she is fat, and doesn’t run away or jump- which I am assuming will prevent a lot of brain damage that skittish hamsters probably suffer.

The trees were blossoming at Schabarum Regional Park in the City of Industry. The younger sister was insistent that she hold her branch for most of the day. I thought it held some quite beautiful flowers!

They seem like very close sisters. Four years apart in age. Who would have thought they would get along so well?

I loved their hair. So curly and clean!