Along the way, I’m totally pumped to be meeting some of my favorite New Orleans based photographers and friends, including the amazing husband/wife duo of Studio Tran – Corine and Beebe… and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll meet Ethan too…

I totally have an action packed week ahead of me! I hope to be blogging some of the amazing imagery that I get there… so stay tuned over the next week.

On the home front… everyone please wish Jason good luck. He is taking over parenting duties for the next 6-days without a safety net. My mom (who is our usual go-to babysitter) is going with me to New Orleans, so Jason and Maggie are being bachelor’s for a week. I guess it’s a good thing that Jason can cook so well!!

Cards can be printed on your choice of regular UV coated paper, pearl/iridescent paper, watercolor/art paper, or a linen textured paper (extra charges may apply for some speciality papers and coatings).

Packages are sold in 25 card allotments and some color and text variations are available upon request.
5×7 flat cards – $40.00 (plus tax)
5×5 folded cars – $45.00 (plus tax)
5×7 folded cards – $40.00 (plus tax)

We will automatically place pictures from your 2008 session on the card, or you can schedule a special Holiday Mini Session. The mini session is $75.00 and includes 3 digital photos and 25 holiday cards. It’s a really great deal! Holiday Mini’s must take place before November 15th to ensure holiday delivery on cards.

Please e-mail me directly (susan at whimsical photo design dot com) for more information!

Take a look at this blog for a good laugh!

PJ and Kirsten – Thank you so much for having me come out to do the shoot. I had a blast with you guys!

Here is me being sappy… I love him too. He makes my entire world a better place! So cheers to my hubby! He’s a good guy!

Every summer, Jason’s fire department participates in a firefighter exchange with a firefighter academy (university) in Poland. In fact, last June, Jason went to Poland for 17 days to participate in the exchange there! Over the last 4 years, we personally have played host to exchange student, taking them on some sort of adventure, hiking at Mt. St. Helen’s, a Husky football game, etc. Well, when we got the phone call on Saturday, we ended up with 2 Polish exchange students who were desperate to see the Pacific Ocean. We loaded up Curvy (for those of you who don’t already know… I name EVERYTHING. The car – Honda CRV – is called Curvy), with a cooler of picnic items and headed off to take the guys, Michael and Maceak (pronounced Ma-jick), to Copalis Beach.

The day was glorious… one of those late-summer days that is 85 without a cloud in the sky. That is, until you come within a quarter mile of the Pacific Ocean. Then the temperature drops by 20 degrees and it’s socked in by fog. This is what we were looking at as soon as we arrived…

Of course, this didn’t stop Mabster from enjoying herself…

and our new friends seems to enjoy the beach a bit too! (Oh… and there IS an ocean behind them, but good luck locating it!)

Did I mention that we were freezing?!? It was a nice day when we got dressed… but we quickly ate and packed up our picnic to get out of there. We quickly made another decision in our adventure! Since Jason and I have never really made the loop around the Olympic Peninsula, and the guys were up for a scenic drive, we decided to go for it.

Our next stop was Lake Quinalt Resort located just south the of the Hoh Rain Forrest. I should mention that this is a true rain forrest and one of the rainest, cloudest places in all of world. They really only get a handful of days that are actually sunny… well, a quarter mile from the beach, and it was again 85 and sunny. This is what we found when we got to the resort!!

See… the sun really was shining that day! You can see the moss that just hangs from all the thick trees in this rainy area.

The resort is absolutely STUNNING – these are the grounds from the hotel down to the beach…

Our new Polish friends enjoying the sun, the beauty and the warmth!

And I would like to take a moment to comment on my daughter’s behavior. She’s a curious handful, but a really a sweet natured child. She did throw a pretty good tantrum though when we pulled her away from the beach. So we stopped in at a little quaint mercantile across the street from the resort and she was once again happy when presented with a lollipop.

So onward we continued our journey. At this point, we had been in the car for about 4 hours, and there was no turning back. We only could plug along!! But it was my turn to drive, and soon out of Lake Quinalt, I found myself alone with Dave (Dave Matthews kept me company on the CD player!) while I had a sleeping husband and child and two sleeping friends. It was ok, because the drive was stunning. I was so glad I am the only one who enjoyed it!

But some of you may remember my silly addiction to the Twilight books I wrote about back in July. Yeah, well, we went to Forks – where the books take place – and i was extremely excited, not to mention extremely embarrassed, to find the car they are using for the movie! Whoo hoo! I know all my Twilight lovin’ gals out there will get a kick out of this. But I did see the Thriftway, Olympic Outfitters and the Dew Drop Inn… if you’ve read the books… you know what I’m talking about. I didn’t really have much more of an opportunity to take pictures in Forks, but I have to say… Nice town! I was really impressed!

Onward we plowed through Port Angeles and into Port Townsend. Jason and I decided to take the guys to a nice little pub there is town we discovered on our last stop-over in Port Townsend. Well, after spending 8 hours in the car, Maggie had no intention in sitting to eat her dinner. So I took her out to run around on the boardwalk and we were treated to a lovely sunset. Oh… these are straight out of the camera shots with no editing! The moonlight shot was a 3 second exposure!!

So now it’s dark, it’s 8 pm and we are quite away from home… So we got in the car, headed to Bainbridge Island and caught the 10:30 pm ferry from Bainbridge to Seattle. Now our Polish friends hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see downtown Seattle. They had only been in town for about 5 days of their 4 week journey, and when they flew into Sea-Tac airport, they were shuttled off, not getting a chance to see the town. So the ferry ride, on this oddly windless, warm and balmy evening was the first they saw of the town. This isn’t the best picture… but you photographers will appreciate what I did to get it this way! It is shown straight out of the camera, hand-held, on a boat, moving quite quickly! It was shot at ISO 6400, f2.8 with a 1/15 shutter. Not too shabby… a tad noisy… but not too bad!

So that was our adventure! We dropped the guys back at the fire station around 12:30 am, got ourselves home and fell into bed around 1 am just exhausted! It was such a fun drive though… and I cannot wait to go back up and explore a little more in detail.

Karen & Brian – Thank you so much for the opportunity to come do your family photographs. You both are awesome people and awesome parents. Colby and Mia were absolute delights!

Here is Colby…

And the beautiful Mia…

What is a Boudoir Session?? A Boudoir Session, as scandalous as it might come across, is actually pretty tame, but totally fun. It is a time to get dressed up in cute lingerie, get your hair and make up done, and be a movie star for an afternoon. We share wine, hors d’oerves, music and in between we take some awesome pictures! It doesn’t matter your body type or size, this is an empowering time for you to enjoy yourself and do something you may never of thought to do before!

So what is the special? See below for details. But these little items make an awesome gift for your boyfriend, fiance, or husband… especially around Christmas time. Space for these sessions is limited, so please e-mail me (susan at whimsical photo design dot com) now in order to book your session.

Session includes…
90-minute Photo Session with 3 lingerie changes at the ultra-hip Hotel Murano – Tacoma
20-minutes Professional Make Up
Online password protected gallery with 25 proofs
20-page 4×6 modern photo album

Cost is $300 (plus tax) and limited to the dates listed below.

These sessions are sexy, hot and oh, so fun, and the album of magazine style pictures are a great gift for that special person in your life.

This special is only good for these two dates in October. Full sessions can be booked year round though!
Saturday – October 11
Saturday – October 18

Time slots will be filled by a first come, first served basis. Grab all your girlfriends and book out my entire day. If needed, I’ll add some more dates!

And finally… one with Eric’s mom…