Almost Famous

So the Goetz Fam got its fifteen minutes of fame. For a quick minute, we were superstars. The paparazzi has finally stopped following us all over Bloomington (maybe that’s an understatement—but still). Why? Because a few months ago we were on Loft3pd’s blog. And they’re kind of a big deal.

(Most photos courtesy of Melanie at Loft3pd; I'm pretty sure you'll be able to figure out which ones aren't.)

One of our faves from the session

If you haven’t figured it out yet, we got family photos taken. Granted, it was in August (nearly four months ago), but I've just now had the chance to write about it. When I tell people this or share with them the link to our pictures, I get one of four questions:

1.  “So…why did you have family pictures taken, I mean, what’s the occasion?”
2.  “How did you get your kids to cooperate?”
3. "Are those taken at Lake Monroe?"
4.  “They are amazing! Who took them?”

The short answers:

1. Why not?
2. They didn’t.
3. Nope. Fernbank (park on the West side of da Nati). 
4.  Melanie Pace, Loft3pd.

The long answers:

1. The long answer has two parts. 

Part one: life is short. You don't know what today will bring, much less tomorrow, next month or next year--so it's worth documenting some of your journey behind a camera to capture the essence of your family at a given point in time. Somewhat related, I actually want to be IN some photos with my children. I've had a camera in their faces ever since they were born, but rarely does anyone else think to take photos of me with the kids, or me with my hubs. Most of our family vacation photos are of the kids, Jack and the kids, or...the beach. Dang it, I wanna look like I'm one in the family, too! 

Who's that lady holding P? Oh, that's me, the Mom, the one who's NEVER in the picture!

Part two: despite the fact that I've had a camera shoved in my kids faces for all of eternity, they are not very photogenic. They don't photograph well when they are being photographed, if that makes any sense. They are cute beyond cuteness...until they see that lens, and then they freeze. Let's take a minute to see what I mean. 

Exhibit A: Joseph's school photo last year (2012). He is making the Goetz Fart Face. On purpose? I don't really think so, but you'd have to ask him to be sure. 

Exhibit B: Pilar's school photo last year (2012). She just looks kinda spooked.  

Exhibit C: Goetz Fam with Santa last year (2012). Jack and I are (somewhat) acceptable. Joe and P looked scared out of their britches. We considered it a Christmas miracle that everyone was looking in the direction of the camera and not blinking. Victory! 

Exhibit D: A more recent example--Joseph and his friends on the first day of pre-school in August of this year. Joe is most definitely picking a winner. Nice. 

Exhibit E: Joseph's school photo from this year. A significant improvement from last year's, but with room to improve. (Yes, he's wearing the same shirt as he work on his picture day last year. He likes red, OK?)

Exhibit F: Pilar's school photo from this year. Not sure if it's an improvement, or just a variation on a theme--poor girl looks like she's seen a ghost. 

Our kids aren't the only ones who aren't exactly photogenic. Below is Exhibit G, a product of a Christmas Mission that shall remain undisclosed until later. Suffice it to say that the Goetz kids aren't the only members of our Fam who just don't do 'studio' well. Yeah. Jack looks drugged and I look like a goober.

Let's be honest: the odds are not in our favor that if you plop our kids in front of a camera, whether it be studio-style or just a snapshot of everyday life, you'll get a decent pic. So we decided a long time ago it's best if we just have someone follow us around and try and get us in our natural habitat--in other words, our clumsy, non-photogenic selves. Melanie is able to make clumsy and non-photogenic look good, even great. See Exhibit H below. Well done, Mel. Well done. 

Clumsy Goetzes in our natural habitat of...clumsiness

One of my favorite outtakes: Joe was doing his usual pretending he was being a lion cub and licking me. Really? This is my son. I love him, but he's a goon for sure.

2. Yeah, our kids didn't cooperate. Neither did Jack, really. (I am not throwing him under the bus. This is no secret. He admitted he was stressed out by the session.) I'd been looking forward to getting in front of Mel's lens for a looooong time. I started following her work in 2010 when she took the birth photos of a friend of mine from high school, Erin (also Mel's sister-in-law). I was instantly in love with her photography and the very special way she catches subtle moments. I made no bones about how excited I was about the session to Jack--starting the minute I booked the session in June/July-ish. Well, that made him nervous because he knew a lot was riding on it for me. And the kids can totally pick up on those nerves so they were kinda spazztastic, too. And to try and relieve the tension, nerves, spazzticity and such, I totally overcompensated by bringing all kinds of stuff that I shouldn't have brought: donuts (um, duh? Chocolate icing on a hot summer morning in August?), bubbles (rookie mistake!), butterfly nets (which the kids promptly used to cover their faces)--I might as well have brought sharpies and finger paints. I won't make those mistakes the next time ("Thank the Loooord," Mel is thinking.).

Jack may have been hitting his breaking point here. I know that look, even if he's not looking head on. I can see it by his jawline. He was probably saying 'Serrrrreeeenity now!' to himself over and over.

We all started to get a little slap happy at this point. And Mel STILL made it look amazing.

Chocolate donuts. Why did this seem like a good idea? 

Did I mention that the night before was Pili's second birthday party and we all stayed up entirely too late? Pilar even decided to wake up and party some more between 2 and 3:30 a.m. Neat! That made her a real gem to try and rouse to get to the session by 9:00 a.m. 

Did I mention that Pilar was constipated that whole weekend and was trying to squeeze out a turd the entire session? She was sweating up a storm between running around chasing her brother, trying to poo and, well, the steaminess of August in the Nati. 

Another outtake. Tired. Hot. Sweaty. And constipated. I would have been crabby, too.

Did I mention that Joe was just coming off his first week of pre-school, so he was crabby beyond crabby (he is STILL adjusting to no nap in pre-school) and so very wiped out?

Tired, yes. Still oh-so-handsome and a great shot of this little buddy? Why...yes.

Yup, the kids didn't cooperate much at all. But here's why I'm making a big deal out of this fact: Mel's photography would have you believe completely otherwise. The tiredness, crabbiness, stressy-McStress-a-lot vibes not-a-once showed up on film. In fact, one of my friends said, after seeing our pics, "The kids did so well!" Bahahahahaha. If only she knew...

Mel got all the in-between moments of less spazz and stress. THAT is why she's the best.

More genius of Mel. 

I seriously thought that Mel had probably only gotten a handful of good shots out of the whole session, tops. That's what a hot (and slimy) mess I thought we were. Turns out she got a whole blog post's worth of goodies--and then some. When we got our CD of photos (which was like Christmas for me!), I was delighted to see oodles and oodles of other great shots that Mel got that she didn't include on the blog. BONUS! She's seriously a whiz.

3. We adore our college town that we call home, Bloomington. It's a photographer's dream. But recall that Mel's photography is also a dream. So we had to pick which dream we wanted to fullfill: it was either get our photos taken in our town that we call home now, Bloomington, and not have Mel as our photog OR get our photos taken in our hometown, Cincinnati, with Mel behind the lens. Winner, winner chicken dinner--I'll take Mel over photos in B-town 10 days out of 10. 

One of our hot spots when we got to the Nati to visit Fam and Friends is Fernbank. We love it there. The kids love it there. I used to run junior high cross country there. Jack and I used to frequent the Cabana, which is near there. Jack's grandparents used to live in Saylor Park, nearby--and on a night long before Joe and P were even conceived of, Jack (after a few beers) stated that if we ever moved back to the Nati, he'd want to live in Saylor Park. Lots of good memories near and around Fernbank. It's a safe haven of sorts for us in the Nati. The kids love throwing rocks in the river there. They love the playground (of course) there. They adore picking up rocks and sticks and throwing them over the shaded bridge there. So we were glad to have Mel capture pics of us there. Yay! 

Good arm, P! Throwing rocks into the river. 

I just love that little dress on her. I'm so sad she will have grown out of it by next summer.

The beloved bridge. As Mel put it, this is real life (which may or may not be conducive to a photo session)! One kid freaking out the other kid smiling.

4. Melanie Pace took our photos. As I said above, I had been stalking following her work for a good long while. We became Internet friends not long after I became engrossed in her photography (my persistent stalking paid off, I guess?). She's a West-side like I am (instant bond!) and though we never ran in the same circles in high school (she went to Seton, I went to Mercy; we were a few years apart), we know a lot of the same folks. Such is life on the West side of Cincy. We follow each others' social media accounts (a modern-day friendship!)--and every day at lunch, one of the first things I do is refresh her photog blog to see what's new. Her incredible work speaks for itself. She captures hope and unconditional love and tenderness and God and angels and miracles. I really need not sing her praises because I think she's got the whole West side (and far beyond) signing up for her sessions--but I still do because greatness like this is absolutely worth continued praise. I told her once that God knew what he was doing when He put a camera in her hands and I stand by that statement. 

So I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons Mel is great is because she is able to capture the good stuff amidst chaos--making the audience believe that the session was easy-breezy. Here are several more reasons she's great: 

She captures the bestest, most tender, sweetest moments ever, moments that I didn't even realize were happening. 

I just love her sweet little hand touching my jaw.

The love between a Daddy-o and Daughter

Perfectly captures the indescribable but very palpable camaraderie between my two kids

She meets your kids where they are. She doesn't force them to be something they are not. She was a teacher (and once a teacher, always a teacher) and it shows. She first figures out your kids' personalities--and then highlights their personality on film. For example: 

This series of three shots perfectly exemplifies the inquisitive nature of my little buddy. Such a scientist, like his Daddy. This was still in the 'getting to know Mel' phase of their courtship. 

This series captures my little buddy once he opens up--lively, sweet, witty. Mel won him over by this point. 

Annnnnd, this is my spirited, willful and adorably sweet and clever P to a T

And one last reason: she makes time to capture Mom and Dad, which is why all the kiddos are there in the first place. I can't tell you the last time someone took a good, quality photo of Jack and I. And I love ALL the ones she took of us. 

Melanie, I can't thank you enough for fitting us in to your schedule. I'm so glad you stumbled on to my camino. I only wish our session was longer because we were getting to have so much good conversation. Felt like I'd known you my whole life!

People of the Nati--get on Mel's list. Because she's the bestest there is. 

How bad ass is this picture? That's what I thought. Besos and gracias to Mel.