Album companies have many different types of cover choices for albums including leather and japanese bookcloth.
My client wanted a gold cover for her wedding album so I found a bookcloth for her through a bookbinding company and Leather Craftsmen was willing to use the bookcloth the client preferred.
I just love how the album turned out.
Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a magazine junkie. I have been that way since high school.
When I became a professional photographer I started to look at photographs in magazines and catalogs in a different way. So if I find an image that I really like and feel it could inspire a shoot in the future I rip it out. Over the last year I have taken many of those ripped pages and created an inspiration book using an 11×14 sketch book and art and drafting dots (in case I ever need to take the images out of the book). I have one book for Portraits and another book for Kids.
The three pages from the inspiration book are from Entertainment Weekly, a Neiman Marcus catalog and a photo shoot at Disneyland I found in C Magazine.
I have recently renewed a bunch of fine art prints on my Etsy site. Great gifts for a new baby’s room, the newly remodeled kitchen or greeting cards for the friend who is hard to find a present for.
Etsy has recently made some improvements to their site, including larger image size, and I’m very impressed with what they have done.
So enjoy and seriously considering buying something from my shop.
I mentioned in a couple of recent blog entries that my family had a photo shoot in 2002 shooting with a Contax 645 camera. So far I have shown you the image of my Aunt Francie and me.
On the same contact sheet were wonderful photos of my Aunt with each of her nieces.
My sister Leanne – top two images
under her is my sister Christie (left) and my sister Marie (right)
and under those two is a photo with my Aunt Francie with my mother, Laurie and my Aunt D’Ann.
I am so grateful to have these images and will treasure them always.
To view this image on a separate page, click here.
I am pleased to a part of Wil Jax’ second annual theme show. This year’s theme is COLOR and I was honored that the gallery chose two of my images to be in the show.
The opening reception is Thursday, August 19 at The Warehouse in Cleveland, Mississippi.
As many of you know Frances Reid from DAYS OF OUR LIVES was my great aunt.
We finally buried her ashes last weekend near Berkeley, California, where she grew up.
I was extremely close to her and in many ways I do not think it has quite hit me that she’s gone. I still imagine myself going to visit her and her face lighting up when she would see me.
I refer myself to friends as Julie from THE LOVE BOAT. My family’s version of a cruise director.
In 2002, I organized a family photo shoot with my sisters, mother and my Aunt D’Ann at Francie’s house. I am so happy I put the photo shoot together as the four rolls of film and Polaroid’s from that day are just amazing. I found them the other day and was surprised at how many gem images there were that I never printed.
I printed this one of Francie and I. It was shot with a Contax 645 camera. Reminds me why I love medium format film so much.
Special thank you to Russell Adams from Shulman Photo Lab for printing this for me.
My dear friend and former theatre professor Ron Marasco was the officiant for our small family service. I wrote this and had Ron read it for me at the service.
There were many times when I was young I was asked how Francie was related to me. The question always puzzled me because I thought every family had a great aunt. That indescribable presence in a family. — so unique and so special. Francie was always there for us but not in typical way. My parents didn’t look to her to take care of us while my parents had somewhere to go. That was never the role she played in our life. Francie was our hostess, our listener, our mentor and our jester.
Francie taught all of us how to listen and how to listen with intent. She never cared to talk about herself, which is rare in an actor, and always wanted to hear about other people’s backgrounds, adventures and experiences. Right before she passed away I realized that she was ours and we were hers and it made me feel so fortunate.
There are so many things I will miss about her. I will miss her calling my mother Laurie Gail. I will miss receiving my Christmas gift in a Vicente Foods grocery bag. I will miss her asking the adults “Martini or a Bloody Mary?” I will miss sitting next to her while having dinner in her home. I will miss her smoking her cigarettes. I will miss going to the theatre and having grand discussions about what we saw on the drive home. I will miss sitting at her kitchen table talking for hours and hours about just about everything.
I feel so incredibly grateful to have had her in my life and we are lucky enough that the world also knew her as well. They didn’t know the real Frances but that’s okay because we did.
I asked Francie once where she wanted her final resting place to be. She said she wanted to be with “Mother and Daddy” and so it has become her final resting place. She wanted there to be a “talk” and I think she would approve. My dear Aunt Francie you will always be in my heart and my mind and I will always miss you.
In 2002 I got out my grandfather’s old Polaroid 450 camera and some Polaroid 665 Positive/Negative film and did a portrait shoot at my great aunt’s garage.
I try not to think too much about how this film isn’t available anymore because it upsets me so.
I do admit to have some of this film stocked up in a cupboard. The question I keep pondering is what to shoot with it since I have a finite amount of it.
In the meantime enjoy this photo of me taken in 2002.
I am proud to announce that April Rocha Photography is part of the 2nd Annual Los Angeles Printers Fair at the International Printing Museum in Carson on September 25 from 9am-5pm.
The goal of the fair is to showcase the art of print and paper in historical and contemporary forms. There are many amazing vendors who are participating in this year’s fair including:
Envelopments
Papermum Press
Sugarcube Press
Bellz and Whistlez
Fugu Fugu Press
Claudia Laub Studio
Click here to view a complete list of vendors.
I will be selling my fine art cards, Christmas gift tags, fine art prints and a new wedding album that will incorporate the wedding invitation in the album.