Photo Shoot Inspirations

My daughter recently celebrated her second birthday. Typically I like to go with more of a "clever" party theme than with the commercial ones pushed by the local Target. Having run out of time, my husband suggested that I go with good old Dora the Explorer, a favorite of the soon to be two year old. It was a hit with the birthday girl and required little effort on my part.

Last year we went with "The Red Balloon" as my son's birthday theme and took some shots of him in our neighborhood, attempting to capture the charm of Pascal and his beloved balloon.

I'd love to loosely duplicate the overall feel of this shot for Fiona's second-year birthday shot rather than going with Dora and Boots as the inspiration.

A few weeks ago the kids and I went to the local farmer's market to enjoy the last of rays of summer sun and stumbled across the most charming band performing - The Toy Boats are an ensemble of four musicians using toy and small instruments. We three happily munched on freshly made crepes and donuts while listening to tunes one might hear on a European city street.


(photo from The Toy Boats facebook profile)

I then ran across the fall line at Gap Kids of Parisian-inspired clothing and couldn't resist buying this adorable boatneck sweater dress (why don't they have fabulous clothes like this in the adult sizes?!?):

(photo from gap.com)

As long as the weather cooperates with us, I hope to photograph her in this dress at this farmer's market or in our old Seattle neighborhood of Ballard in the next week. Not sure about the prop since I don't want the Red Balloon theme again. Perhaps a basket of apples? A lollipop? Flowers? Too bad we can't hire The Toy Boats to play nearby to inspire the model during the shoot.