Charlotte Southern

This evening I went over to Andrea and Victoria’s house after they got back from swimming with the kids and some friends. It was good because they were just hanging out together. They were all exhausted but only Victoria and Sebastian got to take a real nap because Tashi, 5, is very anti-nap and didn’t want to sleep even though it was obvious she was tired.

to be continued. . .

Today they went to an Easter Party which was nice but didn’t  give me too many photo opportunities because Victoria wasn’t there. But then they went swimming and put Sebastian in the pool for the first time which was cool. At first Victoria was really nervous but Andrea convinced her it would be great so they dunked him underwater a bunch of times. He didn’t seem to mind and was very mellow. Tashi swam around the pool with a couple of other children (we were at a neighbor’s house) and did not seem all that interested in her little brother. It goes in waves, sometimes she is really excited to see him and other times she doesn’t pay him much attention. I guess thats what five-year-olds are like with new babies in the house.

Apparently I missed just the four of them going on a bike ride to the park but I am sure that I can capture something like that this coming weekend. All the relatives will be out of the house so it will be just them doing whatever they want. I am looking forward to being open to photograph them without having to worry about getting other people who don’t want to be photographed in the shot.

Photographed Montpellier (in white) verses Chambery (in black) at the American Airlines Arena for the Miami Herald. I had never been to a handball match, and don’t remember ever seeing it one TV but it was really cool. The sport is super fast, which I love, and the players are incredible athletes. They don’t wear any sort of body protection and throw themselves in the air and slam their bodies on the ground all the time. They also basically beat on each other the entire match. I didn’t understand how penalties worked since people were in headlocks and no one seemed to get in trouble. The first photo is one I took before getting pelted in the calf by the ball. The ball is sticky and a little quishy but still stung when thrown with the force these guys have.

My friend Adrienne is a publicist for author Andrea Askowitz and raved about her book My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy and also told me that her partner had recently had a baby. So, I read the book and thought that the story of same-sex partners raising two children who they each gave birth to using the same sperm donor would be an interesting twist on the typical Mother’s Day or even Father’s Day story in the newspaper. Now that Andrea’s partner Victoria has had a baby Andrea says that she feels more like a dad since she was not the one that was pregnant and is now breast-feeding (something she is a little envious of Victoria for).

Tashi, the biological daughter of Andrea, is five years old and does not call Victoria “mommy” yet. She was already three when Victoria came around and she already had a mommy. Sebastian will call both Andrea and Victoria “mommy” and Andrea hopes that Tashi will pick up on it too (she has already told Andrea that she will when Sebastian does). So both partners are mothers but each has a slightly different role in each child’s life.

I think that this is going to be a good project. Both Andrea and Victoria are very open to having me in their home documenting their life. Right now Victoria’s family is in town from Venezuela and don’t want to be photographed so that creates a little bit of a problem because I don’t want to be intrusive and I feel that the grandmother won’t be involved in the same way if I am there and she thinks I am going to put the photo in the newspaper.

The family will be leaving soon though and it will be just the four of them (+ the dog Beast and the nanny Ana) so I think that will be the time when I will really be able to capture their relationship with each other and their children.

Tonight was the first night I met the family so my pictures are not great (the first time you meet people is more of an evaluation of the project I think ) but just by being there and observing I have a better idea of what to look for and hopefully can turn this project into something great. I am really excited because its my first real project in a while and I am also looking forward to integrating audio and possibly video into this project.