4:40 am. I am wide awake.
So I quietly slipped out of bed and made some coffee and now here I sit. Wide awake with you. And thinking about this past year and this new year.
It is cold and dark outside. I have a little heater in my office studio. I am wearing a sweater with a fake fur collar that is like a coat.
But there was a day last summer that was really glorious and the sun was shining. I was on the farm outside my cottage studio. I was with an amazing photographer, some white wine, music, cheese and bits of watermelon.
This was a birthday present to myself 6 months later. A photo shoot to update my pictures for my website. I wanted to be seen exactly as I was at 50. And by June, I had felt I had arrived at this sweet place both in spirit and in body. I wanted to capture that feeling.
What fun! Brae Howard is tall and lovely and as her long legs followed me around the farm, she reminded me of a graceful gazelle behind her lenses.
I had considered my family come at the end and having a few portraits done of all of us. But I decided I just wanted these few hours to be mine. And I am so glad I did. It felt decadent and really good to just think about myself for a few hours. And appreciate where I was and who I was at that moment.
The shoot lasted about an hour as the sun was going down on the farm. Just me, Brae, natural light and a few costume changes.
I love how I can wake up way too early on a cold February morning and still feel the sun on my shoulders from that day. I was so at ease and completely myself. And she saw me.
Then we just sat outside my studio and talked over a glass of wine under a tree that was a few hundred years old.
As old as us. We are both two old souls. Intuitive.
Now it is time to get my girl up for school, make breakfast, tackle a to-do list...
But I love thinking that something may happen today that will wash over me in June and comfort me on a morning that starts sooner than expected.
-xoxo
ps. There are lots of really good things going on in my studio these days. Projects, commissions, shows, new products...I will be back soon to share. Today it just felt really good to go back to the farm to that sweet day in June and remember.