Pregnancy Photo Shoot: Nicole and The Bump

Memories...This little photo shoot was done just a month or so before my dearest friend Nicole had her first baby. It's true what they say, she really was glowing. I definitely have a fascination with how beautiful the baby bump looks on women. Hopefully I'll be luck enough to shoot her again, should the need arise ^.-

Taking these shots was so easy in some ways and so hard in others. Easy because Nikki is almost always so picture perfect, it's hard to take a bad shot of someone who smiles so genuinely. But super hard because I was stressed out she wouldn't like how she looked in the photos. Even if I thought she looked fabulous in a certain pose, it can be hard to convince pregnant women of that fact. Sometimes all we see is all that extra weight, right ladies?!



But I stand by my choice of shots. I wish I hadn't made her get up and down and walk all over the complex as much I did. I think she's forgiven me.

This is my favorite shot. Click here to go to the full album. New growth, new baby, new beginnings.


with love- M

IFTTT: So many possiblities

Old hat to some, looks like Latin to others. IFTTT. If This, Then That. Such a basic concept but so important!

I remember taking my first logic class and having my mind blown every time my teacher walked us through an especially difficult equation. Maybe I'm not the logic master she hoped I'd grow to be but I sure do appreciate the impact it can have on absolutely everything. Case and point is this wonderful project, IFTTT.

Basically, there's a trigger (if this) and an action (then that). How about a real world example. If I drop a ball from my hand, it will hit the ground and create a sound (and then bounce all over the place and make my dog go nuts). In our online universe of websites, all separate and unique, this can become a similar equation. I can tell my blog to post to google+ in it's settings menu so it knows 'if a post is published, then send a blurb to her google+ page about'. Genius, right?! But what about facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr, and the rest of the social network sites out there?

After a short while, I suppose folks started to realize how irritating and time consuming it is to manually post to all these different avenues of social-ness and a revolution happened! Well not really, but some smart people in San Francisco decided to create an easy to use website with equations that anyone could create and use (yes, still talking about IFTTT). They call these equations 'recipes'. Makes it easier to swallow for those of us who loathe math. Anyone can make a recipe from any of the many 'ingredients' or pieces of data (like a post url).

But the fun doesn't stop with social networking! It can use data from emails, calendars, news sites, and just about anything else with text. It's quite inspiring for me. A permanent addition to my web arsenal.

with love- M 

Blog Switch: Leaving Wordpress

And back to Blogger! I started messing around with Blogger when it first came forth years ago but at the time, Wordpress was way more appetizing. Now the tables have turned and I find myself using more and more 'google stuff'. Looking forward to some quality time here on my blogspot.

A quick update on some different compartments in my life.

1. New house in April. Very exciting but very stressful. Had to say goodbye to a beloved freelance gig because of the move.
2. Got to experience a bunch of cool (and very different) freelance gigs in Philadelphia and Wilmington since then.

And here I am trying to keep up.

Some fun illustration stuff to keep the blogging hounds at bay.