Did I mention I love SG Studio days?  So I’m excited to announce that SG Studio March 12 & 13 will be our Spring studio dates.  If you are interested in spring pictures for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter – you name it…NOWS THE TIME!  Give me a call to book your session: 925-586-7145.  You’ll come to our place in Concord and we’ll have  a great time!

This time I have a new bench that is super cute (and photographs really well!!!) as well as some fun little fairytale enhancements to play with.  You won’t want to miss this!

Sara

I love them.  The people, and the pictures.

Enjoy!
Sara

• You get a 13 page PDF as an instant download.

• There are twelve “cards” within the kit.  The first two are overview & technical info.  Each of the following 10 cards contain:
  • a sample image
  • lighting conditions
  • camera settings
  • my thinking about  how to set up and execute the picture.

• The pictures I used are pictures I’ve taken of my children in a very real environment.  No extra lights, no intense photoshopping afterwards.  I was working around laundry baskets, nap times, school schedules, and every thing else that seems to get in the way of good pictures.  These are real pictures.

• These cards are designed to let you into my thoughts when I am taking pictures.  You’ll find some of them focus on technique, some of them focus on what I think works best with kids, and some of it focuses on how to be present in the moment.  They all focus on designing and executing a strong image.

Currently, I have two sets available for purchase:

1. Guitar Hero – Images of my children creating & playing with cardboard guitars that we made at home.
2. Trim the Tree – Images of my children decorating the Christmas tree at grandma’s house.

Here’s a sample of one from the Guitar Hero set:

And here’s a sample from Trim The Tree:

Aren’t they cool?

You can purchase one set for $20 or both for $35.  Once you’ve made your purchase, It’s an immediate download.  Then you can view them on your computer monitor and/or print them as you choose.

You can buy them here! Just click the “add to cart” for the one you’d like to select first. Once the pop-up appears, you can click “continue shopping” to add the other one to your cart.

Photo Breakdown Set #1: Guitar Hero:

Photo Breakdown Set #2: Trim The Tree:

I want to empower you to take amazing images of your family!  I made these cards to support you in doing just that. Once again, I’m thankful for you all and the opportunity to take pictures.  Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend!

Sara

Here’s the front:

And the back:

We are super excited!  If you know anyone getting married…would you give them our info?  We’d love to chat with them

Sara

We are back from the adventure of our kids’ lifetimes to SoCal and back.  We had an amazing time, took too many pictures, and really enjoyed seeing friends, family, and spending time together.  We have so much to share and will be blogging it all soon!  Are you my friend on Facebook or are you following me on Twitter?  Why not?!  Sara is working on getting her Facebook life up and running, but we updated tons of mobile pics from our trip via Facebook on my iPhone – it was really cool to share those pics with family and friends.  I’d love to be your friend! Just search for me – Chris Goetz!  You can look up Sara, too, and add her!  On Twitter I am goetzchris and Sara is saragoetz.

First order of business, though, is to unfortunately share that we’re having difficulty with our website – so, in the meantime, visit our blog or send folks here in lieu of sending them to saragoetzphotography.com if you’re blessing us with referrals!  Nothing like coming back from vacation to surprises, eh?

So – stay tuned as we get unpacked and up and running again and thanks for your patience!

Chris

UPDATE: Our webhosting company has restored our site!  Yay!  Resume normal viewing and referring.

I think it’s hard to know about mothering because being a mother is about so much more than the duties of running a home – whether you work outside or strictly inside of it.  It’s so much easier to measure being a good housewife.  It’s much harder to measure being a good mother.  Being a mother is about the intangible things – and because of that, it’s really hard to know if you are making the grade.I would say that being a mother is about creating a safe place for your children to run to when they are scared.  It’s about teaching them that they are loved unconditionally.  It’s about fostering laughter and joy – even if the living room doesn’t get dusted again this week.  It’s about playing with the hose, even if everything gets full of mud, it’s about tomato gardens and planting sunflower seeds, and it’s about princess tea parties.  It’s about setting good boundaries and holding them accountable to high expectations.

The only way I’ve found to measure those things is through pictures.  When I’m frustrated or lacking confidence, I take out my camera and snap a few frames of the kids.  That way, I have something to look at, something I can use to step back and see the my children for who they are.  I end up with evidence that I am doing a good job.

This year, I compiled some of my favorite mother-child images to share with you and made it into a slideshow.  It makes me cry   and they aren’t even images of my children!!!  If you’re an RSS subscriber, you may need to go to our blog to see the show.

I bet that you could use some updated images with your little (or not so little) ones.  I’d love to set up a session to capture you with them.  Consider it an opportunity to acquire some tangible evidence that you are doing a great job.  Call me and book a session before June 14 and receive an additional $50 print credit with the package your choose!!!  Please forward this blog post to any other mommy who could use a little tangible evidence of her amazing-ness.  I’d also love to give anyone who refers a friend that books by June 14th a $50 print credit, too – either for prints from a previous session or a future one.

So don’t worry about the laundry.  It will be there Monday I promise (it will even be there on Tuesday…)!!!   Listen for laughter and enjoy those kiddos! (if you don’t see a “slideshow window”...click here to play!)

Happy Mother’s Day,

Sara

Chris here.  You all know me as “tech support” most recently, but believe it or not, I do have a lot to do with things around here.  Well, I can say that because Sara is out of town right now and she won’t read this ’till she’s well rested and back!! I do find my way behind the camera whenever I can *pry* it out of Sara’s hands, and I just realized as I’m typing this that I have some pictures to share with you from a recent session that *I* did!  Yay!  I’ll try to get those up on the blog tomorrow.  Ah-hem…sorry, got distracted. Read on….

Seriously, Sara wanted me to post that she’s currently in The Sea Ranch with her Mom and our kids, so if you need to get a hold of her, the best thing to do would be to email because there’s no cell service.  The only catch is that there is no email access up there either, so just know that I’ll be reading and answering all of the email over the next few days.  We really don’t have any secrets around here so it’s all good anyway!

When this week was approaching I have to be honest – I thought I was looking forward to it!  Don’t get me wrong – I love my family dearly.  But the thought of a few days of peace and quiet?  Well, that thought never crosses my mind because it just doesn’t happen!  And in this case, it doesn’t happen either – I have a crazy work schedule this week.  That explains why Sara boogied on out of town.  Anyway, this afternoon after they left I went to meet up with a friend at Pyramid Brewery in Walnut Creek. That place is cool!  Lots o different types of beers and great appetizers.  I seriously have been trying to eat more healthily lately (summer is coming, after all) and I just fell completely off  the wagon today.  How can you pass up calamri, onion strings, and buffalo wings?  I couldn’t.  Thank goodness tomorrow is Monday.  <did I just say that?!>

As I was saying, when this week was approaching I thought I was looking forward to it…but I have to say that it is WEIRD around here!!  Quiet, yes….but lonely!  I miss everyone so much and it’s only been a few hours.  I guess work is a blessing because I’ll be distracted all day and won’t have to think about how I miss my Lucy girl, Luker, and my wonderful wife.  I tidied up the house and now I’m blogging…but it’s quiet.  Oh yes, and I shan’t (that’s shall + not) say that I “cleaned.”  Cleaning, according to Sara, involves rubber gloves and Pine Sol.  Lots of it.  So much you need a mask.  You think I’m kidding?  I’m not.  And I didn’t go there tonight.  I just put all the toys back in their bins and loaded the dishwasher.  Do I get points for that?  I even made the bed!

If you’re still reading, Sara also wanted me to tell you all that when she gets back she’ll have some cool stuff to post!  YAY!  I’ve seen some of it, and I can attest – it is cool.  So be excited.

In the meantime, I’ll try to keep everyone entertained with my musings and updates. Post up a comment!  Don’t be shy.

Here’s to a great start to a new week,

Chris

We’ve been having some technical difficulties with our new site…I’ve called tech support (aka: Chris) and he’s gonna get to it right after he finishes his full time job. (Priorities!!! ). Hang in their with us….sorry for the complication!

Sara