Portrait session with Wendy

The ultimate chocolate

A couple of weeks ago I had the most wonderful day at my studio with Pamela Gillies photographing her raw and vegan snacks. When I tried a little piece of her chocolate and let it melt on my tongue I was convinced. I can not remember to have had such an intense experience with chocolate.

A little later we did this photo shoot together to create images for her new website Vivir - Living Foods for living people. It was such a pleasure and so inspiring to bring these creations and ingredients in a form that still give an idea of how they were crafted and that evoke the desire to touch and to taste them.

What I especially like about them is how they are presented: In irregular shapes, broken from the big bar. Wabi Sabi meets french elegance!!

Walnuts with a coating of spicy banana cinnamon glaze.

Spicy flax seed crackers: O M G !

My favorites: Green Chips - Kale leaves dehydrated with "cheese" sauce made from walnuts. They melt on the tongue..

Pamela, vibrant and beautiful as her foods.

You can order her snacks from the shop on her Vivir website

Beautiful Stores: Crackerjack

Some months ago I photographed Kathleen Koch as part of a story in SeattleWoman Magazine about women owned stores in the Wallingford center. Kathleen owns the store "Crackerjack Crafts", a treasure-box full of handmade jewelry, clothing, pottery and other handicraft.



I came to photograph Kathleen, but I could not resist to explore the store, to peek in the glass cases with all the lovingly arranged pieces. Especially the work of one designer caught my attention. Beautiful filigree earrings, presented in a way that adds magic.

The designers name is Cecelia Otto, and as I found out last week, she will be at the store during Artwalk on Wednesday August 5th from 6pm to 8pm.

Isn't this beautiful..

And here an elegant lady who demands admiration...

A miniature pitcher..

Beautiful things to dream of...

The Seattle Storm owners..

These four courageous women we have to thank that Seattle has again it's own women basketball team. You can read all about it in the June issue of SeattleWoman Magazine.

From left: Dawn Trudeau, Ginny Gilder, Lisa Brummel and Anne Levinson.

The game season is until the end of September. Check it out at the Storm website!

Women's Empowerment Summit

This weekend I am documenting the Women's Empowerment Summit at the beautiful W Hotel in downtown Seattle.

Bettina Carey, the "Business Matchmaker" and founder of "Women in Small Biz", is bringing together "powerful and inspiring women" to learn from each other , to network and to have fun.

The gala this evening was quite an event. Many wonderful women were honored. It was electrifying and energizing, with singing and dancing and many wise words that came from the heart.

Saturday has an interesting program too with many breakout sessions and a lunch with latin icon Maria Marin

Many of my photos were used in the invitation, website and brochure.

It's a lot of fun to photograph these beautiful women in this atmosphere of openness, mutual respect and empowerment.

More to come...

Atieno Kombe - Africa Mama

Yesterday I had a beautiful afternoon at Atieno Kombe's store Africa Mama in Bothell. She had invited to a Customer Appreciation Party with live music by Guillaume Mpacko . Great music and a wonderful atmospere! Lot's of fun dancing. (Some images of the party will come in a few days).

Atieno Kombe is the first woman I photographed for SeattleWoman Magazine four years ago.

She left a deep impression in me when I met her the first time, as I am sure she leaves with everybody who meets her.  There is a light around her, a beauty that comes deep  from inside. You can feel her strong presence watching her interacting with the people around her. Graceful, full of attention for the other person and full of joy. 

Here you can see her with her stepson.
Atieno grew up in Kenya. She devoted herself to work for the children who are left behind as orphans from the aids epidemic. She is the president of "Urgent Africa", a non governmental organization "committed to creating programs that build sustainable solutions for communities that have been gravely affected by aids."

I feel there is much to learn from her. Faced with the pain of the on-going nightmare of aids in Sub-Saharan Africa and the 16 million orphans "sadness and mourning is a normal part of each day", as she says.  But you don't see any anger, blame or cynicism consuming her. She uses her sadness as strength to help children to live.

Atieno is closing her store Africa Mama in Bothell on this Tuesday. There is still a chance to visit. 

Happy New (rest of the )Year

Spring is nearly in the air, but you never know, it might snow again. And  for good wishes it's never too late, I think. So here is a view of our garden and with it I am sending all my best wishes to everybody for this year, that still feels new. This year with all it's challenges, but also with it's promises of something new and wonderful.

I am grateful for everybody that crossed my way in the last year, for people I met new, and for the ones I met again. And for the times when clients became friends.

My friend Debra Gunn gave me a beautiful book as a gift. "The Wishing Year - A House, a man, a soul" by Noelle Oxenhaendler. It was my "New Year Holiday Book", the luxury I allow myself once a year, to read a book in one piece.

The author embarks on a one year "experiment in desire",  looking at all the wishing theories and ideas that are out there with a critical eye,  trying some out for herself, in-spite her own doubts.

The conclusion she comes to ".. she is amazed that there is indeed, both power and danger in the act of wishing."

This year, which for me began on the 20th of January, started out with a lot of wishing. I hope for us all that we keep our wishes and hopes alive and don't choose cynicism, when they don't immediately come true.

Warmly,

Ingrid

Debrena Jackson Gandy - All the Joy You Can Stand

Debrena Jackson Gandy is a business consultant and success coach. She truly embodies what the title of her book says: All the joy you can stand. 

I photographed her during the Women in Small Biz Expo some weeks ago. It was fascinating to watch her speaking. There was so much beauty in expressing her mission:  " To empower others to create the life they desire and deserve."

You can hear - and see - her speaking tomorrow morning at 7am at the WBE breakfast at Washington Athletic Club.

Two amazing women: Big Hug with Bettina Carey, the founder of Women in Small Biz

FRIPP and FRIPP - The quality of our attention

On Saturday I attended an event with Patricia Fripp and Robert Fripp at Microsoft in Redmond. "How to be an Hero on and off the Platform, from Beginner to Mastery in Business, Performance and Life"

I nearly did not go, but thanks to my friend Jaxie Binder, the co producer of Tuning The Air, who helped organizing the day, I did. I am so glad and grateful that I did.

Patricia Fripp is a well known speaker and executive speaking coach. Energetic, funny, on the point and very present. She literally jumps in front of you with open arms, waking you up..  Her brother Robert Fripp, the legendary guitarist and founding member of King Crimson, has a different kind of presence: modest and preferring to be in the background, but extremely sharp in analyzing complex connections and bringing them down - or up - to basic (and wise) principles. With that there is a wicked sense of humor and a very generous spirit. You can see it in the twinkle in his eyes..

I met Robert Fripp for the first time in 1992 - I was still living in Berlin in Germany - when I attended my first Guitar Craft course in Texas. I did not know too much about King Crimson or Robert Fripp at that time, did not consider myself a "Fan" or having any musical ability, but suddenly I was sitting in an airplane to Austin, Texas with my newly acquired guitar, following an inner voice that this was the absolutely right thing to do and a question of life and death.

And it was the right thing. I did not become a musician - I gave up the guitar some month after that- but I got very involved in Guitar Craft projects in Germany and in America as well as in Seattle after I moved here 11 years ago. I also met my husband Frank on the first course. He was teaching the Alexander Technique for many years on these workshops in Europe, North and South America.

What does this all have to do with Photography? I believe that my experiences on these courses, many of them in a two hundred year old farmhouse in Grossderschau, a small village in former Eastern Germany, helped shape a certain sense of attention. Attention and openness for moments of sheer beauty, often connected with silence. Sometimes painful "lessons", stripping away the clutter in my head and the self perception and deception.

I believe it had an influence on my photography, on who I am in the act of photographing people. I feel I can "see" better because of that, the other person I photograph and myself. What I am aspiring to - to allow the truth and the beauty of the other person come through - became a little bit more available, by not getting into my own way all the time.

In Robert's talk on Saturday there were so many beautiful and eye opening things that hit me in the mark and that I can apply to my work as a photographer. It is still settling in in me and will be material for the next weeks to work with. The sentence that is there with me all the time like a subtle bell and sometimes like a rambling alarm clock is:

"The only thing we have in life is the quality of our attention"

---------–

The event in Seattle is over, the next one will be in Phoenix, but there are cd's available and more information on Patricia Fripp's website.

A funny description of Guitar Craft by Patricia.

Some clips on Youtube.

Tuning The Air, a project by some Guitar Craft people in Seattle, worthwhile checking out their weekly performances.

Mary

Mary gave herself the present of a photo shoot for her birthday, to celebrate herself a little bit. She looks so beautiful and there is something special about her eyes.

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Ezra at 10 (nearly 11)

With Ezra and Deborah at Sandpoint Park. It was raining a little, but that did not take away the fun. The light was beautiful and the sprinkles in the air too. I photographed Ezra before. We did a shoot when he was eight and three. It's so interesting to see a baby become a boy and then (nearly) a teenager.









This one was Ezra's idea!