The ENTIRE Simmons fam!

When Monica contacted me and asked me to shoot a group of about 25 people at Champp's on Valentine's Day I prepared myself for chaos!  However, the hour I spent with the Simmons family was anything but that.

The shoot was one of the easiest I have ever done.  Everyone listened, knew what photos they wanted and were all smiles for me.  The kids were adorable and well behaved.

Monica and her husband Leo have 11 children between them.  And some of them have children.  This makes for a very, very large family:)  Everyone seemed so happy and excited to be in the company of their brothers and sisters.  They are a beautiful example of family.

Thank you to all of the family for letting me spend a little time with you on Valentine's Day!

Coren Moore Blog

Hello everyone!

Remember Raine & Denver's fall wedding?

My photos have been featured on Coren Moore's blog!  She is an NYC designer who designed the gorgeous bridesmaids dresses for Raine & Denver's wedding.

Check it out!

Amelia Round 2

Remember this little cutie?

Look how big she has gotten!

I was so happy to have another opportunity to shoot beautiful Amelia along with her parents, Steve & Mary Ellen.  They were in Ohio visiting family around Valentine's day (they live in Boston) and wanted some 6 month shots done of Amelia.  The best part is that Steve won one of my facebook contests so they received an hour session absolutely free!

It was so much fun spending the morning with this family.  They are head over heels in love with their baby girl.

Thanks again Steve & Mary Ellen, enjoy your precious girl!

PS- I think Theo has a crush on Amelia.  He is helping me edit and can't stop staring and and cooing at Amelia on the screen:)

 Mary Ellen wanted me to edit out any drool, but I just think it's absolutely adorable in this photo:)

She's a good model!

Paczki | PUNCH-key

Never heard of Paczki? I hadn't either until a Zanesville grocery store started selling it a few years back. My father loves his sweets (I've seen him polish off an apple pie in 24 hours) so of course we tried some of these delicious treats. I've been hooked ever since. See wikipedia for more info.



So here comes another fact about me - I love to cook. It is so rewarding to me to take ingredients which alone are nothing and create something delicious (well most of the time it is). I love trying new recipes and searching through thrift store cookbooks. I'm smitten with Smitten Kitchen - her recipes and pictures are amazing and I love that she is honest about whether or not the end product actually tasted good.

So when I realized Fat Tuesday was coming up I thought to myself I wonder if they sell Paczki in Columbus. I'm sure they do, but instead I got the bright idea that I would just make my own. I scoured the internet for a recipe that didn't include 20 egg yolks (holy heart attack!) or whiskey (don't have any of that just lying around...unforunately! teehee) and finally found one that seemed perfect. I changed a few things that I thought would make it better. The result?

Amazing.



Oh they are light and fluffy and sugary and delicious. Well the second batch was anyhow. Thank goodness I changed the recipe because the way it instructed caused the Paczki to split in half while cooking leaving me with two half cooked halves. Not so pretty but, well, still tasty.

Since I did so much recipe searching, I found the best method of filling is to poke a hole in the side of Paczki after cooking and use a pastry tube to insert the jam (or custard) into the center. I don't have a pastry tube so I innovated with a chopstick and sandwich baggie with a corner cut out of it.

Worked like a charm!

So I won't make you wait any longer for this recipe. It is time consuming but well worth it. And people will think you are AMAZING when you tell them you made it yourself.



Oh and don't use a hand mixer for this. It is worth the extra effort to get the stand mixer down from the top of the refrigerator or else you will fight the hand mixer the entire time and it will win.



Paczki

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 (1/4 ounce) packages dry active yeast
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup soft butter
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 1/2 cups flour
• jam
  
• oil (for frying)
• confectioner's sugar
  

Instructions:

1. Scald milk and allow to cool to lukewarm, add yeast and stir.
2. Beat sugar and butter until fluffy, add eggs, salt, & vanilla.
3. Add flour and yeast-milk mix gradually, beating well.
4. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.
5. Roll out dough, on a floured surface, 3/4 inch thick.
6. Cut out 1 1/2 inch circles.
7. Let rise again for 1-1 1/2 hours until doubled in size.
   
8. Heat oil to 375°F (medium heat).
9. Fry, turning once, to a medium golden brown.
10. Let cool. Poke hole in side (chopsticks work well!) and use pastry bag to fill with jam. Dust with confectioner's sugar & enjoy!
    

My pricing

In a wedding consultation the other day I was asked a question that I had never been asked before, "Why are your prices so much lower than other photographers?"

It caught me off guard, not because I suddenly realized I wasn't charging enough but because the answer to that simple questions is somewhat complex.

I thought about it for a second and told them that mainly I wanted to provide people with quality photographs that don't cost $3,000-$4,000. I know when I got married our wedding budget was $5,000 (It was a gorgeous wedding if I do say so myself...so it can be done!) and a photographer that took up the entire budget was out of the question.

That being said I understand why photographers charge what they do. There is A LOT of time that goes into wedding photography. It's not just 8 hours on the day of the wedding. There are consultations and emails to answer, engagement photos to take and edit and then wedding photos to take and edit. Editing takes up a ton of time.

One of the reasons I can charge less is because I keep my marketing and packaging simple. As much as I would love to spend money on fancy CD cases & cute bags to deliver prints in, I cannot justify charging someone more so I can spend more on fancy schmancy products. I myself would rather spend less and get an ugly plain CD in the mail so that is what I offer my clients. The photos should be the star, not the packaging!

I also buy new equipment sparingly and do not pay for actions (plug-ins for photoshop to make the editing process go faster). I don't attend $200 photography workshops...I just use google and flickr to answer questions I have. Photography can be an expensive business to be in!

Another reason why I charge less is because I don't need to make a lot of money. Ever since my husband and I sold most of our possessions and took a trip around the country (see Who I am or simplyonelife.org) we've learned to live on less. Much less. I don't need fancy things to make me happy which means I don't need a large income to support myself and my family. I hope I don't come off sounding arrogant but that's just how we live. We are very careful when it comes to spending money. We only have one car, one cell phone (hah, I can't believe I admit this:)) and we live in a house that we bought for $10,000 and are rehabbing.

I earn enough to support my family and I think I keep my prices low enough that even those who don't have a huge budget can receive quality photos.

I would love to hear your comments on this philosophy.

new lens + new business cards = happy melissa:)

Snow!

Theo is enjoying his first big snow!

Who I am.

This blogs bores me. Right now it serves it's purpose, I understand that. It's a photo blog designed to showcase the clients that I am so lucky to shoot. But it lacks personality. I want this blog to become a personal space for clients and potential clients to connect with me. So don't be surprised if you start seeing more personal posts along the way.

Anywho, I thought I would start with a few basic posts over the next few days/weeks (I have a baby...things take longer now:)) explaining who I am, why I do this, what it's like to get your photos taken by me, etc. So here goes.

Who am I?

Most basically I am Melissa Pauquette. I've been married to a wonderful man named Brad Pauquette for 4 1/2 years and we have one son Theodore who is 3 1/2 months old.



I grew up outside of Zanesville, Ohio on 10 acres.


child labor?

Perhaps my love of photography started there. In high school I spent weeks scouring ebay looking for the perfect (and cheap) slr (film of course) to display my growing passion for the beauty of the great outdoors. I've inherited my father's love of nature. It amazes me that God created something so beautiful for us to enjoy.

Well, I eventually found a slr that met all of my requirements and began shooting anything and everything. My parents even bought me a brand new Canon Rebel for my 17th birthday, which as you can imagine just made my day.

College came and photography went. I don't know what happened, my interest in taking pictures just dropped. I think part of it was the advancing digital age and my lack of funds for a $800 camera and the other part was meeting Brad at Ohio University and having a little too much fun drinking root beer:)


my, my we were young:)

So how in the world did I get to be be a professional photographer in Columbus, Ohio? No I did not go to school for photography...or even art for that matter. Well Ok, I spent one quarter as an art therapy major at a college in Erie Pennsylvania but, well, that's another story.

Brad and I got married halfway through our college career. Yes we were young and yes we were in love. And we're still in love.



So there.

I finished up one more year at Ohio University and decided I had had enough. Athens bored us and we felt left out. We were finished with the crazy college scene and craved a more "normal" married life. So one night I had a fantastic idea. I would transfer to Ohio State!

Yay! I was accepted. I finished my sociology degree at OSU and unsuccessfully tried to find a job. Sociology is an interesting major but not so great when it comes to making it a career. I worked as the manager of a coffee shop in the OSU med center for about half a year before my husband and I sold all our possessions, bought a pink campervan and jetted off to see the United States and find a new way of life.

Back up. You did what?



Yea, it was crazy, but critical to my life as it is now. If you want to know more about this you can read hundreds of blog entries at simplyonelife.org.

Short story: Brad and I were unsatisfied with our material driven lives and passionate about Jesus and felt that we must do what Jesus commanded of us: Sell your possessions and give to the poor.

Oh we had quite the time. For 6 months we traveled south and then west and then north and then back east. I took photo upon photo upon photo (Brad had surprised me with a digital SLR for my 22nd birthday a few months earlier:)). We met wonderful people, learned many many wonderful lessons and learned to live with only the things that fit in the back of a Chevy Cavalier (the campervan broke down 2 weeks into the trip- read about that mess here and here).

We lived in Seattle for a month in a house with 3 other roommates - a Mexican gangsta, an alcoholic baby daddy and a 40 some year old dude who worked in Seattle in the summer and traveled in Thailand the rest of the year.



This is where we felt called to buy a house in the ghetto of Columbus and essentially be a good neighbor to those around us. You can read all about this here.

This is also around the same time that a girl who I went to high school with saw my pictures from our travels and contacted me about being her wedding photographer. I fought this and fought this but eventually Brad helped me realize that I wanted to be a photographer. I didn't want to work some crappy job making someone else rich. I wanted to make a meager living being a photographer so I could spend the majority of my time helping others. So I said yes to her and actually ended up shooting 3 weddings before I got to hers.

I've fallen in love with being a photographer.

Last March Brad and I bought this beauty for $10,000. It had no electricity or plumbing. We spent months getting it up to code and moved in sometime mid-June. We take the renovations one room/ project at a time. We now have a bedroom and baby room fully completed, a kitchen and dining room 50% completed, and a bathroom that is usable (that's the next project, yay!). We don't talk about the rest of the house:) Someday, oh someday, there will be a spot for our offices and even my own studio!

It's not in the best neighborhood but we love it. We have the most diverse group of neighbors and we are working on making friends and becoming part of the Woodland Park community. It's not a luxurious lifestyle but it is one Jesus is calling us to, although we aren't quite sure what that means yet:)

This past October I gave birth to our beautiful baby boy, Theo and our lives have been forever changed. He is our joy and gives us greater of appreciation for everything and everyone around us. We are learning how to be parents and also how to live on less sleep:)



I am now in the process of booking weddings for this summer. By the grace of God I have already booked 9 (holy cow, that seems like a lot to me!) and I've still got more consultations to attend and clients to meet:) I am looking forward to meeting new families for portraits and revisiting past clients for pictures of their growing children. I can't wait for a whole new batch of seniors to photograph. I really feel like God has given me this talent and I am trying to use it to the best of my ability. I thank you all so much for your support and compliments and your trust when using me as your photographer. I would not be here without you.

So that, my friends, is why I am here.