Every 2 year there is Pho­tok­ina in Cologne, Ger­many. So I meet Carl Ryt­ter­falk only every 2 years. We always try to meet in between but some­how we never man­aged. And this year it looked like we would not be able to meet at all. Carl was not plan­ning to go to Pho­tok­ina and we only man­aged to squeeze in a one day visit in our busy sched­ule. But in a last minute action he still decided to come over for Pho­tok­ina and we invited him to stay the night here. The visit was of course way too short. But it was a very nice even­ing and break­fast. Hope­fully we can per­suade Carl and Linn to come over for one of the work­shops we are plan­ning (didn’t I tell you that yet? well, more about that later). Because pho­tok­ina 2010 is way too far off!

This is a little trib­ute to you my dear. We are work­ing and work­ing and work­ing and I’m amazed about how much you can do. The stu­dio is com­ing together now very fast. From where you get the energy I really don’t know. But the res­ults are there, the open­ing not too far off now. Hope­fully after that we will have a little bit more time for us two again. Not just work­ing together but also hav­ing fun. Just want to let the world know how great you are! I love you and I miss you! Please click on the photo to see a tired but still beau­ti­ful Olga in action.

Or also called an update on the stu­dio. When we have a few hours left in the week that we are not work­ing for our lovely cli­ents, we don’t just sit back and relax. Because we want to fin­ish the stu­dio as soon as pos­sible. Not easy when we also have to do some work to earn our liv­ing. But we are very grate­ful that there are people who are will­ing to help us. Like Eike, he recently spent a big part of his free sat­urday to help us put the floor into the office part. Ok we need to paint a little there too but it already looks tons bet­ter. So hope­fully we can move the office part there in a week or so. And then we will make the pho­tostu­dio ready!

Tak­ing a wed­ding assign­ment doesn’t mean come-shoot-and-go for us. We are writ­ing a story of THE day with our pic­tures. But that’s not all. Along with the story pho­to­book we often make “Thank you” card in the same style and spirit as the book. Yes­ter­day we received such card from the printer com­pany. A slim and eleg­ant card with match­ing envel­ope with silk paper inside.

Well that means this pic­ture was not taken by us. But it is of us. We had an incred­ibly busy but excit­ing week­end. We were very cre­at­ive dur­ing the night mak­ing a new show for Olga’s show­group. Olga did an extra train­ing with her form­a­tion­group on sat­urday. We hos­ted a very nice din­ner on sat­urday, the cook­ing was a lot of fun. And on sunday, after a ‘nor­mal’ day full of train­ing and teach­ing we took can­did por­traits at the party in the dance school. At a cer­tain point I grabbed one of Olga’s stu­dents to take a pic­ture of us. He did a good job! So there you have it… this is us

Another dress was ready and sent yes­ter­day. This time it was a very simple and eleg­ant one with accents on accessor­ies. I am impa­tiently wait­ing for my customer’s response. It is some sort of “blind date” as the girl lives quite far away, in Zurich. She was here only once for the first fit­ting when the dress was look­ing, well, not really a dress yet. Of course we dis­cussed the design and dec­or­a­tion in advance but it is still a big sur­prise for her how the ready dress looks like in real life and not on the paper.

I was really under time pres­sure and had no time even for details shots. Bob was very kind doing it as well as tak­ing the shots of the com­plete dress.

Today I’ve got a chance to hold in my arms another baby which was gone. Yes, it was another dress made by me, fin­ished a few months ago. The happy, sunny, play­ful dress which was made for a very nice green-eyed girl. I got inspired by impres­sion­ists’ aquarelles. I wanted to cre­ate a very light and joy­ful dress with some sum­mer feel­ing. It was such a rush at the time that I didn’t have the time to take any pic­tures. The last stitches were made when the cus­tomer arrived to pick up the dress.

Some­times I need to make some adjust­ments to the dress. Like in this case the skirt “grew” a little bit so I had to take a few cen­ti­meters off. Of course we would not want to miss this second chance to take a few shots in our still to-be-ready stu­dio. I was dead tired because of another dress that had to be fin­ished today too. So I only man­aged pla­cing the dress and hold­ing the reflector. All shots were taken by Bob. Avail­able light, no stu­dio light­ing, SD14 and his beloved 30 EX.

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can sore
I see me run­nin through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly

(I believe I can fly — R. Kelly)