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Oh how I love our Milestone Portraits! Little Owen was the most precious subject at just four weeks old! I love his little toes, how he is looking right into his mother's eyes and the comparison of his little foot to dad's hand. I can't wait until his next portrait session which we will do around four months. Andrea and Keith will look back at these photos and marvel at how tiny he was!

I love this family! I have been photographing them on Nantucket for years and they are always so natural, so fun, so adorable, so real. It's a pleasure going out with them for our annual shoot. This year I asked them if they'd be up for something different and being the wonderful people that they are, they said, of course! So we met at Old South Wharf and made a trip around the wharf stopping to shoot. Are these kids adorable or what? Thank you so much.

PS. I have been so busy this summer that I have to apologize for neglecting this blog! Please forgive me. I promise to catch up soon. I guess busy is good! More soon!

This slideshow is one part of the culmination of the year's work by little Nantucket ballerinas and the wonderful Ms. Jackie. While I was photographing the rehearsals of this performance I was struck by the dedication, patience and efforts put in by the girls. With a reverence toward Ms. Jackie they worked so hard to get the steps right. They were very serious while still having fun doing it. This slideshow is available on DVD to play on your computer for $30. Click here for more details. And thank you to the wonderful Maura Moore for producing it.

Fetching is a Boston-based personal shopping and styling firm founded by Kerry Waterman who happens to be a bride-to-be (guess who's shooting her wedding this October?) with a very discerning eye for style. Kerry called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I'd come up to Boston to photograph her out and about on Newbury Street so that she had some material for her new website. Well, that was a very cool assignment for me, so after waiting for an agreeable weather forecast, I grabbed a puddle-jumper over and met Kerry for an afternoon of shopping. (She actually turned me on to some very cool and comfortable shoes to wear for working weddings). I think a personal shopper/stylist is in order!

The six month mark is certainly a milestone: not quite sitting up, but so aware and adorable! This is our third session together: maternity, newborn and now six months. It so wonderful to have your baby documented this way because as you may know already you can't go backwards and do it again! I've certainly learned that with my kids and though I'm kind of like the shoeless cobbler, I try to capture my children's fleeting childhood while I can.

Maresa and Derek are getting married on Nantucket this coming Labor Day weekend and I am their photographer thanks to the Audra and Tripp connection. I had met with Maresa and Derek in Boston earlier this year and we decided to do an engagement session on Nantucket this spring. They are a wonderful and beautiful couple (as illustrated above) and were very easy to work with as we made our way around the village of Siasconset on Nantucket's east end. I think it's a great idea to work together before the wedding so that we can get to know each other a little and it enables them to see the process of not only the shooting of the photographs, but the way to view them and order them. It also gives the couple a less formal portrait which is great to have in their new home or to give to parents and friends or to use for the "Save the Date" card.

I love my "job"!

Sam was born with craniosynostosis, the premature closure of suture lines in the skull. He had surgery to correct his condition when he was 9 months old. Often, kids with craniosynostosis have issues with their eyes and Sam had eye muscle surgery at 14 months because he was not seeing binocularly. His new specs help to strengthen his eyes. His mom says, "Phew! I think we're almost at the end of this long road and have such a healthy and happy little boy!"

We are blessed here at our studio to have photographed Sam since he was in utero and throughout the milestones of his young life. He is Mr. Sweetie Pie to me and one of the most endearing kids I've ever had the pleasure to photograph. Thanks Megan and Bert for sharing your story and having us chronicle your son's many milestones.

I just love kids! I also love our new little CKP "stamp" designed by dear friend Melissa Murphy. This stamp is to brand our photographs and also to inhibit people from using them straight off our web site which is actually copyright infringement.

My daughter's kindergarten class, with the help of earnest fifth graders and yours truly, held a studio portrait session during TV Turn Off Week at Nantucket Elementary School last week. We are talking wild! I brought in the above shown soft box which the kids all wanted to crawl into until they realized it was a very important and very giant flash in which my Nikon SB900 resided. As you can also see from the top picture Angelina is using the Nikon remote wireless system to fire said flash unit while the apprehensive Claudia presides. The camera I brought in was Nikon's D90 which Nikon so graciously has loaned me for these purposes and for my upcoming basic digital photography class and when I can get it out of my teenage son's hands then we are good to go. The kids took all these shots and did an amazing job of focusing and the other day I brought them the jpegs shot straight out of the camera (which where gorgeous, btw) and we edited them and made a little slideshow to Bye Bye Baby by the Baycity Rollers. That was just for class because of course we use all licensed music for our slideshows.

After the class we were asked to return to hold a mini workshop for TV Turn Off Week, so between the student vs. faculty basketball game and the icecream social we got some very energetic upper classmen's photography. Go here to see more!

Jodi, Claire's mom, has had her family portrait shot by us every summer since her eldest JT was born, but after seeing the studio series of the children's portraits from this winter she wanted to have Claire photographed in the studio as well. Jodi is an amazing cake baker and creates many of the cakes for my weddings and also for my family's birthdays and it's fun to see her kids grow up. Jodi is also going to take my upcoming photography class here on Nantucket and learn how to photograph her kids and her cakes on a regular basis. Check out her website to see her awesome cakes: Jodi's Cakes.

Before Jodi came in I had the pleasure of photographing Mandy McCleave of The Calming Room for her business headshot which I will let her show you on her website when it debuts. She is also a wonderful addition to any Nantucket Wedding with her knack for makeup to bring out anyone's strongest features. Check out her website as well: The Calming Room.

PS. Did I mention that I love my job which is not really a job, but a passion and a wonderful life?

Evan is one lucky little guy to have two doting sisters and it shows in these photographs. Just a month ago I photographed him in his mom's tummy and now he's here! These were taken in their Nantucket home the other day.

The personality of a child shines through in a portrait sitting. Or it should! It is fascinating to me to watch the child's comfort level grow during one of my portraits. Yes, this is Sonia who feels very comfortable and bordering silly in front of a camera, but working with her I was able to really achieve my goal: to freeze this stage in her childhood so that I can look back in the years to come and remember my Sonia at this tender and sweet age of five.

I love this project and can't wait to see the photos all together set to music. Nantucket Community School's ballet program with Ms. Jacki is such an enriching experience for our young ladies. After photographing over 90 ballerinas I am blown away by the girls' dedication and motivation and by Ms. Jacki's endless energy.

My photography class is just about full. Imagine that! After putting it up on Facebook the class was 90% full in just 24 hours. I love Facebook and its networking capabilities. Plus it's fun!

The more I work on these portraits the more ideas I have for future shoots in my studio. I'm so glad that I took on this challenge to do something new in my field. Where I can see some lighting flaws and room to improve I also feel my confidence build up and really enjoy seeing the different personalities come out. My goal was to capture the essence of each child's stage in his or her childhood: a missing tooth, a favorite bathing suit or dress, siblings and more. When Nantucket beach portraits are too chilly to consider then Nantucket studio portraits are the next best thing!

Photographing a Milestone session is always a highlight of my day. Here is little Annabelle for the third session: once in Mom's tummy, once as a newborn and now as a 4 month old cutie. This is such a great way to document the first year and I love seeing the babies grow and change which they do so quickly! This is a great group baby shower gift. Please call for more information.

What a wonderful experience working with Nantucket families in my own studio. Can you tell who are siblings here? Thanks again to all my wonderful island families who allowed me to photograph your kids for these wonderful portraits.

Newborn portraits are so special and magical for me. It is really a witness to the newness of life and the parents' love for their new little baby. I photographed Johnna while she was pregnant so that makes it extra special for me to see the baby finally here.

Wow, I'm tired! I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning shooting 33 portraits in my studio and that was before I went off to shoot a wedding this afternoon. This project has been so much fun. Here are a few of the portraits and there will be more to come. If your child is not here yet please be assured that the photographs all were great, but I need a little more time to get them up.

Thank you to all the families that came in and I wanted to let you know that these are straight out of the camera and not worked on yet. I appreciate all your efforts and your wonderfully spirited kids!

This weekend I will be photographing 18 Nantucket families with a total of 34 children in my studio as a way to hone my studio lighting skills. My two girls were my first models today as I prepare my studio and work on lighting as a way to challenge myself with something new. The lighting on Anjali (top) is a little flat and low and so I moved the lights a little to make this one of Sonia more modeled looking and less flat. I also added a light to the seamless on Sonia's shot to pop the white. These photographs were taken with one SB900 in a 30x40 softbox off to right side and about three feet from the subject, one SB800 on a floor stand behind the subject and pointing to the white seamless and one SB800 on the left of the model pointed at a reflector on the floor. All of these Speedlights were powered by my Nikon wireless commander for a complete wireless system.

More coming soon as my models file in tomorrow and Saturday. (I have a wedding on Saturday too! Yikes!)

It's not everyday that a photographer is invited to speak at MGM Grand in Las Vegas and so it was very important to me to showcase my wedding and portrait work in the best way possible. Here is the result of many years of portraiture on Nantucket and in Boston and the hard work by producer Maura Kate Moore. Thank you to all my many clients whose weddings I have shot and whose children I have watched grow up. I am passionate about my work and seeing it all come together like this makes me feel so blessed that I can pay my bills doing what I love: photography and creating memories for so many families.

I recently received this note from the co-founder of Triple Scoop Music who upon seeing this piece wrote, "My partner Roy just shared your slideshow featuring our artist Nancy Farkow's song "I Wish You Love". I have to say that this song combined with your AMAZING images just had me grinning from ear to ear and even getting misty eyed at the end and I don't even have kids. Not only is this such a joyful blessing of a song for us, but your images are so darling, so full of life and whomever put together the slideshow down to the timing of the edits did a fabulous job." And then in a subsequent email she says, "I see a lot of cool art from our photographer friends but sometimes certain pieces just really touch me in a deeper place." Wow! Okay, that made me feel so so wonderful and fulfilled as an artist and creator!

I also showed it Skip Cohen, president of WPPI and this is what he had to say as well, "I love it and great choice on the music too...Thanks for sharing it with me-I loved it and your images were great!"

Stacie and I had a lot of fun working together in her home the other day as a part of her Milestone portrait session with Claudia Kronenberg Photography. The very cool thing was that Stacie is a photographer too so it gave me an added incentive to be creative. The Milestone sessions are great because they document the pregnancy and first year of your baby's life and can be done in the privacy of your own home. This is what Stacie has to say after seeing these images: "Oh my gosh! Thank you Claudia. I LOVE THEM! You are awesome. You made me look so pretty and I love the light. That little room worked out well, huh? I am on the edge of my seat to see more!!! Thanks a million...They came out GREAT!" Thank you Stacie. I completely believe that the subject's willingness to work with the photographer makes a huge difference.

Jacki was a wonderful model for my second ever boudoir session. This is a great idea for an engagement, Valentines or wedding gift for your sweetheart.

Jen and I go way back. When she asked about doing a boudoir session I was thrilled to take on the challenge since it was my first official boudoir session. We started with some mimosas, a beautiful old Cape Cod inn and the gorgeous Jen and these are a few of the results. Jen did this session for herself, a reward for getting in shape and it is also a wonderful idea for newly engaged girls or as a gift to that someone special. Jen was a complete inspiration to me and a fantastic model. I wanted to show the same image in black and white and color as they are both very good.

This is a very busy month for me as I am headed off to WPPI in Las Vegas to present for two hours in front of some of the most talented wedding photographers in the world. I have been preparing for this for weeks and am very excited to be presenting as well as attending.

It's also an important time for brides booking their vendors. I am so excited to be working with some beautiful and warm-hearted couples this season as well as fabulous vendors. I just have to mention Linnea Tangorra because I am so thrilled that she contacted me recently to shoot a very special Boston wedding. Linnea is sweet as well as professional and it is an honor to work with her.

We have a wonderful group of families right now who are in different stages of their pregnancies and first year of baby's life. Caroline was one of my first maternity portraits when she was pregnant with Emma and now Emma is a very important part of the new baby's arrival. This was done in the morning in the privacy of their own bedroom.

Another really cool thing was to come up the stairs of their home and see my photographs lining the stairway and hall. They had Emma in the tummy and Emma's first newborn photographs all in black and white and Caroline showed me the spot where the new photographs are going to be hung next.

David and I took the kids down to Florida for the holidays and I photographed his brother's family on the beach in Melbourne. I only brought my D700 and one old time favorite lens, the 50mm 1.4, so it was fun to see what I could do with the minimum equipment. I shot both raw and jpeg files and used Nikon NX2 to work on these along with some great actions by ParkerJ. My girls are hamming it up below.

We have a Milestone program here at Claudia Kronenberg Photography that documents the first year of baby's life. These are two that I shot today, two different babies who are brand new to Nantucket! We currently have about a dozen babies that we are photographing in various stages of pregnancy and their first year. This portrait session makes a great gift for showers or holidays as well.