Middle child

Middle child

 

Je bent te klein om te doen wat je grote zus kan.
Te groot om dingen te doen waar je kleine zusje mee weg komt.
Je bent niet de grote zus.
Je bent niet de kleine zus.
Ergens daar tussenin zit je…

Maar in jouw ogen ben je een GROTE zus en een KLEINE zus in één.Eigenlijk. Je hebt alles!

Het is niet altijd gemakkelijk om het middelste kind te zijn. Maar toch, je staat vaak in het middelpunt van de belangstelling. Je glas is niet halfvol… het stroomt over! Ze zeggen vaak dat het middelste kind gemakkelijk vergeten wordt. Nou… laten we zeggen dat dat nooit zal gebeuren met onze Haley. Wacht maar af, ze zal het eisen. En lief kind… je verdient alle aandacht die je nodig hebt, mijn liefde.

Een sterke wil, avonturen, nieuwsgierig, assertief, slim, grappig, direct, sterk, eerlijk, observatief, en zo zo lief. Het lijkt erop dat jou andere twee zussen van een andere planeet kwamen, gesneden uit hetzelfde hout, hetzelfde temperament, hetzelfde basispatroon, maar jij kwam uit een heel eigen universum.

Er is geen saai moment met jou klein drakenmeisje. Je stopt nooit met bewegen, klimmen, reiken naar de meest gevaarlijke (en daarom meest interessante) objecten, stoelen op tafels en boeken opstapelen om hoger te komen, nooit bang en snel… oh wat ben je zo ongelooflijk snel. Ik knipper met mijn ogen en je loopt om een ​​hoek om, lachend, kijkend over je schouder om te zien of je wordt gevolgd. De vastberadenheid in alles wat jij doet. Ik geloof dat je alles zal kunnen bereiken waar je je zinnen op zet. Slim, lief, sterk, gepassioneerd, fel, athletisch, energiek, gek, explosief, grappig, stralend en mooi meisje van mama. Je zult zal opgemerkt worden.

Over dat spelletje dat we spelen, waar we allebei beweren meer van de ander te houden:
Mijn klein baby meisje, ik hou meer van je dan je ooit zou kunnen begrijpen! Misschien realiseer je je wanneer je op een dag zelf baby’s krijgt… Ik win… Ik hou VEEL meer van JOU! En dat hoort ook zo. 

Liefs,
Jolanda, Michiel
Miley, Haley & Quinn

Middle child

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Shoot us mom!

Never let children pose… let them be themselves!

From the moment Miley was born until she was 4,5 years old we had a big photo studio. She grew up surrounded by camera’s, lights, makeup, fashion, and set styling… She occasionally watched the models getting ready and saw me shooting them in our photo studio. She saw them “pose” naturally and make subtle changes in their pose with fluid movements. changing expressions, taking directions from me and all of that without looking forced or unnatural. And she loved it.

As it comes to photo shooting kids, I like them to be interactive. give them something to do, something to engage with, something to play with. Anything but posing! I don’t like kids posing, because most kids (Really, I mean 99%) look forced and unnatural. That kind of photo’s with kids smiling those fake (almost creepy) smiles makes my hairs stand up. Not cool. Just fake.

So whenever I’m shooting kids (my one or any kids for that matter)… I let them play.
I have a strict NO POSING rule.

But… Tiny baby girls turn in to big baby girls! And then that day came, the day when Miley (8yrs) Came up to me dressed a bit much over the top and  Asked me “Mom? Can you shoot me? I’ve made everything ready!”
I looked over and there was my living room turned in to a complete styled set. With 3 different concepts, she wanted to work on!  I was like “What the….!?!? uuuh… Ok!? I guess?”

So we could proceed in peace. After every Klik, Miley made a tiny adjustment in pose, expression or looking direction. I didn’t have to give her any directions. She was totally in control.  Like she understood exactly what it was she wanted to reflect, express and what story she wanted to tell. I felt a warm proud glow in my heart for her. What a great way to express yourself.  There goes my “NO posing rule” for her… She has got this down.

 

Turned out she had a school project where they had to take their favorite piece of clothing, make a photo of it, and write a little poem about it. She wanted to create a photo she had pictured in her mind. (Creative little creature) So who am I to refuse such a brilliant initiative from my 8-year-old.

I grabbed my camera gear and as she stepped in front of the camera. Wow! She is actually doing a really good job posing! Not one Photo where she looked unnatural or overly posed. I guess she intensively studied the professional models in our studio! My little baby copy-cat. Loving this…

After a few minutes, her little baby sisters decided they wanted attention too, and started to jump on top of Miley… So I had to promise them that I would shoot them too tf they waited their turn. And If they would go and play a bit more I would call them and take their picture.


As for her sisters… The rule still stands. No posing! PLAY! Once I called them for their turn to shoot, I gave them something to keep busy! Singing a song,  playing peekaboo, giving them a ukelele or a watering can to play with. And as usual, that way I had a fun and playful shoot with my two babies. And my no posing strategy still worked out worked perfectly fine with them! Scroll all the way down to see the rest of all the photo’s we took!


How do you take pictures of your kids? I’m thinking of making a series of DIY video’s in photography toppics like “kids photography” .
Would you think that’s something you would like to see? Anny requests on specivic photography toppics!?


Love,

  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

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Shoot us mom!

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Bohemian roomtour – Urban Jungle

Eclectic Urban Jungle

Take a look in our Bohemian styled home. We have created an urban jungle filled with beautiful plants, macrame, flower wreaths, vintage finds, artwork and carefully selected and styled toy corner for our kids.

You can find our previous roomtour here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STmpvcOPoDg

We hope you like it! If you do, please make sure to let us know in the comments and subscribe to our channel!
enjoy!

Love,
  Jolanda, Michiel,
Miley Haley & Quinn

Music in this video is by:
Meydän – https://soundcloud.com/meydansound/

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Bohemian roomtour – Urban Jungle

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About this Curveball…

Uncertainties are scary yet exciting…

Normally we like to share our highs, but we do hit some low’s along the way, just like everybody else. So let’s get real. So here is one huge bump in the road we are dealing with right now.

The beginning of 2018 brought us stability… Something we haven’t had in quite a while. I didn’t have any pregnancies or newborns this year in our family of 5 (we think our little family is complete now) and we had a stable income through our Wedding photography (If you were wondering… this is what we do). No crazy sh*t happening around us. Just a nice day to day routine and all was good. We finally got into the flow of balancing work and family.

On top of that my Instagram and this blog started to generate some income too! We had some pretty awesome collaborations amazing brands. It’s still not enough to stop doing weddings (not that want to stop doing weddings, weddings are awesome). But it was enough to let all the photo and video editing after we shot the wedding days over to Michiel, so I could focus on investing my time on creating content for this blog, the vlog, and my Instagram!

-“And then came Oktober… Oh my. What a curve ball!”-


The curveball

Things were pretty amazing!

And then came Oktober… Oh my. What a curve ball!
Our stable income was not so stable anymore.
The short version: We don’t have enough weddings in 2019 to keep ourselves afloat! So we need to make some adjustments. We need to push ourselves out of our comfort zone once again.

To fully understand what happened I need to explain it a bit more:
It takes us 2,5 week to process all the photo and video images of just one wedding. We do a maximum of 18 weddings every year. We don’t have room for more. 
The summer month we survive with the income of the weddings, the winter months we survive on the down payments for the upcoming weddings and the orders of wedding albums of the past wedding season.

We reach 90% of our clients through the biggest wedding fair in Holland. We participate two times a year, and then we are fully booked.
No need for online ads, campaigns or another form of advertising.
But this year, the wedding fair of October was a complete fail. Where normally there are on average 5000 visitors, now there were only 1000. We got ZERO bookings from that fair this year. Something that has never happened before in the last 5 years. And on top of that, the fair of March 2019 is canceled. The whole fair stopped. Forever!

-“looking back afterward it always has been exactly the way it should have been. We just didn’t know it yet at the time.”-

So now we have 4 weddings booked for 2019, Wich generates not enough to get us through this winter, or the next summer for that matter. so we need to get familiar with online advertising. But oh’my… its all sooo complicated and time-consuming learning process. And we don’t have the time, we need bookings like yesterday.

 

So Now what!?

I’m positive that we get this online advertising thing down soon, and we’ll get enough bookings for the upcoming summer. But until then, we have a bit of a financial problem. So one of us needs a job somewhere for the upcoming 4 months. On “project base” or for a longer period of time if we like it enough. And with “we”, I mean preferably Michiel. I want to stay focused on creating our content and keep the inspiring Wild&BOHO collabs going! I’m only selectively applying to jobs that I would LOVE to do so much, that I would maybe ditch all other stuff and stay working there forever! And there are not so many vacancies out there that will get my attention. I’ve written 3 so far. Michiel 5 and counting. We’ll see…

-“It’s not a curveball… its a Pusch in the right direction by the universe.”-

I’m stressing a lot about the What If’s.
Our reserves are running dry and something needs to happen soon! The uncertainties are taking its toll. Images of every imaginable scenario are going through my monkey mind. The never-ending chatter of my internal dialogue who sometimes gets stuck in a carousel… Going round and round in circles. Pointless and exhausting. We are doing our best here, there really is nothing more we can do.

One of my goals for 2019 is to just let the universe do its thing.
I’m going to do the best job I can, work my but off, and then I’m going to let it go. No stress. Trusting everything will be fine. Because looking back afterward it always has been exactly the way it should have been. We just didn’t know it yet at the time. This is a chance to grow, evolve, move forward instead of getting stuck in the same pattern over and over again. It’s not a curveball… its a Pusch in the right direction by the universe.

Our glass is half full. We have love, we have each other, we have our creativity, we have a nice home. We’ll pull through. 

-“Because of you this blog and our Instagram has started to become a way to support our family”-

So if you reached all the way to this point in the blog, I want to thank you for reading!
You are here not only for our best moments but apparently also here for our struggles.
Thank you for being there for us, for following our blogs, watching our video’s, checking out our Instagram posts and by leaving a comment now and then. Because of you this blog and our Instagram has started to become a way to support our family a bit! Maybe one day we can fully focus on creating art and cool content full time! We appreciate your support so much. So Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Have a Wonderful New year’s eve! We love you guys!

Love,
Jolanda, Michiel
Miley, Haley & Quinn

 

Blog post: Jolanda Marti
Photography: Michiel Fook

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Happy Christmas and a Merry New year!

Wohooo Happy everything with lots of glitters and such!

Like every year we made our traditional “best wishes video” With a little sparkle!  Upcoming months will be finding glitter everywhere… but it was SO worth it!

Enjoy the holidays!

Love,
Jolanda, Michiel, Miley Haley & Quinn

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Happy Christmas and a Merry New year!

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