So…these photos are of my dogs PLAYING, not really fighting. They actually do love each other and I have about a million photos on my iphone to prove it (and you can see some of those photos if you follow me on twitter – @LRodriguezPhoto). I just have more fun getting my real camera out and taking photos of them when they’re going at each other. Anyway, just wanted to make sure that was clear! They’re really sweet beasts, but they love to go crazy and wrestle on nice days. Luckily for them, we’ve had a ton of nice days the last couple of weeks here in Nashville, so they’ve had a great time frolicking around the backyard. Here are a few favorite photos I took of them last week. You can see more photos from this day here – and read a fun story that Javier wrote to go along with them. Enjoy!

…and just to prove that they really do love each other, I just grabbed my camera and snapped a photo of the two of them chilling on the couch in my office. Chori is giving me the most typical “is this a candid shot? I don’t know whether I’m supposed to smile or keep doing what I’m doing” face. I get that ALL THE TIME from people – and now my doggo. Poor guy is just gonna have to get used to having a lens pointed at him for the rest of his life!

Ohhhh my goodness I haven’t posted on here in such a long time! I had these grand plans of posting some great photos of the family when they were all here at Christmas, but most of them wound up on my family blog and now Christmas is too far away. In fact, it’s practically spring! We’ve got a nice spring downpour going on right now but my windows are open because it’s a sweet 60 degrees, I’ve got plants blooming all around the house and for the most part the weather has been incredible for the last two weeks.

The nice weather brings me to this post that’s long overdue – last fall I took some fun photos of the Vanderbilt Curb scholars at their welcome-back-to-campus event at the Curb Center and then the Dyer Observatory. I meant to post about it but time got away from me, bad weather hit and these photos don’t match winter weather so I decided to hold off. It was a beautiful day and part of my job was to get photos of the new freshman cohort and I loved the way they all turned out. So here are a few photos to hold y’all over til I get a few new spring and summer shoots up!

The first few are from the meet and greet when the new cohort met all the older Curb scholars, the latter few are from the Dyer Observatory. Enjoy!

I’m so excited to finally get little Jackson on the blog! Whitney is a good friend of mine – she’s a PhD student with me in the Sociology department at Vanderbilt, but she’s two years ahead of me in the program. She and her boyfriend Charles welcomed their baby Jackson into the world a little over a year ago (almost a year and a half!) and he’s one of the cutest and most social babies ever. He LOVES to smile, twirl around like he’s dancing and every now and then he’d stare at the camera and smile, then take off like a shot running and laughing in the other direction. I really couldn’t get enough – I could take pictures of this family all day! We spent the afternoon walking around Centennial, taking advantage of the beautiful fall colors and mild temperatures. So fun!

Javier and I started decorating two weekends ago for Christmas (see my justification for decorating early here) and finished up this past weekend – the finishing touch, icing on the cake etc etc was Javier’s wonderful effort to make our porch look totally beautiful and Christmased-out with lights, lights and more lights.

It’s so much fun for us to decorate our very own house for the first time – and one of my favorite things is to see new decorations mixed in with decorations I’ve had since I was a kid. I think my bedroom growing up was the most decorated room of the house – I had my own box of Christmas decorations I would put up by myself every year. Below are 5 of my favorite Christmas decorations up in my house – a few old and a few new.

I’ve had this nativity scene for as long as I can remember. The little figurines all close up into the barn when I store it – I loved to fit the figures in like puzzle pieces when I was a kid. The first time I went to Chile back in 2008 for Christmas, Javier told me that on Christmas eve we’d go to a service where everyone brings the baby Jesus from the nativity scene at home and holds it up and the priest blesses (all at once) the various baby Jesus figures. So yes, I took this entire nativity scene with me to Chile, and took that tiny baby Jesus to the Christmas eve service. It’s a pretty special decoration!

This is another Christmas decoration I’ve had for a long time – twenty years at least. If you look close where the scepter meets the hand, you can see that it’s held there with hot glue! I LOVED this guy – he always had a prominent spot on the top of my dresser growing up. He’s now on my desk in my home office.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry!! Haha – yes, that is a Harry Potter ornament. My mom bought me a whole set of HP ornaments when I was in high school to go on my tree in my room. The tree is tiny so the ornaments are really small too – this tree is now on top of the filing cabinet next to my desk, with all the Harry Potter ornaments. Love.

My mom and I made about 200 sparkly candles for wedding reception decorations for our Christmas wedding back in 2009. Javier and I got married on Dec. 12 (in Nashville) and Dec. 26 (in Chile). We only used about half of the candles at the reception, so now we have a gigantic box of these candles in the attic that we bring out every year for Christmas. I love them!! They are so beautiful. I have a few photos up on our family blog of me and my mom making them, and a few photos of the candles at the reception so you can see what it looked like.

Definitely the least sentimental of the Christmas decor I’ve already posted, Javi and I bought this little guy at the Bath and Body Works at the Lebanon Outlet mall this year. He’s hanging out in our bathroom, and cracks me up. I love it!

Have you decorated yet?!

If you’ve been following my blog since the old blogspot days way back when (like, a whole year ago! that was so last decade), you might remember the shoot I did of Beth and her adorable son Conner. It’s been about a year and a half since that day and Conner is now almost three!! The last time I saw him he was swaying back and forth when he was walking, totally unsteady and highly expressive but not talking yet. Now, he’s running around like you’d expect a 3-year-old boy to do, jumping in leaves, laughing and pretty much doing his own thing. He’s so big now and as cute / handsome as ever. It’s so much fun to be able to get photos of kids / families at different stages of their lives – and it’s such an honor to be asked to do photos of a family more than once! Beth is now engaged, and her fiancé Brian came along so they could get some family photos together. We spent a lovely afternoon at Centennial – which happens to be where the first shoot with Conner was back in 2010. Pictured immediately below are a few photos from that original shoot for fun / comparison, then come the new photos from this fall. Enjoy!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Here are a few photos I got at the Denver zombie crawl when Javi and I were with our family in Denver for my cousin’s wedding last weekend. The day of the wedding we were driving out of the downtown area to get to the chapel and on our way out we kept seeing zombies walking down the road. The photo above is the first photo I was able to get from my car window of the zombies. We thought it was a halloween party or something, but when EVERYONE was dressed as a zombie and there was no variety (well, there was alot of variation on the zombie theme but no other costumes to speak of) we figured there was a zombie convention. But who’s ever heard of a zombie convention?! So we asked around and heard about the zombie crawl – and Denver was trying to break a world record with 10,000 zombies! So obviously I couldn’t miss the chance to photograph 10,000 zombies in one place. I don’t know if they reached their goal, but I sure reached mine – I got some pretty fun / terrifying pictures of folks of all ages walking up and down Denver’s downtown center. Javi dropped me off on one street and drove around the block picking me up on the other side – so I literally ran through the crowd snapping photos as I went. I really did have to go as fast as possible, because the zombies didn’t take so well to normally-dressed civilians crashing their parade. They seemed to want their pictures taken, but they also came after me as I took them…so I snapped and ran! haha. It was pretty awesome. Anyone out there dressing like a zombie for halloween?? Here are some ideas for your costume…

seriously though…that little girl!?! The eye just poking out from her hair, the teddy bear, the jerky way she walked…this girl had it down, but to a terrifying level that I don’t think I would have been able to handle at her age!

zombie love.

by far the winners for the scariest get-ups and acting…these girls are zombie pros. I’m sad I didn’t get a goot shot of the girl pushing the carriage – the way she moved made it look like she was possessed. Exorcist-zombie!

There’s pretty  much no better way to kick off the fall season than with a beautiful, colorful fall wedding on a perfect day! Cindy and Charles took a gamble with the volatile fall Nashville weather (for example, 2 days ago it was 80 degrees and yesterday it was 46 degrees) and lucked out with an absolutely perfect day for their long-awaited wedding. They met back in high school and started dating when Cindy was a senior. Charles is in the army (and has been to Iraq), so planning the wedding wasn’t as easy as simply setting a date since they never knew exactly when he’d be expected to be anywhere besides Nashville. They’ve been engaged for over a year and you could tell how happy their family and friends were to finally celebrate their wedding day. Cindy and Charles are two of the kindest, most easy-going people I’ve had the pleasure of working with and I had a blast shooting their wedding! Enjoy the photos!

Hey all – Occupy Nashville is still in full swing (as of 2:45 PM 10/6/11) so I encourage all of you who want to support to get on out there and take part! I wanted to get back and upload these photos ASAP to get the word out. It’s lively out there (in a VERY PEACEFUL way)!! Javi took his lunch break with me and we walked over to legislative plaza to join in (well, Javi ate lunch on the steps of the plaza while I ran around shouting the call responses and taking photos of every person I could) and  it was just AMAZING! There were SO many different kinds of people there – democrats of course, but also republicans, students of course, but also older folks, parents, teachers, public workers – I mean it seemed like every kind of person from every walk of life was participating. It was so exhilarating and refreshing to see people finally waking up and calling attention to the fundamental wrongdoing of corporate America. I sat down with Javi on the steps to eat my lunch and it occurred to me that this is when I just LOVE America – when the 99% wakes up and participates, makes themselves heard and shouts in unison for what they believe in! It was awesome! And if you are still unsure about what’s going on, check out this beautifully worded declaration from the NY group. I am so proud of Nashville for participating and I hope the rest of the country sees that it is spreading!!

hey that’s me!! and my friend Minyoung – thanks to Jeremy for letting us borrow the sign!!

this is the Vanderbilt Sociology contingent – this is our “ready to fight” face. Toma la calle!! Occupy together!!!

One of my very favorite organizations in Nashville is Conexión Americas. My interest in immigration and Nashville’s Latino community developed long before I met Javier, and Conexión Americas is part of the heart and soul of Nashville’s immigrant community (and thus the Nashville community at large!). Conexión provides vital resources for Latino families and acts as an important liaison between immigrants and the rest of Nashville by introducing Latino families to support networks and local resources that help improve their experience as Nashvillians. I have three friends (one from Belmont, one from Vanderbilt and one from my church!) who work at Conexión and I’ve seen their photos from the last couple of Hispanic Heritage Month Celebrations, which Conexión hosts annually at the Cannery Ballroom. I vividly remember last year seeing a friend’s photo from the event and thinking that I wanted to be the photographer for that event someday – and this year I got my chance! It was just as amazing as I knew it would be – incredible food (thanks to Karla’s catering…delicious), wonderful people, exciting music that got everyone dancing, colorful decor and dance performances…I can’t tell you what a fun night it was!! But I can (kind of) show you, so here are a few of the photos from the evening.

Pictured above is Renata Soto – Co-founder of Conexión Americas

Mayor Karl Dean

Juana Villegas – one of the winners of the Orgullo Hispano award. Read about her story here and here

Mercedez Gonzalez, another Orgullo Hispano award winner. Read about her story here.

Cindy and Charles are getting married in a little less than a month, so we barely squeezed in their engagement photos before it’s time for the wedding photos! They already had an engagement shoot done in Chicago, so we wanted to go for something a little less urban and a lot more green. We had a lovely fall day for the shoot and the leaves were just starting to get a yellow tinge, so I’m sure that by the time their Oct. 8 wedding rolls around we’ll be almost in full-fledged fall mode – my favorite time of year!!! These two have been dating since high school and they are obviously an awesome couple – I’m really excited for the wedding!