Fearless Family Event in Minneapolis

I will be participating in the Fearless Family Event in Minneapolis and photographing Fearless Families at the Mall of America, November 7-8, 2009. We are donating part of the session fee to charities helping our troops and their families and local charities in the Minneapolis area.

Fearless Family Events celebrates the warrior within that conquers those difficulties every day.

Photographing a Hero

Greg Grunberg is a very interesting guy. I recently photographed him for this cover. He's a father, a drummer in "The Band From TV" an actor on "Heros" and a businessman. He started an app for your iphone called "Yowza" where you can get discounts at certain stores. Where does he find the time?

Speaking at Texas Professional Photographers' Association

This week, I will be making a speaking appearance on the main stage at Texas PPA on Friday September 16th. For more information or to get your tickets visit the TEXAS PPA website.

Copyright Mary Ann Halpin.

eWomen Network & Homes for Troops

This year I photographed "Fearless Women Portraits" at the eWomen Network convention in Dallas, Texas again. I had an amazing time mingling and getting to know a whole group of new faces and catch up with old friends from attendees who came to the same event last year.

This year at the conference, I became involved with a great organization called "Homes for Troops." Their mission is to build specially adapted homes for our severely injured veterans.

Copyright Mary Ann Halpin.

Photographing Children

Yesterday, I photographed an adorable group of children, two sets of children actually, who were cousins. The idea of the shoot was to get something unique and special for the "grandma who has everything." The background setup was a classic black to compliment the children's fair skin, hair, and white little outfits. We got comfortable and started to play... after a few moments we were lucky to get this amazing shot that really captured their personalities!

Copyright Mary Ann Halpin.

Porter Family Portraits

Copyright Mary Ann Halpin.

Speaking Appearances and Workshops 2009

Portraits with a Purpose

My book Pregnant Goddesshood A Celebration of Life, was released in 1996. It blazed the trail for women documenting the beauty of pregnancy in a portrait. At that time there wasn't the technology of today to show videos on the Internet with ease. So now you can view the many TV shows that featured stories and interviews about my book. At the end of the video you can see a slide show of images from Pregnant Goddesshood with music by a wonderful band called Incendio. Enjoy the video and my many hair styles over the years!

Fearless Women Portraits

It is an amazing experience for me to photograph women embracing the power within created and documented in a "Fearless Woman Portrait". Over the last couple of years, this celebration has become quite popular. So I ask myself often as I ask other women, "What's your fearless?" Women can now book "Fearless Women Portrait Parties" to celebrate sisterhood, milestone birthday's or just to have an unusual gathering for fun. My husband, Chef Joe creates sumptuous food and wine or beverage of choice. My amazing makeup/hair artist, Nicole Bolin will be doing her artistry on each Fearless Woman with a beauty menu of body makeup to tattoo makeup. Each woman will pose with the sword in her version of fearlessness that will mirror who she really is as a courageous Goddess woman. The end result is a beautiful wall portrait, retouched to perfection, that will be a reminder of who the woman truly is inside. We all need that...

This is an ad that will appear in the next issue of Westlake Magazine. I photographed the actor, Greg Grunberg from the TV show Heroes for the cover of the magazine. Speaking of fearless, Greg is just that and more. More on Greg when the issue comes out....

Fearless Women from the Anne Douglas Center

My new "heart project" is photographing women from the Anne Douglas Center at the Los Angeles Mission in a "Fearless Woman Portrait". I proposed the idea to Rev. Tina Babcock, at the Center, to create these portraits for each woman that graduates from the year long program. My goal with these portraits is to honor these inspiring women for their accomplishments but also to inspire the new women entering the program. The portraits will be hung on the walls of the women's center. My hope is that it will be a visual touch stone for those women to say, "Someday I want my portrait up there." The program at the Anne Douglas Center is fear inspiring. It takes these women from the streets of skid row, off of drugs and alcohol and teaches them to reclaim their lives. Most leave with a GED, transitional housing and a new spiritual life.

I photographed several of these women a few weeks ago. We created a video of the portrait seesions with an acknowledgement to Anne Douglas to be presented to her at a luncheon a couple of weeks ago. The women featured here touched my heart with such powerful inspiration. I am honored to have photographed them.

Honoring Anne Douglas

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present the "Women Helping Women 2009" award to Mrs. Anne Douglas, wife of the legendary actor, Kirk Douglas. We presented the video of the "Fearless Portraits" featuring some of the graduates of the program from the Anne Douglas Center. We presented a group portrait to Mrs. Douglas and then a sword with her name on it. I pulled it out and told her (as I pointed it at her husband) that if Kirk got out of line she could use it on him. As I pointed the sword at him he lifted his cane to fence with me. The audience roared with laughter. Later I realized.....I dueled with Sparticus!

Fearless Women Portraits

I am so happy to be announcing that I am doing "Fearless Women Portrait Parties". It stems from my book, Fearless Women:Midlife Portraits. Here's how it works. A group of girlfriends create a night where they come to my studio for a fun and empowering night of fun and photography. We provide great food and wine and a sword to be photographed with. We create a portrait that is a symbol of fearlessness and courage in any way that makes you feel empowered and beautiful.

Since I created the images from this book several years ago, the "Fearless Movement" has really taken off with women all over the country. I think there are many reasons for this looking at the world we are in right now...so full of fear. So the fearless message is a powerful one. 

What's your fearless?

April is Autism Awareness Month

With one out of 65 children living with autism, we have a serious problem.  Nancy Alspaugh, friend and co-author of my photo/essay book, Fearless Women:Midlife Portraits, and her husband, Read Jackson are living with this challenge. They adopted a beautiful boy, Wyatt who has autism. They are working 24/7 to help Wyatt heal and reverse his condition. I wrote about them in my blog in August 2007. Since then Wyatt has made great progress. 

Look for the LA Parent April issue where you will see some images I took of Nancy, Read and Wyatt. It's a "Day in a Life..." piece. It was so interesting and inspiring to spend the afternoon with them seeing how much goes into healing a child with Autism. 

Nancy is now executive director of ACT Today for Autism www.act-today.org. Every year she and her husband, Read, host a fundraiser, Denim and Diamonds. ACT Today exists to help families who need assistance in paying for care and treatment.   

As part of my commitment to help spread awareness and fundraise for Act Today I am offering an incentive for those who want to have a portrait taken. For the month of April, 25% of my sitting fee will go to ACT Today for Autism. Please check out the ad that appears above. This also will be published in the LA Parent April issue.

Busted in Buckeye!

My husband, Joe, and I enjoy road trips. In our new, slightly used Highlander that we purchased last September, we set out on our first long ride to Phoenix to attend Imaging USA, a big photography convention. Driving through the desert is always so beautiful and peaceful. There is stillness in the vast cactus land that is like no other. With music playing as our soundtrack, we cruised down the highway effortless.

We crossed over the Arizona boarder past the town of Quartzsite, viewing this amazing sea of RV’s dotting the desert landscape. Quartzsite is like Burning Man for the elderly. Snow birds converge on this area for the winter in their elaborate RV’s and set up shop to sell to each other or to the tourists passing through.

We blazed the I-10 trail at a pretty good speed only to be pulled over by the highway patrol 35 miles outside of Phoenix. We thought we were being stopped for speeding but found out from the officer that our registration had expired and we did not know it. He wrote us up a citation and told Joe to call the court house in Buckeye in a week to take care of the matter after we paid our delinquent registration.

Investigating the problem of not receiving the notice to renew, Joe found that it was sent to our physical address in Pine Mountain and not our PO Box. The renewal notice was returned and we were never notified. Joe called the clerk in Buckeye and explained the situation. She told him to call the judge the following week. Now who would think you can just call up and talk to the judge? Anyway, this judge tells him that in Arizona it is a criminal offence, a misdemeanor, with up to $750 fine and or 4 months in jail. He asks him "How do you plea?” Joe was shocked and told him he didn't understand! The judge says, "Didn't you go to college?" So he said, "Well, it was a mistake. I am not guilty". So the judge told him that he would have to come to court on February 26th in Buckeye.

Buckeye is located 35 minutes west of Phoenix but it seems like it is in the middle of the Wild West desert. With as much preparation as possible and conferring with two attorneys in Phoenix, we set off on our journey on Wednesday to stay over so we could be fresh in front of the judge the next morning.

I decided to make lemonade out of lemons. As a photographer, I thought it would make it much more fun to document our trip and see what this Wild West town was about and write a story about it. So I did. I took photos of the town and Joe in front of the brick court house, which is situated in the middle of a cow pasture. Down the street is the Buckeye Meat slaughtering plant.

I must say our imaginations did run wild as to what could happen. We had visions of this judge (who did have on his mean face in the courtroom) sentencing Joe to jail just because he is from California. We checked in at the courthouse office and were told to enter the courtroom. The woman with a gun on her hip signed in Joe and told us to sit down and he would be called to talk to the prosecuting attorney. His name was Nick, a nice young man that was willing to work out a plea agreement. Joe was fined $300 by saying "I am responsible" when he stood before the judge. We ran out yelling, "We're free!"

We ran around town taking pictures. I stopped into the Buckeye Chamber of Commerce and met Deanna, a really nice lady who ran the joint. She confessed that she went to traffic court once and realized that everyone there was passing through at one time. Thus, passing through Buckeye is a major speed trap and of course other things. We have told this story to several people who all shared that they have gotten tickets driving through Arizona. So be very careful!

The lesson for all of us people in a mountain community is to make sure that you have all your important papers with your PO Box on it. Otherwise, who knows what could happen to you! It was a costly mistake with all the fines, hotel and gas but at least Joe is not in jail in Buckeye. I like lemonade… but not that much!

Motel across from the Buckeye Courthouse.

Sunset in the Buckeye farmland....

Across from the farm this road sign was lit by the sunset. On the otherside of the roadblock are plans for hundreds of new homes. Below, Old Town at night.

The Buckeye Elks were meeting that night. I asked one of the Elks for a photo of him but he objected and bolted into the lodge.

Below, Hobo Joe basks in the sunshine located in front of the Buckeye Meat company. The iconic statue originally stood in front of the Bobo Joe Coffee shops. Sculpted by Jim Casey, this particular statue is the last surviving 25 footer.

Found Art:

On the way back to Los Angeles, we stopped in the desert community of Quartzsite where snowbirds stay for the winter.

Windmills of Palm Springs...

For more information on Buckeye visit: www.buckeyevalleychamber.org