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!