Some images from the archives in honor of the Chinese New Year : At the end of 2009 I had the opportunity to travel to New York and study with Magnum Photography.  The project I worked on was in China Town.  I’ve always been fascinated with culture within culture and how they interact with each other.  I could have spent weeks exploring and discovering more about the people and lives they lived.  I’d like to go back some time and do more work on the project.

I have put together a website with my personal work here www.melissasquires.com if you’d like to see more of my personal stuff.

“When ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled and people constrained in their choices, the Internet is diminished for all of us.. There isn’t an economic Internet and a social Internet and a political Internet. There’s just the Internet.” – Hilary Clinton on SOPA

educate yourself =  PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

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This last few years we’ve grown quickly and it was more then time to hire a studio assistant.  I’m so so excited to announce that Kerri Baker Zuck has stepped in to keep things running smoothly and help keep me organized! An artist in her own right, she does beautiful screen-printing and works with creating things out of fabric.  I really wanted to welcome her officially :) so I dragged her around the office yesterday for a few frames and we played with my new polaroid 330.

(taken with the “new” polaroid 330 land camera)

images credit : Shanan Wellman, Kyle Banas, Brandon Baier, Alison Lara

It takes a lot to bare one’s soul through art, the self portraits especially can be hard, but the reward for that opening up of self is so worth it, and I thank all my students for being part of such an important and wonderful process.

and finally a last day of the last class portrait :)

If you are interested in signing up for the self portrait workshop (June 15th runs for three evenings Wednesday nights for three weeks) or the Photographers Eye (July 13th five evenings for five weeks) you can sign up online @ www.tecumseharts.org

I love it.

The new sites look clean, the images are huge (be patient some load time is still a bit long) and wedding and portraiture are separate

The new site will be more organic, there are still images I want to feature that aren’t in there and they will be, things will be added, things will move about, it’ll be more a living site, less stagnant.  I’d love to hear what you think.

and even the blog has a new header

I’m really happy the new logo – the whimsy and the fantasy intermingled with the silhouette, the wild and the civilized, the female and the male. It expresses the energy and the passion and the control that my images and my life balances.  Hope you love it too.

I was meeting with some wonderful people yesterday and pulled facebook up to show them my new space, which is when I realized I hadn’t blogged about it, which was CRAZY.  Anyway I thought an update was needed, the photos and a quick “what’s going on?”.  The new space is moved into, a few more touches and some work to go on the walls is next but for the most part yah it’s complete and I love it. Choosing to share the space with other artists was the best decision, you walk in and it feels cozy, warm and lived in.  I think the most fun I had was shopping, I’ve never bought so much STUFF all at once and the light, the light is just fabulous (as you can see)

It was a GREAT thing to come back home to after shooting in Antigua, Guatemala.  That amazing 8 days we spent with Stevie and Jose still have me mostly in a spin :)  The images are gorgeous and I am catching up on weddings that came before and working my way up to sharing some things here.  November is stacking up to be my most busy November yet, with portrait sessions and a slew of head-shots as well.  The weather has treated us fabulously..  so I will go back to processing but here are more images of the new space I can’t wait for you to see it in person :)