here.today » thoughts

happy birthday Ares

melissa — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:18:52 +0000

My bean is 8 today, we are celebrating with a party on the 4th so it’s going to be lots of hugs and kisses and love today and crazy town next weekend… I love him so.. He is my favorite and my best..

things about ares at eight:

he loves starcraft II
he complains about school
he has no fear about being 100% his own self
he’s in the advanced spelling and reading group
he’s great at math
he is kind
he is the best dancer I’ve ever met
he has violet hair
he loves his dogs
his favorite books are calvin and hobbes and american chillers
he is not a huge eater – even of cake
he has a sense of humor that cracks me up
he loves being in his pajamas
he gives amazing hugs

… here are a few frames from this fall.

I love you bean happy birthday!

happy chinese new year . china town . two thousand and nine

melissa — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:17:22 +0000

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.

melissa — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:10:39 +0000

I make a living artistically, I post images that I take to make a living on the internet and I run the risk every time that someone may “steal” that image, share that image, take that image as their own, print it without paying me. I would rather take that risk a million times then suffer an internet where money buys silence and the strong can stifle the weak. contact your representative and say NO to SOPA and PIPA.

“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.

Take Action

looking back at two thousand and eleven

melissa — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:57:14 +0000

I really cannot stand these “best of” end of year, beginning of the new year blog posts… I mean, how can I be expected pick and choose from all the weddings and all the portrait sessions and pick just a few to somehow sum up all the year meant and all the people and photographs that touched me. I can’t, honestly, but I love to look at these posts and so I’m breaking my normal routine and I chose some (just some) of the images that I took this year that meant something to me. We didn’t travel to Guatemala or Mexico this year, instead we stayed on the continental US, Alaska, Chicago, Detroit. Meeting and connecting with all kinds of people and families, celebrating who they are and the big and the little moments in their lives. Happy New Year from my family to yours may it be a blessed, peaceful, and fulfilling two thousand and twelve.

happy passover, easter and the weekend

melissa — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:56:34 +0000

This weekend I took almost two full days off (with just a little bit of running out to the office) and hung out with my two guys.. season starts full steam in about a week and I’m looking forward to the crazy whirlwind of shooting and travel of weddings and portrait sessions, but working too at enjoying this less busy time while it’s here. I hope your weekend was as full of love as mine. I am a sucker for shooting eggs and as we were LATE to the egg hunt on Saturday I didn’t get but a few images, but they are pretty cool. And then the sunset on the way home on my phone… wow.

my skies

melissa — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:21:23 +0000

I have been shooting film this last few months much more than I have in a long time and have come to the conclusion that on film my skies do not look better then they do in digital, but the fact that I can capture them this way is somehow, annoyingly, more magical

excited to be incorporating that magic into the weddings I am photographing this year…