# 56 Anne takes stock

It’s halfway through 2009 and Anne’s book is coming together as you can gather from entries on the blog.

So usually at this point in time Anne needs to have a look at the images she has taken so far. The best way of doing this is to lay all of the prints out on the floor in the studio in no particular order. This way she has a better idea of how her creative approach is coming together. Anne also needs to find a time where she is not shooting for a couple of days as the entire floor is covered.

This is a photo of Anne standing amongst her images talking to a camera that we are using to document the process. As we go along we intend to show you this video that explains in broader detail as to how the book is being put together. All very exciting!!

Also we will have some other exciting news to share with you in the next couple of days!! Stay tuned!

#55 Practice makes perfect!

A lovely young couple visited Anne’s studio yesterday. She was pregnant and Anne was talking about the type of photograph she envisaged; her husband accompanied her. He comes from Jamaica and she is Australian. Together they host their own television program here in Sydney. Their show airs on one of the pay television Christian stations here and they have just been booked to do a second series, so were very pleased about that.

Their baby is due in a couple of weeks and they are very excited at the thought of also coming back with their new addition, as Anne was interested in photographing the new born.

The day they came in for a chat, Anne happened to be photographing some other newborns in the studio, so the prospective father was able to be have the experience of being around a new born. Ironically one of their friends was in the studio with her new baby, so she had no hesitation in handing over her precious little bundle of joy so that he could have a hold.

Anytime is a good time to practice!

#54 Cupcakes again!!!

We have mentioned previously we have a lady who helps out when we have newborns in the studio. (Blog #44) She has two daughters, one five years old and the other ten. After meeting them, Anne decided to include photographs of some older children in her new book.

On the day, we happened to have a make-up lady here and Anne’s prop maker had made some beautiful outfits for them, so there was great excitement at the studio when the two girls arrived.

We had also organized for some cupcakes to be delivered to the studio as a treat for them when the shoot was over. (You would have noticed from other blogs, we all like cupcakes!! Blog #28)

Now which one will I have? Helping with the selection are Anne's studio manager (on the right) and Anne's camera assistant.

We overheard the make-up artist asking the ten year old what color blusher she preferred – of course she never wears blusher, but she did say, “It depends on where I am going!” When we mentioned this to her mother, she laughed. (Anne only uses a very minimum of make up for the girls, as they are both young and it’s more to make them feel special) They felt quite glamorous, both during their respective shoots, and when they left the studio. (and very, very special)

#53 Some information for all who want to purchase product

For those fans keen to buy Anne's items via the gift shop at www.annegeddes.com but not living in one of our shipping countries, there is still a way. You can contact a mail forwarding company in the USA and they can arrange to receive your item and ship it on to you in your location. An internet search on "mail forwarding companies" will bring up several options for you to consider.

We hope to be able to add more countries to our shipping list in future, so do remember to always check there first when you place your order.

#52 It's all in a name!

A lovely young couple brought their new baby into the studio for one of the shoots.

They told Anne that they had nicknamed their new baby (before he was born) Bumble Bee. They were both fans of Anne’s and had visited both of her stores in America, the Flagship store in Downtown Disney in Anaheim and the boutique at Wynn Las Vegas store and had brought a large quantity of gifts home from there, including some items with the bumble bee images on them.

They loved the clothing and plush so much, they decided to call their baby (temporarily) Bumble Bee! As you can imagine they were absolutely thrilled to be in the studio and having Anne photograph their new baby.

And Bumble Bee has now officially become Aiden John!

#51 Motherhood.

It’s lovely the relationship that Anne has with new mothers and newborns.

One of the mothers was so keen and excited on coming into the studio to have her baby photographed that she was released from hospital the night before she was due to come into the studio. She was fine, and very able, so there were no worries or concerns.

Another of the new mothers was so used to not having a baby – this was her first – the baby was incidentally only eight days old – she said that she thought she would send her husband along to the shoot with the baby as she needed to catch up on some sleep – in fact her first words to us were – sleep is a long distant memory! She phoned back very quickly and said how remiss she had been because naturally she needed to come along to FEED the baby; we had a laugh together!

It’s all very nice and it’s all very natural!

#50 An answer for Anne's fans

Thank you again for the many great comments and posts on Anne’s Facebook Wall. We want to acknowledge that whilst our posts are in English, we also enjoy hearing from Anne’s fans in non-English speaking countries. So … Gracias a Anne's ventiladores en todos los países de habla hispana. Dank je Anne's Nederlandse vrienden. Grazie per la bella commenti da Italia. Merci à tous les fans d'Anne de France.

Many of you have posted questions about buying Anne’s products in your home country. Please see Anne’s website – www.annegeddes.com - for more information on this. If you have other questions that are not answered there, you will also find contact information for our customer help center so you can email them your query. They will be able to tell you if we have a licensee for your country who may be able to supply the product you would like to buy.

Some visitors to the page have also asked about having their baby photographed by Anne. Anne does not undertake any private portraiture work as her own work (especially for her new book) keeps her incredibly busy. The baby models for Anne’s projects are usually from her local community, and as Anne is based in Australia now, she is only working with Australian babies, or babies that are born in Australia to parents from other countries, at present. Anne doesn’t advertise or conduct castings.

Anne and her team will often know of babies among their own family and friends, and it doesn’t take long for word to spread when Anne begins a project. Of course, if you are in Australia and are pregnant and would like to take part in Anne’s current project, you can email us via the website customer help centre. Also make sure to read the blog postings to hear how the new project is going.

#49 A window to the world!

Hello, one of Anne’s team went on a holiday to Jasna Góra in the city of Częstochowa, Poland and took a photo from outside a book shop that was close to the cathedral.

Yes, that is a copy of Anne’s ever popular, baby record book, My First Five Years in the front window! Our publishers in Poland are lovely people and we always enjoy meeting them.

If any of Anne’s Facebook fans see a window display in other cities around the world make sure you post them for others to see.

Anne is published in 83 countries, so it’s a nice way to travel the world looking through other countries book-shop windows!!

#48 A boy or a girl??

Today Anne had three newborn babies into the studio. The mothers had all been photographed by Anne whilst they were pregnant. It is very exciting to see the babies who were so recently inside the mothers tummies.

If the mothers do not know the gender of their babies before they are born, everyone in the studio always discusses (as does the rest of the world with pregnant mothers) on whether it will be a boy or a girl…after all we all have a 50-50 chance of getting it right. In the studio we are usually wrong!

Everyone was convinced that one of these women was going to have a boy!

There were all sorts of theories as to the shape of her belly, whether it was low or high, and all manner of other signs that pointed to her baby being a boy.

It was all very technical and we all felt confident. I think we even convinced the mother…………She had a girl!

#47 A nice honour for Anne

A nice touch today when the State of Queensland in Australia where Anne was born, recognised Anne's contribution to the States history from the year 1859-2009.

You can view the page celebrating Anne at:-

http://www.women.qld.gov.au/q150/1990/index.html#item-anne-geddes

Blog #46 And now for something completely different!

Here is a photograph of Anne outside "Sydney Wildlife World", when she went along to introduce herself to the curator to do some research for her new book. Now that is a clue!

As some of you may recognise, Anne is standing beside a cast of a (Red) Kangaroo, which stands outside. There are many live kangaroos in the Australian bush, but none in the city except at our famous zoos. (And none in the new book!)

Kangaroos are certainly not all this big, but some of them are, with the average Red Kangaroo standing approximately1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) tall. Accounts of sizes greater than this are not uncommon, with some large males reportedly reaching approximately 2 metres (6 ft 7 in). Anne is approx 1.8 metres (nearly 6 foot) tall, so this cast is not too unreal.

The males can leap over 9 metres (30 ft) in one leap!! Now that is one giant leap!

#45 The trick is to be prepared!

Anne had a meeting last week with a pregnant woman who was to come into the studio today for Anne to photograph her. Her husband telephoned this morning to say there was a slight problem about her coming in because……… she had given birth that very morning!

He was very apologetic (!!!) and of course Anne reassured him that it was great news and when babies decide to come out, there’s no stopping them!

As Anne had quite a few people lined up for the shoot, including make-up, stylist etc it seemed a pity to cancel and not shoot anything. As luck would have it (or good organisation!) we have many pregnant women on our files, so we called a lady who happened to be out shopping at the time (!!) and asked her if she was doing anything that afternoon? She said she had nothing important on, so agreed to come into the studio to have her photograph taken. Usually Anne likes to meet people beforehand and explain what she has in mind for their image and what they can expect when they come into the studio. This particular woman was coming to us had never met Anne before.

She arrived and Anne chatted about what she wanted to achieve and she was very happy about it all. She told us that she runs a company which trains women for treks, but treks to Mt. Everest and mountains in Borneo and Indonesia, (not just your average stroll around the park) as well as local treks just outside of Sydney.

Even in her last month of pregnancy she was very fit, (naturally) and looked the picture of health in her image.

She wrote a note to us tonight to say how much she enjoyed her time with us and that if we ever wanted to do a group trek that she would be happy to train us…obviously she did not have a close look at the team!

#44 Everyone in the studio is involved

Whenever Anne has newborns in the studio we have a lady who comes in to help. She helps with parking for the mothers and the fathers and anything extra that needs doing on those days. She is African American and has lived in Australia for around 15 years. You can see in the photo, her hair is quite amazing as it falls in little corkscrew type curls and is a very dark brown with blonde tips on the ends.

The first time Anne saw her hair, you could see her mind ticking over wondering how she could utilize it in the new book. Soon we will be able to give you more of an idea about the book, but we hope it's interesting understanding some of the background as we go along. Of course it did not take Anne long to come up with something, so yesterday Anne photographed her. Without giving too much away, the stylist placed various objects in her hair, all inspired by the element of nature that started Anne down this path in the first place earlier this year. Anne had a rehearsal last month to see if the idea would work and the following morning the lady said she was still picking things out of her hair and that her husband was wondering what on earth went on when she came to the studio.

It should be noted that straight after the shoot, the lady made a beeline for the hairdressing salon and had her hair cut. Anne had (jokingly) instructed her not to have her hair cut until she had photographed it. So she obeyed orders and couldn’t wait to have it all cut off the minute the shoot was over.

#43 A moment to share

It is always interesting to meet new parents, however today we had a wonderful Australian Aboriginal mother in the studio with her newborn, and as it turned out, she had to bring her other daughter, and her niece, along as well because of baby sitting problems; as a rule, Anne prefers to work only with the new born babies and mothers, or fathers, so there are no distractions.

When it came time for the sister to be photographed, Anne asked the two girls to come and sit by the digital monitor so they could see what was going on. They were so surprised when they saw the baby asleep in the set Anne had created, and then at the same time on the monitor connected to the camera. That the look of wonderment on their faces was absolutely priceless!

As you can see by the image above, they were still mesmerised when Anne had finished photographing.

Anne gave each of them one of a plush toy to take home with them.

(You can see the egg being held by one of the girls.)

#42 We travel the world through the children we see!

Anne continues with her photographing babies for her new book.

One of the babies had an Australian mother and a Tanzanian father. The mother met her husband whilst she was teaching Maasai children in Tanzania. (The United Republic of Tanzania is a sovereign state in central East Africa, and the Maasai are an indigenous African ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania.)

The father is also a teacher.

The mother came back to Australia to have her baby and her husband joined her just a week before she gave birth. They intend to return to Tanzania in a couple of months time, where they will both continue their work.

They said that most of the classes in the school where they taught had up to 250 children in each class! Obviously it is a highly rewarding job to be able to teach all of those children, even though at times it must be quite difficult. The mother is a volunteer and is looking forward to going back.

Their tiny baby looked so sweet. He had lots of black tightly curled hair, no doubt inherited from his dad.

#41 The dinner dance went well (refer blog #32)

The African Womens’ Dinner Dance held over last weekend was a huge success. There were numerous articles and photographs about it in all of our major newspapers. The organizers said there were around 400 women there from many different African countries, all dressed in their national costumes.

They said that one of the highlights of the night was the print that Anne had sent along. It was displayed on an easel alongside the Anne Geddes information table they had set up. The grandmother and the aunties of the little baby in the image were there and they were thrilled to tell the other women that the baby in the image was a member of their family.

#40 Activity continues in Anne's studio!

There is a great deal of activity shooting Anne's new book. The plan is to photograph all this year, and the new book will be available for all to see next year. It is going very, very well and Anne is really pleased with what she is achieving. It is exciting!

Launching very soon will be Anne's new pure clothing range and this will have a number of new photographs that we are sure you will love, so expect something very soon. New images and also a new video!

But back to the new book. Anne had two African families into the studio this morning. One from Sierra Leone (a country in West Africa with a population estimated at 6 million) and the other family came from Nigeria. (Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the eighth most populous country in the world with a population of over 150 million.) Anne took some beautiful images of their new babies. It was lovely to have babies with darker skin in the studio. Anne is making a major effort to contact the international communities here in Sydney as she has always ensured there is diversity in her images. There was also a baby who was part Australian Aboriginal, part Samoan; she had the most beautiful skin colour.

#39 Every day has an interesting story

There are so many interesting people we have in the studio. A new mother came in for a shoot, her baby was just ten days old. She said that both her and her husband are neurophysicists. (For your enlightenment (and ours) neurophysics is the branch of physics dealing with the nervous system. It covers a wide spectrum of phenomena from molecular and cellular mechanisms to techniques to measure and influence the brain and to theories of brain function.) So there! That is interesting!

Apparently it has become very difficult to practice, as you need to be constantly sitting exams and updating your degree, so she decided to become a dentist instead, and finished her degree about eighteen months ago, and now her husband has decided to do the same. He will finish his degree at the end of the year and they intend to open their own practice.

She was a very lovely person who was coping extremely well with being a new mother, whilst her husband continues to study, and they are in the initial stages of finding a suitable space to set up a new dental practice.

Interesting indeed!!

#38 A new Google association with Anne

Today is a big day for our continuing terrific association with Google. It’s so nice to see so many of you using Anne's iTheme on iGoogle; for Anne’s Facebook fans who haven’t tried it, check it out now.

But today, Google have announced their all new iGoogle Showcase. Here you can check out what gadgets Anne uses on her iGoogle page along with a host of other names, such as Martha Stewart, Katie Couric and Rachael Ray, Queen Rania of Jordon and a collection of other exciting names that you would be interested in.

It is really worth a look and is a very interesting and exciting Google innovation.

#37 Hello Facebook Fans

In some of your Facebook fan photos we've seen that your little ones are wearing Anne Geddes outfits. If you have a photo of your baby wearing items from Anne's clothing range you can send it into our monthly Baby Photo Quest competition on anne geddes.com and maybe win a great Anne Geddes gift pack, including a book signed personally by Anne. You can find more details on how to enter and photos of past winners on www.annegeddes.com.

#36 It's amazing!

It’s happened again!! (Refer Blog #29)

By sheer coincidence we had two new mothers in the studio today who were both film producers. They did not know one another, but they had both called their new sons exactly the same name! What is more, the babies were born one day apart and in the same hospital. They thought it was highly unusual that this should occur.

They became quite friendly whilst Anne was photographing their babies and during their time in the studio, organized to have lunch because:- they also live in the same neighbourhood! Might be a little confusing later on, as their friendship continues, with their sons having the same name. Both boys will answer a name call.

It is very satisfying for us to know that new friendships are forged in Anne’s studio.

#35 Anne and inspiration

If you have had the chance to read Anne’s autobiography,
A Labor of Love, you will have seen that when Anne is not photographing for the new book, she loves to photograph flowers, for enjoyment and relaxation.

So very often at the weekends the studio looks more like a flower shop than a photographic studio. Attached to this blog are a couple of photographs to show you what it sometimes looks like in the studio. There may be a clue here as to where the inspiration comes from, regarding some new ideas that Anne has for her new book?

#34 Thanks to Anne's Facebook Fans

Thank you to all of Anne’s fans who are joining us on Anne's Official Facebook. It’s so nice to have another way to keep in touch with you all, including those ex baby models who have said hello. It’s also lovely to hear so many nice comments about Anne’s images and products from around the world, and to see all of the fan photos that you are posting. Anne is always very touched when she hears that she has inspired somebody in some way. Even small things, such as adopting an Anne Geddes birthday party theme like Ariana Diaz-Romero did, mean a lot. Please do keep sharing your stories and thoughts on Anne's wall – we love to read them.

Some of your Facebook posts have asked about availability of Anne’s products around the world. All of the information on how to buy any items can be found on Anne’s website – www.annegeddes.com. You’ll also find the addresses for our stores in the USA there, and if you have any other questions, you’ll find contact information for our customer help center too.

We look forward to meeting more of you in coming months.

#33 Thanks to Anne's Fans on Facebook

Hi for those genuine friends of Anne who have supplied the lovely photos on Anne's Official Facebook page. Be aware that Anne does not endorse or support any company that endevours to promote their own business by posting photos with their company name superimposed and try to trade off Anne's name and reputation.

We love the real photos and the warm and generous comments.