#108 What has the old song Rockin' Robin and Anne Geddes in common.

Correct! We are now Twittering!!!!!

You can now follow Anne on Twitter and bookmark our RSS feed to receive the latest from the Official Anne Geddes website.

And if you haven't already, be sure to become a Fan on Anne's Facebook page and subscribe to the Gedddes Group YouTube channel!

There will be more exciting ways soon that we will be able to keep up the news to you, especially to let you know about Anne's new coffee table book to be available in the Fall 2010.

Anne has been shooting new images all of this year and it is going to be a lovely, all new, book for you to buy for yourself or as the perfect gift!

#107 An under cover question?

We're excited to announce that the second of Anne's Limited Edition Prints is due to be released next week!

No prizes for guessing what this one is, but you can join in the discussion on our messageboard!

A clue= Fairy!

Thanks for all for your comments on Facebook and to the followers of the blog; it's a nice feeling, knowing that you are all out there sharing our thoughts and feelings. Lovely also to see the posts of the photos of the babies.

We will have a couple of new announcements over the next couple of weeks, we will keep you up to date.

#106 A reason to celebrate

The reason is that Anne's Flagship store that we just showed to you on Facebook celebrated it's 4th birthday, so Happy Birthday to the store.

And for those who were wondering what the flower was in the last blog, it's the Waratah! (telopea speciosissima) (plant family: Proteaceae).

It's the Floral Emblem of New South Wales, the State that Sydney is the capital of in Australia and where Anne has her studio now.

Sorry no prizes for correctly guessing, but if you knew the botanical name well done!

#105 A clue for the new book

As mentioned in an earlier blogs, Anne sometimes goes on excursions out of the studio if she need to research anything. It’s always exciting to go on these little road trips, whether they be near or far, as it gives us all a chance to get out of the studio for a while.

Producing a book means a great deal of time spent at the studio, so it is a nice change to actually get out.

Some of the team accompanied Anne out to the Mount Annan Botanic Gardens. Anne has sourced some elements for the new book from them in the past, and visited the New South Wales seed bank, which is located there.

But yesterday, Anne was invited to tour the gardens themselves. (more clues re the content of the new book) Mt Annan is a native garden on approximately 400 hectares (100 acres) and is about one hours drive from the centre of Sydney.

Two of the research team took Anne on a guided tour. The gardens are really lovely, quite natural in appearance a lot of the land looks like undulating countryside, not garden-like at all.

The team had a wonderful morning out there and finished it off with a picnic in their wattle grove. (no cup cakes)

Here is Anne studying a possible addition to the book. The name of the flower next blog!

Don't forget to look at using Anne's iTheme on Google and also it was nice to see so many nice comments from Anne's Facebook Fans regarding Anne's Flagship store in Downtown Disney. It was actually a Disney invitation that made this location possible.

For those who have not been there to Disneyland, (make a promise to go to Disneyland, it's really a fun place) we are directly opposite the Disney store.

#104 For your interest

It's terrific to see how many of Anne's Facebook fans are using the iTheme that we created for iGoogle. We will be going to change this as we go forward with the new book and once it is set you will be able to receive the changes automatically.

We will be releasing the name of the new book also this year with a special announcement by Anne. In fact there is a clue in the current theme! The release will be the Fall of 2010 and the wonderful results from the Frankfurt Book Fair will mean the book will be available in most countries around the globe.

We will let you know on the website and blog as to where and when.

Also, a little while back I mentioned that we had a pregnant lady from France into the studio, who happened to be the ex nanny of one of our team. Well she has had her baby and brought him into the studio along with her sister, Veronique, who is visiting from France. Veronique lives in a small village called Goudourville, which is in the mid Pyrenees area in the South of France.

Veronique speaks little English, so it was lovely to hear them speaking their beautiful language. Our team member, Valerie, speaks fluent French as well, so she joined in. Not so the rest of the team! Smiling is good!!

The two sisters were discussing a family wedding, which is to be held in Goudourville later on in the year. The new baby will be going. It seems that many new babies do lots of travelling before they are even six months old, at least the ones that come in here do.

#103 "Love is in the air"..... (literally ). What can go wrong sometimes does!

A young couple visited Anne's studio last week and they told us that they had met via a dating service on the Internet.

They said that they talked every day online for about six weeks and then decided to set up a date.

The man, Scott, booked a very special table at a restaurant which overlooks Sydney Harbour and had gone to great pains to book the best table in the house, he had ordered flowers to be on the table, he had also booked a limousine to pick his date, Helen, up from her home and drive her to one of Sydney’s five star harbourside hotels where she was instructed to catch the lift to the beautiful cocktail bar on the 36th floor where he would be waiting for her.

The plan was to have pre-dinner drinks there, then back to the limousine, then drive over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the restaurant he had booked.

Unfortunately for both of them, Helen developed a bad case of food poisoning in the afternoon, but left it until the last minute to call him, as she was hoping she would recover.

Unfortunately she was very ill and couldn’t make it.

So, after much discussion, Scott organized a repeat performance for the following week. (naturally there would be a fresh bunch of flowers on the table)

Things went very well, they talked and laughed and were the last people to leave the restaurant; they said the staff were cleaning up around them probably hoping they would leave so that they could all go home.

Ever since that evening they spoke several times a day on the phone.

They decided after a brief romance of about three months, that they wanted to try for a baby, and it happened very quickly.

They plan to marry next year and both laughed that they are doing things back to front.

They are very happy together…something to be said for love at first sight (or in case of the Internet, first email).

We hope the baby can come to the studio to be photographed by Anne when he or she is born.

Now "Isn't it romantic"?

#102 Catch up news

The Fair at Frankfurt was very successful with the reaction to Anne's new images and book really terrific. The team who were there are on their way back to Sydney (and also America), this blog in fact comes to you from Dubai airport in the Arab Emirates. ( a very big airport) We will be able to tell you more about the new book as we approach the end of the year.

Back in Sydney, Anne continues to shoot new images, and as mentioned in earlier blogs, we do get some interesting people into Anne's studio.

A young couple came to the studio. The mother( who is pregnant) is a voice-over artist who works on animated features – mainly doing children’s voices. The father looks after their first baby at home during the day and will also look after the new baby when it’s born, however by night he is a chef and caters for private dinner parties.

She is from Chicago and her family are still there. He was on holiday in America when they met in Los Angeles. They spent the next week together and then he returned to Australia. A month later he was on a plane again to meet up with her in Los Angeles.

The rest is history – they have not been apart since. They married, had one little boy and a baby girl is on the way.

The baby is due to be born quite soon and the mother will have a couple of weeks off, then she starts work on an animated series for television.

So onto the next leg of the journey home.

When we travel it's always lovely to hear comments from the flight crew on how much they enjoy Anne's photographs when they learn what some of the team do.

#101 Behind the Scenes!

For Anne's Facebook Fans it was exciting to pass the 11,000 number, thanks for your help. The Book Fair continues with some very good reaction to the preview of Anne's new book.

We said in blog #100 we had some more news regarding the Limited Edition Prints that we would share with you.

For the launch of Anne’s Limited Edition Print Collection, we thought it would be nice to share with you some of the things that go on behind the scenes to create a truly special collection, such as this:-

Let me introduce to you Marie, one of Anne Geddes two specialist black & white hand-printers.(See photo above)

Marie says:-

"Some years ago Anne decided to make Limited Editions of some of her favorite photographs.

Rebecca, who is Anne’s other printer, and I have been working on these for a while now, in between making prints to scan for Anne’s book projects.

Until recently, all of Anne’s black and white work had been shot on film, and printed in her studio darkroom, and this is where Rebecca and I have produced Anne’s Limited Edition Print Collection.

Before her move to Sydney, Anne’s office was just through our darkroom wall. Fortunately she had a wall full of books to muffle the sound of music – ours, not hers!"

#100 Good news from the Frankfurt Book Fair

Well to celebrate the 100th blog for this year, it is nice to say that reaction to the preview of Anne's new book is very, very good.

Everyone is very excited!!! We will be able to let you all know what it all about very soon, as naturally we had to wait until the Fair.

Also we will be able to celebrate the 11,000 Facebook Fan in the next few hours; make sure you tell a friend so they may be the 11,000 person!!!

More soon, tomorrow we can give you some interesting information about the Limited Edition Prints.

#99 Day One at the Frankfurt Fair about to start

Some interesting facts on the Frankfurt Book Fair to let you know how big it actually is. It goes over 9 large Halls, each hall is the size of 4 football fields. There are 7,314 companies exhibiting and over 300,000 people expecting to attend.

This is the 16th year that we have been exhibiting Anne’s images for her books.

Reaction is expected to be all that we imagine, and Anne has created once again a beautiful collection of images for what promises to be a truly wonderful book for Fall 2010.

More soon.

#98 It’s a very exciting week.

This week is the time of the Frankfurt Book Fair. And this is where for the first time we have a showing of a preview of Anne’s new book that we have been telling you about.

Anne has not finished shooting the book yet, and won’t be until the end of the year, but all of the many joint publishers from around the world come to Frankfurt to see what Anne has been photographing.

Some of Anne’s team are going to be there including Anne’s husband Kel. Anne is staying behind in Sydney to continue with the photography.

It’s all very exciting and we will be able to let you know during the week of some of the details from the Fair.

#97 A repeat of one of Anne's interviews

As many of you are aware, Anne recorded a lovely interview on the programme Between The Lines, when she was on her tour to promote her autobiography A Labor of Love. This has been replayed in many cities; for those who like to see the interview on the television at home, it's now Central Michigan's turn, so tune in to WCMU-TV on Wednesday, October 14, at 1:00 PM.

If this post has sparked an interest in others wanting to see this interview with Barry Kibrick, you can watch it on Anne's YouTube channel.

#96 Questions and answers

It’s been wonderful to see such a great response on Anne’s official Facebook page and from our dedicated blog readers.

You will no doubt have seen that we have had a lot of exciting things happening in the last few weeks, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been enjoying seeing your photos and reading all of your comments on Anne’s wall.

It’s been really lovely to see the great responses that you’ve all had to the pure clothing line and the Limited Edition Prints, which were released just this week.

For those with questions of the Facebook page we do try to answer personally, but we can share a few responses for all of you.

Thanks to Susan for her comments regarding Anne’s speech in Arizona.
Anna Marie, Anne doesn’t actually undertake any private portraiture work, she simply doesn’t have the time because of her contractual commitments;
Cali, because of Anne’s book project in Australia she is not able to visit her store at Downtown Disney, but we will let all of her US fans know via the website and Facebook page next time she’s going to be there;
Irene, we do review our shipping arrangements and add countries whenever we can, so keep checking back on the website;
Ana Luz, unfortunately Anne’s calendars are not published in Bolivia and we can’t ship there at present, but you could try to use a mail forwarding service in the USA to purchase via the annegeddes.com online store.
Carrie regarding Anne finding her babies for her photos, if you go back over the blogs, you will see that it is generally by word of mouth, when Anne is going to produce a book, people find out through friends and contacts

Once again thanks again for keeping in touch. We do love hearing from you.

#95 What has banana bread to do with this photo?

So far for Anne’s new book, (available Fall 2010) Anne has photographed many newborn babies, in fact at last count, it was up around 160. It’s lovely having them in the studio, very calm and peaceful, because once they are fed, they fall asleep basically. (perhaps not at 3am at your house!) But when they do, because Anne has it all set beforehand, the photo happens very quickly.

Last week Anne had five six-month-old babies into the studio to be photographed, quite a change from the newborns! Five little strong personalities came through the doors. Absolutely beautiful and entertaining because they look at you and laugh, so it’s a very happy time for the team as well. Anne still has to be quick, as they lose interest very quickly.

We had two African babies, one whose mother is from Sierra Leone and the other from Nigeria. One of the six-month-old babies was a little girl in who had already been to the studio as a newborn, but during the course of that morning her mother developed terrible mastitis and had to leave to go to the doctor before Anne could photograph her baby. So finally, she came back as a six month old.

Here is a photograph of one of the little African babies. Her name is Cordelia and she is sitting on the floor of our reception area eating some banana bread. This was the first time she had tried banana bread, it happened to be on the morning tea plate that we provide for the parents and her mother gave her some to try. We ended up sending the entire leftover banana bread home with her, as she seemed to have taken a distinct liking to it.

We will continue with stories regarding the new book, and as we move into next year we will share more in-depth stories and also share some of the images with you, but you will have to patient for that.

Tell your friends if they are interested, and we can let you spread the word regarding what the content of the new book is all about.