Jérôme Aoustin Photography

February 5, 2010

“Peek-A-Boo!”

It’s all in the eyes, isn’t it?

February 4, 2010

“Where’s Jasmine?!”

That’s what Caroline exclaimed when she went to see her in the morning. She obviously wasn’t in her bed and the sheet was covering her face. Then she saw a hand… I guess she probably decided to get out of bed and visit us, but wasn’t quite that awake to make it past the cushions down below. Never a dull moment with Jasmine!

February 2, 2010

“Coloring At Uno’s”

After an unfruitful search for a toddler bed for Jasmine, we decided to stop by our local Uno’s restaurant. The waiter found Jasmine so cute that she got a complimentary fruit platter. We’re used to it, she’s used to it… Yeah, we’re in trouble.

January 12, 2010

“Bath!”

Bath time is a daily routine that Jasmine won’t ever let us forget, which is great. “Bath! I want bath!” Did I mention that she also loves brushing her teeth? I guess we are lucky… if I didn’t know it already.

December 27, 2009

“Allo ?”

My parents were going back to France that day. Jasmine found these phones as we were leaving the JFK airport. Don’t they start early nowadays…

December 23, 2009

“Jasmine And The Mint Tea”

We celebrated my parents’ 32nd anniversary at the Zitoune restaurant, home to a delicious and authentic Moroccan cuisine. Jasmine enjoyed her mint tea so much she kept drinking glasses full of it, then asking for more. I bounced my flash to her right side for this shot. I hope it works. It was tough to choose a single photo from that day.

December 18, 2009

“Cookie Mouton!”

A fun shot of Jasmine gluttonously engulfing a chocolate chip cookie. I have to explain the title… clearly, it should be cookie monster. However, Jasmine calls it cookie “mouton” instead (which translates into “sheep”). She loves sheep and I’ve got to admit the pronunciation doesn’t differ that much. To top it off, the actual Sesame Street character does look a little like a big fluffy goofy blue sheep, so… there you go!

As for the technical or artistic qualities of the photo itself, I leave it up to you. As far as I’m concerned, it falls under the snapshot category. Nevertheless, I keep reminding myself how some of those rough snapshots can hold so much more value than a beautiful photograph. Instants are fleeting, and you won’t always get a second chance. Keep shooting, it doesn’t always have to be perfect… and it certainly won’t always be. I took it on the way back from Vermont.

December 13, 2009

“I Can Do It, Too”

It’s been a long time since I posted anything to my blog, but it doesn’t mean I gave up on the Project 365. First, I’ve been really busy. My parents were here for the holidays and I already wish I spent more quality time with them. Blogging would have taken more time than I had to spare. Second, I got a new monitor for Christmas, a monitor that I need to calibrate. It will be done by the week-end, at which time I will have much more pleasure developing my photos… and finally catch up with what I shot over the previous couple of weeks.

This one was taken on our first evening at the Grand Summit Resort Hotel at Mount Snow, in Vermont. As usual, Jasmine was not to be left behind on the fun. I fell asleep early that evening so this is the best I got. To make up for a lack of a better photo, I got a little creative on the post processing. Don’t worry, the next ones will be much more interesting. I’ll see you in a couple more days… in the meantime, I wish you all a very happy new year 2010!

November 29, 2009

“Jasmine’s 2nd Birthday”

I took quite a few photos of Jasmine as she was blowing out her two candles. She repeated it five times with the same enthusiasm we know her so well for. Out of all the photos, this one really stuck out. I didn’t even think twice about choosing it over the others. The only retouching I did was to burn some areas of the background in post, so as to not distract from Jasmine and her cake. Caroline made the cake. In our daughter’s words, it was indeed “yummy!”

November 24, 2009

“An Escalator Ride”

I took this in “The Westchester” mall, where photography is apparently prohibited. A security guard let me know about it as I was doing a test shot. He then left. What was I going to do? Not take that second shot with my family in the picture? Let me point out why such a rule is absurd anyway.

First, there are areas in the mall where they have props set up for Christmas to pose children. Are they supposed to sit still on a box, smile and go away? Not really… parents do take photos. Are those areas less sensitive than where I was standing? Ever heard of wide angle lenses? Second, if I really wanted to videotape the whole mall, I would, and this without attracting any suspicion.

Yet there are those rules that security guards have to abide by… which are completely nonsensical to me. If somebody has a clue, please enlighten me. So many of those rules have been put in place after 9/11, so I am assuming it’s stemming from that. I may be wrong. If I’m right, all it really does is give people a distorted feeling of safety all the while adding a new set of restrictions.

As for the photo itself, I obviously didn’t spend a lot of time shooting after that incident. Hence, very little thought went in the composition and I had to crop it in post. I elected to crop Caroline out as well in order to better focus on Jasmine, which in my opinion made the end result stronger.

As a side note, minutes before I took this shot I was very tempted to take a photo of another security guard coming down that escalator. He looked completely goofy, chewing on his gum, slouching on the ride down with his belly sticking out, his hat on the side… a real cartoon character. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to take it. Or maybe that was fortunate… I’ll never know. Oh snap! I just realized why they don’t want people to take pictures.