We’re three weeks into the school year. The Fall is picking up speed. The new shoes are scuffed. Somebody in this house has already lost a jacket. (It was me.)

OK, here’s what’s in this roll

• School Picture Day rules from someone who photographs kids for a living

• A bonus Six Pics prompt, free, because September is ending

• Ideas for the hundred and seventy-eight school days with no obvious photo opp

Here’s what I’ve noticed, photo-wise: I have never seen a single photograph from the third week of school. Typically it’s like, no official occasion? No photo. But I think there’s an opportunity here! Well, a hundred and seventy-eight of them, or so. So exciting. Let’s start today.

Everybody clicks the first day of school. We talked about that. Shoes, backpack. Bookends. Check. And the last day of school, definitely good. Don’t think I won’t have a tip for that day. But now, we get to making good memories out of zilch.

How to take a low-angle photo of your kids with your phone

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND. Timer on. Camera flat on the ground, lens pointing at the sky. Then send the kids running and spinning around it.

And to be clear: you are not spinning the camera. The camera is the only thing here that holds still. The kids orbit, the camera waits. Your phone is the spindle. Everybody else is the record.

You’ll get hair in the breeze, a profile mid-laugh, a blur of legs, somebody’s shoe. Two keepers out of forty is a win!!

And you do not need a lawn for this. It works just as well on a rug, a kitchen floor, a hallway. Which is lucky, because there was a storm up the coast all weekend and I did my test on the living room floor.

A ceiling is a perfectly good background. It's giving… well, nothing!

This prompt is so funnnnn!

I’m doing the real one with all three of my kids tomorrow, look for a how-to reel on IG.

Send me your results and we’ll be even.

And no, my kids aren't in it. I tested this in PJs at night first because I would never hand you something I hadn't tried myself. But the technique REALLY worked, which is why you're reading about it.

A few things that make it work:

• Timer on a delay (I did three seconds) so you’ve got time to get out of the frame and get them moving. If your phone will do burst mode, even better. (Live photo and flash both have to be off.)

• Lens pointing straight up, not propped at an angle. The upward angle is what makes it look unlike everything else on your phone.

• On gravel or sand, put the phone on a book or a jacket. On grass or a rug it’s fine.

• Indoors, get the overhead light off and use whatever’s coming in the windows. Overheads throw a color you don’t want, even on a gray day. A rainy afternoon is genuinely lovely light for this.

• Tell them to run. Don't mention smiling. “Run around it” and “spin” turn faces away by physics. A kid moving past a fixed camera blurs on their own, and the blur reads as motion rather than a mistake.

• Do it at least five times! On burst that's around forty frames.

• Go looking for the fragment, not the portrait. Hair, an ear, a chin, a shoe mid-air.

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That’s the one you control. Now the one you don’t.

School picture day tips from a photographer

Before school: the outfit

• The clothes have to fit. This is the one that beats all the others. Too small or too big is a lose-lose. Even if you love it, even if their heart is set on it, if it doesn’t fit, don’t do it. I will not be taking questions.

• No orange. Ever. Even if it’s their favorite color (it’s my son’s). In any lighting, orange casts a weird tone up onto your kid’s skin. Hard pass.

• No neons. Hard no.

• Skip patterns and logos. They pull attention away from that cutie little face.

• Avoid complicated layers. My daughter spent years wanting to wear a cardigan with only the top button buttoned. Great look. But after a trip to school under a jacket, there was no guarantee anybody would get that detail right, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed by a photo she’d been picturing all week. Keep it simple enough to survive a coat.

Before school: the hair

• Style it out of their face if you can. It may clash with their personal aesthetic, so do your best, but nudge them toward a style with less unpredictability.

Unless your kid has opinions

• Everything above assumes a kid who doesn’t much care what they’re wearing. Plenty of them don’t, especially when they’re little, and in that case the school photo is for you. So follow my rules, get a great and distraction-free face shot that is solid gold.

• But some kids care enormously. I was one of them and I still am. So on behalf of baby me: if your kid has a vision for Picture Day, let them have it. Let them choose it, let them be proud of it, even if it is nowhere near what you would have picked. Especially then.

• Because in that case the photo isn’t for you. It’s for THEM. And a kid who got to decide how they showed up, and liked how they looked doing it, beats a photo that coordinates with your living room. It might do wonders for their confidence, and that is priceless.

In the car: the pep talk, since you can’t be there to micromanage

• Tell them to tell their friend in line a funny joke as they are walking into the gym. Being in a good mood is a great start. Need some jokes? I get mine from the Primal Meats beef jerky wrappers, and they’re gold. “What do you call a room with no doors? A mushroom!”

• And after all that prep? Take the pressure off. It’s all for fun. We take a million pictures ourselves every year (true!), so if this one isn’t great, so what?

And the one that actually fixes it

Take your own picture-day photo. Snap their outfit yourself that morning, in your own doorway, and then let the official one be good or bad.

Because school photos aren’t the record. They’re a receipt. The real photos are the ones your family takes.

Send me your September photos for The Six

Three days left in September, and then these prompts get their own room behind a door.

Here’s what I actually want, and I’ve been asking for it wrong. Send me the ones with nobody in them. Your four o’clock wall. The shoes by the door. The thing your kid outgrew. The light doing something in a room you’ve stopped looking at.

I know that asking you to send me a photograph of your child is a big ask from a person you’ve never met. I wouldn’t do it either. A picture of a wall, though. That we can do.

Just hit reply. This email comes to me and nowhere else, which I suspect is the part that matters.

Sending it means I might feature it here, with your first name or without it. Tell me which and I’ll do that.

And, guys, you know exactly how low this bar is: you already saw my merry-go-round test pic. It's mid. I kept it anyway!

October’s Six lands Monday the 5th, and one prompt is always free.

Meme of the week

I will forever be looking to see if I can recreate this. I will be deep-knee bending to get a low angle now on ALL weeds. In case art is afoot. And I love that the caption is just completely earnest grass facts!

So that’s September. I asked a few hundred people to take six photographs, and then spent four weeks finding out what anybody would actually do with that.

Here’s where I’ve landed. I’ve started something over on Instagram called Ode to the Ordinary, where I film the least remarkable parts of my day and stitch them together anyway. I started it by accident, sitting in the car one day thinking a video looking up at the trees would be cool. And now it’s a thing that I’m having so much fun with!

None of it is an occasion. That’s exactly why I keep it. The occasions take care of themselves.

So I think that's just what I do now. I point the camera up and I see what happens.

These are a type of photo prompt, one you don’t mind sharing. And if you make one, tag it #odetotheordinary and I’ll come and find it.

Go get one before the month runs out!

hugs!!

Ana

I was not a great student. And, like, I want to be clear that this isn’t false modesty; it’s just the truth. I was creative and happy, but I was distracted and not fully aware that my brain worked differently from that of a traditional learner.

READ ON TO DISCOVER

• The sentence a teacher said to me in high school that I’ve been living off for nineteen years

• The File: the folder I keep of every nice thing anybody has said, and how to start yours tonight

• The photos I took of a newborn who is now eighteen, and the message his mother sent me out of the blue

• Where September’s Six photo prompts stand at halfway, and what you’ve sent me so far

• How to photograph your kid without showing their face, from my week with the royals

• Photo shoot availability with Ana in NYC, The Hamptons, Westchester and Westport

Then I took photography class at Santa Cruz High School with a teacher named Mr. Wills, and he told me I had good instinct. A good eye. That I’d taken to the medium. That my printing was technically strong (I’d never been complimented for anything technical before) and that my dedication to photography had the kind of momentum behind it to go the extra mile.

Whether it was true or not, it felt like the first time a teacher had told me I was good at anything.

For a long time I told that story as a sad one, because it sounds like photography won by default. It didn’t. What actually happened is that school had spent a decade measuring a narrow set of things I did not really have, and then one room finally measured something I did, and somebody said it out loud. And it felt good.

Nineteen years later I’m still clicking pics. And Mr. Wills surely has no idea the difference he made.

How to keep a folder of every nice thing anyone has said

Here’s a thing I keep, and it isn’t a photograph.

A folder on my phone. This was my friend Leah Fink’s idea, and she calls it “F*ck Yeah File”.

Screenshots of nice things people have said. A text from a client. An unexpectedly generous line in an email. Something kind my husband said, with a cadence I didn’t want to lose. Evidence.

Leah says she also uses hers for things like thank-you cards, or even after nailing a killer gig: the paid invoice, as a reminder of reaching beyond previous limiting beliefs, of achieving, and of gratitude.

We are all excellent at cataloging our failures. I happen to be a gold medalist in this sport. And you too, probably. Most people can list theirs right now, in order, with dates. Almost nobody can do the same with the evidence that they made a difference in somebody’s life.

Here’s why this isn’t just a feel-good exercise.

There’s a well-documented thing psychologists call negativity bias, and the shorthand for it is bad is stronger than good. A negative event lands harder, lasts longer, and gets processed more thoroughly than a positive one of exactly the same size. Criticism outweighs praise, reliably, in study after study. It isn’t a character flaw. It’s standard equipment.

Which means your internal record is not neutral. You are not misremembering. You are running an archive that logs every failure in full and files the good stuff in a loose pile on a picnic table, outdoors. On a windy day. Gone.

And mothers get a second helping. The research on self-compassion keeps turning up the same asymmetry: women are dramatically better at extending compassion outward than inward, and researchers tie it directly to being raised into the nurturing, self-sacrificing role. In postpartum studies, how harshly a woman responds to herself is the single variable most strongly linked to depression.

And on an ADHD brain, which is the brain I have, criticism gets filed in bold and praise gets filed in pencil.

So. You already have a complete, meticulously maintained, obsessively detailed record of everything you have ever done wrong.

What you don’t have is the other file.

That isn’t a self-esteem problem. It’s a filing problem. And filing happens to be my entire new personalityyyy.

Emotional Filtering

I’m not the first person to land on this idea, and the version I found this week is better than mine.

Kelly Banks writes The Dopamine Dispatch, about ADHD, and she has a wonderful piece on the lies your brain tells you. Two of them are exactly what I’m describing.

One she calls emotional filtering: you walk out of an interview having answered nearly everything well, and the only thing you can think about is the question you fumbled.

The other is minimization, and her example took the top of my head off. Her clients sit down and open with “I didn’t do anything this week.” Then they unpack the week together and find that they did an enormous amount.

Leah does this in her coaching too, where she has you identify three things you want to celebrate yourself for this month. It can be hard to come up with! But those three things are there.

Four things that landed in my file this week

• The family whose newborn photos I took nineteen years ago. Those kids are fifteen and eighteen now. She wrote out of the blue to say they’d moved house; they moved the photo wall with them, and the pictures still make her smile every day.

• A second family, no connection to the first. Two little girls who are now not so little, and who live in the South now. They’ve had other photographs taken since. Mine are still their favorites.

• A third family I've been photographing for eight summers mentioned in today's session that they'd love lots of kids-only photos, because they have a whole wall of them. I had no idea. She sent me a picture of the wall. I can’t get over how lovely it was to see my work in the world like this.

• Now it feels like I’m making this up, or perhaps I’m a witch, but I just got a fourth poke from a treasured client, tagging me in a post of her photo wall, literally as I type this. Whaa—?! And she has such great taste. (Thank you, Jessica!)

  

All unrelated. All in one week. All about work I had long stopped thinking about. My file is swelling!

And I would never have known. None of them had to write to me. Nothing prompted it. If they hadn’t, I’d have none of it.

Four in one go is not normal, obviously. The universe understood the assignment.

People do say the nice things. You’re just not keeping them.

Start yours tonight

The fix is much smaller than the problem. You don’t have to believe the nice thing. You don’t have to feel worthy of it or sit with it or do anything at all with your feelings. You just have to keep it.

Screenshot. Folder. Done. Ten seconds, no emotional labor required. Belief can come later, or never. The evidence is there either way.

It's the same move I use for saving inspiration: collect first, judge later, let the pattern turn up on its own.

Go back through your texts, your email, your screenshots, and find three. Just three. Then keep adding for a year.

So tell me

Who was your Mr. Wills, and have you ever told them?

It might feel good to type it out!

Leave a comment

September's photo prompts for parents, at the halfway mark

We’re halfway through September and the first month of The Six is running in public.

If you missed it, The Six is a monthly series of photo prompts for parents, with a pro photographer’s tip from me on how to nail the shot.

As promised, September Prompt #4, The Selfie Portrait-mode Hack, now has a how-to on Instagram:

If you took a first-day photo for the Bookends, find it now and put it somewhere you can locate it in June.

There are two and a half weeks left in the month, so nothing is over. All six prompts are here, still free for everybody!

In October, The Six becomes a paid perk, with one prompt always free. This thing keeps going in directions I didn't plan, as people actually use the prompts and tell me what's working, and honestly I’m here for it. Don’t forget to leave me your advice even if you don’t feel like submitting your photo!

Leave a comment

To submit your photo: Hit reply to this email! Sending it means I might feature it here, with your first name, or without your name if you'd rather. Tell me which. (Or ana@anagambuto.com)

How to photograph your kid without showing their face

I got asked to talk about something I think about constantly and have never written down here: how do you photograph your kid when you don’t want to show their face?

It came up because Prince George started at Eton this week, and because Meghan has gotten genuinely inventive about posting her children without posting their faces.

My friend Rachel Bowie asked me how a person does that on purpose. Here’s the whole piece.

The short version, and then the part I didn’t say:

Let the adult be the subject. Toss a little one in the air and face the camera yourself. Cup a three-year-old’s face so only part of it shows. Ask a big kid to do a cartwheel, so the face is turned away by the physics of it.

Use the environment. A giant leaf held up in front of a face is a fall photo and a privacy screen at the same time. Photograph them walking away and let the focus sit on their hair, or the outfit, or the back of a neck.

And the one I do the most: selfie timer on, camera flat on the ground, kids spinning around it. I walk away with hair in the breeze, a profile mid-laugh, a blur of legs. Two frames that work out of forty is plenty.

Here’s the part I didn’t say in the interview. The face is not actually the thing you’re trying to keep. What you want is this year. The neon-yellow pants my toddler refused to take off for a month. The preschooler who is still willing to hold my hand on the way to the bus stop. Those are dated and specific and they will wreck you in ten years, and not one of them requires a face.

Who are you posting for? I’m posting for future me. That question settles almost every version of this argument before it starts.

One more thing, and then the vote.

Here’s the thing I noticed about the photos you sent me. Walls. Light on a floor. Shoes by the door, and several clever things you’re going to bookend. The thing somebody outgrew.

Almost none of them have a face in them, and I don’t think that’s an accident. I think you were right, and I was asking wrong.

So something is changing in October, and I’ll tell you about it then.

Do you post your kids' faces online?

Last week I asked you if getting School Picture Day tips in your inbox would be fun. Five people replied, all saying yes! Look out for that next week.

I told you something's changing in October. This is the question underneath it.

Results next issue, as always.

This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon. If you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!

What I read, bought and watched this week

How to set yourself up for success this Fall by thoughtfully lowering the bar: Amy Shoenthal’s the Sunday Set-Up really spoke to me with this idea.

Beauty is not my beat, but I do evangelize this to everyone, if they ask. Many of us in our forties are wearing less makeup, but I find myself wearing it more and with more pleasure than before. That said, I rarely have the time to apply it. But when I do, I want it to stay put and this setting spray has changed the game for me on my aging (whateverrr) skin.

My husband and I were marveling at the talent of Norah Jones and Harry Mack freestyling in this viral clip, please do watch and let it make your day! She tosses him random words like “seratonin” and he makes it pure magic.

Meme of the Week

Like, guys, honestly, the longer I live, the fewer things I know.

​​

Fall Shoot Dates: Family photos with Ana

Announcing dates here before they hit the open airwaves of Instagram!

I have openings in September, October and November in NYC, the Hamptons, Westport and Westchester.

The Hamptons: Saturday, October 17th, Sunday, November 8th, various weekdays

NYC: Friday, 9/25, Saturday, 10/3, Sunday, 10/4, Sunday, 10/18 (morning)

Westport: Sunday, 10/11

Westchester: Sunday, 10/18 (afternoon)

Email me to snag a booking. ana@anagambuto.com

Everything above is me asking you to keep proof that you’re good at something. So here’s what I think I’m good at: making the ordinary extraordinary, at the potential expense of good sense. I feel good at making memories for others, and for myself. When I look at my f*ck yeah file, I think, yeah. I’m proud of me.

Make the folder. It takes ten seconds and one day it will be there to make a dark day brighter.

hugs!!
Ana

Read on to discover:

• September’s Six Pics, in full and free, including one I’ve never published anywhere

• The first-day-of-school photo you really should be taking

• The portrait-mode trick I gave a national magazine and never told you about

• Why I’m telling you not to buy a new backpack

• A reader’s flowers, and the fifteen-second recording I want you to make today

Squeakie, Noodles and DiDi are all heading out into the world for hours a day now, without their mama. Nobody outside this house knows why any of them are called what they’re called.

Squeakie, because as a baby, Colette squeaked like a literal mouse, from the moment she came out to her first birthday. It was so so cute and I took endless videos of it! Watching those videos now makes my heart swell and my breath catch.

Noodles because calling out “Noooooooooodles!!” was so fun to say, and it made him laugh.

DiDi because it is a cute, natural, easy-to-say shortening of Elodie, and it stuck so hard that I added it to her paperwork for pre-school.

Here’s the thing nobody warns you about. The nicknames expire. Not on a date, and not with an announcement. One day you call across a parking lot and the eight-year-old turns around with a face that says Ew. And you will not have known, on the last ordinary morning you said it, that it was the last ordinary morning you said it.

I have made an entire career out of catching the things you can see. I have almost nothing on the things you can hear.

Back to School: Spend Where the Camera Looks

I’m equal parts excited / an emotional puddle. Four times this week I’ve made the joke (stolen from my friend Susan who is much funnier than me) that I’m like a marathoner elbowing her way to the finish line, leg broken and covered in something icky. I’m at that part of the summer as a parent. But I also feel the deep magnetic pull of the book closing on my baby being a baby. I no longer have two kids and a baby, I have three full on kid-kids.

And now, since no one asked, here’s my one piece of back-to-school advice.

I’m not good at school supplies, because I always just get to Target and buy pretty pens and not whatever I came for. But I’m good at looking at pictures, so here’s what I know from the looking: the backpack is in every single photograph of your kid for the next nine months. The lunchbox is in none of them. It lives in a cubby from 8:30 to 3:00 and comes home inside the backpack.

So the backpack gets your attention. The lunchbox gets whatever is on sale.

This isn’t about vanity, and it isn’t about spending more. It’s that your family’s photo record has a wardrobe department, you’re the one staffing it, and right now you’re staffing it in a fluorescent aisle at 8pm while a two-year-old removes one shoe and licks it.

Which brings me to the thing I actually want you to do this week.

The September Six: Photo Prompts for Parents

Let’s fkn go.

I promised you five more prompts today. Here they are, plus the one you already have, all in one place.

Free for everybody this month, because September is the test run and I want to see what happens when a few hundred of us shoot the same six things.

They take about a minute each. Do all six, do two, do one. Do none and just read along, that’s allowed too.

1. THE GASP

One thing / moment / action this month that made your body do the little internal ooh. No researching it, no justifying it. If you gasped, shoot it.

Why: this one repeats every single month, forever, because it’s my whole philosophy in one assignment. Your ooh instinct has been right more often than your eyes have.

2. THE BOOKENDS

Pick one thing per kid. Photograph it on the first day of school and again on the last day. Same spot, same framing, same distance. Not the kid. The thing.

What thing? Your call, but here's mine.

You cannot see a year happening while it happens. Two frames, nine months apart, and suddenly you can.

How: whatever you pick, make it easy to find again. The front door. The same tree. The corner of the porch. If it’s paper, shoot from directly above, near a window, with the phone flat and parallel to the page so the lines stay straight.

Now open your calendar and put it in June. You will forget. Everyone forgets, and the second frame is where all the meaning lives.

I’ll remind you too. It’s already on mine.

3. THE 4 O’CLOCK WALL

You’ve had this one since Wednesday, and a reader asked me a question about it that made me realize I named it badly. So here’s the fixed version.

Do not stand in your kitchen at 3:58 PM waiting for something to happen. What I’m actually asking is for you to start noticing when the light in your house does something. It might be 7am on the stairs. It might be 6:30 in the bathroom, of all places. It might genuinely be four, in which case, lucky you.

The light has moved since July, and it will move again before November, so the answer you find this month is only good for this month. Find the wall or the patch of floor where it’s doing something now, and shoot only that. Look across from wherever your windows are. No people required.

Why: you’re learning your own house. Once you know where the good light lives and when, you’ll start standing your kid in it without thinking about it. That’s the actual skill, and everything else is a setting.

4. THE SELFIE PORTRAIT TRICK

Here’s one I have genuinely never published here, and it’s the most useful thing in this list.

Portrait mode on the back camera needs about four feet to work, which is useless when the subject is a moving child. So: open portrait mode, switch to the front-facing camera, then turn the phone around so your kid is in the frame instead of you.

The shorter focal length lets you shoot from about six inches away, and it focuses faster. Hit the volume-up button to fire, and shoot in rapid succession.

Why: it turns the one lens that can’t handle kids into the one that can. I gave this tip to PureWow a couple of years ago, and I hadn’t yet started Six Pics then! It's funny to reread because it calls me a mom of two, which was true at the time.

Follow me on Instagram for a front-facing portrait hack how-to, coming up soon!

5. YOU. IN THE PICTURE.

Non-negotiable. Every month. Forever.

Prop the phone on a shelf and use the timer, or hand it to a seven-year-old and let them cook.

Why: your kids will not care about your hair. They will care that you were there.

6. THE LAST WARM EVENING

One more night this month, everybody ends up outside without a jacket and nobody planned it. That’s the one.

Why: you won’t know it’s the last one until it already was. September endings don’t announce themselves, which is the argument for shooting all of them.

I’m definitely going to have this in mind when I take my family to Sagg Main Beach this weekend.

Can I See Your 4 PM Wall Pics?

I made two asks last week. One was to scroll back through your August photos and find the one you had already taken without anyone telling you to. The other was the first prompt of The Six, the wall.

Both were answered immediately, which I did not expect.

Janis [11:45 AM] sent flowers she’d bought herself in August, with the caption: “Well…why shouldn’t I buy myself flowers?” Reader, she should. She should absolutely buy herself flowers. This is what I meant. Not a technically perfect photograph. A photograph of somebody deciding she was worth a small, nice thing on an ordinary day.

Lauren said, “I’m obsessed with how light moves through my house.”

Maureen [10:00 PM] said, “It’s 10pm, not 4pm, partial credit??”

Thank you to everyone who sent in photos! I am genuinely a proud photo cheerleader today. Aren’t these GREAT!?

So send me yours. Post a note and tag me, drop it in the comments, or DM me.

One photo, one line about which prompt it is. I'm featuring what comes in: the ones that made somebody stop scrolling and go ohhhh.

Leave a comment

What I’m Actually Buying as a Photographer and Mom of 3

This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon. If you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!

Three kids, three milestones, and a shorter list than you’d think.

The third grader

This is the year they start choosing for themselves, and the choices go sideways. Colette has opinions now and the opinions are not mine.

Let her pick, even when it’s not your taste. Especially when it isn’t. In four years, you will not remember the backpack you would have chosen. You will remember exactly which one she wanted and how sure she was about it.

And no, you do not need a new backpack. We buy one every couple of years around here and this isn’t a new year for the big two. Photographically, the old one is the better object anyway: a backpack you keep for three years is a fixed thing hanging on a kid who is not fixed at all. Buy a new one every September and you’ve thrown out your control group.

What she is getting: a bag charm or three. As many as the zipper pull can structurally support. She will curate them, rearrange them, trade one at recess, and come home devastated about it. Is this the year the backpack stops being a container and starts being a whole personality? That’s what I’m gathering.

It's cool to watch my daughter assemble a statement about who she is. Not an outfit I bought or a room I decorated. A cluster of small plastic objects she chose, in an order she decided, hanging off a bag she picked. It’s the closest thing a third grader has to a byline.

And it will be completely different by spring, so photograph it. Not a snapshot of the bag. In close, fill the frame, use good window light, and treat the cluster the way you would treat a face.

Her bookend: photograph the handwriting, not just the sign.

Even a scribble counts, because kids move from drawing with the whole arm and shoulder to drawing with just the wrist and fingers, so a year of scribbles is a year of your kid rewiring how their hand works.

Handwriting changes the same way a face does over the course of a school year. It gets smaller, steadier, and more sure of itself. You cannot see it happening while it happens.

Then, in June. Same paper, same window, same kid. My name is [your kid] and this is my last day of third grade.

Those two photos are the first and last pages of a book, which means everything between them is what you make over the next nine months. So start it tonight while you’re still thinking about it. Open your phone, make a new album, and name it with your kid’s name and the grade. Every time something from this year lands in your camera roll, drop it in. Picture day hair. The soccer thing. The lunchbox she refuses to retire.

In June you’ll have the whole year in one place instead of scattered across eleven thousand photos, and the book will more or less already be built.

The first grader

He's still carrying last year's bag. It came home from kindergarten enormous and it isn't enormous now. Nobody watched that happen. It happened at a rate no eye can detect, over a summer, while we were at the beach.

You can’t see it. You can photograph it.

Buying: sneakers he can fasten himself, because first grade is the year of doing it alone and Velcro is not a compromise, it’s independence. A jacket with a hood, because first graders do not carry umbrellas, they simply become wet. And then probably nothing else. Check the school list, check the closet, go outside.

His bookend: the back of his head. Walking away from you, last year’s bag still hanging near the backs of his knees. Down the hallway, the driveway, the sidewalk, whatever you’ve got. No face required. The whole story is in the shoulders and the direction of travel.

First morning, last morning, same spot.

The 2s

Five mornings a week, a lunch box the size of a paperback, and a cubby with her name on it written by somebody who is not me.

Elodie did get her first backpack, though! She loves butterflies so of course I picked a ridiculous shiny one covered in them. She’s, shall we say, jazzed about it.

Confession: with the third kid, you buy less, and you photograph less. Both are efficiencies, and only one of them is a mistake. I have thousands of frames of Squeakie’s firsts and I’m not going to pretend the count is the same for DiDi. That’s just facts.

This is me correcting that.

Buying: almost nothing. She has two older siblings and a house full of hand-me-downs and that is genuinely fine. Except shoes. New ones, chosen by her, not inherited. One new thing so this year belongs to her and not to the archive of her brother and sister. Plus a change of clothes for the cubby, the least romantic purchase in this entire newsletter and the one you’ll be most grateful for.

Her bookend: the shoes. Clean exactly once. Straight down from standing height, both feet in frame, before the walk to the door wrecks them. Again in June, when they’re unrecognizable.

And one more, which is the one that will get you. Preschool drop-off is a teacher taking your baby out of your arms while you stand there. Take that picture. Stay out of the frame.

You have a thousand photographs of your baby and almost none of your baby being loved by other people, and this is the morning that gap starts closing whether you document it or not.

Tool of the Trade:

• You’re amassing your yearly school album digitally, of course. But for immediate at-home printing: This SELPHY printer is still my #1.

The Weekly Ooh: Worry Stones

This video of massively talented crafter Lydia Rowley made me gasp. She’s making back-to-school worry “stones”, something you have in your pocket and run your fingertips over in case you’re feeling off. (Do I need one for me?)

If you make one, photograph the stone before you give it away. That's the second half of the gift, and it costs ten seconds. Just like we did with Instax print gifts, remember? P.S. The photo in that post is a 4 PM shadow, guess that’s been my thing for a while now!

Links I Texted This Week

Apparently, I didn’t read at all in the last seven days. Or what I did read didn’t make it through my Swiss cheese Labor Day Weekend brain.

Did I ever mention that I grew up on a beach with a roller coaster on it? It’s true, and now that I’m older, I think it’s super duper cool. I'm headed home soon to take my own kids there, and I am pretty excited about seeing their faces.

‘Fit Check: Picture Day is Coming

Have my eye on this tee for my cheeky son.

And these leggings for my eight-year-old daughter! She’s super into leopard prints right now (I mean, same).

Would you like some Picture Day tips? I'm putting it to the Committee, which is what I'm calling you, dear readers, when there’s a vote.

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The Seventh Pic: Meme of the Week

None of this is actually about buying more. Though admittedly, I am into objects, having them, thinking about them, pondering what they mean. I’m also a frequent victim of consumerism eating my brain. It’s a push-pull. Most of these are mindsets; the buying is optional.

It’s about knowing, in the fluorescent aisle at 8pm, which of these things is going to be in the pictures. That’s the only expertise I have to offer here, and it took nineteen years and 155,000 frames a year to get it, so please take it.

Six prompts. One minute each. Send me what you get, because in October The Six becomes a paid perk with one prompt always free, and I would very much like to fill that issue with your photographs instead of only mine.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about four feet left in this marathon and I intend to crawl them, while looking at the light down here.

hugs!!

Ana

It was supposed to be a portrait, except she’d be talking the entire time. The brief was normal, composed, elegant, which is a funny set of instructions, because nobody on earth looks normal while they’re talking, let alone elegant.

Three minutes, and a great many facial muscles to overpower. So I did what you do. I sprayed and prayed.

And then one frame went by, and I felt it. I didn't see it. Felt it. A gasp and a YES shouted somewhere behind my forehead, before my eyes had confirmed a single thing.

At midnight, completely wrecked from the day, I went back through the frames, hunting for the nugget of gold I was pretty sure was in there.

It was there. The relief was enormous.

Here’s why I’m telling you this. That gasp is not a professional skill. It’s a body doing what bodies do when something is right. Mine happens to be trained on a stranger’s face mid-sentence.

Yours is probably trained on a kid. The face they make right before they cry. The way they look asleep. The light on the kitchen wall at four o'clock, with somebody small standing in it. The way he won’t leave the beach when it’s time to go, but you let him stay a minute longer because the light is doing something rad and you want it clicked into record.

It’s the same instrument. Learning to play it is where we’re going to start.

Confession: sometimes you go back at midnight, and the perfect frame you hoped for isn’t there. Bad exposure, motion blur, flash error, an ISO still set from a completely different scenario an hour earlier. The moment was real, the feeling was real, and it was lost to a number you forgot to change.

I shoot about 155,000 frames a year. It still happens to me.

So I front-load everything I can control. Settings checked before she walks in, based on how fast she might be moving. Background picked, tested. I know where the light is falling before I know what her face is doing. Then I stop thinking about any of it and watch. I set the conditions, and the magic usually shows up.

I keep shooting like the gasp is trustworthy. Because it is.

I’ve been telling you to trust the gasp since No. 0006. I’ve been posting my six pics as they reveal themselves to me each week.

This week I stopped waiting for the six pics to find me and went and made them instead.

And next week, I invite you to do the same.

My August Six

For the last month I’ve been running a trial on myself. The same six assignments I’m about to hand you! Not as a demonstration. As a person with three kids and a phone, in the middle of a standard (but extraordinary, because life is!) August.

Here’s what I got. Six photographs, one per prompt, no do-overs.

1. The gasp. A mint chip cone, drippy and unreasonably good. A very hot day, with very cold ice cream, and the kids slurping their drips behind me. Mint chip is my favorite flavor and this one from Big Olaf sings.

2. Someone mid-jump. My two-year-old, jumping like a hyena, not that she can even say “hyena.” Unrelated: Can hyenas jump?

3. The last good beach light. Long Beach, Sag Harbor, 7:52pm.

4. Shoes by the door. As they were left. Do not straighten.

5. You. In the picture. Yesterday, first thing, nowhere near camera-ready. The less camera-ready, the better.

6. The theater camp goodbye. Colette and her brother outside the theater where they spent all summer being other people. Next roles: Third Grader and First Grader.

None of these took more than a minute. Two of them happened while I was doing something else entirely. The point isn't that they're good photographs, although I like them. The point is that they exist, and they wouldn't have if nobody had told me to look. Well, I told me to look. And it worked out!

An Experiment: The Six. Monthly Photo Prompts for Parents

I’ve been plotting.

If I’ve found this much meaning in setting the stage for my own future memories, on purpose, in advance, then you might too. Especially if you’re the one in your house holding the phone.

So here’s the new thing.

Who it’s for: the people raising kids. Not aspiring professionals, not anyone building a portfolio. Whoever in your house ends up making the family record: you, your partner, the auntie who visits on Sundays, the au pair, the person who does pickup. If that’s you, this was built for you.

When it arrives: the first Monday of every month. They take about a minute each. Do one, do two, or do nothing and just read along.

Starting in October, The Six becomes a perk for paid subscribers, with one prompt always free for everyone. By then I’ll have a whole month of these to show you, made by more people than just me.

Let’s find out if this is as fun as I think it is.

September’s Six: Try it!

Here’s one of September’s prompts so you can see the shape of it:

Why: you’re learning your own house. Once you know where the good light lives at four, you’ll start standing your kid in front of it without thinking about it.

That's one of six. The other five land Monday.

Can I See Yours?

Here’s the part where you come in, and I mean that literally, because this doesn’t work if it’s just me.

The easy way in: scroll your August photos right now. Don’t take anything new.

I would bet a pricey-but-perfect Sagaponack General iced coffee that you already took one of these six without anybody asking you to. The shoes by the door. The kid mid-air. The one where the light was doing something and you stopped walking.

Post a note and tag me, and tell me which prompt it is. Or send me a DM! That’s it. One photo, one line.

The other way in: start fresh on September first, with the wall. Then keep going, and post them as you get them.

I’m going to feature what you send. Not the technically-best ones, because that’s not what this is.

The ones that made somebody stop scrolling and go oh. Yours, next to mine, next to a stranger’s, all six of us having looked at the same prompt and found completely different things.

That’s the part I’m actually curious about. I already know what I see. I want to know what you see.

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The Weekly Ooh: Your Senior Year, Assembled

After I posted about bottling an era, I got a ton of texts about how songs were the most powerful time machine, dropping you back into places you’d long left. Or next to a person you haven't seen in twenty years.

So I took to IG and asked what was playing during your senior year of high school.

I cannot overstate the joy I felt as you all commented with EPIC musical GEMS that I’d forgotten about and felt a rush of delight to rediscover.

You answered with everything from The Roots to a truly unhinged amount of nineties hard-guitar riffs. Here’s the playlist below. Put it on and see where it takes you. I’ve had it on in my car all week, and I’ve been so pumped up, I can’t even tell you. Shuffle and LIVEEEE.

A playlist can hold an entire era. This one holds several at once, which is a strange and incredibly lovely thing to have built together! My girlies (and my non-girlies, who need a name, please advise) have impeccable taste.

Thank you to everyone for helping! Living for this soundtrack. It’s 116 ways to merge my old life with this one, and every version in between. 8 hours and two minutes!

See "High School Tunes" on Spotify

Look what we made in two weeks with one question about high school. Now imagine what we can do with photographs!

This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon. If you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!

Helpful Tools for The September Six

First and foremost: a good idea. Think of one thing that was only true of your kid THIS summer. Then go shoot it before it isn’t.

For you-in-the-picture: a pocket tripod with a cute little Bluetooth remote. I own this. I keep it in my (large!) tote bag. Twenty dollars is what stands between you and being in your family’s photo record.

The stick-it-to-a-window influencer fave, the Octobuddy! You too can look like a YouTuber. Smash that subscribe button!

For the shoes and the goodbye: Nothing. These two require zero equipment, which is the point.

Ready to print some faves? Start with a smattering of these on the coffee table. Rotate them out on the season change. I’ve been doing this for years and it’s SO FUN. The stakes are also low… coffee spills or the baby eats one (ask me how I know) and it’s easily replaced.

Links I Texted this week

OK, not a Substack, but did you know Olivia Rodrigo started her own Lilith Fair? In light of our millennial masterpiece playlist, this news should get TOP BILLING!

Dude. Molly Sims’ piece this week was the one I sent to three people. For summer parents who are equal parts joyful and eye-twitchingly overstimulated, read this right away.

I’m a happy paying subscriber of Art Direction by Zoë Yasmin. This week, she wrote about how most alive work has an unexpected twist, and how you may not have found your creative medium yet. What a lovely shame-removing thought for anyone longing to break free from whatever assumptions they’re making, creatively.

The Seventh Pic: Meme of the Week

Go let your ears deliver you a memory. Then describe it to me, because I want to know where you landed.

And in September, we start making memories on purpose, together, out in the open.

Six prompts, one minute each, and the only thing you have to bring is the thing you already have (your phone!). In October The Six becomes a paid perk, and by then I’ll be able to show you what a whole month of this looks like when it’s made by more than one person.

Whether a song or a photo, when your ooh instinct says yes to something, trust it. Mine has been right more often than my eyes have.

Send this to someone who NEEDS this playlist in their car this week.

hugs!!

Ana

Rituals are my religion. Not the wellness kind of rituals. The kind where you decide in advance that a smell or a song or a genuinely disgusting drink is going to mean something cool to you later, and then you go plot a way to remember it.

Memory doesn’t actually live in photographs. Are you surprised to hear a photographer say that? It lives in the body. The rituals I love best plant a trigger on purpose, while the thing is still happening. Photo or otherwise.

These rituals are my love language and possibly my life’s work. (Too dramatic? Probably.)

Read on to reveal:

• The perfume trick that turns any trip into a door you can walk back through

• Four notes that hundreds of pop songs are quietly using, and why your kids will hear them forever

• The ruined shoot day that produced my favorite print

• What a first bite does to a person’s face, and why I’m always ready for it

• A confession that could get me thrown out of the olive oil industry

This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon. If you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!

Smell: How to Bottle a Trip

I started doing this by accident, and now I do it on purpose.

In 2006, before six weeks in India, I bought a dry shampoo on the theory that showers might be few and far between. The bonus of the Stila Jade Blossom Hair Refresher (discontinued! I use this one now!) was that it smelled incredible. I used it every day of that trip.

Then I got home and realized I’d accidentally built myself a door. One poof of that product and I’m in Kerala. No warning, no permission asked.

So. Before your next flight, find a perfume you’ve never worn before. Something you genuinely love, so smell it first, don’t order blind. Buy it, then don’t touch it until you land.

On your first morning in Paris, or Malta, or wherever you are: spray it. Then every morning after, for the whole trip.

The scent gets woven in with everything else your body is taking in. The light, the language, the food, the slightly different person you are when nobody from home can see you.

Then months later you spray it on an ordinary rainy morning and away you go.

My current beloved is DS & Durga Rose Atlantic, a gift from my bestie Kiyuki. It’s the one I do the shoulder shimmy with. Makes me feel energetic and enigmatic, which is a lot to ask of a bottle.

And three more perfumes with descriptions so vivid I’m obsessed despite never having smelled them:

• Maison Louis Marie No. 09

• Ffern, Summer ‘26

• Perfumehead, Alone Together

Sound: How to Bottle a Decade

Same trip, different door. On my trip to India, I made a playlist. The standouts were this Regina Spektor song, and this John Frusciante one. Twenty years later (eeeek!) I can still hear both songs.

Make the trip a playlist, play it in your ears the whole time, but not until you leave on that first day.

But music does something perfume can’t. A scent holds a place. A playlist can hold an entire era. We all have songs we’ve claimed as ours, and at some point they stop being music and start being identity. (If I tell you I loved No Doubt and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, you know exactly how old I am, don’t you.)

Our kids are recording theirs right now, and not one of us can hear it yet.

Which brings me to something genuinely unhinged: a video identifying the Gen Alpha melody. Gen Alpha is our kids’ generation. This video identifies a sequence of four notes that hundreds of recent pop songs are all using! It shows the songs all stitched together, and they’re… all the same? It’s pretty wild.

Every generation gets a melody that will someday drop them straight back into being nine, or seventeen, and it’s looking like theirs might be a hundred versions of the same one.

Give it five minutes. Fascinating.

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Sight: How a Ruined Shoot Day Made My Favorite Print

Two rituals from earlier issues just paid off, and both of them are hanging on walls now.

First, the vote. A few issues back I asked you to pick which water photo should go up in my house, and you did, in a landslide. It’s framed. It’s up. I look at it every single morning.

Here’s what I never told you about that picture. I shot it on a ruined day. I was photographing the Sag Harbor wharf for the Chamber of Commerce; the brief called for blue sky, and the sky was having absolutely none of it. We rescheduled the whole shoot. But while the sky sulked, the water was doing something extraordinary, and the frame I got on the day that didn’t work for the client is the one that’s now 30x40 on my wall.

Second, the little frame. In June, I told you about the Day-After Move: pick your best photo from a holiday, order it that same week, hide it in a closet until you need a gift. This is mine, from Father’s Day, from the morning we went to see the vintage airplanes. It lives on my husband’s desk now.

Both of these are simply memories I decided to engineer instead of hoping I’d remember.

Gesture: The Moment Just Before

We took it to a deserted bank of Hamptons sand, climbed a literal wall of it, and found a spot at the top that looks like a still from a daydream. (This is the olive oil I keep on my counter, so you can imagine my composure.)

Here’s the gesture part. Faces perform. Bodies don’t. So I spend most of a shoot handing people something pointless to do with their bodies, and I shoot on 1, never on 3, because by 3 everyone has arranged themselves.

BTS bonus: it’s not often that getting the shot makes a better video than the shot did.

Taste: Eat the Thing

I need to tell you something and I need you to stay calm.

I don’t like olives.

I love olive oil. LOVE. I have a bottle I don’t let anyone cook with. I can wax poetic about its polyphenols (they’re present in olive oil, and also, blessedly, in coffee!). But the olive fruit itself? No, thank you. And I cannot explain it, because I love everything else on the mezze table. Pungent stuff, fermented things, pickled, briny, and funky things. Bring all of it. Just not those.

Corfu, 2000. I was nineteen, and it was the first time I had ever left the United States.

And olives. Constantly. On every table, in every dish, at every hour of the day.

In spite of myself, I ate them all week.

Not because I came around on them. I did not come around on them. I ate them because I was standing in the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and I was not going to miss out on living like a local over a teeny tiny thing like a gag reflex.

Somewhere in there, a local poured me a shot of ouzo and stood there, waiting. It tasted like a licorice candle someone had set on fire. I do not like black licorice either. Down the hatch.

Here’s the thing about taste I think gets missed.

Smell happens to you. Sound happens to you. You can walk past a bakery and be nine years old again with no say in the matter. Taste is the only one that asks your permission first. Somebody has to offer it, and you have to open your mouth on purpose.

That’s why it sticks so hard. You weren’t a bystander. You agreed.

I have never ordered ouzo again in my life. But I can still tell you what that Greek terrace smelled like (the salty sea!), what the chairs were made of (plastic!), and exactly who I thought I was that summer. (A mermaid)

And then there’s the photographer’s reason for trying new and weird tastes, which is the best reason, IMO. The face a person makes at a first bite is the exact face I spend whole shoots hunting. Unguarded, mid-motion, honest for about half a second. You cannot pose it. You can only be ready for it.

Anyway. Scroll back up and look at those Fancy Peasant frames again. I made that olive oil look like a religious experience and I meant every single frame.

But I’m still not eating the olives.

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Ooh: One more door

Write a letter to your future self.

You can date it for a year out, or five, or leave it undated and let it ambush you.

I got this from Austin Kleon’s newsletter this week, who got it from The Traveling Bookbinder. (Kleon wrote Steal Like an Artist, the book that literally every creative I knew was obsessed with in 2012, me very much included.)

Would you actually do it? I would. I already know what I’d tell her.

Substacks I loved this week

A permanent place to build an art habit for the whole family!

I learned about the French ritual of rentrée in the Fall from Frosso’s Substack, and I loved this reframe on Back to School idea. Frosso is a Greek magazine editor living in Paris and writing about all things Parisian. Immediate follow.

The Seventh Pic

Of the many memes I had in my IG Stories this week, this one where a dad makes real songs with lyrics his toddler writes got the most DMs. (Linked instead of embedded because Substack is glitching this week, eek!)

Pick one this week. Buy the perfume before the trip, not after. Play the album only in the car. Order the print on the Monday after the holiday. Hand somebody the weird thing and have your camera up.

Then tell me which sense you’re using. I want to know what you’re planting.

Heart the heart, even if you normally don’t! (thank you)

hugs!!
Ana

I’ve been collecting beautiful things since I was fifteen, back when collecting meant a stack of magazines and a pair of scissors. Turns out that was never a hobby. It was training.

Read on to reveal:

• The wall of torn-out magazine pages that trained my eye at fifteen

• Why a pro clicks at 1, never at 3 (and the trick I use to get there)

• Ninety-five degrees, one Owala, and a table of cakes under pressure to perform

• The ten-second shelf fix that finally gave my Cindy Sherman the spotlight

• Bougie objects that haunt me like perfect, gorgeous ghosts

  

  Sante D'Orazio, A Private View, and the wall that trained my eye

My W and Harper’s Bazaar magazines were piled up in a very Type B fashion in my room. When a new, freshly bound volume arrived each month (the thicker the better, yay September, boo January), I would find a quiet, untouched moment to take it in, start to finish, emphasis on the profiles of ingenues and the models in the editorials.

There were others. Vogue, untouchable. Interview, the coolest in the room until V showed up. Vanity Fair, which invented spilling the tea. My allegiance shifted all through the nineties and the oughts, each one dethroning the last as my taste caught up to it.

And I’d try to guess which famous photographer shot each ad. Patrick Demarchelier, Mario Sorrenti, Michael Thompson, Herb Ritts, Inez + Vinoodh or Steven Klein? Had to be one of those. (Ads don’t come with bylines. I guessed anyway, and reader, I was usually right.)

When I found one that made my heart stop, I would rip it out and put it on my wall. I wasn’t decorating, I was training.

Sante D’Orazio spent the nineties deciding what cool looked like. Cindy, Linda, Kate, Christy, Naomi. Prince, Keith Richards, and Axl Rose for seasoning.

I recently found this interview with Sante, and he says something like: if you're going to count 1, 2, 3, click...better click it at 1, because by 3 the moment is long gone. I couldn’t agree more.

It’s always the in-between moments, the just-about-to moments, the fractured little bits of time that have the most honesty to show the camera. We can’t help but present with artifice; we’re humans.

So, to get a subject to drop it, I often dictate a string of pointless or invented body movements, like: “and then skip, like actual skipping, the second half of the way…” just to give myself time to click at 1 instead of 3. If I ask you to jump, I’m catching the smile you can’t help but flash me just after you come back down.

Cut to 2004, and the teenager with the shrine got to stand in the room. My first job after moving to NYC was working as a receptionist, and later a booking agent, at Pier 59 Studios, also known as “the biggest fashion photo studio in the WORLD!” as the owner used to boast. Various magazines and advertising agencies would book our spaces for the day, and you never knew who the talent would be, buzzing the door to be let in, and not always patient about it.

What a wild six years I had while working there, seeing all the photographers I idolized in real life. Walking past Karl Lagerfeld and Naomi Campbell each morning before I’d had my coffee, coming in for the 6:30 am shift.

This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon — if you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!

Today my tear sheets don’t get taped to my wall. But I do still have Sante’s book, the one I’ve been carting from apartment to house since 1996, “A Private View.” It’s scrapbook-y and maximalist in a way that’s suddenly very 2026.

His latest book, a memoir called A Shot in the Dark: A Memoir, is in my cart.

Work I Shot This Week: Goldbelly's United Cakes

The Goldbelly United Cakes Extravaganza! It was 95 degrees when I arrived, and despite a full Owala with ice in it, I had my work cut out for me. I was better off, however, than the homemade masterpiece cakes, who also had to stand tall and not buckle under the pressure to perform! If they could do it, so could I.

A photographer walks into the internet, clicks around

Collecting the things that make daily life happier is my whole personality, and honestly, my job description.

Everything below is me still doing what I did at fifteen: collecting the things that teach my eye what it loves. It’s essentially the Gasp Test!

I haven't bought (and may never buy) everything below. But as it was in 1996, my wishlist is a curriculum.

Home: VEGETAL, a Japanese woodblock print, and a +COOP pedestal bowl

AKA bougie home decorative objects that haunt me like perfect, gorgeous ghosts.

Speaking of gorgeous ghosts, see a dress I never saw!

This gorgeous chef-y coffee table book VEGETAL (2) that you can’t get in the States yet (via Maria Piessis)

This Japanese block-print (6), which is begging soft sunrise light to fall on it, is it not?! ahh

The dramatic curve of this Sinafu pedestal bowl from L.A. darling +COOP

Style: a Cahu tote, Buck Mason tee, and the barrel jean situation

I've tended to capsule dress ever since my first pregnancy. I love to wear all black or all white (or all butter yellow!?) so for a person in head-to-toe white this pink tote (5) is actually the perfect bag? It goes with everything, and it's on sale.

I first learned about the brand Cahu from effortless-cool mom Laurel Pantin (who I’ve also had the good fortune of photographing!), so it's vetted. (P.S. She just wrote a book! I pre-ordered it immediately.)

All white outfit solid gold: This tee, cropped and boxy but without swallowing you or showing your belly button, and these barrel but not too barrel-y jeans. Repeat. Class dismissed.

Wait, one more thing! With my all white, I’ll often throw this long-sleeve stripey number around my shoulders.

And to round out the capsule, I'm always in a statement shoe. Flip-flops with arch support, which say "I'm 40+ and my back has opinions." A classic pair of Sambas in every color, which say "I'm omw to work." And a couple of times a summer, platform heels, “Remember y’all, I used to leave the house!”.

I legitimately wear the flip-flops every day in the summer though, they're Havaiana-adjacent without wrecking my back.

Jewelry: Andrea Iyamah chandeliers and a tennis necklace I never take off

Earrings I may need, purely to communicate: I don't get out much, but I'm out, so here are my ears! And if you’re the chandelier-earring-type, you do too: Andrea Iyamah. (3)

I'd wear them with this pareo (1), tied like Jen Galante Han told me to. It's an elevated version of the busy, super-patterned pareos I can never chill out in. I'm a sad beige mom through and through, and this is color but, like, NOT THAT MUCH (via No Stress Club)

The Tennis Necklace: I wear it every day, including in the shower. The bezel setting is a nice twist on the classic, and the comments I get from nice noticers are day-making and reliable. I already felt good wearing it. The validation ices the cake.

Substacks I'm reading

“He’s never actually seen the moon.” -Vaughan’s Substack Becoming Mom, where she realizes her space-obsessed little boy has never once been awake late enough to actually see the moon. Sweet musings.

My Morning Muse: a German artist I stumbled across, whose abstract work is unguarded and extraordinary, built out of ordinary things she notices walking around. Her writing is direct and honest.

Speaking of Goldbelly (see above, in cake form): Joe and Vanessa Ariel, co-founders of Goldbelly and friends of mine, just launched The 250 Dishes That Made America. The writing is personal and warm. Start with the hot dog post, which I loved.

One small thing to make your house more aesthetic

Turn one beautiful book face-out on your shelf tonight. Out from under the clutter, into the light.

Museum rules: rotate monthly.

The Seventh Pic

Of the many memes I had in my IG Stories this week, this one got the most DMs.

I fear the water bottles have won. I have officially reached this point (see below). Reporting live from that point. Food-safe bags, add to cart!

Here’s my ask this week. Think of the friend whose taste you steal. The one who sends you the good links, who knew about the thing before it was the thing, whose apartment made you go home and rearrange your own.

Send her this. Tell her she’s been training your eye for years and never even knew. This is a cousin of buying something for someone with your eyes!

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And if you made it this far, heart the heart. It helps the right people find me.

Now go rip something out and put it on your wall.

What's on your “wall” right now? Tell me in the comments. I want to see what trained your eye.

hugs!!
Ana

Quick pause for a milestone: this is issue No. 0010. Ten essays. Sixty pics. Double digits, baby. I can't overstate how much fun I'm having here, and not just the writing. I sign in to work on my own post and lose an hour to all of yours, in the best way. Fourteen open tabs, zero regrets.

If you're one of the writers I've been reading: hi, you're the reason this is fun. And if we don't know each other yet but clearly should?

Comment below. I'll come clicking.

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Read on to reveal:

• My photo book system that starts before my au pair even arrives

• What hosting an au pair is actually like, a POV from the last morning of our second year

• A mouse in a party hat. You’ll see.

The 5 AM I Didn’t Know I Needed

I don't do 5 AM. I know, I know: my literal first issue was called I Woke Up at 5 AM and Didn't Hate It. For the record, that ritual lasted exactly five mornings, which longtime readers will recognize as extremely on brand. As a general rule, if the sky is still doing its overnight thing, I am doing mine, which is sleeping.

But last night, our au pair, Emi, on the eve of her very last day in Sag Harbor, came to me with an idea. She wanted to see her last Hamptons day begin, from the sand. I said yes before I could talk myself out of it.

Sagg Main Beach, Sagaponack

The alarm went off at five. The light was already blooming, making leaf shadows on the lowest few inches of wall in the hall. Canada’s smoke had been drifting through all week, but the air had cleared just enough to make the outdoors feel safe again, like the day was giving us permission.

We drove to the beach with my son, Beau, my early riser, who has apparently been living his best life at this hour for years without telling me.

One other car in the lot. That was it. Just us, a stranger’s headlights, and the dunes. Beau trotted ahead. We found a horseshoe crab, and drew some shapes in the sand. We marveled at the crazy beauty of this place, which she was seeing for the last time. Neither of us said that part out loud.

I never would have done this field trip on my own. It took someone else’s ritual, her last-day-in-this-place insistence, to pull me into a version of the morning I didn’t know I was missing.

Or maybe a version I’d met once before. This newsletter was born at 5 AM, ten issues ago, in a pitch-dark December kitchen. It took Emi to bring me back for issue ten.

Puff. Forward.

I build my whole life around small, deliberate markers of time. But I think I forget sometimes that discomfort is often the price of admission. Getting up before the sun, driving to a beach in the dark, doing something slightly inconvenient for no reason except that it mattered to someone I love? Worth it.

After the sunrise, the departure got real. She gave back her keys, pink pom-pom still attached from her arrival a year ago.

An au pair is a young person, around 19, from another country, who spends their gap year living with your family and caring for your kids in exchange for an American cultural experience. They get to hang with a cool American fam; we get way more than a babysitter; we get a third trusted adult in the house.

We’ve now hosted two au pairs, and I would do it forever. It really is a cultural exchange; incoming au pairs are prepped to expect that Americans will be ridiculously friendly, and to “brace yourself, Americans will hug you a lot.” (Hahahaha) GUILTY.

And we adopted things from Austria, where Emi is from, too. We learned about soccer just in time for the World Cup, and my baby now goes to sleep to the sound of a German lullaby. My big kids can count to ten in German. And together, across borders, we all irrationally love Diet Coke.

When you agree to host an au pair, you accidentally sign up for a love with an expiration date printed on it from day one. And yes, it’s grief with a known date, but that looming departure day is also the gift, because it makes you pay attention all year.

The Books

Since Emi spent a year of her life with us, her send-off should be an artifact, not just a party. As it turned out, we made surprise photo books for each other! She made hers by hand, old-school photo slot style. I love it.

And at the end of her book, she had one more surprise: a time capsule, meant to be opened in ten years. The shows, the songs, the games each kid loves right now, logged at ages 8, 6, and 1.75. I gasped, obviously. I make memory artifacts for a living, and I’m delighted to say that the nineteen-year-old out-memory-made me.

How I Make the Au Pair Photo Book

My photo book is from a favorite of mine, Blurb. Blurb.com makes the easiest book if you have to juggle a lot of iPhone photos, because it plays nicely with Lightroom (which will sort by date or location!).

I start the iPhone album that will become the au pair book before they even arrive! I screenshot the acceptance message, and I screenshot our first FaceTime.

When thinking about making the future book, I recommend choosing remnant-y candids over posed shots: the random, badly lit breakfast, the frame where something funny had just happened. If it’ll still make you smile in ten years, it’s in.

Of course I have a zillion beautiful photos from my big camera, but the book is for the ones that pass my Gasp Test. This is the Gasp Test applied to a full year of pics.

The Party

We also threw her a party! Inside jokes required. I pasted a party hat onto a photo of the mouse that lived in a rental house we shared this year, a mouse we shrieked about together, memorably. Ha!

The kids contributed too. There’s nothing better than a handmade card from the kid who loves you.

And the inscription. We’ll miss you, Emi!

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The Kids: Navigating the After

The conversations. We told the kids that we’d always have Emi with us, available on FaceTime any time, and in the memories we have of her. Beau asked if he could go with her. He said he’d miss us, but that we could always call him on the phone.

Keeping her present. Our group photo of the six of us is displayed in the den, a room we use every day. When her name comes up, we stop and wonder out loud what she’s doing right now, and whether she’ll have dessert tonight. (She doesn’t like ice cream. An unfathomable position in this family! But if not ice cream, I wonder what she IS having?)

Letting it be sad. When Emi’s car pulled in (with someone else behind the wheel) the baby cried out, “Emi, Emi!” and I made myself not fix it. We stood in the driveway and let it be sad. She was easily distracted that time, but the next time might sting more. That is okay. I hope I have the wherewithal to explain that bad and sad feelings don’t last forever, and that loving someone doesn’t stop when their shadow is no longer in the doorway.

For the mom wondering about hosting

If you’re curious about the unglamorous logistics (agencies, matching, what it costs, what the contract actually says), ask me in the comments. If enough of you do, I’ll write the whole guide.

The Remnant

A letter came in the mail a few days too late, from a friend in her hometown. I do love making a care package, and I’ll get started on that tomorrow. I bought this for you with my eyes, except this time I'm actually mailing it.

She left her Birkenstocks.

How do you mark the big goodbyes at your house? And host moms: what do you want to know? Tell me in the comments.

Since you made it this far: heart the heart if you loved this post! Or, send it to a friend.

Squeeze your people!

hugs!!

Ana

I bought this for you with my eyes.

It was from a woman I used to work with. Blonde, wild, kind, the type to produce confetti from a handbag. She told me she had been at a couture fashion show and seen a dress that cost thirty-six thousand dollars, hand-beaded with rhinestones from head to toe, opalescent, the kind of thing that took nine and a half months and thirteen seamstresses to finish.

She said it was made for me. Not for someone like me. For me. She bought it for me with her eyes.

I was never going to see that dress. She was never going to buy it for me. She was just thinking of me. I’ve thought about that text for years.

Real talk: you don’t need an IRL moment at all. When something specific conjures a person, tell them. It takes five seconds. I have three kids and roughly four free minutes a day. This is how I stay inside my friends’ lives anyway.

I don’t always have time to meet for coffee. I don’t always have time for a real phone call.

But when I see something funny, ridiculous, or perfect, I send it to the person it conjured. I bought this for you with my eyes.

If you send me the right unhinged sign, or a thirty-six-thousand-dollar dress you have zero intention of buying, or a tragically perfect meme made for me, I will feel loved for the rest of the day. I promise you, so will your friend.

Who just came to mind for you? You know the one. Tell me in the comments, and then go text them before you finish reading this. (And heart the heart, if this one got you!)

If this feels like a totally “you” thing to do, you might enjoy Jen Shoop’s Green Flags as well, a list of other beautiful ways to make a difference for someone’s day.

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Vote Results are in

Number 3 won, and it wasn't close. A landslide. And I have to tell you a little secret: it was my first choice too, which means either great minds think alike or I have quietly trained you all in my exact taste. (It's both.) The 30x40 is ordered, no mat, and I will be posting a photo the second it's hung! (Here were the contenders, if you missed them!)

Back when I ran a print shop out of my travel archive, I learned which photos deserve to go giant. The best big prints work at two distances.

Nose to frame, where some tiny pattern reveals itself only up close. And across the room, where it all snaps back into one image. An aerial view of a real place. A telephoto of Paris shot from miles and miles away. A print your eyeballs get to keep discovering.

Here's one of mine: Paris, 2015, now living on my wall.

And now, six more from the former Print Shop that I still love:

This is a lovely version by Nicholas Cosedis, whose whole archive is this idea having the time of its life. I really dig a proper aerial shot.

P.S. Fun places to find art for your walls without buying an edition that would break the bank are 20x200 (I loved this Dorothea Lange there), Printed Matter (this poster caught my eye) and any and all museum gift shops, anywhere.

The meme this week that made me laugh the hardest:

And with that, we're done!

hugs!!

Ana

Share Six Pics I Clicked // Ana Gambuto

It’s officially summer on the East End, which also means we’ve entered the purgatory known as The Week Without School or Camp. Normally this is where I’d joke about accepting thoughts and prayers, but real talk: I’ve legit had so much fun with my kids this week. Turns out I, too, want to eat ice cream three times a day. Whimsical of me!

The only thing stopping me year-round is that I apparently have to watch my A1C now. Made an exception this week. Zero regrets. (My favorite ice cream in the Hamptons is A la Mode in East Hampton, if you’re asking.)

Summer as a lifestyle family and brand photographer also looks like this: jetting into the city for a rock and roll birthday party at Cafe Wha, frolicking around a vineyard at sunset tasting cake (that shoot drops next week, keep an eye out), and ending most evenings on the ocean beach with a family client and, if I’m lucky, a cute dog.

After every evening beach shoot, once the family heads out, I make myself stop and just stare at the waves, for at least five full deep breaths. That early evening beach is natural, quiet, and refreshingly un-scene-y for the Hamptons. It’s like hearing colors and seeing music.

But, girlies: it’s very easy to be chill and reflective when there’s zero cell service.

This Cafe Wha party was incredible! I haven’t stayed out that late in some time, admittedly, but I adore the birthday girl and I had the BEST time. The band was SO good that all their covers somehow sounded exactly like the original band, if not better. And I learned that in my forties, I am no longer attending nights out without earplugs.

I gasped hard when the amps first cranked, and then a kind waiter who saw my reaction said, “I’ll be right back.” He handed me a set of orange earplugs, swiftly, in his hand, like he was handing off illicit drugs. And now I’ve ordered Loops so that I’m forever prepared to party.

Help me pick what goes on my walls

Here’s something nobody tells you about being a professional photographer: You end up with approximately three gazillion photos. Travels, daily life, pretty things, the place you live. It’s an archive that is mega unhinged in size.

If you’ve tagged everything correctly (Ha! I have not), you can sort through it all and basically excavate art for your own walls. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing this week, with my ragtag, well, tags, and my Swiss-cheese memory working overtime to conjure up when I might have witnessed a magnificent sunset at a shoot in the last five years.

We have a couple of walls in our newly renovated house that are very much yearning for giant photos. And I mean giant. The kind you take in every single day. Which means the pressure of choosing something I actually want to look at forever is… a lot.

I narrowed my picks down to water photos, mostly abstract and landscapes. Photos I’ve taken over the years during family shoots, at the beach with my kids, just living life near the water. I mocked them up in frames.

I am too close to this project. Emotionally compromised. I cannot make this call alone.

I’m asking for a vote. Look at the images below, pick the one that speaks to you, and tell me in the comments. I will tally real counts and report the results in a future issue.

Your voice literally determines what I wake up and look at every morning, so no pressure.

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I got so many fun messages about my post on saving inspiration! Here are a few I thought you’d love. Keep sending me your sources and tips, and I’ll keep sharing!

How pretty are these Travel Palettes that Wink Design does? I love the idea of creating a visual callback from a place, using a few bars of color, and based on the found evidence of a special place. So good.

Glassette is a content-led lifestyle shopping site, and they curate gorgeous editorial features, often centered on color. Here’s my fave:

Did you know that the kids are saying “clock it” now? A young person told me this. It’s a fun finger clap when you like something! But make sure you’re doing it right, and know its origins, you old fogey.

This was a poignant list of Things You Can Say to Make an ADHDer’s Day.

This article is on the science of dark chocolate and why you should eat more of it! (gah!!)

Could not be more fascinated by this take on the 180 of branding from 2016 to today, and I have much more to excavate out of my own psyche and aesthetic here: “After years of corporate millennial blanding, consumer culture oozes into shape for a new generation.” -The New York Times

In my hometown of Santa Cruz, CA, there’s a literal roller coaster on the beach, It’s an amusement park called the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. This week, they operated their 70 millionth ride on the roller coaster I spent my childhood on: The Big Dipper!

If you enjoyed this post, would you heart it? Thank you!

Have a summery week!

hugs!!

Ana

Today is Monday, the day after Father’s Day here in the US. And I have a hack for you. (You can apply this to any holiday!) It’ll make you feel like the best friend in the world, will delight your loved ones, and it’s efficient AF.

This totally hits my whimsy note too because it’s giving me a beautiful memory to look back on before it’s even far enough in the past to be called history.

Here’s what you do.

If you celebrated yesterday by doing anything at all, I’d bet you took a photo. So right now, today, you’re going to:

1. Pick the best photo from yesterday

2. Order it as a photo gift, immediately

3. Hide it in the closet until you need it

The day you need it might be your anniversary. Might be your partner’s birthday. It might be six months from now when it’s the holidays, and you’re scrambling for something that doesn’t feel last-minute.

Either way, you’re going to look like a genius. (A thoughtful one!) A beautiful callback to a day that already happened, already mattered, already made you happy. And when it shows up later, it’s going to feel like the most clever, unexpected gift in the world.

Do it now. Thank me later.

As I’ve mentioned before, navigating ADHD as a mom in midlife is usually a story of chaos and things I meant to do, even though I wanted to follow through. So when I can manage to crack the “I forgot” code, I do my best to repeat it into habit!

Stashing away the excellent gift in advance means I remembered, and I care. And — I didn’t forget!

Pick One, Order Now, Hide It

• An effing classy, small metal, desktop frame from Artifact Uprising

• A slightly larger gallery frame, for the wall (I have these everywhere in my house)

• A customizable old-school slip-in photo book (paging millennials!)

• These tiny fridge magnets, displayed in a chic grid

• These tiny photo albums?! I stuck these in my kids’ stockings last year to great fanfare

My pick if you want zero decision fatigue: This more substantial desktop wood frame. I have and love these!

P.S. Now you may be wondering, and surely my husband is wondering as he reads this, doesn’t hiding gifts in a closet make me a bit of a hoarder? The answer is kind of. Yes. Kind of.

Hoarding implies keeping things you don’t need and don’t know you have. This is keeping, but the payoff is good. (If you remember where you stashed it, bahaha…)

If you keep and stash consistently but not daily, then it’s under-control hoarding! Hoarding with heart. Should that be the name of my forthcoming memoir?

More on why I’m an emotional hoarder in an upcoming post.

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More Ways to Use This

This hack isn’t just for hiding gifts in the closet. Once you start thinking this way, you see the opportunities everywhere.

1. For your kids

This Friday is the last day of school for my big kids. I’ve got albums on my phone already sorted: Beau’s kindergarten year, Colette’s second-grade year. I’m ordering photo books from both. I don’t do anything fancy with it; I just dump in the photos from each iPhone album and let it build the book. Then I present the kids with their books on the last day of summer, right as they’re gearing up for the next school year. A little closure, a little excitement for what’s next.

2. For work

After a big activation or event, print a small photo of your boss looking good and give it to her at the office party.

If you’re a photographer who delivers digital galleries, take a top tier shot, print it, frame it, and hand it over at the next session. And if you’ve got a family who books you every summer, go back into last year’s favorites, pick the one you know they already love, and turn it into a little keepsake, like a little faux Polaroid print. Bring it to this year’s session. They will not see it coming in this ephemeral age of pixels.

3. For yourself

Pick a photo of yourself, mom, one where you think you look good and everyone’s happy. Doesn’t have to be recent. If you’re doing a spring clean, redecorating or setting up for summer, and you’ve got a desk or a corner that’s yours, make sure there’s a photo of you on it. Go find it on your phone right now, send it to print, and have it up in your home by the end of the week.

I’m going to take my own advice and print this one:

Here’s the one I’m ordering! It incorporates our fun day at the airplane show with a cute Papa selfie.

In Sagaponack, the Antique Airplane Club of Greater New York hosts an open day on a farm in Sagaponack, where the families gather to watch beautiful small planes land and take off.

The planes park there every Father’s Day at 9 A.M., and some pilots even let your kids sit in them. A wonderful hidden Hamptons secret that my friend Kim whispered in my ear!

Have a wonderful last week of school!

hugs!!

Ana

From the very first humans huddled around a fire watching the same flames flicker, we have been fundamentally, cosmically unable to resist turning to the person next to us and going, “Are you seeing this s**t right now!?” Every mosh pit, every courtside seat, every funeral, every New Year's Eve countdown is that same ancient impulse to share something powerful, in current clothes. Blue and orange clothes, if you're anywhere near NYC this week! After this week in New York, I gather the thing we actually can't live without isn't food or shelter or whatever; it's witnesses — other people who can confirm that yes, this is really happening, and yes, it’s absolutely incredible.

As you may have heard, the New York Knicks are the GOAT. The city, as I walked through it yesterday, was a sea of giddy bodies in blue and orange. As a person who doesn’t follow the sport, I would like to say to Basketball: I am more than impressed. I am blown away by you! The way your sport has brought humans together is nothing short of epic. Being a witness to this moment with all of you basketball fans has been a total high.

I was in the city for a shoot, and walking around Central Park yesterday before the game, you could smell it, hear it, and, of course, see it. One out of every three people was dressed in head-to-toe blue and orange, and the Silvercup Studios sign (and every other lit sign) was colored blue and orange.

I briefly took this video on the 59th Street bridge on my way out of town Saturday night! Here’s more amazing art:

And! The art stemming from this joy is brimming with feeling. When people are so moved by something that they freely, joyfully create, it is the most fun to consume. Which brings us to a mini list below of some of the most beautiful and deeply felt artwork I found from Knicks Week.

My friend Nikki Ascher’s Zeeland Brand made this tee shirt that was worn and photographed in Vogue this week!

The Gasp Test

You don’t need to analyze it. You don’t need to justify it. You just need to notice when your body does the thing — the little internal ooh — and go, yes, this rules. Saving it.

That’s the gasp test. It works every time.

I spend so much time waiting for permission to care about something — waiting until I’ve researched enough, understood enough, have a good enough reason, or (cringe) asked enough other people for their opinion, unconsciously averaging out their responses to calibrate my own.

But intuition doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t explain itself. It just shows up as a small interior flicker. The gasp test is just the practice of catching that flicker before your brain talks you out of it.

Look for it! This is what I’m doing when I’m saving inspiration.

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What Actually Makes Me Gasp: A Few Examples

Since we’re here, let me tell you the specific things that get me every time!

1. Color drenching in interiors. You know when a room is painted one single color — walls, molding, ceiling, all of it — and then everything in it follows suit? The bed frame, the bedding, the furniture, every surface just fully committing to the bit? I will never plan to do this in my actual life, and YES, I know that now they’re 99% AI and I simply do not care. I love them. It’s obsession-level.

2. And then there are painters’ palettes. Not the finished work — the palette after. My friend Inslee Fariss does this sometimes, and it is genuinely one of my favorite things on the internet. The combinations are wild and unpredictable in a way no mood board tool could ever generate for you. It’s a remnant — of a specific human, in a specific moment, making a specific thing. There’s no recreating it, and there’s no planning for it, and that’s exactly what makes it so gooddddd.

And that reminds me of something I would absolutely add to any inspo board, a Katherine Wolkoff photo I became aware of when I worked in art and fashion in my twenties: Deer Beeds. Like, what’s leftover when they get up and are gone.

In both cases, there’s something beautiful and meaningful not in the thing, but in the remnant of the thing having happened. Super into that idea!

Pinterest, Instagram? Camera roll! Right?

Of course, we should talk about platforms and best practices for the actual saving of gasp-worthy stuff — maybe you’re still on Pinterest, maybe you use saved boards on IG, or maybe you’d let me talk you into screenshotting your saved IG board, printing it out, cutting it into squares, and gluing it onto an IRL inspo board. (WHAT. Yes, I’ve done this. It’s so fun.)

But you’re not limited to those. For something fresh, try this leveled-up version of Pinterest called Cosmos (here’s my board, below) and an amazing color palette generator called Coolers that I’ve been obsessed with for years (via the inimitable Maria Piessis!)

Coolers is free, stupidly fun, and majorly addictive. It’s a color palette generator, and the whole experience is basically: hit the spacebar, watch a new five-color palette appear, decide in half a second if it’s the one. Here’s one I made just now, which feels very good to my eyeballs in this minute:

Once you’ve landed on your palette, something kind of wild happens: you start seeing those colors everywhere. In your coffee. On a stranger’s jacket. In the light at 4 pm. It’s not magic; it’s just focus — your brain has been handed a filter, and now it’s applying it to everything. And suddenly your inspiration isn’t random anymore. It’s a picture of your current vibe.

I use all of these devices above. I save to an album on my phone if it’s for a specific open project (my next week’s Substack, my son’s Kindergarten show), I save to IG Saved boards for open-ended things like “Japandi interiors I like”, “Renovation tips” and “The Next Time I’m In Tokyo”, and memes. And I play with Pinterest, Cosmos, and the rest of the internet when I just need to be inspired and zone out on a scroll of beautiful things.

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But the most interesting thing about deciding what to save — and what to do with it later — is that it hones the skill of figuring out what you actually love. So, my one and only tip is this: First, save with wild abandon, without worrying about what it signifies or means. Save a lot. Then, look later at everything you’ve saved and see what the emerging patterns are. Because when you smoosh it all together on an inspo board, something clicks: you can suddenly see the thread that ties it all together. It’s a genius reveal you’re giving yourself.

My six pics for this week: an inspo board (made from last week’s content!) with two of the saves in motion! Made with the Esti iPhone editing app. Try it and report back!

I’ll do a part 2 if you like! I realize I didn’t really explain my “…and do something with it” process, and now the post is too long! Drop a comment here if this sparked you, and I’ll continue the conversation.

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I have a post in drafts about trends — specifically, why they're best observed with a kind of Buddhist detachment, hold the hatred. Women of a certain age (aka my age) love to complain about them, and I have a heartfelt reframe. That post isn't ready yet, but in my research I found a 'stack I can't wait to share. This New Slang post is an easy, clever, well-researched POV on the design history and cultural appeal of dressing monochromatically — which is basically my interiors color-drenching obsession, but make it an outfit. (eee!)

Though I literally live here, it is hard even for me to keep track of all the businesses in the Hamptons that changed hands this year. Here’s a great round-up of what to do out East this summer, boasting bits even I didn’t know about!

My friend and longtime client Jen Galante Han’s love letter to Substack, and why it’s the better destination for fashion, vs. Instagram. I always feel like she writes directly to my personal brain, and I love that feeling.

Jean Godfrey June (another beauty I met when I photographed her 11 years ago!) on WHY she chooses clean beauty. Such a great piece.

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If you loved this, heart that cute little heart, and share with a friend!

Thanks for reading, and GO KNICKS!

hugs!!
Ana

Back in the day, it was extra compelling to have a photo appear right in front of you, especially when a normal print took days. Instant film felt like a magic trick.

And IMHO: digital photography didn’t kill that magic. Not even a little.

The whir of the camera motor, and then — pop — it just slides out. Like a toy! A very fun, very whimsy-inducing toy. (I said what I said.)

Since becoming a professional photographer with frequent kids as subjects, I’ve used Polaroids — and yes, “Polaroid” became the word for the whole category of instant film, like Kleenex or Xerox — in all kinds of my photography sessions, as a distraction, as an add-on. But in 2026, instant film has been genuinely optimized, and I think Fujifilm’s Instax line is absolutely brilliant for kids.

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Okay, yes, Instax film is lowkey robbery, not gonna lie. But the cameras are genuinely so cute, everyone from toddlers to full-grown adults loses their mind using them, and watching a photo develop in real time will never not be a serotonin hit.

My favorite part is that you can hand the instant print to someone to take home, but first, photograph it with your iPhone! They get to keep the print, and you keep it forever. Best party trick going.

The only problem: you will end up with a towering stack of Instax prints and absolutely no plan for them. An album works, technically. But let’s be honest — albums live on shelves. Hard to remember to open them.

What if you put them on your wall instead?

I just made an Instax frame using some old wrapping paper I had lying around, and I’m going to show you exactly how.

If you try it, let me know! I’d love to see yours, and I’ll post a few in a future issue. If you’d like to get all the supplies for it, here’s the link. I listed some awesome solid-color wrapping; I’m especially into the matte silver. (You’ll also need a pencil, scissors and wrapping paper of your choice; link above to what I picked!)

LAZY VERSION: If the above feels too onerous, pick up these cute colored frames!

1. Eadem Le Chouchou Exfoliating + Softening Peptide Lip Balm is the softest, smoothest shiny gloss I’ve found in a while, and it has this ridiculous applicator shape that I absolutely love. Plus, I learned about it from someone IN THEIR TWENTIES, and I’ve since noticed many youngish people sporting this poufy pout-glosser. Good products often go viral for good reason, not just “because it’s cool”, though safe to say, this gloss is cool.

2. Instax mania (photo of the craft I'm working on, in the IG video above!)

3. I’ve been thinking a lot about this article. I’m not a shoe girl. I’ve always been a handbag girl. But even I’ve noticed lately that I really… don’t need one? I pretty much just always have my phone, and my purse stays in the car. But as my friend Lauren aptly observed, “we millennials hold FAST to our designer handbags”, don’t we? I certainly did for a long time.

4. I’M SO SORRY, but I really do love the smaller bubble of the “private equity water”, the viral influencer-peddled Loonen Water. It’s got a less-agro mouthfeel than my beloved Pellegrino, and I truly would buy it again. HOWEVER, overall, the taste of Pellegrino keeps it my #1; despite the bubble size, because the mineral flavor is top-tier.

5. Where to buy the prettiest and most unique peony roots, like this “Angel Cheeks” variety I grew on Shelter Island and transported to Sag Harbor. And yes, this photo is of my actual hand holding actual peonies I grew and was on my way to deliver to a friend.

6. The book I’m dying to read but haven’t yet: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. It’s a biting, suspenseful satire about "tradwife" internet culture, toxic narcissism, and the performance of womanhood. Gulp! The premise of an influencer sent back in time alone is worth a go, but I’ve heard so many people recommend this book that I feel extra compelled to add-to-cart.

I just found out that Charlie and Sons turned part of their luxe, massive plant nursery into the most gorgeous coffee shop — there’s a greenhouse to sit in, an adorable little shop attached, and it’s giving Secret Garden (a book I loved!). Run, don’t walk, and get the $8 Olla latte. Trust me on this one. All the Instax I used in today’s Six Pics and the Instax frame project were shot there in the garden.

That’s all for now! Would you heart this post if you liked it? Next week I’m writing about how to gather and organize inspiration for work and life. If you have a burning desire to tell me how you do this, comment below, and I’ll add it to the post! It’s going to be such a fun one.

Hugs!!

Ana

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When a friend recently had major surgery, the community rallied around her immediately and fully, with understanding and total no-strings-attached help. It was absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately, there are more occasions to show our strength as a community. Fortunately, this beautiful community immediately stepped up with love.

Sag Harbor is grieving today.

We lost one of our own, a beautiful 6th grader named Cesar Albarracin Guncay, taken too soon in a tragedy on a school trip. There are no words for what his family is walking through right now.

I met Cesar last year when he was a fifth grader; I was photographing him for the school’s Wax Museum project. He was a wonderful person. Our community is gutted.

As a community, we show up. That’s what we do. I’m proud to be a part of the Sag Harbor family. Tomorrow, everyone is wearing blue, for Cesar.

A GoFundMe has been set up for Cesar’s family. This is the link. If you can give, give. If you can share, share. Every bit of it matters.

I love this village and the people in it. Hold your kids a little tighter today.

🤍 Please share widely.

Ana

You’ve heard of whimsy, right?

Whimsy is a term that’s been trending lately on social media, including TikTok and Instagram. It has caught fire across all generations, not just the “Zillennials,” as The New York Times suggests, but with people of all ages. It’s similar to Marie Kondo’s “spark joy” movement, but instead of focusing on organization, people are seeking out things that have no other purpose than, well, FUN.

Although the word “whimsy” is not my favorite (maybe it needs a rebrand?), I do appreciate its onomatopoeia, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE it as a trend. It’s about having side quests, making things, being intentional and creating quirky rituals.

And it’s not just sprinkles in your coffee.

In one of my fave examples, people are using this viral original TikTok video where a concerned Sean Anthony Bryant is encouraging his overly negative friends to lighten up, “and some of y’all need more whimsy…” as a fun, trending audio behind a video of themselves romanticizing their lives in some way, and it’s fun to search for! Once you start looking, this whole whimsy idea will have you hooked.

I’m apparently an adult (I object!), so I have to use self-discipline not to ALWAYS choose the fun option throughout my day. But the recognition that there’s value in fun, that there’s a visceral benefit to making it all make less sense, is SO GOOD.

One of the many things that lights me up is… being extra! The weird little things I notice throughout my day make me happy.

The gorgeous shadow on an ugly wall, the green plant against a green wall, any little happenstance beauty-thing, something that sparks something, and creates a tiny moment of (fine) whimsy. A moment of FUN. I let those things matter. And I want that for you, too.

I also don't want to get so sparkly that I lose sight of where this idea came from — it developed as an antidote to people having a really hard time. That's worth sitting with. One of the ways I work through something hard (like a midnight freakout) is by getting loose, letting go of my inner critic, and making something. What helps through a hard place is, truly, whimsical s**t.

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Here are some of the micro-rituals I use to add whimsy to my life:

I’ll heart my own sent-bubble in a text chain to a friend – it always makes them laugh. (And me, too!)

I type “PARABENS!!!!” instead of “Congratulations” because the iPhone will still do the confetti explosion and it sounds somehow MORE enthusiastic in Portuguese. (Thank you for starting this trend, Susan Passoni!)

(I swear I do other things besides texting.)

I do a little shoulder shimmy and a hair flip when I spritz (ONE SPRITZ!) of my favorite perfume after my shower, which feels like it helps spread the fragrance molecules around?? Listen, the science isn’t important.

This is the most ‘80s thing ever, but in the summertime, if there are “daisies” in the grass (ahem, weeds) in the lawn, I love to make daisy chains with them. What a DIY picnic-party hack. You need long-ish, natural nails to pierce the stem properly and thread the daisy through! No gel nails, people.

The other day, after coming home from a business trip, I left a little car I had bought for my son out on the stairs, on the edge, at a height I knew he’d see it. Letting him find it instead of handing it to him felt like the sparklier option. He squealed with delight when he saw it!

I only manage it about a third of the time, but I love sending handwritten cards and thank-yous. I’m obsessed with stationery — calligraphy, quality cardstock, letterpress — and I put real care into finding a card that the specific person I’m writing to would genuinely enjoy. The latest one I bought is this one! I would even write a letter to my future self, on nice paper.

I love to go on solo dates, tie bows on things, and surprise a friend with something they love, and I think I’m going to try all of these things, including star-shaped ice cubes.

Being playful doesn’t have to mean buying something. It can also mean taking a photo!

I once read, “This is a great shoes and socks flower” in a gardening catalog selling plants and seeds. I never forgot it.

How delightfully unhinged is it to wonder what the shoes and socks of a flower might look like? They mean to say it’s a short flower that grows densely, and it’s great to be seen underneath a flower that has its blooms higher, but I went feral with it, and here’s what I made.

Send me a message or post a comment and let me know. (And heart the heart, if you liked this post!)

Playfully yours!!

Ana

I am genuinely having so much fun on Substack, like, actually. (If you’re finding me for the first time this week — hi! — I’m a professional photographer, and I live in Sag Harbor. Read more about me in post No. 0001)

Today, let’s do photos first. Why not!?

And now: How I solve my midnight freakouts.

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Everyone asks me this when they find out I’m a photographer: Do you hate AI? Does it freak you out? Don’t you just feel like the best to ignore AI with confidence? (Well, as a woman, please don’t ignore it, or women will be left out of the boardrooms determining our futures. Read more about this reality in my friend Patricia Assui Reed’s latest excellent post (here).

No, I’m not afraid. I’m not threatened. I’m not even annoyed.

The speed at which our culture is changing around us to be AI-native is genuinely jarring to me — I won’t pretend otherwise.

Over the last six months, I’ve turned my healthy curiosity about AI into a self-directed research project.

Here’s the part people don’t always know about me: every single one of my many hats sits on top of a head with ADHD.

And some essential adulting things were simply never attainable to me before.

Ways of organizing myself.

Ways to finish a task before I burn out on it, got frustrated, and turned that frustration inward.

Ways of feeling things too deeply and letting those feelings cloud my judgments and reactions. (Midnight freakout #1!)

After experimenting (a lot!) I have found a few totally rad AI tools, and honestly, things that felt impossible are now often within reach. That’s not a small thing. That’s a life-altering upgrade-thing.

Here are three ways I use AI every single day to feel more in control and capable of managing my busy life.

1. For me, procrastination is seldom laziness. It’s the feeling that a task requires more time than I have right now — and probably more than I’ll have later — which activates a very special flavor of ADHD stress spiral.

So I talk instead of typing.

I’m a fast typer, but that’s not the point. The point is, I can ramble into my phone while I’m watching my toddler, while I’m driving, at midnight when I’m spiraling about everything I didn’t finish. (Midnight freakout #2!)

Run-on sentences, bad grammar, total chaos — it doesn’t matter. I end up with something started. And something started is everything.

Dictation works for writing. It works for to-do lists. It especially works for the midnight freakout list, which is a real genre in my life. I’m not going to remember which undone thing needs to happen first. So, my Substack draft is due Wednesday, and I haven’t started. My camera kit needs to be packed for Thursday. I need to sweep the next four weeks of client bookings and confirm deposits and details. Summarize that into action items, add to calendar — done. I can sleep.

Dictation gets the thing out of my head and into a shape I can work with. That’s so helpful, so DIFFERENT. It’s a thrill. I used it to start writing THIS POST. At 3 a.m. while driving my baby back to sleep after a night terror, I opened my app and started just talking, by saying, “I want to write about how my AI fascination has changed my life, and I’m going to ramble on until a thesis forms.” My midnight freakout turned into a midnight productivity moment.

Once I get going, I talk in circles and tangents — but somewhere in the blah-blah, a real idea always surfaces.

2. This one is a pivot into my inner world, but it might be the most useful thing in my life right now.

I have a client who responded to my pricing as if I’d personally insulted them. I need to write back professionally. But I am, in fact, kind of insulted. So I brain-dump the situation — what happened, what I need to say, what I cannot say — and ask for a professional edit. What comes back has all the necessary information, but none of my feelings. I don’t sound pissed. I don’t sound like a pushover. I sound like someone running a business.

I’m realizing that I’ve wasted countless hours micromanaging my own emotional landscape in professional settings, without realizing it.

I am a chronic people-pleaser in writing. Left to my own devices, uncomfortable emails become a series of “so sorry, no worries, totally fine, I can wait” — even when I cannot wait and it is not fine. AI just… removes all of that. What’s left is an email that actually moves things forward. I get the booking I want at the rate I know I’m worth, or the clean exit I’m relieved by, without three days of emotional labor to get there.

3. Okay, this one is a little different, but stay with me.

I’m in the middle of a bathroom renovation, and it’s going too quickly for a designer to get involved. BUT! If I drop a photo of the empty room, the mirror I like, and the tile I like into an AI tool, I can see what it might look like together.

It’s not perfect. It’s not going to look like a spread in Architectural Digest. But I get to iterate. I get to be the creative in a moment where otherwise I’d just be guessing — or worse, deferring to someone else’s vision.

That part matters to me — a lot.

Could this newfound addiction to AI come back to haunt me? Absolutely. Probably in ways I can't see yet.

Keeping our voice in the room as women, our dignity for all human beings, and our care for the natural world while AI transforms everything is a conversation that needs to stay loud.

THAT AND right now, I’m a photographer with ADHD who is sleeping better, fighting with fewer emails, and actually excited about her bathroom.

I’m optimistic.

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Four AI apps I actually use every single day because they make my life easier — linked below if you want to try any of them.

• Wisprflow — My go-to texting dictation app. It gets loaded as a “keyboard” in your phone, and it makes dictating a text sound normal, not insane. Eliminates run-on sentences, slots events into order, uses proper title case and grammar, and I almost never have edits when I review it before pressing send. In fact, if you speak with proper “reading with expression”, Wispr will sense where to put your commas! Unbelievably helpful.

• Granola — AI notepad for meetings. It runs in the background and returns a clean, thorough summary. Game changer for anyone whose notes normally look like a squirrel disco.

I’m great in the room, I love face time with a client, but I’m so “on” that the meeting often ends with me saying to myself afterward, “What did I say exactly?” This saves me by providing the info I need for a thoughtful follow-up.

Another time I used it was like a party trick — I tested how long it could record by using it at a full two-hour happy hour. I announced that I was using a new app at the start of the convo, and since AI is on everyone’s mind, people were so into it! Then I sent everyone the summary after. It recorded every part of the convos, minus all my lame jokes! What a win.

• Chat GPT — Best for quick fact-finding — the kind of stuff you'd normally just Google. And their image generator does my absolute favorite "make this room have THIS tile floor…" bathroom renderings.

• Claude — Yes, Claude, the buzzy favorite of Spring ‘26 (who my friend affectionately calls Clive, as though she’s made him HERS).

Claude is the AI I rely on the most. I use Claudey-Claude for email editing to improve professionalism, for dictating an idea and asking for my ramble to be formatted into a to-do list or draft, and for thinking through problems out loud by having the AI ask ME questions about the kind of answer I need. It’s also what I use to strip the emotional baggage out of a client email at 11 p.m. when I should be asleep.

This is how the midnight to-do list gets out of my head and into something actionable.

If you try any of these for the first time, I’d love to hear how it went! Send a message or post a comment, so others can see.

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1. Body Doubling Session — Coming in June, an opportunity to feel supported and motivated to tackle your own tasks by doing so across from another rad person.

I’m hosting my first-ever community work session, which people call “body doubling,” and it’s a practice I find TRULY helpful for productive work.

90 minutes on Zoom: 10 min intro chat, 70 min heads-down work, 10 min closing chat. Theme: Attack the one mundane thing that’s been on your to-do list for weeks. Admin, research, insurance, whatever you’ve been avoiding. Bring it. Get it done.

Interested? Hit reply! I’ll tell you more.

2. Hamptons Family Photo Sessions — Book Now for Summer

Opening the calendar for July, August, and September weekend sessions. Spots drop on Memorial Day Monday — and there aren’t many. Mark it.

3. Small Business Branding Photos

I’m deep in it with my entrepreneurial clients right now — making genuinely iconic, first-of-its-kind work for their personal brands.

If this is you and you want something people actually remember, hit reply — I’d love to tell you more about how it works.

4. Guest Post

I was a guest writer this week on the Blue Balloon School Substack (songwriting school). I photographed brand photos for BBS and spent time with them, and I really got to know their business. Then, my own kid started lessons with a teacher there, and it went really well! I loved this interview; I got to write about my own life and history alongside the experience of photographing them. I’d love for you to read it!

Also, if you’re a Substack publisher, consider guest-writing for another creator — it’s a very rewarding creative collaboration! (thank you, Blue Balloon!)

Share Six Pics I Clicked // Ana Gambuto

How do you save your inspiration when you find it? I’m always curious how other people organize the stuff that moves them. Tell me below.

I keep a saved folder on Instagram specifically for accounts that stop me mid-scroll VISUALLY — the ones I want to return to, think about, extract energy from in the best possible way. This week I’m sharing six of them with you.

As I mentioned, I’m doing some fun renovation on my house, and I’m super into beautiful home inspo.

This was a long one — is anyone still here? Tap a heart if you made it this far. I have more to say, actually. There’s always more.

Until then, wishing you many cherry-blossom stomping moments around town. I like to kick them around like confetti.

hugs!!

Ana

Hiiiiiiiii!

I’m a professional photographer, and if I’m in your life personally, I’m definitely the fun friend. Not available for a run. Very available to try a controversial new beauty product, eat somewhere impossible to get into, perform a skit, make up a song on the spot, or film a quick happy birthday video for someone who lives far away. Any unhinged side quest you’re enthusiastic about — I’m your girl.

I was raised by the waves in Santa Cruz, CA, and then spent my baby-adult years stomping around New York City. Now I’m in Sag Harbor with a husband I adore, three darling kids, and a garden I’m deeply committed to. I work with clients here in the Hamptons and head into NYC every week, which has turned out to be the exact life I find satisfying, bursting with non-stop energy. Thriving.

My new obsession is weekly writing as a hobby, which I realize sounds like something a person says right before they get really into sourdough, but I promise it’s more interesting than that.

I'm terminally online, and I'm not even a little sorry about it? My phone is basically tuned to the top tier of what's being shared at any given moment — but I come at it with curiosity, a real eye for what's actually funny, and an overwhelming need to tell everyone I know.

Enter — my shiny new Substack.

Every issue: six photos I use to tell a story. Six pics that clicked for me. It might be a thing from my life, a full-on personal essay, or just a random collection of curiosities, things I’m noticing, the stuff that doesn’t make it onto Instagram. Part photography, part ADHD diary, part handbook for using your aesthetic to make daily life happier.

I figured out that paying attention to uncommon things is both my job and my superpower, so I made a newsletter about it.

1. my girls. sisters becoming besties 🌸 // pink dogwood outside the John Jermain Library, Sag Harbor

2. me in my element — photographing two kids i love dearly // the rippling pool got me, it always does

3. my oldest, camera in hand — me with mine // two artists, two cameras, one very happy 8-year-old in sequins 🪩

1. Mini-shoots in the Hamptons are coming! Hit reply if you want to be added to the list — subscribers get first access.

2. NYC mini-shoots are also happening. Hit reply and say something witty. I’ll add you to that list, too.

3. Need photos for something? You can now book a free inquiry call and tell me all about it.

4. SAG HARBOR — save the date. Saturday, May 9th at the Church, 11 am–3 pm. I’ll be at the Sag Saturdays pop-up alongside local businesses, all hanging out to gab with the community. Stop by — I’d love to see you.

   Okay, yes, I want this.

   ---

Of course, since I had somewhere important to be in the morning, I was inexplicably awake at 5 a.m. I’d argued with a friend that afternoon, and I was sleepless with thoughts of what I could have said, but didn’t.

I read somewhere that if you can’t sleep, you’re supposed just to lie there until you drift back off. But I was so awake, my eyelashes were twitching.

This was December. Heavy and cold in the way only December is. I decided just to get up.

I crept out to the kitchen in a pitch-dark house — I’d left the blessed phone on the nightstand and couldn’t risk waking the baby by going back in. I found myself with an empty Apple Note open on my computer, much like this one, and I just started to write.

That was the beginning.

The next morning, I got up early again. Not by choice — a bad dream had yanked my daughter out of her sleep — but I rose easily, because my laptop was waiting. I padded out carefully, wondering, “Is this who I am now?” I was secretly looking forward to creating some whimsical ritual around my morning pages, something I could narrate later at parties, delivered with a casual hair flip.

I couldn’t really remember what I’d written the night before. I opened the note eagerly, honestly kind of expecting something exquisite on the page, because writing at 5 am is something Real Writers do, right? Surely my friends Jess Soffer and Susan Passoni do this. Surely Real Journalist Rachel Bowie does.

The blinking cursor giggled at me. The draft was… terrible.

Ah, well.

This is the middle of the story.

I read recently that a glimmer is the opposite of a trigger — something small that moves you. Not setting you off, but setting you forth. A little puff of propulsion toward something unknown, but something good.

I got up early a total of five times. And then, I didn’t.

Now it’s May — late sunsets, later bedtimes, and early mornings are rare. But knowing I did it, knowing I can, is a glimmery reminder that writing from the heart is good for the brain. It quiets a racing mind and closes the thought-loops that torment. If I don’t write, those loops stay open, stealing bandwidth. When I feel lost, the morning pages are there to bring me back.

A little noticing. A little writing.

Puff. Forward. Puff. Forward.

The story isn’t over. New chapter dropping every week on Six Pics I Clicked.

The tabs that live in my head rent-free!

BOOKS // Last week I went to Brooklyn to see a writer I love, Kaitlyn Teer, read from her new book Little Apocalypses — essays about motherhood and climate change that will make you cry happy tears, sad tears, and probably both at once. Genuinely inspiring. I loved it. She was interviewed by my friend Joanna, and the two of them together were so funny — Joanna always asks the best questions. What a treat.

BEAUTY // I scream if this product isn’t in my purse for some reason.

I was born with two fluffy sections of frizz exactly like Krusty, on either side of my head. They’ve been on active duty since childhood, and even in midlife, they’re resilient and ever-present.

The DAE Styling Wand is basically a giant mascara wand filled with styling cream — and it just puts the hairs in their place. No crunch, no fuss, no questions asked. I use it every single day, and I cannot get over it.

What a note to end on. From the bottom of my frizzy heart to yours - thank you for reading down this far.

Not to make this a whole thing, but I'm finishing this edit at 5 am. Again. (Eee, I love a full circle moment!) Today, the stars aligned, and I woke up early! I wonder if my subconscious just couldn’t resist.

I’d love to know: Who’s your favorite read on Substack? Leave it in the comments!

Send Six Pics to a friend if you think it’ll make their day. Or tap the heart at the bottom.

hugs!!

Ana