Modeling

In December of 2010, just three short, cold months ago, Greg met a woman named Amy at the fire station. Amy is a photographer and was doing a ride along with good ol' RFD to take some photos and hang out with some cool firefighters. While not on a call, and hanging out at the Station, Greg got to talking with her and she mentioned that her kids did some modeling. She showed Greg some pictures of her very adorable children. Greg promptly pulled out pictures of his four adorable children and asked if she thought they were cute enough to model too. Amy promptly agreed that they were. (I would just like to make a side note that this is a reason that we like her so much. Just tell me how cute my kids are, and you're in!) We have always thought that our kids were cuter than most, but also realize that we are their parents and have a feeling we might also be slightly biased. We love it when people agree with us. In fact, I distinctly remember laying in bed with Greg with Josiah when he was just newborn. He said, "People tell us all the time how cute he is, but do they really think he's as cute as we do, I mean look at him Tammy, he is the cutest thing I have ever laid eyes on!" We knew then we were masked with the eyes of new parents, so we never know if we should believe all the people who tell us our kids are cute. Greg decided that out beautiful children would love to do some modeling. Nothing major, just a couple of photo shoots and see where it leads. It never hurts to have extra money for college. Amy said she would love to photograph our kids, so we set a date for January 1, for her to come to our house. She graciously agreed to do family photos, individual shots, a couple of just Greg and I. All for the bargan price of $50! We whole heartedly agreed. This decision was not as cheap as one might think because we are now required, by me, to have coordinating outfits. We were visiting Greg's parents for Christmas, so on our way home we had a mad dash stop at the mall in Mankato, where we shopped for about 3 hours with 4 kids. Greg wasn't exactly enjoying himself, but he was a good sport. After all, this was his big idea. So several hundered dollars later, we found great coordinating outfits for our first shoot. Amy came out on a very cold January day. One of the coldest of the season and at 20 below zero, we all decided to take pictures without coats or hats outside. Freezing! You'll notice in some of the outdoor pictures what a beautiful rosy color our cheeks turned. Amy was great about getting me a CD of pictures and we had a ton of great pictures. Sadly however, we didn't have any really great ones of Ethan. Amy said she would happily take more pictures for no extra charge. So in February we went out again to meet Amy for more pictures. Of course, this meant we needed more outfits. So off to the mall I went with my mom and my sister-in-law. This time, we were just looking for stuff that would look good on each kid, rather than coordinating with each other. Hundreds of dollars later, we were ready for our second shoot. We met Amy at the Gonda building at the Mayo Clinic. After our second shoot, she called me and said, you are not going to believe this Tammy, but we got even better pictures of the kids. She was right on both accounts. I didn't believe it and they were better. We went through more pictures....975 pictures in all and choose the best ones. Which was incredibly hard. When you have that many, they are fairly similar. Amy once again met me in Rochester to go over the pictures during lunch at Chipotle. That week Amy was up in the cities, at a photo shoot with her own children, when she showed the "New Talent Director" some of the photos she had taken of my kids. He whole heartedly agreed that they were all amazing looking kids. So we made some "comp cards" and e-mailed the pictures up to Steve. We didn't hear anything from the agency, but we continued to flash our new pictures of our kids to everyone we knew. We were like first time grandparents. Boasting with pride about our cuter than cute kids. As it turns out, professional pictures are quite a bit nicer than the school pictures. And in our case, quite a bit cheaper. Near the end of March, we finally heard back from the Agency, and they wanted to meet all four kids. Surprise, surprise! So we once again stopped at the mall for new outfits. (Heaven forbid we show up in outfits that we had on in the pictures!) We headed to the cities and met with the agency. They agreed to sign all four kids and told them each why they were choosen. All four for their own unique looks. We agreed to put them on the website for a few more hundred dollars. That's how their major clients choose kids to shoot. Clients like Gap and Target and many others. A little less than a week later, their faces adorned the website and a day later they called with a photo shoot for Devon for the next day. So today Devon had his first photo shoot for Gopher Sports out of Owatonna. They sell athletic equiptment. They paid him $80/hour for two hours and $25 for gas. For this particular company I had to provide the clothes, solid, primary colored shirt and shorts, white shoes, and above the ankle socks. This provided me with another opportunity to go shopping! Greg and I were both working, so we had our social skills worker bring Devon up to Owatonna. We knew that Devon would be anxious about the whole experience. I was anxious and it wasn't me and I wasn't going, of course any kid would be nervous. They started out by trying to get an action shot of Devon hitting a volleyball. He said it was harder than he thought it would be. Then he had a break, then did some photos through a tunnel. The ad will appear in their on-line catalog in August. Lynsie took a picture of his photo shoot, but isn't allowed to show us, because Devon wants us to be surprised when the ad comes out. We decided for all the kids that any money they make will go in a savings account for college, but they will get to have 10% of their earnings. Sadly, the industry norm is to not pay their models for three months. That's the maximum and sadly, most clients take that long to pay. The agency takes 15%. So Devon should see a check in July. I'm so proud of him for getting through such a nerve wracking experience. He's ready to do more. Not so much that he's into fashion, but because he has dollar signs in his eyes. So we'll see what the next couple of months bring. Keep your eye on the ads. Maybe you'll see one of my kids!