Robin Dodd Photography

I grew up around horses. My dad's Aunt Betty was the first horse lover in the family that I remember. One of my first memories was riding one of her horses around in a pair of pink terry cloth shorts, why do I remember what I was wearing? I think because it was one of those hot summer Texas afternoons and I wasn't wearing a shirt.. HA. I guess that was okay for a sassy four year old.           Our first horse was named Joe, he was an ancient quarter horse, at least he seemed ancient to me at the time. The second was a big fat Palomino named  Dawn, and then Matt, my dad's buckskin who looked exactly like Matt Dillon's horse on Gunsmoke. We called him Buck. When I was little I could saddle them myself or ride bareback through the fields in between driving our old white truck Lurch. I was probably 12.. barely. Those were the 70's.  In this lifetime, now that I spend alot of my time around some of the sweetest and most  beautiful horses I've ev...

Two separate shoots this week in Centennial Park.  Addison Bonni

I guess we all have this idea that if we ask really nice over and over and over they'll remember all the little  lectures and inane things we beg them to remember, from how to load the dishwasher properly to "whose shirt is this on the refrigerator?" It's a part of the leaving. Or the preparing to leave. Sometimes they hear us, they do, but most of the time they don't. So we say it again.  There's always this nagging guilty feeling, followed by a pick up your bootstraps and get over it, one that makes me feel that maybe I'll make it through motherhood unbroken, even though it's been almost fifteen years. I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was early and I was watering the horses in the barn. For a full minute, I stood with my cheek on Dodger's, the horse who also remembers the 80's, we have alot of conversations on Tuesday mornings. An author was discussing her memoir and was quoting Anne Truitt, and her feelings about mot...

These two are about to be eleven together for two and a half months and it's hard to take.. every time I see this pic I just want to reach into it and squeeze them!! And what a lovely backdrop.. I think I took this in an old fort or dungeon on Dauphin Island.. LOL Finn was saying.. Aunt Robin.. no more pictures.. hahaha. I'm sure I've posted it before and I'll probably post it twenty seven more times before they graduate from college. These are our babies, our athletes, our kids who are good at math AND stand up comedy. See you in less than a month cuz...

"Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.”  - Catherynne M. Valente ,  The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There There was something nostalgic about these three photos from the shoot yesterday, of course I edited them to look aged, but the wisdom is in the eyes isn't it? Aw teenagers.. just when I think I'm smarter than you, your wisdom stops me in my tracks.. 

I was going to post with my favorite images for the year and I decided to just post some of my favorite all time photos. Enjoy.   This photo was taken at the Southern Festival of Books long long ago, when our gymnasts and ballerinas and tap dancers had really short little legs.. no more...   I remember this like it was yesterday. This was taken outside a storage unit in East Texas that Shawn  and I were loading all of our things into, while we spent the summer with his mom. Holly was six and she was especially full of joy that day. Daddy and Robbie  were  moving to her little town for the  summer before the big move to Nashville. These are from two of my favorite couple shoots. Above are Yvonne and Jason, newly together Yvonne had already been my hair stylist for a few years at Osgood -Oneil in Dallas. Years later, they have two beautiful girls who are the mirror image of both of them and Yvonne owns her own salon Lure in the Uptown area o...

Sometimes being a teenager and even a tween is an emotional roller coaster. This group is making it look easy. How I admire them all.  I love photographing kids, and you probably know by now, kids    who aren't cheesy smiling.. there's so much going on there beyond the smile.  Even though the smiling photo may be the one sent out to the agents and the grandmas these are the ones I think moms and dads like better, the ones where they can see the wheels turning, shining a light on that day when they'll be able to say, and I quote Maya Angelou, "you've been raised".