Tag: Photographer

Categories
Love Stories Weddings

Holly and Treg’s Backyard Wedding

My family moved to Aptos, California, in July. Two days before we moved, I photographed my final wedding in Vermont. It couldn’t have been a more special person to me. Holly Rouelle is the principal at Gertrude Chamberlin School in South Burlington, Vermont, where both my children were students. Weeks before Holly’s wedding, my daughter, Remy, had graduated from fifth grade, having attended all six years there. My son, Bo, had just finished up first grade and had been there since preschool. Holly had been a bright light and guiding force for my kids and our entire family all those years. She is an incredible person and a community change maker. She made our elementary experience so special. It was such an honor to have a front row seat documenting her vows with Treg and to witness the joy that radiated from their own adult children, and their closest friends and family. Holly and Treg’s wedding was in their friend’s backyard in Essex, Vermont. Their adult children were their wedding party and bicycling was a theme of their day as a nod to their shared passion for it. Holly and Treg surprised everyone with an outstanding choreographed first dance to boot! It was the perfect ending to my own time in Vermont. I will be forever grateful that she asked me to capture this day for her. It bookended my time in Vermont so perfectly. She was the first person I met at my daughter’s kindergarten orientation and she was last person I saw before we boarded the plane to San Francisco.

Categories
Quarantine

STAY-SCHOOL ADVENTURES: Breaking Through, Quarantine Month Three

STAY-SCHOOL ADVENTURES: Breaking Through, Quarantine Month Three from Cat Cutillo on Vimeo.

This week marks the end of the school year for my first grader and preschooler. As days have become weeks and weeks have become months, we find ourselves mostly outside. This week, we explored Shelburne Pond and the land near our house. We talked about how we will use our voices to speak up for change and how people around the country and around the world are also speaking up for change.

Everywhere we looked, we saw metaphors in nature. On Saturday, we found a snakeskin in our backyard. We think it belongs to the snake we spotted days earlier slithering around the shrubs. My first grader explained to my preschooler that snakes shed their skin through molting. Online research told us that snakes are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality and healing. They shed their skin so that they can both grow and also get rid of the parasites attached to their old skin.

Near Shelburne Pond, we found a turtle carrying its home on its back. Its shell provides both shelter and protection We were carrying an enormous backpack stuffed with everything we might need for our outing, so we could relate.

We even found a frog at the pond and talked about its life cycle, and its ability to change so masterfully that it becomes unrecognizable from its earlier tadpole self.

We caught up with our bird friend in the backyard, who has made a nice life for itself in our birdhouse, with the freedom to come and go as it pleases. We believe this chickadee is creating a nest to lay eggs.

Nature has a way of turning over, of shedding its skin, of changing. I’ve been thinking about the bird eggs and hatchlings we will likely witness soon. In order for a creature to be born, it must first shatter and dismantle the very thing that has been its source of protection. An egg can’t hatch unless it breaks.

Categories
Quarantine

STAY-SCHOOL ADVENTURES: Gardening, Quarantine Week 9

a girl gardening

STAY-SCHOOL ADVENTURES: Gardening, Quarantine Week 9 from Cat Cutillo on Vimeo.

We’ve buried a lot of things in the backyard recently. From a fish funeral to a time capsule, my kids, Remy and Bo, have gotten used to digging holes over the past two months. The thrilling part is what they find: Worms, snails and more worms.

My 3-year-old, Bo, is a worm connoisseur. He knows every variety they come in, from long ones to fat ones to stubby ones. Worms are his biggest motivation in life.

This weekend, my husband, Ross, was equally elated about worms. Earthworms are a gardener’s gold and a benchmark for healthy soil. They speed up the composting process and help mix soil by eating the bacteria growing on decaying plants and giving off “worm castings” —  a nutrient-filled type of manure that plants love. As we were out in the garden planting seeds and seedlings, Ross took the abundance of worms he found crawling in the dirt as a sign that the growing season would be successful.

“It is going to be a great garden this year,” he said.

In response, my 7-year-old, Remy, started pumping out worm facts.

“Did you know worms have five hearts? They also breathe through their skin and don’t have any eyes. I’ve been studying them,” she told me.

Like many Vermonters, the first thing Ross did when he heard about the quarantine was to start planning for an expanded garden. He had the kids start seedlings with him in the house as part of their homeschooling curriculum. Watching the seeds sprout up from the soil never gets old for them. But perhaps the best part of planting this year was the digging. The creepy crawlers were like buried treasures.

Worms are a great reminder that life is odd and, at the same time, resilient. These creatures without eyes and ears might spend most of their time buried beneath the surface, but they are the first things you see in the aftermath of a rainstorm. And when life tears them in half, instead of dying, they multiply and crawl off in different directions to continue enriching gardens and delighting kids.

Music by Ben Sound:
bensound.com

seedlings growinga girl holds a wormgirl planting a flowerkids look at garden

Categories
Quarantine

STAY-SCHOOL ADVENTURES: Time Capsule, Quarantine Day 36

STAY-SCHOOL ADVENTURES: Time Capsule, Quarantine Day 36 from Cat Cutillo on Vimeo.

We’ve been circling the block a lot, going on neighborhood walks. This seems fitting because time itself has started to feel circular. Our mornings often begin where our nights left off, and sometimes I’m pretty sure I spent the day running in circles around the kids. This weekend we took a shortcut through a tunnel of trees. The lighting was just right and created a perfect shadow reflection of the trees’ long slender branches. We started talking about how trees grow from the inside and track time through growth rings that are permanently logged into their layers. The harder the tree’s winter, the tighter the growth ring.

“It’s a trunk full of history in there,” I told my kids.

When we got home I pointed to the coffee table my father-in-law had made when he was a teenager from the found cross-section of an enormous ponderosa pine tree trunk. We tried to count the rings on it but couldn’t make it past 58.

Having lapped past a full month at home, we started thinking about ways we could record our time. I brought up the idea of creating a quarantine time capsule to dig up in exactly one year that included each of our favorite memories over the past month. We presented the kids with a glass jar — like we were literally trying to preserve the memories like pickles — and told them to collect something for the time capsule.

My 7-year-old, Remy, brought out a toy rabbit in honor of Easter and swapped out the jar for a handmade, wooden treasure chest. My husband, Ross, put in a pencil and sharpener to remember working on art and school assignments with Remy. I put in my birthday candles, having recently added another year to my age. And my 3-year-old, Bo, put in a toy figure of Batman’s sidekick Robin and his socks.

I’m hopeful in a year he’ll be able to tell me why.

Categories
Editorial

Reporting for The Bridge: “Finding Fur-Ever Families”

I wrote a story this week on the Central Vermont Humane Society in East Montpelier, VT, for The Bridge newspaper’s Pets & Wildlife issue. I learned so much while writing this. I had no idea that a healthy indoor cat could have up to four litters per year and that a kitten can get pregnant at just four-months-old. It sheds some light on how one family accidentally found themselves with 20 cats in just 18 months. I loved the story of the Executive Director’s ‘heart dog,’ Mr. Bumpus, and how he is to thank for her entire career change. Here’s the opening if you want to keep reading, it continues on the tear sheet below.

Finding Fur-ever Families

by Cat Cutillo

Laurie Garrison knows first-hand the paw-print an animal can leave on one’s life. Hanging above her desk is a framed portrait of her late dog, Mr. Bumpus, whom she rescued in 2005 from a shelter in New Jersey, where she was living and working as an AT&T research scientist.

“I call him my heart dog,” says Garrison. “He was really, really a special dog. Obviously, a special dog because he made me change my career,” she says.

After adopting Mr. Bumpus, she started volunteering out of gratitude at the shelter, joined the board, and eventually fully submerged herself into a new career as executive director. Now, she holds that position with the Central Vermont Humane Society (CVHS) in East Montpelier, a job that regularly makes her cry.

“Its emotional work. Ninety percent of the time it’s good emotion,” says Garrison. (continues below…)