Archive for the ‘Random’ Category

Is it apparent I totally have ADD lately? IS IT? Ooooh, something shiny!

This week I am re-reading a favorite book of mine, The Book Thief. Such a beautifully written and sad story. I don’t really think people re-read books like I do. Certain books, like Memoirs of a Geisha or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I read at least yearly. I also loved I Am The Messenger by the same author, Markus Zusak. It’s a great read if you’re looking to pick up a new book!

My self-administered French torture lessons continue. Look at these amazing new phrases I have in my repertoire!

Je ne comprends pas le français. (I do not understand French.)

Je comprends un peu le français. (I understand a little French.)

I’m going places, folks! Practically fluent!

If you live in southern California and looked at the sky last Friday, it was absolutely gorgeous! I saw it out my window and ran upstairs, grabbed my camera, grabbed my flip flops, and flew out the door to get to the roadside to take a picture. Anyone that saw me running through our complex probably thought I was crazy. Anything for the shot!

This week my husband told me, “I like how you do things weird,” and it was a compliment. LOL. The reason he said this was I’d just received a large order of loose leaf tea from The Republic of Tea. My Teavana Perfect Teamaker is always on the counter as I make 5-6 cups a day. He was commenting on the fact that I rarely use bagged tea and I also make popcorn on the stovetop instead of the microwave. Some might call it weird; I call it old school.

These Ryan Gosling gifs are KILLING. ME. Seriously, I was laughing so hard I was in tears. See more here.

I love the internet. So much.

Lastly, this week I signed up for the Cliff Mautner Lighting and Skillset Bootcamp in October. This is how I feel about it right now.

It’s never too early for Christmas gifs! Happy Friday!

I was SO FREAKING EXCITED when I saw this casting call for extras in Anchorman 2. It was like the clouds parted and the sun shone on me and I heard a voice from the heavens saying, “All your dreams are about to come true!” Sadly, they are only looking for TRUE San Diego locals. But seriously. If I know you, and you live in San Diego, and you DON’T attend this casting call, I am MAD at you!

I laughed until I had tears at 17 problems you haven’t had since the 90s.

I have tried, and failed, to fully pick up on French through the years. My husband and I are talking about taking a trip to Italy and France in 2014, which has renewed my desire and determination. I have some CDs I listen to in my car, and a coursebook. It is SLOW GOING, friends. And tiring. For my mouth. Those French sure do a lot of puckering. Also, they demand too many sounds in one word. How am I supposed to do that throaty thing AND roll the r in one word?

Today I am wearing a Magic of Ministry t-shirt and drinking out of my Hedwig mug, as you’ll be able to see on my Instagram. I acquired both at the Harry Potter studio tour in Leavesden. I saw last week the royal family walked through the tour, and Harry was actually on the Weasley home set! Which they did not allow me to do. Hrmph.

Have I ever mentioned I do not have much of a sweet tooth? While my husband is getting Twizzlers at the movies, I get a nice big artery-clogging bag of salty, buttery popcorn. Yet every so often I get this urge for sweets, which struck me at Walgreens this week where I could buy 2 bags of Hershey’s Almond Kisses for $6. Almost an entire bag is gone. I don’t know how that’s possible. I’m pretty sure someone broke into our condo, ate a bunch of chocolate, and left without taking anything else. That’s what I’m going with, anyway.

Lastly – my FREE Mother’s Day contest to win a portrait session + images + a canvas ends on Sunday! If you haven’t already entered, what are you waiting for??? Here’s the link: Mother’s Day Contest!

Happy Friday!

Sometimes I make up words :)

I am a very late adapter. To many things. Take fashion. I HATED maxi dresses when they came out. Same with skinny jeans. Ugh! So ugly! How could anyone wear those? Of course, I am now the owner, and regular wearer, of many maxi dresses and skinny jeans :) As I like to say, I am sure to pick up a trend right before it goes out of style!

The same scenario has played out with each new social network. I de-activated my first Twitter account because I couldn’t stand the format. Instagram? What? Don’t people already post pictures on Facebook? It even took me awhile to get warmed up to Pinterest…although once I did, I was a pinning fool!

I’ve grown to appreciate each segment of social media for what it is. I think of my blog and Facebook as full-featured ways presenting my work as well as interacting with fans. Twitter is great for quick snippets.  Of course, I love Pinterest for just about everything, not only pinning sessions but finding inspiration for home, food, and more! I was pretty skeptical of Instagram, but I have been amazed by some of the images I see on there. I’ve also come to realize that some people love certain platforms better. For some reason, I’ve always liked Facebook the best. But I know people who hate Facebook, but post constantly on Twitter or Instagram. It’s one of those things where one size does not fit all!

So what does this all mean? I am fully social mediaed! I’d love it if you’d follow me at any one of my channels!

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

Pinterest

Still haven’t figured out Google+…one step at a time now!

Below is a recent photo from my Instagram. I am an Amazon Prime shopper (it’s an addiction, and yes, I need a support group) and I found this when looking for foot massagers. After every single wedding, my feet are aching and this little ball is perfect for working out any pains!

Happy Friday!

When it came to who got the most souvenirs from our Europe trip last year, I was the clear winner! I came back with a Hedgwig tea mug, 2 types of loose tea, a Harry Potter studio tour guide, a Ministry of Magic t-shirt, a Tower of London guide and tree ornament, a book about the Anne Frank Haus, an Amsterdam t-shirt, and a bottle opener. Um. I may have a problem. This was on top of souvenirs I purchased for my family back in Michigan – thank goodness my husband had extra room in his suitcase! I had my camera and I took plenty of pictures as well, but it’s also important, and fun, to have something tangible.

I recently read this article about albums and it reminded me why they are so important. I custom design albums for my clients, but they’re optional and I never pressure them to add them to their package. I DO tell them how important it is to invest the time and money to make an album at some point. Every client today wants their high res files, and I provide them with every session and wedding. But from my past experience as a bride, I know what happens to the majority of those files. You upload them to your computer, look through them excitedly, think about what you might like to do with them…and then life gets in the way.

Your wedding day is the beginning of a story, and you should have something tangible to share with your kids, and grandkids. As much as my friends and family like me and my husband, not a single one of them is going to go through 600 wedding photos. But they will look through an album. I invested in an album with my own wedding photography package, and I look through it several times a year. It would be the one thing I would grab if our house was on fire – after all, there is no time to burn a DVD of your pictures if you’re running out of your house!

Here are a few images from our own wedding album – it sounds corny, but almost 5 years after our wedding it makes me smile and brings tears to my eyes! :)

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday! I hope you’re having a great week! Easter is this Sunday, which means I’ve been fully stocked on these bad boys for a couple of weeks now.

If there was a single food that could compete with Lay’s in the category of “bet you can’t eat just one,” the Reese’s peanut butter eggs would be in the running. I can’t eat just one. Or just five, for that matter.

Am I the only one that absolutely hates applying lotion? It is the bane of my existence. I purchased Vaseline’s Spray & Go moisturizer a couple of weeks ago, and why didn’t anyone think of this sooner? Spray on lotion is GENIUS, and a total time saver! This also smells just a little bit like sunscreen, which I love.

Last week I finally put my Canon Speedlight 600 through the gamut when I second shot a wedding in Temecula. I am in love! It’s so easy to use. I switched from manual and ETTL all night long and it fired consistently. It also lasted the whole night on one set of batteries, which has NEVER happened for me!

Thug Kitchen is a hilarious food blog I discovered this week. It’s also NSFW. You’ve been warned! :)

I’m going to close with my favorite Easter You Tube video. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! :)

A few weeks back, I was in a hotel room in Washington, and I was bored. So I did what every person does when they are bored: I started pretending a striped sweater of mine was a wedding dress and made it a little game with myself to see how many creative set-ups I could come up with. I mean, we’ve ALL done it, right? ;)

These are “straight out of the cell phone,” as it were. I found myself frustrated at times because there’s not much you control with a cell phone – even doing a manual zoom means the quality goes down, and all the pictures were pretty grainy regardless.

I was trying to work with the mirror’s reflection here, but that little post kept getting in the way!

There was a small desk in the room, and frosted panes that you could slide.  So I hung my sweater on a painting, and then went to the other side of the desk and slid the panes open just enough to get a shot. I turned on the light to the left of the sweater to get that “pop” of light.

I think this might be my favorite. The sweater was now hanging up directly on the panes, and I was facing the bed, which had a built-in light with one of those flexible necks you could move around. By positioning the light and myself JUST right, I was able to get some rim light, and by moving slightly to my right, I could capture a very muted reflection of the sweater in the desk’s wood surface. Cool!

I like the idea of this one more than it turned out, and I’m sure I could have made the image look better with my camera! The sweater is hanging up in the same place as it was in the previous photo; I just turned around and captured its reflection in the window facing the street. If I’d been able to shoot at a lower aperture, some of the street elements would have been less focused and the dress would have a cool contrast. You need it to be dark to pull off this type of image; during the day, there is not enough difference between the light inside and outside to see the dress in a window!

In this one, the sweater is hanging over the bed and facing the bathroom, which had a sliding frosted glass door.  I turned on the lamp in between the beds and captured the sweater’s reflection. This image would have looked a little cooler with a video light, so the sweater would “pop” out of the image more.

It’s fun to do stuff like this! I consider it “working out” for a wedding day.  As photographers, we’re always trying to come up with new ways to take pictures of something that needs to be shot at every wedding.

Happy Friday!

When I recently heard the post office was cutting out Saturday delivery, I wasn’t particularly concerned. I think like most people, I mainly get bills, magazines and catalogs in the mail.

In a book I recently read, White Devil in the City, much of the book’s detail came from letter writing. Writing letters was an integral part of everyone’s life; I was amazed by the detail included in the correspondences. That made me think about our generation. I was PSYCHED when email first started, and I remember going to the library to email my cousin Sarah with my fancy new Hotmail address. It’s kind of odd to think about. From a broader perspective, in some ways there is so much MORE information and documentation going on than ever before. But in personal lives, very little. Well, unless you have a blog! ;)

Needless to say, I was pretty psyched to a REAL LETTER from my friend Nannette last week on Valentine’s Day, and on possibly the most awesome stationary that I have ever laid eyes upon! She explained in the letter she had found it when cleaning out her house, and it was from the 80′s, which makes it VINTAGE! Score! It made me miss my old days of letter writing. I had various pen pals, and I wrote letters to my cousins, aunts, and out-of-state friends. It was always fun getting those letters! But even if I picked up letter writing again, I highly doubt I could top this piece of stationary!

Happy Friday! :)

One thing I have become rather obsessed with in the past year is TEA. My relationship with caffeine can be described thusly:

Yet I’m not a huge fan of coffee. Sure, I get a peppermint mocha every so often when the holiday season rolls around, but I really don’t like the aftertaste of coffee. I DO like energy drinks, which I know are not the greatest for me. I’ve slowly been trying to transition to tea and to be honest, MUCH of my search has been trying to find tea with high caffeine content! Ha ha! This is critical as an average cup of tea has a third the amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, and well, that simply will not do!

Two of my favorites have been Yogi Vanilla Spice Perfect Energy and Guayaki Yerba Mate Empower Mint.  Delicious and fully caffeinated!

I loved the tea culture we experienced in Europe. Tea is offered everywhere, and in a variety of flavors, too. One particularly rainy evening in Amsterdam, we passed a tea shop on the way back to our hotel. My husband was actually the one who pointed it out and asked if I wanted to go inside. They focused on a French brand of tea I’d never heard of called Theodor, and I walked around with the sales associate smelling the various tins. I finally left with these two beauties:

This tea is SO DELICIOUS and I am savoring it every time I brew a cup! The black tin is a fruity black tea; the green tin is a green champagne tea. Unfortunately they were so expensive I can see I will need to make them last a long time!

In the interest of continuing to let everyone know what a dork I am, I picked up this mug at the Harry Potter studio tour we attended in London. I saw Hedwig and I couldn’t resist! Nor could I resist a Magic of Ministry t-shirt and Hogwarts drinking glass. I was all for finding some Hogwarts shot glasses, but alas, I guess those are not age appropriate? :)

Happy Friday!