Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Oneword February: GROW

February 10th, 2009
2 Comments

One of my new blog obsessions: Shutter Sisters. SO cool. So girly. But not.

Just this month they started a photography challenge. The prize: a lens baby composer–these things are SO stinking sweet. This month each person gets to pick out a word and take photos relating to that word. Upload to flickr. There you go. If you want to join in on the fun, read about the rules here.

Hmmm… It was so hard to choose just one word. Grow. I’ve been thinking that I really need to expand my interests beyond the hobbyist/enthusiast level. I’ve got it in me, right? So this month, my photos are about growing my talents. Pushing my photo skills and photographing subjects and scenes that I haven’t really mastered yet.

Here they are. Growing. I’m learning how to take pictures of the outdoors. Capturing breath, or life and hopefully conveying it in a still image. More are on the way.

P.S. I <3 you, San Francisco.

bigbasinredwood1

enroutetobigbasin1

growtolovethisplace2sm

growtolovethisplacesm

growtolovethisplace6sm

Penelope Pearl is a D-O-L-L

December 13th, 2008
10 Comments

I feel like all I do all day is talk about how adorable Penelope is. I think I say, “Penelope is so cute!” or “You’re so cute, Penelope!” about 46 times a day. It’s getting old. Penelope’s not. The novelty that is Penelope will never wear off. Although Penelope is getting old. She’s nearly 8 months now. I don’t feel like she’s approaching the year mark, mostly because of her lack of mobility. She enjoys staying put. Unless I’m in the other room.

I’m mostly doing an update because I want to show off how sweet Penelope is. We had a little photo shoot last week, and while I was photographing her I thought the photo-op was a complete failure, I didn’t realize how her personality would show through in the most adorable ways. I admit, I doctored them. You can tell. I’m in a vignetting phase and I like it. Maybe due to my lack of focus in my life, I want focus in my pictures. So here are the overly photoshopped photos. And maybe I should have washed her face before the photo shoot.

Click on an image to see it in full screen mode.

Also, The striped shirt was a 50¢ find at goodwill. I love it.

Camera RAW and Vegetables

May 22nd, 2008
6 Comments

I came across the RAW format for the first time while working at Creative Marketing as a graphic designer, but didn’t really know what it was other than a HUGE image file. Chris just emailed an article from Wired magazine explaining what it is and why we should use it. Pretty helpful! After reading the article Chris so thoughtfully emailed to me, I decided I’d give it a try. I am very happy with the results; a juicier image. I think I’m going to make the switch. I guess I need to go to Fry’s and get another SD card. . .

. . .

Recently I’ve been thinking to myself, I do not get enough vegetables in my diet. That thought came mostly after my sister had me record my diet for a 24 hour period for an assignment in her nutrition class. Since then, I’ve been somewhat perplexed as to how to solve this problem. I don’t really like steamed vegetables, because they’re so mushy, relatively flavorless without loads of butter and salt, and the nutrients are pretty much stripped in steaming. Salads are wonderful, but salad makings seem to go bad so quickly in my fridge. Also, raw vegetables are often bitter, and a lot to chew. The solution to the problem came when my mother-in-law shared with me one of her issues of Cook’s Illustrated: roast them! How utterly genius! We had some fabulous roasted green beans while she was here, and after she left I was thinking I’m going to have to buy more green beans it was so good. THEN, in a cooking class that I went to last week, Sheryl shared with us that pretty much any vegetable can be roasted, even romaine hearts!! For those of you who have already discovered this, kudos. For those of you who have not, here’s the secret to fabulous, just right, tasty vegetables:

  1. Cut up vegetables of choice into bite sized portions and place in a large bowl
  2. Sprinkle just a little bit of olive oil, you could probably spray it with a light cooking spray if you want to spare some calories
  3. Add some garlic, fresh or powdered
  4. Salt and pepper to taste
  5. Mix together
  6. Spread on cookie sheet and place it in the oven at 400º for about 15 minutes, turning the vegetables over so you cook them evenly
  7. Serve!!

Broccoli is great when roasted; it becomes slightly sweeter and the flowerettes become slightly crispy. MMmm. . . I was so excited to discover a new way to eat vegetables. If anyone has any ideas on other ways to have veggies daily, I’m all ears!!

dsc_0540sm.jpg

*I have to give a shout out to my friend Rachel and her husband, Knute for making the chicken and Quinoa salad. It was delicious.

My Very First Digital SLR

April 16th, 2008
4 Comments

YAY!!! It finally came! Chris and I got our new camera this afternoon! Waiting for it to come in the mail was like waiting for Christmas; it seemed to take forever!!!! I was really anxious to start using it as soon as I got it out of the box. Here are a couple photos that I took just messing around with the automatic setting.

.  .  .

dsc_0007.JPG

dsc_0005.JPG

dsc_0001.JPG

.  .  .

I didn’t waste any time this afternoon and read the user’s guide. I have figured out how to use the aperture and shutter priority settings as well as the manual settings. I’m really excited to start playing around with depth of field and exposure times. Chris and I have had a lot of fun this evening just playing around with our new toy. It’s getting me really excited to have a cute little subject to photograph in a couple weeks!! There’s just no comparing this camera to my old one. I just can’t even begin to describe the bliss of using a nice digital SLR! I didn’t even have to spend any time (other than downsizing the large file) in Photoshop to touch up the photos!! Oh, this just gets me so excited to go out and take pictures of everything and anything.

mobile site