Adventures with Sarah

Before I start with the words and the stuff, I want to show you a photo I took this weekend during one of our little adventures.  It is my all time favorite photo that I have taken..(ok that isn’t fair to say because I have lots of favorites).  Sarah had these bold awesome shoes.  I am girl, I can not help but LOVE shoes. So here, before you read on I want to wet your photography appetite:

Looks like it could be in a magazine, I am awesome, and if you don’t think so, I don’t have any shits to give because come on! Look at it! (haha for those of you with your panties in a bunch, relax I am not this conceded, I am just feeling proud!)

Now let us begin….

 

This weekend a good friend and fellow photographer came to visit me from Arizona.  The story of our friendship (in a nutshell) started with a tragedy, but through the sadness of some events we actually became very close.  I am always so excited when I get to see her because  she helps push myself out of my comfort zone, and we usually have some sort of mini adventure.

 

As I said above she is a photographer as well, she almost exclusively works with film (I say almost because she is just starting to work with her digital slr more).  I really admire that, I have two film slr’s and I find myself to scared to really take a go with them. She really inspires me though, when she is around and I watch her, I see her confidence and it really makes me want to take a chance and go crazy with a few rolls of film… Maybe I should.

So one of the reasons she came was to practice with some of my lighting, she had not really worked with strobes before, but right away it was second nature for her.  I, of course was her model.  These are some of the photos she too inside my little studio I set up.

She as a blog as well Sustainable Shutter Speed.  I really suggest you check it out!

The next day we went off to the Joshua Tree National Park and went off on a hike.

There were some awesome areas to just climb around so my husband snapped this photo of my daughter and I.

While I was up there I found an area that seemed slightly interesting to photograph, so I climbed a bit more and got this

Not so exciting.  I found myself really getting bored at taking photos of my surroundings… I really didn’t even take that many.

Anyways, further down the trail we came to the damn, and it had water! Ok, ok, so I know that makes me sounds stupid, but out here the last thing I would expect to see is a damn with water. If you lived out here, or even just drove through you would agree with me (I would think).  Before we started on the trail it mentions the damn, but we figured that it was dry and only filled up during the flood session.  I did get some photos of that.

These next few photos are just me trying not to take boring photos…..

And that is about the time my daughter got a huge splinter in her finger…. Despite me telling her to not run her hand down the wood…

And of course I needed to take a photo of at least one Joshua Tree.   I love those trees!

At the end of the trail we came up to the area where some native petroglyphs.

People were climbing all over this! So I decided to make my way to the other side for this photo:

 

when some older dude tried to tell me “hey, I don’t think its a good idea for you to walk over there, and on the markings” (even though they were chiseled in the rock, and someone had painted over them, AND I was watching where I was stepping).  So after my picture I moved back to the other side, Sarah wanted a photo of her self where I was at, so I go to take the photo and that same man’s kids where climbing all over, everywhere! Not only that that kids kept walking right in front of me while my camera was up.  URG! Ok sorry for that rant…

 

After hiking, we came back home and took some portraits of Sarah (my way haha).

Here are some of my Favorites from the shoot (if you want to see more I put them all up on my facebook page) I seriously love how they turned out:

I so proud of these!  Also all of these were done in my little studio.

The next day we drove to the Salt Mine that is about 45 minutes away from my house.  I took my vagabond and a light, had Sarah dress up and took a few ‘on location’ photographs.  Like I said you can see all of them on my facebook page, but here are a few of my favorites!

I took my daughter with us, and I managed to get some photos of her too that were really cute:

She is such a little model, while we were shooting photos of her I realize how much she listens to me while I coach and pose other people.  I am big on the ‘chin out/ soft fingers/ballet hands’ and she was doing all of those with out me saying anything to her.

This shot is a favorite of mine, you can see Sarah’s Camera, and Ana looking at here getting ready for a photo

This next one is a favorite as well.

Sarah got some photos of me using my camera. This one has ‘me’ all over it:

After we were done, we only had enough time to go home eat some lunch and then I had to drive her to the airport.  I think the photo above accurately displays the way I felt when she left.

 

A trip to Balboa Park in San Diego

Yesterday I took a mini trip to see one of my best friends in San Diego.  I have known her now for 6 years, and I have had the wonderful opportunity to watch her family grow and be apart of all of the great time and not so great times!

Her family is so beautiful, and when she asked me if I would come visit and take some family photos I jumped at the chance.  Her husband will be going away for about a year and she has to stay behind.  One of the many ‘perks’ (sarcasm*)  of being a military wife.   We are probably alone a hell of a lot more then we are with our  husbands.  And I believe that is the number one reason why the divorce rate for military couples are so high.  If they are not around the communication is not there, the affection and attention are missing as well.  It is hard to be married when you only see someone a few months out of the year.  It is also hard to be married to your phone, or skype program!

Crystal has two beautiful children, Cody and Kaitlynn.  It is so awesome to be able to watch them grow! I met Cody when he was still a baby, and now he is in school.  Crystal was pregnant around the same time I was with my daughter, so they have grown together and of course are good friends!

So, as I said yesterday I drove from Twentynine Palms to San Diego (a good 2 and half hour drive each way!).  Crystal picked out the location, Balboa Park.  Very beautiful area!   These will be last family photographs they will have until Mike comes home from his year long deployment.

I am so proud of these, I got to use my vagabond, take a light out, and I seriously had to do so little editing on these.  They came out perfect.  It also helps that Crystal is just so hot, and her family is (I will say it again) beautiful!  One down side, it got a little windy, and my light fell and broke (after the 4th time falling, cue silent tears).  Note to self, make some sandbags for my stands, or bring an assistant!

More ’3d’. Stereo-Views!

First off I want to dedicate this post to coffee!  Seriously, this time change really screwed my sleep up.

Yes, this is my cup of coffee!

Now let us get down to business on this ’3d’ stuff.   Hopefully most of you remember what a view master is.  (In my haste to get this blog up, I forgot to take some nice pictures of it, so please prepare your eyes for shitty webcam photos! GO)

Do you remember these? If you do not remember having one of these, with a gazilion wheel slides and tape cassets then you are either to young, or you really missed out!  Gee’s I think I had almost every slide they had out!  I had disney ones, gremlins, nature scenes…  These slides are for the mature audience  with 1950′s-60′s pinup nudes!  Boobies!

Ok, so if you didn’t have one of these then you don’t know that these created a 3d like effect when looking through the little binoculars.  Two of the same photo are on the slide wheel, each one with just a slightly different angle, you look at them together at the same time and you get a sense of depth.   Some history:1838  Sir Charles Wheatstone patented the first stereoscope, in 1851 after being viewed by Queen Victoria, they became a ‘must have item’.  A popular reference, In the late 19th century T. Enami created many stereo-views of life in Meiji-period Japan.

Like I had said before, I have a lens that creates this Stereo-view effect, it allows me to take two photos at once so if I wanted to I can make my own custom slides (which I plan on doing.)  You can also print out the photo’s and view them with special glasses as well, or what they used to call stereo-scopes! (I actually took some nice picture of it for you!)

As you see the lens has only two aperture settings, and only 3 focus settings you choose from manually.  This lens does not create a sharp perfect image, but who cares! The effect and novelty of it is awesome.  Sometimes content over rules quality!

Here are a few ‘Stereo-Views’ I created this morning! (Don’t mind my funny faces…)

And one of me trying to get my remote to work….

 

Nifty huh? I think so!!  I hope you don’t get bored with these, because I will be posting more! (No, not all of them will be me or my kid)

Some of you tech savvy folks might be thinking ‘hmm how does she do that?’  Well I will show you! Lets start with opening the file!

This is how the picture comes right out of the camera, as you can see I have it in photoshop.  When you want to create the .gif for movement you want to make sure you have your animation menu open.

Great! So now we want to select one side of the photo and make a copy, paste it in a new layer! 

After placing the pasted layer move it into place on top of the first one. (See the red arrow?)  To help with placement change the opacity so you can see how things sort of line up (they won’t line up perfectly, and if they did, then you would not have any kind of effect…and that would be lame.)  Now it’s all set in place, crop that shit!

Yay! It’s cropped.  So with your animation menu you want to make frames from the layers.

Next you choose the speed of each frame (I have mine at .3 second, but really you can make them how ever slow or fast you want)

When you are done, you might want to resize the image, make it smaller, and then save it for web and devices! Usually the default settings are good enough.

 and then you have your finished product!

 

Ok, I am off to amazon to get some slides for my daughter to look at (she doesn’t need to look at the nudie ones…)! Yay nostalgia!   Side note, cleaning out my garage the other day I found my old Teddy Ruxpin Doll, and Grubby! I even still have some of the tape cassettes, books, projector, extra clothes, and this ‘answer board’ you plug into him. Do you guys remember that stuff!!

‘Self’ Family Portraits

Being a woman/mom there must be something in our DNA that makes us want to have family pictures.  It isn’t the end of the world for me if they don’t get done, but when I have a vision for a photo, dammit it IS getting done.

As the post states, these are self family portraits.  I took them, with my cheapo tripod, and my little shutter release remote, one strobe with a softbox, and a back pack full of rocks (to keep the light stand from falling over of course).

So here is the story, about 4 days ago we tried to get these picture done, but I am such a bone head and forgot two pieces of equipment.  My wireless flash trigger, and my strobes power cord.  So we drove all the way to the Joshua Tree National park just to hear me cuss really loud in the middle of the desert.

So today after ballet, cleaning, and rearranging my garage we ‘spontaneously’ decided to get in the car and take some family photos.  It went kind of  like this:

Me: Hey, the weathers really nice, want to try to take some photos?”

Husband: “sure”

Kid:”blah blah blah, I take forever to get ready, I can never find my shoes, I want to wear this fancy dress, ouch I hate having my hair brushed, no I won’t take a jacket, Im hungry, i’m hungry, i’m hungry, I still can’t find my shoes!”

We got everything in the car (and I double checked I had EVERYTHING I needed) and headed to the national park.  I planned it so we would be taking photos near sunset.

Now, when we left the weather was really warm, no wind…just perfect.  We get into the park and it is windy and cold.

I had a soft box on my strobe and let me tell you the wind just sweeps that away.  My daughter, not having a jacket and wearing a sleeveless dress was freezing.  This was turning out to be a disaster, and it almost ended as another trip just to cuss in the middle of the desert.  Luckily we gave the wind the finger and tried to snap as many photos as we could.

Here are my favorites!

These next ones are the husbands favorites:

Ok this last one is my favorite to.

Some of you might be wondering how I got my strobes (that are not battery powered) to work outside, in the middle of the desert. Well in the national park they have electrical outlets everywhere……no, no, haha  I’m just kidding.   I have a mini vagabond.  It is amazing.  If you don’t know what it is, search it. Or for the lazy go here.

Possible Retirement for the blog.

OK.  This blog has been so much fun, and I want to thank all my viewers and subscribers!  All of you are so awesome!

Since things are starting to take off for me. (Very slowly, but hey, we all have to start somewhere, right?).  I am trying to take my blogging to a different level.  Something that is a bit more focused, and has more of myself in it.

A place that spotlights clients, shows work I have been up to, give some reviews on equipment, and what ever tips I can share for other fellow photographers!

My new blog is at fklgz.wordpress.com  I want to invite you all to come check it out!