Notes from the Something

Breakin' out!

Anyone who knows me will tell you I don't have style. No, scratch that. Everyone has a style - mine is just.... not. Basically if it's pink or sparkly, I like it, if it's not, I don't. Why yes, I AM a 4 year old girl, how could you tell? I buy most of my clothes at Old Navy, Gap, Target, and Express, because I know I can trust their stuff to look good. I wear some variation of jeans and a t-shirt most days, or a funky skirt with a plain tank top or t because I want to be different and that's the *safe* way to do it LOL! But I'm comfy and happy, so who cares? Exactly.

My photographic style is getting a bit ho-hum as well. I see photographers like Tara Whitney or the Kaisers (she's only 25 and he's 28 and they are FREAKING AWESOME!), doing things that I would DELETE immediately and making it look really freaking cool, so I decided to try some new stuff. 

This week in photography class, Allison was teaching us about environmental portraiture -- using your subject's environment to make the portrait say more. One aspect of this is what she calls "partial portraiture" so I decided to give it a try, along with some cool pre-sunset lighting effects. I wasn't sure if I got anything good, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found these on my camera!

By the way, special thanks to Baby Girl for being such an AWESOME model! We both love it so it's a win-win-win :)

This is the one I submitted for homework -- it's WAY out of the comfort zone but I like it! 

I wish she was in focus instead of the chain! I still like it though. 

Whoa! Holy flare blowout, Batman!

I totally planned to have that thing behind her perfectly framing her, I swear ;)

I gave this one an antique effect because it was blurry but I LOOOOVE the flare!! Does it work?

Ok, ok, I'm done for now. 

Tip for aspiring photographers: Shoot, shoot, shoot, SHOOT, and then shoot some more!! Don't be afraid to play and mix it up a little! Or a lot! you will learn so much more by DOING than by thinking. Ask me how I know. 

And of course, never forget the first 2 hard and fast rules of photography:

1) Turn the camera on.

2) Take the lens cap off. 

Have a great weekend!

Where I go to talk about photography...

I just have to throw in a plug for the awesome forums at Clickin' Moms... I was searching for a place to talk photography where I wouldn't be totally overwhelmed and intimidated all the time, because many photography forums are just way too pro for me (or at least they WERE when I was starting out), and this is the perfect balance of experienced, super-talented ladies and people just starting out. And it's mainly all children's photography, which of course I just love!

Head over and check it out!

I miss traveling :(

There is nothing more wonderful than coming home to the places and people you love after an extended trip, like 5 months in Australia... but it gets old. Being home, especially without a job and with it the accompanying income, alone, for too long, reallllllly starts to suck. I am so ready to move to England!! (Send good vibes that Dan gets this job he interviewed for last week please!!)

I also really want to have some more adventures, especially after reading my friend Dean's blog. I met him in Laos at the same time as I met Dan, actually, and we've kept in touch via Facebook and blogs -- he's back on the road, adventuring in Indonesia.

I've always done fairly *safe* travel things -- I don't mean in the safety sense, it's all very safe, I mean in the easy sense -- but they were still awesome. I did a trek in Thailand run by a guest house - it came highly recommended and was AMAZING.

We rode on elephants, 

slept in village huts, 

schlepped through rice paddies and the jungle, 

and bamboo-rafted down the river (on rafts our guides made that morning).

 It really was fabulous, especially for an ultra-suburban girl such as myself. It wasn't a "package tour" by any means, it was very authentic. BUT all the other people were other backpackers, and our guide led all the activities. And showed us cool nature things, like a "bubble plant" - the sap works as bubble solution when you make a little cup out of a leaf and wand out of grass! It was the perfect introduction to adventure traveling!

I think after the experiences I've had, I'm ready for more. I'm ready to branch out on my own (with Dan, of course) and do some crazy stuff. Not bungee jumping or climbing Everest -- that's stuff's just not my style anyway -- but I think we could do an India-Nepal-Tibet-Bhutan thing and figure stuff out on our own. 

I am just itching to get going again! England will be an adventure for sure, and it will be VERY nice not to be homeless and have a normal life for a while, but I know it won't be long before the jungle calls me again... it's been leaving voicemails for some time now. One of these days I'll get the chance to answer.

My Crafty Weekend

I was visiting my *second family*, the L's. I used to babysit for them when Baby Girl was little - she's 7 now! And JB and Tay were 10 and 11. So it's been a long time. Now, I live with them on occasion and watch their dogs when they go away (like right now). Perfect example of a bad thing turning out awesome, btw -- I started babysitting for them because I got fired from Olive Garden -- yeah, go ahead and laugh -- for the record, it was because I missed TWO FREAKING WINE MEETINGS, not a reflection of my (admittedly sub-par) waitressing skillz.

Anyway, whenever they want to do something crafty, they call me, and whenever I want to do something fun for kids, I call them. This weekend, we had it all. First, I wanted to do mini cupcakes, as seen on The Pioneer Woman guest starring Bakerella! I know, my taste in blogs is so fresh and unusual, right? 41 pages of comments can't be wrong!

I had my doubts about a big ol' bowl of cake and a whole can of frosting, covered in MORE CHOCOLATE. I am not a huge sweets eater - 2 cookies is about enough for me. (lest you be blinded by the glare of my halo, I need to tell you I can eat an entire pound of bacon/large order of cheese fries/ bag of sour cream and onion potato chips in one sitting). But these things???? Oh. My. French. Toast! They were delicious. Not as pretty as the ones made by professionals, of course, but we liked them.

Oh, and for the record - you CAN dye white candy melts with regular food coloring as long as you use a teeny tiny bit and stir very well! 

The pre-baked cakes - doesn't matter what size or shape they are!

Baby Girl mashing the cake and frosting for the *cake balls*

Her front teeth fell out just from the sugar fumes of this recipe.

Dipped and decorated -- we also got creative with some pretzels! And Oreos.

My favorite - sweet and simple.

I must have eaten 10 of these in a 24 hour period, that's how good they were. (By my sweets standards, that's the equivalent of about 14 boxes of Girl Scout cookies).

She also wanted me to re-teach her how to knit. Now, I don't understand why anyone, upon learning to knit, would EVER want to do anything else with their time (except read books, which she does do), but this girl picks it up and puts it back down on a regular basis. This weekend, she was so into it she snuck into my room to wake me up just to knit more! Unfortunately, it hasn't stuck, so in 6 months I'll probably be teaching her again.

She's working on a scarf out of Malabrigo in Natural... at this rate she should be done sometime after the polar ice caps melt and no one needs scarves anymore. 

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which I re-learn how to sew.

6th picture, 6th folder

I got this from Korin (I do have other friends, I swear.) - All you have to do is share the 6th photo from the 6th folder in your photos. Here's what I came up with:

This looks like an ordinary, candid shot of my mom, walking down a path at the reservoir... at least, that's what we want you to think. In reality, we actually spend a LOT of time practicing walking away, taking each other's photos in what appears to be haphazard and candid poses. It's a little bit ridiculous to watch, LOL, kind of like that scene in Murphy Brown where Miles is getting his picture taken for the magazine... "We're walking, we're walking, we're walking... What?" Hilarious, btw.

I am lying here in my bed at my friends' house, she broke her hip so I am helping them out with their kids for a while, which is perfect because I needed something to do while Dan looks for a job! The Meatball, their 6 month old son, is in his swing right next to me... he usually falls back to sleep after a bottle but doesn't seem interested in that right now-- good thing he's cute! Seriously, this kid is ginormous. I need to post a picture.

Meanwhile, I have 50 million half-posts in my head, and some in my drafts, but it's hard to get motivated to blog when I think I am writing to no one, LOL! So thank you for all your comments, I will definitely get going again. I really want to tell you about Dan, but I somehow accidentally deleted my favorite photo of him (damn you, iPhoto!) so I need to get it off my portable hard drive -- btw, if you don't have one of these, you need to get one! I have the Verbatim one, 500GB, and it was only $150 on ebay! If you don't use a laptop, the larger size desktop ones are even cheaper. 

Have a great weekend! :)

Playing with Photos

I'm posting a few of my favorite photographs below, just to get the feel of adding pictures to posts. 

Attempt #1: Oh my gosh, they're giant! Let's see if we can't make them a smidge smaller...

Attempt #2: Better, but I somehow turned the first picture of Chloe into a picture of Sam. How did that happen? And I have no idea how to delete it. Wonderful.

Attempt #3: Ok, I added the pic of Chloe back in, but that duplicate of Sam is still there. You're not just seeing double!

Adding "figure out how to delete pictures" to my TypePad To Do List. Does anyone know how to get in touch with that little girl from the "I'm a PC and I'm 4 1/2" commercial? She seems to know what she's doing.

 

Oh my goodness! Jessica Sprague commented on this picture on Flickr because I commented on her blog. I am so starstruck by famous people, even if they're only internet-famous. Like the time I emailed Tara Whitney and she emailed me back, I about died.