Sunday, September 28, 2008

Catalina

I went to Catalina this weekend with BB for Canon Captures Catalina at the advice of Dane Sanders Blog. The above photo is a reflection of a flag on a boat in the water. The shot was set up by the tour guide, Adam, on a 100-400mm lens at 400mm and he let us put our memory cards in his camera and take the shot. The water looks so awesome!

This kind gentlemen below let us take pictures of the outside of his home. You could tell he loved the attention. The pictures below are all taken on his property of old stuff he's collected over the years. There was a lot more stuff than this!




The next series is from the pier. The following picture of the homes on the hillside isn't very sharp but I still like it.


As we were on the pier some guys excitedly brought in this marlin and they set about weighing the big guy. Apparently it was a contest and these guys found out they had the biggest one so far and were very happy about it. Of the many people that gathered around to witness the weighing a woman next to me asked "is it dead?" My brain started bleeding so I had to walk away.

This flower was shot on a 65mm Macro lens that I was trying out on a 40D. It surely gets rather close!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Cheers to 9 Years!

Today the hub and I celebrate 9 whole entire years of being together! Phew, it's been a long ride but I wouldn't choose to spend it with anyone but him! This morning I found this lovely little note waiting for me downstairs...


In case you can't read his chicken scratch (and no, he's not a doctor, he just has doctor writing without the matching doctor salary. How lovely for me) it says "Good morning sweet lover! I hope u have a great day. I will be thinking about u and that *edited for privacy*. I love you forever and always Happy 6th year Anniversay sweetie!!! P.S. Take some land $"

First, go ahead and compare the header of this blog post to the body of his note. If you are savvy you have noticed that I used a "9" to describe our anniversary and he used a "6" to describe it. Now, we must give him the benefit of the doubt...maybe he has some weird form of inverted dyslexia. OR maybe being with me for 9 years feels like 6.

Second, the "P.S. Take some land $". Your guess is as good as mine on that one! He left me some cash (which I'm assuming is NOT my present) but I have no idea what land money is. Maybe it doesn't say "land" but that's certainly what it looks like to me.

Lastly, he does not read my blog, it's not a secret blog, he just doesn't like reading, and my blog involves reading so it's not on his radar. If I had links to poker videos he would probably check out my blog everyday, but I don't want to risk boring the rest of the population.

P.S. Honey Doodle...if you do happen to find your way over to my blog today, I love you more than you could ever comprehend. I love your smile and your laugh and your sloppily written love notes with cute (sometimes questionable) drawings. Peace out.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Manual Labor Day Weekend

The above shot is how my "new" desk looked before I got to work on it this weekend. I say "new" because it's new to me but this wood appears to have been on this earth a long time before I got to it! It's actually reclaimed wood that my dad rescued from an old barn. I love that this desk is going to have such a better story than "yeah I went down to Pottery Barn, dropped a couple grand, now I have me a nice workspace." This desk is going to be almost free and my dad and I made it together and it's custom!



This shot is what it looks like now. It's still not quite done. There are a few more steps before it gets to meet its new home in my fuschia office!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

WTF?!

So let's just file this under "things you don't see every day" and move on. And thank God for camera phones!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Seriously?

Canon announced today that they are releasing their new Canon 5D Mark II. This is horrible news for me. Why you ask? Because I’ve been waiting months to buy a 5D and have waited and waited, saying they must come out with a new one considering the 1st version is THREE YEARS OLD! That’s like 86 in electronic years. Last week I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down and finally purchased a 5D. I checked the status from UPS and it’s this close to being delivered TODAY on the day Canon laughs at me saying “haha you fool! You couldn’t wait one more week!” I have never been known as a patient person. I think this situation just proves that. Oh well, I’m going to play with my 5D tonight like it’s the apple of my eye and will resist the urge to treat it like the red-headed step child that it is.


Image from: Photography Bay

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

WOW!!!

I haven’t posted in over a month! I probably lost my entire readership of three due to my absence :(. If I promise to post more will you come back to me? So this must mean that nothing has been going on in my life and I’ve had nothing to write about, right? No way Jose! I’ve been a busy little bee!

It all started at the beginning of August when I attended the Free to Succeed Tour with DJ and Jasmine Star…and it was AMAZING!!! I met my American Idol J* and I love her more now than ever. She is utterly fabulous! And DJs pretty cool too. JK…I LOVE him a lot too! He’s really business minded and I love that coming from a business background myself. He’s all about streamlining your business, outsourcing what needs to be outsourced and doing only what you are great at and love to do! Hallelujah! And he has some fabulous programs for photographers that I can’t wait to get.

After The Tour, we went up to the Freedom House, which is his house up in the mountains of Santa Barbara. It’s a seriously SICK house. But my favorite part about his house party was meeting my new friend and neighbor, Jen Harris! We were just chit-chatting in a group and she was like oh yeah I just moved to Camarillo. And my shy self was screaming in my head “OMG I live in Camarillo too!!!” then I proceeded to actually say it out loud and started talking about Cam-town and it turns out we are neighbors! So cool! So we went to lunch a couple weeks later and she’s so nice, and giving, and helpful! It’s so fabulous to have someone in your same town that can be your friend and fellow photographer so you can talk shop too! (I’m just realizing there are way too many “!!!” in this post. I’ll try to pare it down in the future but I’m just too excited in this post!)

Then after that something else REALLY exciting happened but I’ll have to wait to post on that till I have the physical evidence to show you. Hehehe.

Then my new friend, Jen, and I went down to the Truth or Dare Tour with Dane Sanders, Robert Evans, Sara France, and Carlos Baez. It was fabulous! Robert shot Brad and Jen’s wedding and Tom and Katie’s wedding and he showed us some pics of TomKat’s wedding that were published in Europe but not here so that was cool to see! Sara was the cutest thing ever and she’s works a lot with Apple which would be so cool! I’m an Apple geek. I can’t wait to use some of the tricks she showed us when I have clients! Carlos was hilarious! OMG! The big joke was that he has a gay stylist and trust me you can tell! Too cute. I would love to just sit and have a meal with that guy one day. And then Dane finished up the evening and he was great! I had already read his book Fast Track Photographer which is an amazing book for photographers. My only comment to Dane is STOP GIVING IT AWAY FOR FREE!!! Everywhere I go I’m being offered a free PDF of his book. It’s too good to be given away! He deserves some scrilla for the work he did on that baby! And as a presenter he was awesome! Such a good guy with a big heart.

That evening Jen and I went to dinner with Jen’s friend, Scarlett Lillian. Dinner was fabulous and at a very fabulous restaurant at the LAX Sheraton. (More to come on Scarlett, keep reading…this technique is called a “teaser”)

THEN I went to PartnerCon. I guess you are technically supposed to be a member to go but I kind of snuck in. I mean I paid and all. But I didn’t have a “studio ID” so I just went the morning of the conference and had a girl put in a fake studio ID so I could register. Hey they still got the money! And I will probably be a member in the very near future, especially considering that their sales reps keep calling.

I was pretty intimidated to be at PartnerCon. I think there were like 300 photographers and here I am without even a business card or a website or anything! Even though I was pretty shy everyone was so nice and welcoming. Especially Scarlett!!! I tagged along with her as much as I could because she was the only person I sort of knew, but she was so great to me. She introduced to me to many people (including THE Jessica Claire!) and let me eat lunch with her and sit with her at a couple of the meetings. I met many photographers that were so nice and jumped to give advice to a newbie. I think I’m going to really like being in a community like this! I see nothing but good times ahead…

But wait! There’s more! This is getting to be a LONG post, but I’m making up for 1.5 months!

Nate Kaiser of The Image is Found glory announced his next Shootshops and I got in! He sold out in 24 hours, but because I am a loyal stalker I got in just in the nick of time. More on Nate in another post…again a teaser to try and get my readers to come back to me. October 29th I will be in Oceanside, CA to get learned good.

And to finish this post off…another workshop that I will be attending… The Love Affair Workshop. It will be in November at the W Hotel in San Diego. It will be a whole week with Lauren Clark (we have the same color dining room), Millie Holloman, Kelly Moore, and Davina Fear. There will be a lot of estrogen and I was a little worried but in talking to my new friend, Scarlett, I discovered that she has gone to one of their past workshops and said it will be great for me! Stoked!

Ok, I’m done now. Oh and I almost forgot…Scarlett put pics of me on her blog! Coolest thing ever? I think so!!!