Elements

This is going to be rather picture intensive, but it'll be worth it. The weather today was less than agreeable but Lisamarie was phenomenal and her boyfriend was a great assistant and chauffer. It was cold and rainy and windy but the pictures turned out beautifully. 

Lisamarie made this so much easier because she was such a natural in front of the camera. (Thanks again friend.) 

In reviewing the pictures I was reminded of these song lyrics that encouraged me to find the beauty even in disasters. And with today's disasters with the weather I'd say that things turned out pretty damned beautiful.

If the sea should swallow up my house
I will turn my rooftop inside out and the wind will be wailing
But I will be sailing faster

Oh the elements I do not fear but I fall apart when you appear
Cos you are the greatest
The greatest disaster

Our Humble Abode and the Holidays

I'm always inspired by Kelle Hampton and her ability to just write about the most simple things in life but make them sound like the most beautiful events in the world. She has a really beautiful life that I have to admit I envy sometimes. I wanted to try and follow in her footsteps as much as possible and capture every day things and write about them. Who knows, something beautiful might happen that I just might miss.


Today I cleaned and it was therapeutic. I think I get this from my mother and that's not really a bad thing. I start cleaning up one little area and it begins to spread all over the place. I watched my mom do this while I grew up. She'd start to wash the dishes and then notice the pile of mail next to the sink. She'd take the pile of mail into the living room and notice that there was a stain on the coffee table. Then she'd start cleaning the coffee table and notice that there was a stray pair of shoes tucked underneath. The shoes would then make their way to a bedroom where the bed was unkempt and next the bed was being made. Then she'd walk back into the kitchen and look at me and say "What was I doing in the first place?".

I did that exact same thing today and now the apartment I was dreading cleaning looks pretty damn good. As I was cleaning I was thinking about how concerned people get about others seeing the state of their living space. When we have people over I get really stressed about how things look because I don't want it to reflect poorly on my image.

Well ladee-fricken-dah to that. I will be the first to admit I am no June Cleaver. My apartment is in a constant state of disarray and many times I am shameful of it but way too lazy to do anything about it. When I first moved in right before we were married this place was pristine. I treasured our new humble abode and cleaned off every little spill that would happen right away. That didn't last for very long.

All of this to say, if I'm going to try and capture more of everyday life...all y'all gonna see my dirty apartment. Deal with it.

Most days, the kitchen will look like this:

 

Not like this:

And now, onto the holiday decorations. I married a Scrooge. But we made a deal. The decorations go up if I put them up. And boy do I love to put up Christmas decorations! I was super excited this year because I got to add another piece of decor to the collection, the countdown calendar!

 

When my brother and I were little my parents would put little pieces of candy in each slot on the Calendar and we would wake up every morning and run downstairs and take the candy and move the mouse over one day. It's one of my favorite childhood memories and now I can continue the tradition because last year for Christmas my mom gave this to me for Christmas. Now I just need to purchase some candy to fill up the calendar.

 

 

 

 

And our fun photography experiment of the day? BOKEH FUN!

I still have some tweaking to do with this to get the right shape, but I'm in love with bokeh and Christmas lights are perfect for bokeh...so I created some heart bokeh with my camera and some black construction paper. WALLA!

Tomorrow is the big photoshoot. The forecast is predicting rain. A 90% chance. Boo. Oh well, as Tim Gunn would say...MAKE IT WORK!

The Photo Bug

The poor hubs is sick today and I fear it might be spreading to me also. I'm hoping it's just all in my head.

Besides my adventures in light painting, I haven't really gotten out with the camera much. It's been kind of cold and dreary a few days and with the Thanksgiving buzz and Black Friday hubbub, I wasn't really interested in driving around to places and fighting traffic.

Monday I have my photoshoot with my beautiful friend Lisamarie. I'm really excited about working with her because she's done some modeling before. She's a natural in front of the camera. See how pretty she is?

The photoshoot is for my final project and I was inspired by images that had a vintage fun flair to them. I also want to incorporate some pretty pastel balloons and that awesome suitcase I got from the Antique Mall. The weather isn't looking too promising for the outdoor places I wanted to go so I might have to get a little more creative than I had planned on. Or maybe the clouds will part just in time and we can get a totally awesome outdoor shoot in. ::crosses fingers for a baller sunset::

Here are some of the images I was inspired by.

I'm really excited to do this shoot no matter what the weather will be like. I've been trying to research some new techniques and styles so that my images come out great. I'm also itchin to start editing them. Can't wait for everyone to see the final product.

Until then, here's some pictures I took with my Hipstamatic app on my iPhone that I love. There's a new package that I just bought that has new canvas film and then the lens is called Salvador 84 and creates a duplicate image. I'm pretty impressed with the little camera app on my phone.

Check back Wednesday for some updated pictures!

Water and Light

Today was a very fun and successful photography day. It was completely experimental. I wanted to try my hand at capturing splashing water and also do some painting with light. The water shots turned out pretty great in my opinion but they would be even more amazing if I had a macro lens. (some day)

Now the painting with light...well I'm addicted. It is now 12:10 pm and I don't want to quit. I have a few more ideas before I call it a night but my camera battery needs some charging so I thought I'd stop and post some of what I've done today. Now that I know what I'm doing I would really love to incorporate some of this into my final project. I'll definitely be playing around with it more.

Here's some shots from the day!