Photoshoot with Miss Rachel

Last weekend I had the privilege of doing a photoshoot with my good friend Rachel. According to her this was her first photoshoot- (or portait session) ever. She was really fun to work with and it turns out she's a natural! Really though she was just herself and that is what I set out to capture. Rachel is so beautiful and I just love her to death! 

Here are some photos from the shoot. 

I'm really enjoying this technique lately of shooting into the sun about an hour before sunset. In the photographic world this is called "Golden Hour" (also occurs just after sunrise), and you get the warmest tones and interesting hues shooting at this time. Very fun to play with behind the camera and later in the digital darkroom as well. I will say it is a bit tricky though as the light needs to be hard. At times there were clouds gathering on the horizon softening the suns beams a little too much which only offered flat tones at that time of night.

Again, these photographs are copyrighted and may not be used without the express written consent by the photographer. 

Mada What?

Madagascar actually.

About a month ago I purchased tickets to Madagascar on a complete whim. Well, to be honest I knew it was on the horizon since last summer, I just didn't know exactly when it would happen. My friend Alisha served her mission there and has always wanted to go back. Ever since I knew of this desire of hers I've always said I would go with her. So in about two months time we, and her roommate B, will be on a plane en route to Antananarivo, Madagascar. Pretty cool right?! I'm pretty excited. I already got the shots I need and have a list of things to do for the trip I've been chipping away at. I'm also really excited about our 23 hour layover in Paris. I will finally get to see the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower among many other exciting Parisian landmarks. It's motivation to brush up on my French... er, je vais à Paris! Haha, I never thought I'd actually ever need to use any French I learned in school. Not that I was ever conversant or anything, but a little knowledge of a language is better than none at all I suppose.

Flag of Madagascar

Part of me is a little sad that I do only have 23 hours in Paris because I know from my art history background there is A LOT I would love to see and drool over for hours and hours. But 23 hours is still better than nothing! The main attraction is Madagascar. It's not like I anticipate repeat trips to Mada in my future so I will do my best to drink up the experience in all its entirety. It doesn't feel real to me yet. Not sure if it ever will. Probably not. I'll have to take some amazing pictures.

Oh, and I'll say hey to King Julian for you too!

Excuses

I been neglecting this blog. But I have a good excuse.

My hard drive is full. Aaannnnnd...... my external hard drive is full.

I have done my best to scour and delete all the unnecessaries I could find on each, and still they are too full. Too full for what? Photos. I do not have enough space to handle pictures anymore. I was in Photoshop the other day and the program literally wouldn't allow me to even move an image I had already placed. 'How does this affect my blogging?', you ask. Well, I hate blogging without visual aids. I'm sure the majority of the time you only jump on here to see if I've posted any more pretty pictures for you to look at..... Be honest. Ya, that's what I thought.

So just buy a new external hard drive and do some rearranging and 'viola!' right? WRONG. It so happens that there was some devastating floods in a place called Thailand in the not so distant past. Thailand? So what? Ahem... it also so happens that Western Digital (manufacturer of my trusted hard drives) manufactures their hard drives in Thailand and the majority of their stocks were wiped out and completely damaged beyond use in the floods. What does this mean? It means that my jaw dropped when I saw the price tags at Best Buy in December when I went to go buy an external hard drive. Simple Econ 101, supply and demand. The supply is limited and demand hasn't changed so the prices of external hard drives (not just WD) in general has sky-rocketed. Prices have pretty much doubled in fact. Soooooo.... I will not be purchasing an external hard drive until the crisis is mitigated and I don't have to burn such a deep hole in my wallet just for 1 or 2 terabytes of extra space.

The End.



Sources:

Thailand Flooding: Death Toll Reaches 600

Western Digital reveals Thai floods cost $199m to clean up

Worst Flooding in Decades Swamps Thailand

Photoshoot

My sister came to visit for Thanksgiving and we were excited to set up my studio equipment in my room and to also venture out at "Golden Hour" (technically just before Golden Hour) to experiment a bit with the lighting. We had a blast shooting these photos of each other. Later we edited them with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.

Since Stef and I worked together closely on these we're calling it an overall collaborative effort. 

Enjoy! :)

Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved 

Turkey Day Adventures with My BFF

This past weekend was literally a whirlwind of excitement and good food.

My sister flew down for Thanksgiving and we had a truly amazing weekend together.

I friggin' love that girl. 

We had a T-Day feast with a group of my friends and it blew Stef's mind that we were eating our Thanksgiving meal outside in the backyard. It was new to me as well, and I am definitely a fan.

Appetizer table

A feast fit for kings

The food was awesome. Everyone did a really great job of cooking and preparing delicious dishes.

I introduced my Texas friends to what my family calls, "Magic Potatoes", because they are, well... MAGIC! I have to give a shout out to my fabulous aunt whose recipe I used. 

Good food and good conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed my Turkey Day feast this year.

But our adventures did not stop there. Oh no, no.. that was just the beginning. 

The next day we went on a trail run together and hung out at Monica's for a bit.

I took Stef to Rudy's BBQ so she could experience real Texas BBQ and have her first brisket.

That evening we hit up Six Flags Fiesta Texas.

Sadly Superman and Poltergeist were closed. And even sadder yet, that meant the other lines were even longer. We rode the Goliath, The Scream, Scooby-Doo's Ghostblasters and the Ferris Wheel. 

Six Flags decorated for Christmas 

I beat Stef

The Ferris Wheel ended up being way more fun than I anticipated. 

The Scream is always a favorite of mine because I always get the biggest adrenaline rush when I ride it.

It completely freaked Stefani out though. I ended up laughing uncontrollably during the ride at her reaction. 

On our way home we stopped and pigged out on tacos from Taco Cabana (favorite).

LOVE Taco Cabana!

And then we rented and watched 'Something Borrowed'. Stef raved about it, so we rented it and I quite enjoyed it.

Saturday evening we had appetizers at a restaurant on the Riverwalk before seeing The Nutcracker at The Majestic Theater. After the show we returned to the Riverwalk to get dessert at a fancy French restaurants. I just wanted creme brûlée. Très, très bien. 

The Majestic Theater!

Dinning on the Riverwalk

Riverwalk all lit up for Christmas! :)

We came home and watched 'Killers' since I really like it and Stef had never seen it before. I may or may not have fallen asleep for some of it though. 

Sunday we did a photoshoot after church. We had a lot of fun and the pictures turned out incredibly well. We experimented with light, specifically pre-Golden Hour/Golden Hour lighting. 

Seesters!

The rest of the night we cleaned, Skype'd the rest of the fam and edited pics and watched the T-Day episode of 'Mod Fam'.

"Skype-'ing'" with the fam

I did not enjoy having to drop her off at the airport this morning. 

At least I get to see her again in about three-ish weeks!

My sister is my BFF, and I am so glad I got to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her!

Love you sis!