New equipment, and a portrait of a stranger! :O

Something serious happened yesterday. Something with some very real long term implications. Andrew and I went to the camera store and I bought some equipment for his Canon. That's right. I guess it's official now! I'm looking into selling my Nikon equipment as well. We took all of my stuff to the store (they also buy lenses and that sort of thing) to get a quote, but it was an extreme low ball. To be expected I suppose, it was still surprising though. I'll be having a fun time on craigslist now. If my mom managed to sell a car, I hope I can sell a camera!

We're both interested in making good HDR photos. I had a few HDR 

assignments at Evergreen and I could never get the hang of it, so this

will be a fun venture for both of us! Here's one from yesterday.

We've been on the road toward rebuilding my equipment for his camera since I arrived, pretty much. Since I had some lenses that broke, both of my zooms, I've been feeling a bit restricted. He has a nice 17-135mm that I enjoy using, and a few weeks ago he bought that 50mm f/1.4 that is a dream to use! Such a shallow depth of field makes it difficult to get things in focus without a tripod. It's creating a fun new challenge for me though!

 The guitarist at Disneyland.

Yesterday my purchases included a 35mm f/2.0 and a 430EX II, one of Canon's external flashes. Last year I found myself in a place where I was truly comfortable with my sb-800, and I can't imagine continuing down the dSLR road without an external flash. My biggest concern is how long it will take me to be comfortable with the 430EX II. I read the sb-800 manual twice and also went through tutorials online and messed around with it myself before finally figuring out how to use it for whichever purpose I had. I don't want to take three years to learn the ins and outs of 430EX II.

Seeing as I already have the knowledge of what the flash can do, I don't think it will take me that long, but it's still a worry! I played around with it a little bit last night, and after I'm finished with this blog I'll be spending time with the manual. Hopefully next week's blog will include some nicely lit photos of Andrew from this evening!

I finally managed to get the pictures of the finished birthday cake edited, so here are a few of those!

 First layer with frosting, and the completed cakes!

 Not enough room to write Andrew, so he suggested a lone "A".

This weekend we spent a good portion of Saturday at Disneyland. Since Andrew's birthday was on Tuesday, I told him I wanted to take him to the Blue Bayou for a fancy meal. I had never been there before, but he had and he said it was a fun place. Generally he only goes to the park in the evenings for a few hours, but we wanted to have a fancy lunch so we got there around 1:30. Our reservation was for 1:30 and we got to the restaurant at 2 (oops) but they were still able to seat us! Yay!

 Appropriate for him to be wearing his Happy Birthday button! The name

got rubbed off though D: And we were actually there on our five month

anniversary, so that was a fun coincidence too! :D

It's by and far the nicest and most expensive place that I have ever eaten. It was so much fun though, and my treat for his birthday :3 I've never had the chance to take someone somewhere nice either. It was special! We had an easy going, romantic and delicious lunch. Afterward we took a few photos of the pirate ship and then we rode the train around the park to relax and digest. So much fun. Such a good day!

While we were in the Blue Bayou Andrew mentioned that there is occasionally a single guitar player in the restaurant filling the space with soft music. I thought it was a shame that he wasn't there, and instead we got to hear the entertaining banjo loop that plays at the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean. Hehe.

Treasure chest on Tom Sawyer's island.

Upon exiting the Blue Bayou, Andrew was delighted to notice the guitar player just down the way! We stopped in the shade to enjoy the music for a while and I took out my camera. I deliberated briefly before he asked me if I was going to take any photos of the man. I get so nervous taking pictures of people that I don't know very well, so taking photos of total strangers is that much more difficult. I explained to Andrew that I have to work up the courage and slowly get closer and to feel comfortable myself. Then he says, 'Are you going to ask him?' and I froze because I hadn't considered asking permission. It occurred to me in that moment that it was definitely the right thing to do, and it made me more nervous still.

Finally I found the courage, I have no idea where it came from (but I think it had something to do with Andrew ;), and I walked up and asked if I could take some photos of him. He looked at me, smiled, and nodded very slowly. It was amazing the wave of relief and ease that I felt after that. I stood back and took as many photos as I liked, feeling free to focus without that sense of nervousness and self-consciousness.

The top of the steam boat!

It's an uphill battle for me to find the confidence and comfort to take the photos that I want to take. Andrew really helps me though (that's an understatement).

In other exciting news, there's starting to be a lot of great activity in my garden! It's difficult to tell the random sprouts from MY sprouts because that plot of dirt was filled with a whole mess of things when I started, but it's still neat! I really enjoy stepping out onto the patio in the mornings and smoothing the dirt around. The neighborhood cats like to crap in there (grr) and they push the dirt around a lot, thus covering up a lot of my little sproutlings! I guess the free fertilizer is nice, but I'm tired of them burying my plants.

 I nabbed a lot of great photos of the pirate ship, which was awesome. We also

had a chance to go to the Winnie the Pooh section! I hadn't been before.

I have to make sure Andrew keeps an eye on them while I'm gone. I'll be very upset if when we get back at the end of July they're all dried up and covered in cat poo!

Next week's blog should include a lot of photos of my family while I practice with the new camera, lenses and flash, and probably a lot of pictures of Unjuy because I miss that cat like crazy!

One more thing! My etsy shop is back up and running! I have a lot of photos to add and I'll be doing that over the next few weeks and I plan on adding photos on a regular basis once I'm all caught up on a back log, so keep checking back!

-MJ

Delicious treats!

Today is definitely another scattered day. I'm having a difficult time hanging onto topics to write about. Here it is, past seven in the evening and I've only just now started typing. I can admit that my slow start is partially attributed to sleeping in a little bit (but only by an hour! We had a crazy sleep schedule this past weekend and I am not used to that sort of thing), but mostly it's due to the fact that I was making a birthday gift for Andrew! Pictures next week I'm sure. His birthday is tomorrow, so I'll take pictures then!

 Some fun with bokeh since it was too dark to focus on faces in Disneyland.

The week involved a lot of baking for me. This presented many photo opportunities! I believe I mentioned last week that I was going to try to incorporate a more... interesting angle for the photos I took, and I think I did OK. At the very least I made strides over the previous shots I did of my baking endeavors! I expect to only get better. Part of my motivation is that I'm thinking I'll try and get into stock photography. It could end up being a great way to make some money (eventually), and will definitely provide more chances for me to experiment and grow with projects. It will also create a more creativity driven environment in my brain, hopefully leading to more interesting portrait shoots!

The planet thing that looks neat, and a 

lantern from Fantasy Land. 

Another learning/growing opportunity that I've delved into is creating a model mayhem account. Andrew's co-worker's wife is a makeup artist, both fashion and effects, and has had success with projects and collaboration. So, he encouraged me to join the fray and see what I can do. You can find my account here, as well as her's here. This should be interesting.

 Andrew's exceedingly interesting friend. A nice chance to

practice low light portraits. And the last train pulling

into the station before the park closed.

Saturday night was Andrew's birthday party, and I think it's safe to call it a roaring success. There were a lot of people, I'm going to say thirty to thirty-five total. I don't think I've ever been to a party with that high of an attendance! Andrew asked me to take pictures of everyone having a good time, and I'm sad to say that I failed at that. I am shy, so even though I walked around with the camera literally the whole night I only took about ten photos. And they're not good. They're all from really far away, sort of overview photos. Very creepy and impersonal. I really biffed the opportunity to get to know new friends and to take pictures of people (which is my favorite photography subject!!), and I'm feeling very disappointed about it. Although Andrew says to not feel too badly, because they have parties often and so I will have many more chances. Here's hoping I do better next time.

 My bruschetta! I didn't make the bread. Perhaps

I'll get that ambitious someday.

In good party related news, a handful of people ventured to the photo booth and we ended up with many fun photos of drunk people goofing off. We feel good about that.

 Two plates full of cookies!

Last night we took another trip to Disneyland and this time we had a tripod! One of Andrew's housemates was kind enough to lend us his, and so Andrew and I had the chance to get some photos that we weren't able to get last time. We have yet to go to the park while it's still light outside, or when we arrive the sun has just set, and we've missed the golden chunk of time. There are a few places in the park that would look really fantastic, we just need to get there earlier :) The night shots were super fun though, and created a great chance for us to do some HDR practice. I'm terrible at HDR, so hurrah for learning!

Lots and lots of baking photos!

I ran into a slight update/software issue that prevented me from getting a few of the final cake photos uploaded. I should have it fixed soon though!

 The cakes were lookin' pretty good.

Next week! Andrew's gift (maybe) and hopefully some shots of Disneyland during daylight hours. And who knows? Maybe I'll have some sprouts in the garden to show off.

Should have just made a Mickey Mouse cake!

 I made two cakes: one two tiered and one three tiered!

-MJ

This week has some nice photos :D

I'm in the kitchen making some lunch. It's 2:44 pm and I haven't eaten anything yet today. Alright, that's not entirely true; I started eating some tortilla chips about seven minutes ago, and about half an hour ago I ate a few gummie worms.

Our embroidered Mickey hats from February, and the 

Steamboat Willie Mickey doll that he bought :3

I woke up at 9:30 today, I finally set an alarm. No more sleeping until eleven, because that is lame. From the moment I woke up I started to edit photos. I keep talking about all of the pictures I'm taking, and I haven't had any time to post them yet. Partly I haven't taken the time to go through them, and partly because, when I haven't been taking pictures, I've been pleasantly busy doing other things.

Sunday postings were going well for me for a while, but now that I have weekends with Andrew I've decided that it's a good idea to move my postings to Mondays. I spend a lot of time on these entires and I'd rather do that while he's at work and not while he's at the house :)

Another shot of the pool table, it's just so neat! 

Also, the seventeen foot projector screen. It's huge.

We had a pretty busy weekend that presented many photo taking opportunities! I spent over three hours going through photos this morning, and that felt really nice. It hasn't been easy deciding which ones will be up on the blog today, that's for sure. I imagine this "problem" will only get worse. What a wonderful problem to have!

Friday saw the planting of my seeds in the garden plot. That was fun and satisfying. I forgot to water them for the past two days though >.> I went out there and took care of it today though, so hopefully no harm was done. It's extremely misty up here, and Andrew thinks that it's damp enough in the mornings that I probably didn't hurt the seeds. Let's hope not!

Some portraits of Andrew. Left is of him reading Castle Roogna.

Right is of him playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii. <3 his face.

Friday also saw an exceedingly delicious batch of cookies being made. I'm sad to report that they have all been eaten already. We have half a bag of chocolate chips left, so I actually may make some more today. I swear they just taste better when mixed by hand with a wooden spoon. Must be the elbow grease.

It occurred to me while photographing these projects that I need to approach the documenting with a more interesting frame of mind. I think the photos are all fairly boring. They certainly do the job of documenting and capturing, but nothing beyond that. Next time I or we do a project I will do something different.

 My hand-done projects! Both filled with lots of love and attention.

This is difficult for me to believe, but I think I've actually switched over to only using Andrew's camera. I haven't used mine for any shooting in closing in on a week now. That 50mm f/1.4 is so awesome, I can't stop shooting with it. And then last night we went to Disneyland and I had a chance to push the high ISO settings. I am impressed. I am very impressed. I feel a little bad about my camera, my faithful four year old Nikon. But I've been wanting to upgrade to a nicer model for over a year now, and there's one in the house! It's Andrew's, and he has no issues with me commandeering it for my needs. Awfully nice of him. It'll be interesting when we find that we need to use it at the same time O.O

Speaking of Disneyland, it is an excellent place to hang out! We had a lovely, leisurely strolling time around the park last night. We stopped to take pictures wherever we pleased and took long scenic routes to each destination. It was raining lightly, which was awesome, and I wish I had kept a tally for how many conversations I overheard that contained a person complaining about it :D

 Left is Andrew demonstrating flipping for me. He has

a light box that sits in an animation table. He should get a 

table soon, that'd be super neat. It was a lot of fun watching

him animate that little ball. Right are some lanterns from a 

restaurant in Disneyland.

It's awesome to walk around Disneyland with no agenda. If we passed a ride that had no line then we'd go on it. Mostly we were out walking and taking pictures, we only went on a few rides. We found a lot of places that would make for great photos, but we have to go back during the day for some of them. A lot of locations would be just fine at night, but we started pushing into tripod-necessary territory. The ISO on that camera can do wonderful things, but there's still something to be said for wanting a less noisy night shot.

Hopefully we'll go back soon. He said we'd keep our eyes out for a tripod this week. We need one for his birthday party this weekend anyway!

 Sites around Disneyland as the park begins to empty.

One of our projects this weekend was a photo booth made of cardboard. It's really more of a decorated place to sit and have your photo taken than a real booth, but that does not matter. We had a lot of fun making it, and he had the perfect wrapping paper to use as a background! We're going to set my camera up on a tripod and people can sit down and use the remote to take their photo. Should be a lot of fun. I'm certainly looking forward to it! Andrew will end up with many pictures of his friends being goofy.

My epic task for his birthday party, other than taking candid shots with the Canon, is to make him an epic three tiered birthday cake. It's going to be awesome. I've never made a tiered cake before! I expect I'll take a lot of photos of my masterpiece, unless of course it turns out horribly in which case I'll take no photos and just insist that everyone ate it too quickly and that it looked good you'd better believe it.

 Hard at work on that cardboard and wrapping paper!

 Andrew lookin' cute as always. Me looking very uncomfortable.

I think that about wraps up this entry. I have some phone calls to make and some job listings to look at! I've also been scouring craigslist for a bike. Fingers crossed that I find one soon, I'm read to ride! I hope that whenever I get one it has a basket :3

-MJ