Category: photography

man, today was awesome.

i totally shot a whole fashion thing today. thank you everyone who participated, came, and stuff, even if none of you read this. almost! hehe

MAN THAT WAS AWESOME. i officially love shooting portraits if (a) there’s a make up artist (b) outfits are planned out (c) the models listen to me.
turns out i can be a total control freak. but, i love it! and yeah.

here’s one from today:
sad queen

here’s one from fall:
dark alley and meto

here are two from last week (or week before that?)
accidentally overexposed
fierce

also; i got sick. for real. which makes no sense why i’m up now, except i love these photographs and need to burn the cd before tomorrow.

more cat all the time

cat and tv

who knew i’d ever enjoy the company of a cat that much!

black pear

i made poached pears today. i keep forgetting to buy an orange to experiment with this, but essentially its 3 simple steps:

1. peel and core the pears while…
2. half a cup of sugar, 2 cups red wine, 1 cup water (more wine?), 3-5 cloves are coming to a simmer
3. simmer pears in liquid until desired consistency and color reached with lid on
(4 optional: to get a thick sauce to pour over the pears, simmer half the time with the lid off. or something like that. i just wing it, and it works.)

tasty, easy, and little effort, other than the peeling and coring, but i can live with that for the high class style of eating a poached pear off a tiny white plate.

Lawrence is doing well. cuddling on the couch is normal, he is sleeping ON the couch now, has a favorite chair (director’s chair), and rubs up against our legs regularly. he still bites and scratches in play, which makes me look like i climbed over chicken wire. but its a small sacrifice to waking up to a cat nuzzling at your chest!

also, i got an ear infection day before my first exam. i’m not really considering it luck as its (a) hassle (b) an extra exam to write at the end of the year, ruining my brilliant plan of having 3 exams per semester and graduating with 8 half credits (due to a full year movie course).

russian humor and photographs of the cat

despite my generally large removal from russian culture, it always frustrates me to a great degree to not be able to translate russian puns, jokes and expressions to english properly. we can come close, but it is, of course, impossible.

thus, this wikipedia page is bringing joy to my heart.

witness:

A Frenchman, a Scotsman, and a Russian are drifting in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Suddenly they see a bottle bobbing on the waves. They uncork it, and a Genie comes out. For releasing him he’s prepared to grant them each two wishes. The Scotsman says: “I want a bottle of whisky and to go back to Scotland,” and promptly disappears. The French says: “I want a bottle of the finest Merlot, and to go back to France,” and is sent on his way. The Russian considers it a moment and decides: “I want a case of vodka and the fellas back!”

* Side Note: This joke is a play on the fact that in Russia it is believed that three is the optimal amount of people for drinking. This in turn goes back to when in the Soviet Union a bottle of vodka cost 2 roubles 87 kopecks, 3 r. being a convenient price for three to buy a bottle and have 13 k. left for a snack, e.g., 100 grams of candies. A good deal of Soviet folklore is based on this interpretation of the “magical number 3”.

and, as promised! clicky for large

lawrence 2

lawrence 1

shooting weddings

a co-worker friend of mine asked me to shoot his reception this last Saturday. it was a fantastic experience, and it reaffirmed my intentions of not becoming a people photographer. i do not have anything against people, it is the amount of work that it takes which is insane! it was the first time my hand was CRAMPING towards the end, my camera battery started to run out, i had 25 photographs left on the card (with almost 700 shot), 2 sets of batteries for the Nikon flash (SB800) have ran out (*) and i was exhausted. (wow, Firefox 2.0 spell check is AWESOME!!).

it was great fun, and i am eternally and immeasurably glad i have had the chance to experience this.

one of his friends wanted to talk to me about taking some family portraits. i am not sure if i want to do that.

i do feel that i want to become a) product photographer b) art photographer c) journal photographer? (as long as it is not journalist – tried that, and its FUN but, MAN it takes over your life like nothing else. i guess maybe that’s not that terrible).

opinions, guys? where do i move from here?

(*) the flash is awesometastic, but eats batteries too damn fast. i expected it to last a night on one set! but it is still awesome. if i ever DO move up to a studio i am getting 3 of those, instead of those vivitars. it is genius in terms of calculating output, etc.

ebay surfing

wine poster tim and i were reading the latest LCBO food & drink journal today, and we were talking about one particular ad. the ad showed how much difference the paint can make, where as they actually have not only repainted the room but changed the bed, side tables, added a headboard, absolutely new matching modern set of linens, side lamps, a huge vintage/art deco ish poster instead of the smallish awkwardly framed smaller ones, a new white armchair… and of course they want us to think a $30 can of paint did all that.

regardless.

the poster in particular caught my eye. so i did some brave ebaying, and now i’m drooling over these:

WORLD´S FAIR CHICAGO OLD – POSTER.
ROSSLI CIGARS OLD AD – POSTER.
LOVE this one SO much: POWDER PUFF NUDE GIRL ITALIAN VINTAGE POSTER!
MELE ITALIAN SHOPPING FASHION – great shapes, colors (!)
these are small, but would look fantastic in a kitchen area: 2 VINTAGE ITALIAN KITCHEN PASTA CHEF SPAGHETTI POSTERS

maybe i can shoot something closer to this. but i like the abstractness of that style of drawing! (this picture is not mine:)

wine