Caroline & Nancy

Well, I'm finally set and ready to share all about the session I did just after Christmas (can't believe its February already!!) with the ever-amazing Caroline and Nancy. For some background - Caroline and I have been internet-stalking each other for several years now. I think it started when I fell in love with her scrapbooking style over at Designer Digitals, where she's a creative team member. Then we started to follow each other's blogs, then Facebook, then Twitter...basically, we knew all about the other, except for the fact that we had never met in person! :)

So back in the fall, I had just found out the location where a lot of my fave OC photographers do their sessions (Quail Hill), and then Caroline mentioned that she was coming down for Christmas to see her family. So I suggested we do a photo session swap, and the rest was history! Invited Nancy along, and the instant we picked Caroline up from the train station it was as if we'd known each other "for real" all along. ;) We'll definitely be going back there in the spring when everything is blooming.

This is my absolute favorite session thus far!! The day started out kinda gloomy, but luckily the sun came out in time to give us an amazing sunset. It was one of those days when what I was looking to capture is what I actually did capture - and any photographer can tell you how incredibly gratifying that is when it happens!

Caroline brought along her new Diana lens too.

Isn't she adorable? Made her own scarf! Is there any crafty thing she can't do??

It was sooo incredibly hard choosing favorites to share from this session - that's partly why it took me so long!

How could you not laugh with this girl?

I think the one on the right above is my new all-time favorite of Nancy!

Then we hiked up the hill a bit...luckily all three of us were wearing boots! :)

We braved some crazy barbed wire fences and each got at least a couple snags in our clothes! But I think it was worth it for these shots...

Um, yes, I'll take an order of all-natural amazing sun flare please!

I take it back, that's my fave shot of Nancy evah.

The girl knows how to dance!

Thanks for wearing clothes that coordinate with the hillside, Nanc. ;)

And Caroline used to do ballet, holla!

Well, okay, maybe the one on the left is my new fave - darn you Nancy! I can't choose!

I'm thinking the one on the right is my total fave of Caroline:

All right, since I clearly can't choose, which ones are your favorites dear readers?

Caroline and Nancy, you don't need me to tell you how gorgeous you both are - the proof is here! But you're also amazing on the inside, and that personality shines through. It was a true pleasure spending the afternoon playing at photography with you!

I love the idea of doing this more - in the spirt of Jasmine Star, friendships between photogs are always better than rivalries! Caroline, I'm so glad you made the trip down and can't wait to do it again in the spring!

You can see Nancy's photos here, here and here, and I'll let y'all know when Caroline posts hers! If any of you have a place you want to go play around at, just let me know! :)

xo

Random Funnies

I loves me some good laughs, and Thor knows there are some days you really need a good one! Luckily there's plenty of places around teh interwebs that offer consistently funny content. Some are more well known, like Epic Win, FAIL Blog and Texts From Last Night (TFLN) which I subscribe to (I use Google Reader) and check whenever the needs arises. But there's others that aren't as well known that I just had to share.

Like It Made My Day, for example. People just send in whatever it was that made their day. Some are so awesome, you think they must be made up - but even if half of them are, I still love them! It never fails to make me smile. This recent one made me laugh so hard tears came to my eyes:

I went to a roller derby bout the other night, with the theme “Star Wars”, and some of the local Star Wars fans were there in costume, including several Storm Troopers. I was sitting at the end of one row, when one of the Storm Troopers came and stood beside me, watching the action. I turned to him, waved my hand, and said “These are not the roller girls you are looking for.” He nodded and walked away.

There's also Jorge Garcia's blog, Dispatches From the Island. You might also know him as Hurley from the show Lost. His dry sense of wit cracks me up! Like his most recent post about rapeseed oil (nope, that's not a typo!).

And for my fellow photogs, What the Duck, and his trials and tribulations in the biz, is always awesome.

And because I hate photo-less blogs, here's the most awesome cookie ever that my mom's coworkers gave her yesterday:

What about you? Where do you go when you need a relaxing moment of laughter? Had any moments that should be submitted to IMMD?

xo

P.S. Speaking of laughing, if you want to ridicule my silly comments about the recent photo walk, check out this video from Faded & Blurred. :)

I Heart Faces - Texture

This week's challenge over at I Heart Faces is to use texture in some way. Since I've been working on the session Caroline, Nancy and I did just after Christmas, I had to use one of my fave shots! It's been incredibly hard narrowing down my fave images, which is why it's taking me so long to get them done!

Doesn't Nancy looking stunning? And that sun flare is all in-camera, my friends! :) Just applied a texture from the first Florabella set to enhance the grass bokeh, masked some of out it over Nancy's face and body, and voila! Hellooooo gorgeous!

I hope to be back this weekend with my all my faves from that session!

Descanso Gardens

Wow, I've been a serious slacker around here lately! Last week just flew by, plus with all the rain storms everyone kind of hibernated for the week. We even had a tornado warning at one point! Of course, it was crazy hype, because everyone knows SoCal doesn't get real weather, but at least we actually have some water flowing in the rivers now. :)

Just before all that crazy storms started, I attended the monthly Faded & Blurred photo walk, which was held up at Descanso Gardens this time. (Pssst...next month is at the Getty Center, come and join us! You can win stuff!) My good friend Melissa, whom I've known since we did choir in high school together, came with me and it was awesome to spend the day with her! Here's some of my fave shots...

Melissa had just gotten a Holga for Christmas, and we enlisted Frank's help in getting the film loaded properly:

Since it's still technically winter, even California trees lose their leaves:

Apparently the site used to be a ranch, and most of its original trees were lost in a big fire, but it looked like an old enchanted forest to our SoCal-branded eyes:

Lucky for me, Melissa makes a lovely model!

I think this one is my favorite of the day:

The original owner's house is open to look around, and they host events there too:

Oops, guess there isn't much lilac this time of year!

Gotta include some flower shots, after all!

Teeny tiny train tracks - so cute!

And, of course, no Faded & Blurred photo walk is complete without some kind of food and beer outing afterwards:

Yum! We're so looking forward to the next one!

xo

Squeaky Balls

Are a clear favorite of his. This time he actually wanted to play fetch for almost an hour straight, which is unheard of in his short-attention-span world. But every time, he'll eventually tire of chasing it and settle down (usually on the couch) to chewing the shit out of his new ball until the squeaker finally comes out. And then we can all breathe a sigh of relief. :)

Also can't help loving this shot of him next to my dad, with his "I just dropped the ball for you, why aren't you throwing it?" face.

xo

P.S. Please pardon our brown grass. Clearly, we're doing our part to conserve water.