Love the Beach

Valerie
I went to crystal cove today with Todd and the girls. They were sea shell hunting while I had two photo shoots. The first was Valerie, her husband and twin sons. I love capturing families and am always enthralled with the feelings of love and the dynamic between all family members. My fav shot this time is one I don’t think they know I got – they were a distance down the beach and I had my 70-200 trained on them in my most casual “I’m not really taking your picture right now” of ways. Dad was kissing his son on the forehead and mom was watching him – it was such a real moment.

After that I shot Michelle and Daniel’s engagement photos. I will be doing their wedding at camp Pendleton in early June and I cant wait. She is so much fun. They are quite young, having gotten engaged before he was shipped out to Iraq while she is still in college. Irina from wash dc asked me to do their wedding and when I heard their story and that he had been in active duty for our country (regardless of my position on the war) I was compelled to do everything I can for them. I have to admit, as with many men, he was not into having his photo taken but he was a very good sport and I think the photos reflect that. He seemed determined to do whatever it took to make her happy because he is truly interested in her being happy. I can’t wait for their wedding!

Love/Hate Lightroom

I am experiencing a love/hate relationship with Lightroom. I am so sold on it that i have practically forgotten my old workflow using bridge, camera raw and photoshop. in therory it should be the best thing around and when it works right it IS the best thing around. its getting it to work consistantly that is the problem. for one, it wont aknowledge that i have a dvd burner - its says its unwriteable. and seems lik i can only download two 4G cards before it crashes on me, or worse yet, freezes up. having to reboot after ever 2 cards defeats the whole purpose of speeding up the workflow! and its not that my machine is lacking - i've got a terrabyte of storage, 4 Gigs of RAM and a dual processor. right now i am just ranting because i am stuck downloading cards rather than doing actual work and its driving me nuts! sorry about the rant!

Brian - the sequel

Congrats to Brian for wining student body president for next year! What a great senior he is going to make! I did get more shots of him in one of my favorite locations and he didn’t disappoint. I finally got to see all the different aspects of his personality I was looking for and I think we captured his essence.

I have my own person now!!

Maddy is obsessed with little tiny things. always has been. so its no surprise that she loves playmobile stuff. she puts together these elaborate little towns and ecosystems, takes them apart and makes new ones. well, daddy scored big time by getting she and Alex an Easter playmobile set. i gave it to them last night and they had a blast playing together, setting it all up, deciding who would be who and what they would do together. it was precious. best of all... they gave me my own person recently. not only does she have short hair (yeah!) and a camera and best of all...hedgehogs!! i love hedgehogs but these are TWIN hedgehogs!! i'm so happy to have a mini ME to play with now!

What the .....?

So i second shot a wedding with becky on saturday. it was great fun. lots of work, but great fun still. i think i scared the pants off her because i shot soooo many photos - i tend to take a lot of photos. and i mean ALOT of photos. but i'm pairing them down, no problem. then i came across this one. what i want to know is: what the hell is this?? look at this video guy, right smack dab in the middle of the aisle, right in the FRONT!!! look at this!! not the guy to the right, but the one whose back of his head you can see and he is right next to the mother of the bride!! no one behind him could see through his big massive cranium. becky is off to his right, crouched down, like a true professional, trying to get a shot in there. that guy should be fired!! anyways, i'm sure the guy was oblivious to his position and just wanted to make his money and go home - it isnt his company after all. a lesson to anyone who wants a large company and hires people to do all their work for them. a lesson learned.

Was it a baseball game, or was it a date?

Its that time of year again?taken with a 16-35mm lens - thats how close we were!home run!!
full moon

I LOVE that he was so happy!

My dear sweet husband has few faults, but one is that he loves to go to Angels baseball games. Last night was the first game of the season and while he insisted on taking me, he quite brilliantly made very special efforts to accomodate me. For as much as i dont like watching professional sports (give me a little girls softball game and i'm happy as can be!) i really dont like heights - so look where we sat. Yup, front and center, low as you can go. Right behind the batter, first row. So, to me, it was a date - that kind of effort is "date worthy!" I was happy sitting next to him, holding his hand, listening intently to insane details about these jocks and watching the Angels win. Now, if only he could do something about the obnoxious baseball fan that always seems to be sitting near us....

yup, this is where we sat!

fisheye lens - its so fun!
some guy named Scioscia was blocking our view from our seats
Troy Percival throwing out the first pitch and his last - the crowd gave him a very warm send off for his retirement

the big fish that got away!!

the coopers and boutwells had a party for the antiworkshop alumni and newcomers who are signed up for Seattle in June. Unfortunately I missed it because i had to come home and become a responsible wife and mother again. I was ok with that until I saw this snip-it that Cooper put toghether of the party. Social services would have forgiven me for abandoning my children for this party!! go to www.altf.com/blog and navigate past the darling puppy (click on the right side of the pictures) – OR – click on the link at the top of the page that says “anti” and see what i missed out on. but then again, you probably missed out on it too :)

Brian

Some day this kid is going to run the world. And do it really well too. Brian asked me to get some headshots for his portfolio. I don’t think he realized what I had in mind. I really need to get a separate website up for my teen work because I have this vision and can’t seem to get it across. Anyways, we shot for an hour or so today around the school campus but his friends were there and I think that stifled him a little. He was good but I think we need to do this again and I know just the location where he can relax a little and come to life. Sure he’s a handsome kid but that’s the least of it – he can sing, dance, play the cello, saxophone, is a stellar student, very involved in his school on many levels. Just a great kid. And he’s the only one who doesn’t annoy me the way he says “Mrs. Walsh” – its far more respectful than just a reminder that I aint just Cheryl anymore. I hope he likes these photos but mostly I hope he is game to try my other location!!