Posts under ‘Imagining Wonderland Portfolio’

I’ve been super busy trying to wrap up my photo book and story and been staying up until 3am every night for the past two weeks.  I plan to wrap it up tomorrow and get my order placed so that the book will arrive in time for the class exhibition.  I think I’ve gotten it to a good point with the layout but I still think I will rework the writing when I have a chance to put it away for awhile and them come back to it.  The book I show for the exhibition will be a first draft/test print to see how everything looks.

Anyway, I thought I would give you a sneak peek of the cover photo for my book.  I shot this several years ago in Lake Tahoe and forgot about it.  Since I’ve been looking through all my photos to find ones to put into my book I found it again and realized how much I like the dreaminess of it.  I hope you do too!

I’m really looking forward to wrapping this up so I can get back to other things in my life and get back on a better bedtime schedule. LOL

The hubby has informed me that he’s noticed I’ve been completely enthralled with my photography portfolio/photo book project.  I’m having such fun with it and spend all of my spare time working on it.  The problem is I get crabby and frustrated when I don’t have enough time to work on it because I’m feeling like I’m way under the gun (only three more weeks until the class exhibition and I need at least a week to submit my order for the book, so I really only have two weeks).  I’ve also not been real good with keeping a balance with the rest of my life.  At the moment, the house is a disaster and my office filing and paperwork is piled high.  Our sectional is covered in about 5 loads of clean laundry waiting to be folded.  All for the love of photography!

As far as my progress goes, I’d say I’m about 40% done.  The hardest part was starting it–not the photography part, but writing the story that goes along with the photos and then trying to lay it all out with the photos.  It is extremely time consuming to say the least.  I have at least 50 photos that I need to process, resize, sharpen and save as jpeg’s in Photoshop CS4 before I can load them into the software to layout my book.  The story is turning out to be nothing like I thought it would, but I think that’s ok.  It is a bit on the crazy side because it’s about dreaming and memory (inspired by Alice in Wonderland), so maybe some people who read it will think I’m a little loo loo.  I guess maybe I am.   My only time to work on this (since Little A has decided this past week that he doesn’t want to nap anymore) is from 9pm until 2am.  Anyone who would stay up until the wee hours must be a little nuts, and I’ve been doing that a lot, so feel free to call me nuts.  Thankfully, the hubby is a bit of a night owl too so often times we’re nerding out together at our respective work stations in our office. 

I’m so glad he is understanding about the crazy hours I’ve been keeping and not complaining about how useless I am as a housewife.  Actually, I’m quite useless as a housewife regardless of any project, because I hardly cook and I only deep clean when I get in the mood.  I do however, manage to always do the laundry–the one task I don’t seem to mind so much. LOL

Tonight we went to my husband’s cousin Forrest’s Going Away to College Party.  It was held in their backyard and this is where I shot this photo.  They have quite a lovely backyard.  They even had entertainment lined up for the night.  It was such a treat to hear Forrest’s band play.   It was the first time I had heard him sing and play saxophone.  We also got to hear Dane (his older brother) perform with his barbershop group.  After every song Little A would clap his hands and say, “Yay!”  LOL  I will post more photos from the party to my FB page later.

Amazingly I’m up very early today (for me that is) to continue writing my story.  I’ve been up since 6:45am – can you believe it?  LOL  So, I decided to go ahead and post my photo for Project 365 and check off this task from my list of things to do.

Yesterday we met our friends Laurie, Bob and Jack at Kate Sessions Park in La Jolla for a picnic dinner.  They were visiting from Colorado.  I can’t believe I’ve never been to this park before.  It is one of the most stunning parks I’ve ever seen–huge, gorgeous trees and a view of the ocean!  I shot this photo during the magic hour using my Sony Cybershot.

This was shot at twilight in my backyard yesterday.

To commemorate Day 50, I decided to do the “official launch” of my blog and tell everyone I know about it.  I feel like when I get to a big number like 50 I should dance, sing and jump around.  I know I’ve got 315 more days to go but I’m feeling very proud of myself for getting this far.  So, I felt like today’s photo should be one that is very special to me even though I didn’t technically take it today.  I shot this at Lake Hodges awhile ago and it’s become one of my recent favorites.  This will be part of my portfolio.

I want to thank my hubby for his support in getting my blog and website going.  I started this without having a clue about Wordpress or blogging.  He helped me format it to my liking and then got it up on the web for me.  It sure is nice having my own personal IT Dept. at home!  He also reads it almost everyday.  As always, I’m so thankful and lucky to have his support.

I started Project 365 on a whim.  About 51 days ago I had a conversation with my friend April about starting sister Project 365 blogs, supporting each other through the process, and following along.  Little did I know what I was getting into when I agreed to do it, but I am so happy I did.  This is turning out to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.  I want to thank April for getting me into this and for being one of my readers.  Finally, I have to thank my friends Deanna, Scott, and Kasey as well for all their encouragement up until now.  You guys rock!

Sneak Peek:  tonight I’m heading to the Private Listener Concert for an indie rock band called The Airborne Toxic Event at the Hard Rock Hotel.  I will of course have a couple of my smaller cameras in tow (no DSLR, just my Holga and Cybershot), so expect a few shots from the show for tomorrow’s posting.  I am not very familiar with their music and have only listened to their album a couple times, but I’m hoping they will win me over live.  I am very excited to have a double date night tonight with Deanna and Scott.  Thank you Grandma for babysitting!

I continue to be amazed by the amount of photographic opportunies I’ve found in my own front and backyard.  There isn’t anything special about our front or backyard but they are good enough for us–a lawn, some nice landscaping and just enough space for the mass of toddler toys we’ve accumulated and our herb and succulent gardens.  Probably the best thing about it is how private it is (nice and high fences).  But all in all, we have a pretty modest backyard, and that is ok with me.  But, this is why I’m so impressed with what I’ve found in my own front and backyard with a macro lens.  I love finding ways to present another world right outside my back door even though we don’t have a spectacular view. 

Last evening at twilight I ran around my backyard experimenting with the macro lens.  Yesterday and the few days preceeding we’ve had beautiful sky and cloud weather. On days like that I find myself gazing at the sky and admiring the cloud formations and the colors.  I shot the above photo by pointing the camera lens at the reflection of the sky, trees and fence in my French doors by getting pretty close to the glass.  I like this one a lot and am considering it for part of my photography portfolio/photo book.

Lastly, this evening when we came home from dinner I noticed a pretty big spider hanging out underneath our pot of succulents in a metal plant stand.  This was right outside our front door near our porch.  I got a flashlight to investigate as it was pretty dark.  It was a black widow!  I called the hubby to help confirm my findings, and yes, I was correct.  I grabbed the macro lens and shot a few photos.  This is probably the best shot I got of her because I didn’t want to get too close and it was very dark.  We admired her spinning her web for awhile and then destroyed her.  Yes I know, it’s sad.  I like to respect all life but when the spider is poisonous and residing right outside our front door, we just can’t allow her to stay. 

***Important Announcement:  I’ve amended one of the rules/procedures for my Project 365 due to my time constraints as a very busy mommy to a very active boy.  Sometimes I am so exhausted by the end of the day that it’s been getting too hard for me to get the day’s photo processed and posted on my blog and I end up staying up way too late.  So, sometimes I may post yesterday’s photo for today’s entry.  I don’t plan on doing this all the time but I think it is alright to bend this rule a bit and I reserve the right to do this as a sometimes very tired mommy in the thick of the terrible twos, tantrums and all.  I also have a lot on my plate right now with my “Building a Photography Portfolio” class and need to devote more time to the work required for this class.  I will never go further back than the day before though, unless it is something I shot on film and just got developed and scanned.  Lastly, when and if I do go on vacation in the next 300+ days (which I really hope I do) I will probably just catch up when I return home or post photos from my iphone camera since I have the Wordpress app on my phone.

With that having been said, today’s photo I shot last evening at twilight in my own backyard (surprise, surprise!).  I am really having fun with the macro lens I borrowed from my dear friend and I’m still in love with waterdrops and cobwebs.   The cobwebs and waterdrops set of photos I last shot were done with my Cybershot and I really wanted to do some with my DSLR since I only have this lens for a limited amount of time.  I also hope to include some of these photos in my Imagining Wonderland portfolio/book.  Hopefully the few who look at this blog aren’t growing tired of these kinds of photos yet.  As for me personally, I think I could stay in this world for a long while, continuing to navigate my camera into the land of bokeh and the pleasantness of dreaming in macro form.  What a lovely world it is up close, and, still even in my own backyard. 

Oh, how I want my own macro lens!  The list of camera equipment to purchase someday is neverending…..and now I think I’m adding a printer to that list (shh, I haven’t told the hubby about that yet).

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards.”
-Søren Kierkegaard

A few days ago when I was at the MOPA library, I was incredibly inspired by a photographer’s work that I had never seen before.  I decided to try to make an image inspired by some of her work. 

I love the feeling within Sandi Haber Fifield’s images.  They seem like beautiful, dreamy litttle vignettes that express something like the above quote, which by the way is one of my favorite quotes.