Archive for the ‘Personal Projects’ Category

A group of photographer friends have joined up to document our own lives more. We do a series of ten photos on a day and post them on the 10th of the month. I wasn’t going to join in, because they are all going to post adorable photos of their kiddos…and we’re empty nesters. But, then I decided that our life is no less worthy of documenting than the next photographer’s. I do wish I would have been more of a photographer when my kids were little though!

Anyway, I give you THE JOURNEY

begin the journey

As a surprisingly apropos photo…this is what we saw as my husband and I headed out. We decided to go antiquing…a past time we both enjoy. We weren’t sure which direction we were heading, or which antique mall we were going to. This intersection decided for us.

We drove about an hour or so south of St. Louis to St. Mary’s Antique mall in, you guessed it, St. Mary’s. It’s in an old school and huge and always has the most interesting things.

St. Mary's Antique Mall

I was looking for some interesting food photography props for the monthly food photography and styling challenge group I’m in. Here are just a few of my finds:

food photography props

Such a great time. Then we headed back north to St. Genevieve to eat in one of our favorite places- a cute little restaurant, The Anvil. Look at their amazing wooden bar across the length of the restaurant.

The Anvil in St. Genevieve

They serve the coldest beer there. The. Coldest.

ice cold beer

But my favorite? Their onion rings! So delicious!!

fried onion rings

I know! Don’t they just make you want to drive to St. Genevieve right now and dive into a plate of onion rings? So yummy.

We headed back out driving, chatting and watching the scenery.

the journey-the drive

I absolutely love our slow, wandering, antiquing, road trip days.

end of the day

(It was hard to pick just 10 photos from the day!) Hope you enjoyed seeing a glimpse of our life!

Hop over to Rachel Noah’s blog to see her 10 on 10. She’s a friend an fabulous Vancouver WA photographer.

Fine Art Friday for January

January 27, 2012

pink rose I believe in pink

I believe in pink.
I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner.
I believe in kissing, kissing a lot.
I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong.
I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls.
I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

~ Audrey Hepburn

FINE ART FRIDAY

Fine Art Photography: “photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist” according to the wikipedia definition.

I joined a group of talented photographers who are hoping to expand our horizons and travel away from our portrait businesses for awhile each month and capture a fine art image. Each month, on the last Friday of the month, we’ll post our vision of a fine art photo. We’ll explore different types of photography and take time to capture an image that is just for us.

Take a look at what the talented Tracy Tisdale, a Pensacola FL Photographer came up with for our Fine Art Challenge this month. Click on through the blog circle and see some amazing images. Thanks for joining us!

A group of photographers have joined up to do a food photography challenge every month. This month’s food challenge was fruit on white with no props. Now, I freely admit I’m a prop girl when it comes to foodie photos. I’m a frequent stalker of antique malls for dishes, silverware, bottles, etc. So this month’s challenge was…well…challenging for me.

fruit food photography

I shot these in natural light on a day when the sun kept going in and out, darting and dodging behind the clouds. Settings on my camera that were correct at the time, quickly changed to wrong in a blink of an eye. Settings for this shot were 1/100, f 5.0 with my 100mm macro, and ISO 1000. Love how my camera handles the higher ISOs.

Here is a pull back shot of my setup.

set up for food shot

This is simply my desk in my office with a white foam board behind the fruit…held up by some clamps I stole borrowed from my husband’s woodworking shop. The window is directly behind me with the sun coming in at an angle.

I first tried for a bright sunlight making-lemonade-in-the-summer feel. (Even though it’s the dead of winter here in the midwest.) I never could get the exact feel I was going for with harsh sunlight shadows and bright yellow lemons.

One of my many rejects:

lemons in bright sunlight

It also bugged me that I didn’t notice that the slice in front had a crazy smashed in side to it. Changed that up later in my shoot.

Anyway, not one to let all those sliced up lemons go to waste…I rewarded myself at the end of my shoot with this yummy beer:

boulevard wheat beer with lemon

Be sure and check out what the other photographers in our Monthly Food Photography Challenge came up with. Visit Stacey Siegal, a Longboat Key Photographer, to see her take on our challenge.