Eye Cleanse

These are old snaps, they've been "gathering dust" on my laptop's desktop for the past two months. I've been working a lot lately. The overtime is great for my bank account, but it's hard on me. Thankfully, things are slowing down and I'll soon return to pursuing the things I love, rather than the things that pay the bills.

I visited a friend from college a few months back and while we were together, we went on a "just for fun" shoot. I jokingly call it an eye cleanse. We got in the car and each picked a number, my number led us to the first right, her number to the next left and there we'd stop, get out of the car, and discover an image.

Shoots like this remind me how much I love photography. The world is full of frames just waiting to be snapped. These are my favorites from the entire trip, including some from the "Eye Cleanse."

Wedding Moment

Here's a funny one from a wedding I shot two weeks ago. Kids! Oy!




(I know - busy background, bad lighting, etc... it's still a funny pic)

2 Day Dinner: Day2

Success! That's right ladies and gentlemen, I have conquered the spinch dumpling and the homemade tomato sauce. The "sauce" may have shared more in common with a paste than a sauce, but it was still a sweet and spicy mouthful of flavor. The dumplings weren't the best looking 'plings on the block, but they still landed like a moment of zen in the mouth.

To put it plainly, dinner was a success. In a word, Yum! :)

2 Day Dinner: Day1

Today I embark on a new adventure, an all-out, sweat on the forehead, foray into the world of cooking. We’re not talking about the paltry task of whipping up some Mac ‘N Cheese. No, this adventure will take me to a very different, dangerous place – the land of homemade spinach dumplings and tomato sauce (for some reason, every time I write tomato I want to add an “e” – like I’m about to add Tom’s Toe to the recipe). There will be tears, there will be drama and in the end, if the stars are aligned, and luck lends its hand, there will be an amazing dinner.

With instructions like: simmer for 1 hour, let sit for 24 hours and finely chop the basil (okay, so the last may only be a challenge for me) I bite my lower lip and set out to cook. Let’s see here, let the sauce simmer for an hour… What?! An hour?! Won’t that burn a hole in the pan? Well, we’ll see – the sauce has been under low heat now for… exactly… 10 minutes.

The spinach dumplings have been mixed and are now resting peacefully in the fridge, where they will remain for at least 24 hours.

(just took a taste of the tomato(e) sauce -- Yummy!)

Weekend Guest

Have you ever had a toad wave to you? ... well ... now you have :) My little cousins love to hunt for toads when they visit my parent's house. They gathered up about a dozen in a tiny white bucket and spent the afternoon terorrizing the poor creatures.



A few weeks ago, my mother's little brother (my uncle) flew down from Oregon to spend the weekend with us. We picked him up in San Francisco and spent the day sightseeing. We went to the exploratorium science exhibits and the pier.

My "uncle" should be coming to live with us this Tuesday. It will be a bit of an adventure.

Group Job Interviews: Picture People in Modesto, CA

When you show up for an interview and discover there’ll be 4 other people interviewing for the position at the same time, you know two things right of the bat. 1. You’re pretty much living through the lowest point in your career. 2. These people don’t really need a person, they need about 20 seasonal robots that can form complete sentences and don’t drool excessively.

The interviewer took us to the kid’s section in the middle of the mall and began her interview.

We five sat there, our legs sticking to the plastic, stain resistant couch, with our heads bobbing up and down in time with the interviewer’s questions. I’m quite sure an imaginative passerby would have seen us as a packaged set of bobble head dolls.

“You all know we work with a lot of children.”

From left to right, we all bobbed our heads as she looked our way (like the group interview version of a baseball crowd’s “wave”). I assume this question was meant to illustrate why she chose to interview us in the children’s play section of the mall.

I bobbed along with everyone else, but as I bobbed, I watched a stupid little girl take a nosedive off a big purple dinosaur and only after she got up to try it again, did her overweight, haggard looking mother get up pull the child away.

“Okay, well, I’d like to know if you have any questions.”

“Do your photographers have any artistic control over the portraits?” (I ask this because I want to try different lighting and posing setups)

“Oh, yes!!” Trust me, I think the entire play area heard the second exclamation point. “We have so many different colored backgrounds! Purple and pink and blue, they’re so nice! We get new ones all the time!”

Mentally, I was slamming my head against the giant purple dinosaur and thinking about taking a plunge using the same technique as the crazy little girl.

I know what you’re all thinking – “Amanda! You can’t be thinking things like that during the interview. They’ll see right through you!”

Not to worry, I’ve always imagined my poker face as pretty kick-ass. I think all sorts of horrible, yet honest things while I’m interviewed, yet I still maintain a look of passive interest and intelligence…

Maybe I’m not as good as I though I was….

I didn’t get that job… This might surprise you, but at times, I can be a bit of a smart ass...
:)

Private Clubs

My cousin's children created an exclusive club when I last visited them. Every few minutes they'd post a messages on their door. One message wrote "mom and dad cannot come in," one message excluding "everyone else except Aiden and Trinity and Amanda" and as I watched, they were compsoing a new sign saying, "Trin is not in the club for right now! You can come back later..." Shortly after I was blocked from the room and the girls' sister, Trinity was pulled out.
From what I could tell, this exclusive club's only purpose was to post messages excluding everyone else. It was very funny.

Reunited

I'm working at Subway now - just something to help me pay my bills while I wait for my ship to come in - as they say. I work about 4 hours everyday, making sandwiches for old high school classmates and taking orders from kids ten years younger than me. It's not fun. I spend most of those 4 hours daydreaming, reliving better days. And sometimes I write silly, horrible poems while I count out the onions and the tomatoes and the pickles and the olives and the .... and the ... and the ...



I was washing when I felt the soap
run
between my ring and my fingers
squish
I was fighitng sweat
drip
when I lowered my eyes,
no
away from a memory
run
I was remembering when I cut my finger
squish
blood mixing with tomatoe juice
drip

_________________________________________

I am now foggy
I am now hollow
I am now looking into the eye of my nightmare, cowering with fear

You were so different
You were so very smart
You were destined to be here, my past and present shhhh!


You are now pair
You are now hope
You are now true, my past and present lie never again

We are all a you, an I, a we, in time
We are overexposed in our own, these unique facts
We are tarnished by today

You and I and we are done
Eaten by Today

Look at the Pretties!!!

A whole batch of Rolls-Royce cars rolled their way into Midland, MI on Saturday. I've been to car shows before, but the spectators I saw at those shows never had that glassy "please Mr. Santa Claus" look in their eyes. When the Rolls rolled into town, I not only saw those looks, I'm quite certain I was also giving them! These cars are awesome! The vintage cars remind me of the horse drawn carriage and the new 2000+ ones glide about like they're on ice skates and look like the most popular kids in school. They had names like, Silver Cloud, Silver Shadow and Aston Martin. Can you imagine driving a car called the Silver Cloud?! I'd want it for the name alone - driving around on a cloud! Yep - I kinda want one of my own... better start playing that lotto!

In the Dugout

Picture this... you're at a softball field, it's about 3:00pm, the sun is shining, the field is perfectly manicured, the players are ready... and the stands are barely occupied. Such was the scene I met when I shot softball for the first time ever on Monday. I needed features. So, what's a girl to do? Why, hang out in the dugout with the rest of the ladies of course! :) There are times when I think you need to hear the sounds to really appreciate an event... and this softball game was one of those times. The girls would whoop, scream, cheer and congratulate each other between each play... even if NOTHING happened! Seriously, the final score for their game was 1-0 ... talk about BORING!!! I don't understand softball or baseball - Give me some crazy, fast-paced, rough hockey over softball any day... but anyway, the players were fun to hang around with before and after the game.
... even though they did loose...

Less than flattering...

After the shoot is done, when I'm sitting in the editing room, pounding on the arrow keys looking for "the" shot, I always try to choose a flattering photo. Generally speaking, The Golden Rule guides my edit. However, on this one occasion I couldn't resist the upside-down, scrunched-face tumble. I must admit though, I felt a little guilty when I went back to this place the next day to shoot photos of the building... hehehehe... I kept expecting this little girl to come tumbling out of the nowhere, demanding to know why I selected this less than flattering image. Seriously, I had a complete escape plan ready in case the child decided to attack me! Guess we can't always take the high road. (FYI - I didn't run into the child... but I did see her coach. He was just happy to have his team mentioned in the paper - but I still felt guilty about the photo.)

Lansing Rocks!

High Contrast Photos + Small Dark Bar = ROCK AND ROLL BABY!!! This was a really fun assignment! Of course, because I was quite literally in a tiny black box, only about 1/4 of my photos were sharp.

Sick and Bored

I love my Mac - if I could, I'd write a poem to the wonders of my shiny silver computer. But despite all its many amazing qualities, it doesn't have a single brainless game on it. So, there I sat-- bored, sick and wide awake after a drug-induced 15 hours of sleep. What is a girl to do??? I discovered the ever so exciting photobooth program and ... well... the rest is history! I still don't know what's possessing me to post pictures of myself when I'm sick and literally twisted... but - I'm still working on that new year's resolution. And life just doesn't get any "funner" than posting wacky picture of yourself... ;)

This is the x-ray setting


twisted...


Glow


Color

Playing Catch-Up

It seems I've come down with a very serious case of "bloggerlazyistis" this last month. It's been truly terrible - the feature photos are crying and the sports action shots just sit around counting sheep. But alas! I am cured! So... there's a bunch of "forgotten" blog posts here now. :)

The Need for SPEEEEEEED

The American Cup speed skating competition came to Midland, Mich., this week. If you've never seen speed skating - you should! I was amazed! I consider myself lucky if I make it all the way around the ice without falling so watching these people skating at a 30 degree angle going fast enough to build a breeze was... what's the word... oh yeah - amazing?! Totally cool!

Sports Zone

Digital TV

Creepy Crawly

Lights! Camera! Water???!!!

This was my first time lighting swimming. As a rule, I'm always a little nervous shooting swimming (could be 'cause I dropped my flash down the deep end once...) so I was extremely nervous about having a rickitie light stand holding up the strobes just three short feet from the edge of the pool - but, luckily, all turned out okay. :) I really like the way the photos look with the extra light. I put both lights on the same side - about 10 feet apart and bounced them from the ceiling... let me know if you have any suggestions for lighting swimming in the future. I'd like to try something a little different next time.