Exposure

What I really wanted to do this evening when I got home was just go into my room, sit on the floor and be cranky. Not that work was stressful in any way; it wasn’t.  I look at photographs all day and get inspired.  I was just low on energy.  I do not know how people take on more than the basics. My life is pretty freakin simple.  I even had an adorable cat to greet me (noisily) and made caprese salad for dinner, and had nothing much on my to-do list.  Yet I felt taxed at having to take my shoes off and like, you know, breathe. That takes way too much work and I object.

Like I said, work was not stressful.  In fact, I came up with this idea today to try to do a photography show with my co-workers.  I need to put together a proposal, which includes an artist statement and some of the photos that would be in the show.  And I got SO excited about it.  It is long overdue, and I think would be very well received by whoever ventures out to see it.  It will even be fun to help curate.  The Final Prints Dept at my work has been doing these photography field trips for close to two years now, with everyone greatly improving in their skill and range along the way.  We’ve had some great times, some sleepless all-night drives, some amazing sunrises, and I have seen some of the best photography, ever.  I still can’t believe I can go somewhere and witness someone taking pictures, and still be so astonished by what comes out of their camera.

I will update on this as it progresses.  Right now I’m struggling with the artist’s statement.

As for my weekend, I enjoyed a nice, peaceful 2 days with my parents.  I caught up on sleep, and we all drank a lot of coffee.  I capped off the weekend with a photoshoot of a family, up in the Joshua Tree Nat’l Park.  And as I leisurely drove out of the Park into a stunning sunset, forgetting entirely that I was technically working, I remembered, THIS is what I love the most about photography, and I must be in the right line of work.

Skull Rock, Joshua Tree Nat’l Park

Surveillance and the circle of life, part 2

I’m in Joshua Tree again, for the weekend. I have a photoshoot scheduled for this evening at sunset, which I am excited about. I love desert sunsets.

The past week has been nothing but work, with obsessive organizing at home so that the next time I move it won’t be so cumbersome. Since I spent so much of my life in the desert, I associate July and August with months that you simply survive the heat and then come back to life in Sept/ Oct. I think, some years, that I still auto pilot back to that mode.

The quail nest that I traumatized at my parents’ house in June still yielded a flock of baby quail, and they can be seen running by whenever we look out the window. Why? Because there are no cats. While we definitely miss having cats here, we now get to see ridiculously cute scenes like this:

Our Savage Mistress Of The Dark

By the way, Savage made the top thirteen, and will be in the “Next Elvira” reality show on Fox TV.  Atta girl.

Just in case

 

 

In certain parts of the world there are people who are stuck in whatever house or room they are dwelling in, and their only outlet to the world is through the internet, which tempts me to talk about my cat some more because, hey! That’s a captive audience.

But no, I will spare you the tales of my favorite animal in the wide world because I know what it’s like to be at the receiving end of that. Instead, I will tell you about the how I found my masthead!

I was in Hawaii for a week in 2001 with my two sisters and my niece, and we were in the town of Kona. We were all three rummaging for swim gear in the trunk of our rental car when I discovered this glow in the dark tag attached to a wire, with the picture shown on my masthead. The image made me laugh so hard that I could barely get the words out, “Asia, look!” and we all looked at the tag and fell apart laughing again. Someone mentioned, through their laughter, that they could have gotten their point across with just the image of the open trunk, and Asia, barely able to get the words out, said, “But then how would he know to keep running?”

Because THAT’S what I put in my latte

I took the day off because I wasn’t feeling well this morning. I wasn’t feeling well because I barely slept last night. Luckily that doesn’t happen very often, or I’d have a real problem on my hands.

About mid-day, I started feeling a lot better, and thanks to drinking a whopping latte while watching Martha Stewart, I suddenly got the urge to clean my garage. The heaping pile in the middle of my garage has haunted me for a year and a half now. It has remained pretty much the same since I moved here, and I often walk by it in awe, on my way to do something better with my day. But I don’t like how it haunts me, and makes me feel like I’m anchored in the world by my obnoxiously heavy pile of possessions. So I tore into it, and by mid-evening, I had pitted the garage. It was shocking. I mean, all of a sudden, it feels like we have a large new room! Granted, most of that pile is now in the living room.

I will get back to that project just as soon as I regain the feeling in my feet. In the meantime, may I recommend ‘Meth Coffee?’

Elvira at the Queen Mary

I accompanied my friend, Savage, to her Elvira audition on Friday night at The Queen Mary in Long Beach. I was expecting a sea of Elvira clones, but there were actually some great variations on that look. I was listening to her giving a radio interview the other day, and I really like her. She’s a total comedian. And did you know she was in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? I didn’t.

Incidentally, I just got Adobe’s LightRoom today, and this is the first thing I’ve developed in it. It is great for files shot in Raw, and that’s what I usually shoot in. So Elvira’s photo was my introduction to LightRoom. I like that.

This little guy was one of my favorite things there:

 

 

It’s legal in our eyes

Orange County is still there, and doing just fine, but I had to go down again for the weekend, just to make sure. I spent Saturday evening in Silverado Canyon with Janae and Andrew. Janae and I ended up wandering out into the woods and getting married:

We also had a nice photoshoot, with her very helpful husband, Andrew, and later Charles Deguzman via his Photoshop actions. He is currently my favorite wedding photographer and also makes a mean set of actions. This one replicates the lensbaby, a lens that you can put on your camera that makes a special motion blur around your subject. The focal point is called the “sweet spot” by lensbaby enthusiasts. I also used his cross process action to turn a grey gate in the background into a gorgeous blue.

For our honeymoon, Janae and I are going to go see Bat For Lashes in concert, followed a couple of weeks later by The Beastie Boys.

sweet

This morning I was given a photo scavenger hunt for myself, consisting of one item: Lisa’s boyfriend Chad going down to (or up from) Table Rock on his crutches:

We had a great day at the beach, Thursday, for Lisa’s birthday. The water was crazy beautiful and clear, and I can’t believe I spend all day indoors when the beach is just sitting down there looking like this. I had to sit there convincing myself that on most days it’s cloudy and dull. The days I’m not there, for example.

Animal behavior

The other night I dreamt about tigers and lions, and they were mauling me. Everywhere I went they were either mauling me or other people.  I spent the next morning looking at my cat suspiciously.  The first time I tried to trim his claws, I went into it thinking that if I want to do it badly enough, I will somehow make it happen. But he had the same approach, and he didn’t want them trimmed, SO much more than I wanted them trimmed.  So now every time he comes after me for affection, he gets something stuck in my skin.  It’s not pleasant for either of us.

Speaking of cuddly animals, I went to Janae and Andrew’s yesterday in Silverado Canyon so that Janae and I could scout out some locations for a photoshoot next weekend.  They now have four adorable doggies that are very, very friendly.  You can tell they are dog people and also that they are home a lot, because the dogs act very human.  I love watching the interaction between humans and animals in an environment where the animals get a lot of attention, because it’s neat to see how both have trained each other.  Both the human and the dog seem to know what the other is about to do. The display they put on when we were about to leave was ridiculously cute.  The dogs were cute too (awww!).

Doesn’t it look like they’re crying??

 

Because I get kinda stressed out working in Photoshop all day.

Today I went to little dive bar with one of my co-workers, and we played pool for a while and I had a beer, which I ended up drinking like, less than half of. It consoled me while I got fully slaughtered at pool. Three times in a row, and sooo humiliating. I taught him how to play pat-a-cake afterward, just to feel like I was better at something than him.

But you know, I felt so relaxed from doing that. Because I NEVER ever stop off somewhere and have a beer after work. It seriously felt like it was just as good for my spirit as all this yoga. Not that I’d want to drink beer in a dive bar on a regular basis. But in terms of relaxing me, it totally did the trick. It stands out just as much as that nice long swim in the ocean I had on Saturday. Less of a workout than a session of treading water and watching someone paint a mural on a house on shore. I just floated there, mesmerized, and watched the painting. Now that’s what you do when you want to relax.

And Wednesday, more relaxation. I will try to recover.