another katy & ryan photo

okay, so this might get old - me posting one photo per day, but that's how i have been doing these. i went home at lunch to work on another photo, but didn't have a lot of time since i took the cable car to work instead of michael. hopefully i will be able to get a lot finished this weekend.

is this couple hot, or what??

photo edits

yesterday i sent those 4 photos to katy and while she said she loved them, she did point out that in the first two it looks like she has a black eye. i was very embarrassed i over looked that important detail, but am happy she said something because i will definitely be paying more attention to small details like that with all other photos... rather than try to rush through to get them finished during my sneaky lunch hour. ha.

anyway, so here are the fixes i made to the first two photos. while i couldn't completely get rid of the shadows in the eye socket, i think these new photos look much better.

katy & ryan - engagement photos

on saturday i met katy & ryan bright and early at the ballpark. i am completely unable to get myself to my cubicle job during the week at 8am, but funny how easy it is to get to a job i love at 8am... especially when it's outside and the weather is gorgeous.

we took a walk around the park stopping for photos along the way. i was surprised at how many photo opportunities there were that didn't involve baseball gloves and statues.

i snuck out of work today during lunch for an hour or so to work on the photos. here are a few of my favorites:






can't wait to shoot their wedding up in napa in september!

mmm... strawberry pie

with homemade graham cracker crust! love this recipe...

polaroid transfers!

now that allison's monday night soccer season is over, we had some time for a roommate date night. allison made delicious fajitas, which we ate on our new patio furniture on our deck at sunset. how romantic!

after dinner i got all my polaroid transfer stuff out and we got to work. it really is a pretty simple process and allison caught on right away.

to start, set up a tray of warm water which is used to first use to soak the watercolor paper. using a roller, squeegy the excess water and set it down next to the vivitar polaroid slide printer. once you've picked your slide, load it into the printer (which luckily for me was already loaded with polaroid film - although the package did say the film expired back in august... i couldn't tell!) then take the photo and pull out the polaroid film. count somewhere between 10 and 15 seconds, cut the film, peel it apart and place carefully face down onto the watercolor paper. with the roller, press down on it and roll 15 - 20 times, then float it, paper side down, in the warm water tray for 3-5 minutes. submerge the entire thing, peel the film off the paper and set aside overnight to dry. here are some photos of the process. and our (before drying) results!

sf photos and other news

in order to get motivated to start those sf polaroid transfers, i'm going to post a few digital photos i took of our day. here you will see photos of my favorite bridge and of the talented miss allison getting down and dirty to get the good shots of gigi and the palace of fine arts. it really was great to get out there and take photos. now if we could just coordinate our schedules for the development and printing!





in other news, it's back to the drawing board for my duvet cover. ugh! i really should tackle smaller projects first, but i'm in it too far already... and my mathematical mind on some level does enjoy this challenge. anyway, this time the problem was that i did not allocate enough fabric for each seam allowance. since i'm doing 1/2" allowances, i added 1" on each side in my measurements. well, for fabric i'm cutting into 2 or 3 pieces for the patchwork pattern, i forgot to add another 1 inch for each piece. and since i have just enough fabric for the 86" by 86" duvet cover, i ran out. yesterday i was able to solve it, by changing the sizes and number of pieces i'm cutting, but that means it's back to the tedious photoshop work. it will all be worth it when i'm finished though (i hope). and... i'm SO proud of myself for being patient and planning this all out before i cut. that. would have been a disaster.

and by the way... i don't reeeeally want to talk this, but i thought i should mention it: destiny #9, victoria #10. i might have to start hanging fliers around the area telling people about the super-cool name andrea...

holy photoshop

okay, i really need to stop only doing these photos one at a time... but it's a little difficult when i have so many new tools to work with. i upgraded both lightroom and photoshop a few weeks ago and bought a few actions for both from a wedding photographer turned wedding photography entrepreneur.

so here is lisa and julian with some effects done in lightroom and brought into photoshop. i used a "lord of the rings" action which makes the photo slightly blurry except for areas where you paint over to keep sharp, a tea leaf (i think that's what it's called) color effect, and then an edge blur. holy photoshop...

i will probably just convert the original to B&W with a slight edge blur for the final version on my website. but i do still really like this version.

ASL words of the week

since today is tuesday and i have sign language classes on tuesday, i'm giving my sign language words of the week. if i'm learning it, everyone else i know should too! i actually gave allison a lesson last night. it's really a lot of fun!

anyway, so here is "where" and "who". of all the images on the world wide web of these words, i chose this guy to be my go-to guy. for "where" you actually wave your finger back and forth and for "who", you curl your index finger in and out. both signs work much better if you have a confused look on your face.




side note: Victoria and Andrea overtook Destiny yesterday and today Andrea has taken over Victoria for the #9 spot in top baby girls' names in san francisco. game on, Ashley...

more julian photos

how effing cute is my baby godson? so freaking cute, is the answer to that question. i was able to sneak in a some work on these this morning while i was waiting for the cable car. (although i should have just taken the bus since the cable car made me late for my all-day training session about... wait for it... DATA. yep, just data. which, as you can see, i am really getting a lot out of right now. wait, so actually, on second thought, i should have just stayed at home working on these photos...)

anyway, so here are a few more.





i can't work on them tonight since i have book club. sorry again, mrs. z! but... if you're looking for an interesting book to read, we just read skinner's drift by lisa fugard. after visiting south africa, i was interesting in finding a fiction novel taking place in south africa during the aparteid. it started out slow and somewhat confusing, but all came together in the second half of the book and i really ended up liking it. although, i am now even more curious about south africa during the aparteid. maybe it's time to read some non-fiction history books... (after i finish the rest of these julian photos, of course)

new baby name website - "updated constantly"

and if you think for one minute i haven't checked this website once to twice every day since i discovered it... you would be wrong. especially when i discovered Andrea was the #8 girl name in san francisco so far this year. although since by today it's already down to #10 the excitement is fading. apparently more parents in my city have named their kids Ashley and Destiny in the last 2 days than Andrea. Destiny!! the real name of the no-talent-ass-clown who ruined the name Maile for me.

anyway, it's a site that hospitals use as baby announcements and to order newborn photos or something. it's pretty cool, but only gives the top 10 names of any area (state, city, or hospital level). it would reeeally be cool if it had all the names... so you could look up how many of each name were born in the town near you. no one wants their kid to be Tanner P. or Tanner F. in kindergarten class! (or on the bachelorette??)

hopefully the website will get more involved with this, but so far it is a very exciting discovery for someone like me who claims to be a baby naming consultant. (and the supreme justice of baby naming for one family!!)

sneak peak of julian photos

i posted these photos to fend off phone calls from mrs. zappasodi in the next couple days asking where they are... haha. just kidding! (really it's to get her to start following my blog)

there are a bunch more i love, but i didn't have time to get to them last night since, as you can see from the last photo, i was working on something else. sorry mrs. z!! (lisa, i posted that so you can approve the color scheme before i start cutting the fabric - obvi)

please note the pants in the 3rd photo. yes, that's how they came out... not even fitting over the diaper. embarrassing. i brought them back to sf with me hoping to fix them before he grows out of them...

slides are ready!

my awesome roommate allison and i started a motorcycle/photography gang and had our first day out a couple weeks ago. we took photos on our outdated film cameras with color slide film with the intention of making polaroid transfers for homemade christmas. (photos of SF for everyone!!)

sometime last year i read an article in a photography magazine about how to make polaroid transfers at home. i remembered making them in photography class back in high school and loved it, so immediately went on ebay for the machine... and a film camera... and the polaroid film, etc. another addiction day.

i made transfers for my brother and his wife at their wedding, but not much else. i had intended to make some of gigi bridge as presents, but found it very difficult to get myself to gigi alone and without transportation. enter allison (with her motorcycle, camera, and striking good looks) and michael (my beautiful new-to-me vespa) and we have a motorcycle/photography gang who can travel to the gigi bridge for a photoshoot. the day was a lot of fun and i can't wait to make the transfers!

more duvet drama

really... who do i think i am trying to create something as huge and dramatic as a patchwork duvet when i can't even sew a simple pair of baby pants? this project is seriously over my head. it really only came about after one of those crazy fabric addiction moments i wrote about in my previous post which actually led to me buying the entire line of fabric. since i had spent the money on the expensive fabric, i had to come up with a project. who doesn't need a new duvet cover?

but really... i've never even pre-washed fabric! and apparently there is a lot that goes into pre-washing fabric. luckily for me i googled it before i turned on the washer machine and hopefully saved some precious inches. although not enough. when i was finished washing, drying, and cutting every little fray off every little piece i realized my measurements for each piece were probably off and i should have pre-washed and measured before i dramatically designed the entire cover in photoshop. below are photos of the fabric after the pre-wash. look how much it grew! (and yes, that is a reflector i used to bring light to the backlit fabric. definitely a photography tool i need to be using more!)




anyway, i read somewhere each fat quarter of a bundle is around 18 x 22, but of course after washing and measuring all the pieces they're only 17.5 x 20.5, which completely throws off my photoshoped design. i guess it's back to the calculator and erasing. hopefully i don't get bored of it before it's time for the actual sewing machine part...