Eyecandy – pretty canopy

Oh, can you imaging getting married under a canopy like this?!

I’d LOVE to photograph a wedding with such a canopy (since I am already married, I can’t get one!)

You can get these grapewood branches here at Nettleton Hollow.

Their blog have some cool ideas too so check it out for wedding or home decorations!

Skiagraphics – x-ray prints of nature

I am on Sargents Gardens’ newsletter and in the latest newsletter they mentioned Skiagraphics so I went to check it out – now I want a print! Dr Andre Bruwer created these incredible art of flowers and seashells etc.

From their website: “Dr. André Bruwer’s roots in his native country of South Africa go back over 300 years to his French Huguenot forbears. He earned a medical degree from the University of Cape Town and served in the South African army during World War II. During his time in the army he read the book “The Doctors Mayo.” This inspired him to move his wife and young son to America and study at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in 1947. In 1957 he moved again, to Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Bruwer would go on to practice radiology in Tucson for over thirty years.”

i think this may be my favorite, although I couldn’t decide if I like the standard, the inverted or the gold version the best! I guess it’d depend on which room I want to put it in and see what color would go best with it.

http://www.skiagraphics.com/christmas_bells.html

The other day I was at a presentation that talked about how medical imaging (eg x-ray, CAT scan, PET scan etc) has progressed over the years, and it’s really amazing what technology can do and how far it has advanced.

RIP Randy Pausch

In an earlier post, I talked about Randy Pausch and his book, the Last Lecture. I have bookmarked his blog, and checked it almost daily to see his progress. I didn’t have time to check the last couple of days as I was busy preparing for a wedding.

Sometimes I am almost too scared to check his blog in fear of bad news. His blog is here.

And the bad news came. He passed away yesterday

His last entry was on 6/26/08 and a friend posted on 7/24/08 because Randy couldn’t do so himself anymore, and then he passed on 7/25/08.

RIP Randy.

Winner vs. Loser

Winner vs. Loser

The Winner – is always part of the answer.
The Loser – is always part of the problem.

The Winner – always has a program.
The Loser – always has an excuse.

The Winner – says, “Let me do it for you.”
The Loser – says, “That’s not my job.”

The Winner – sees an answer for every problem.
The Loser – sees a problem for every answer.

The Winner – sees a green near every sand trap.
The Loser – sees two or three sand traps near every green.

The Winner – says, “It may be difficult but it’s possible.”
The Loser – says, “It may be possible, but it’s too difficult.”

Be a Winner!

Source: Unknown
(received it from an email…)

3 years… & landscape photography

While I am not a landscape photographer, I do love landscape photography, especially black & white ones (remember which an earlier post – which famous photographer I am?).

So far, my favorite landscape photograph that I took is of a tree, and I used it as my opening page on my old website back in 2005 when I first started (ha, I did all the basic HTML codes by then using frontpage… what a frustrating experience that was!) Here it is:

So, today, when I stumbled across this photographer’s work, I fell in love with his work! His name is Michael Kenna. Here are a few of his work that caught my eye (I will post the links only, as I have not asked permission to post his images here… plus they’ll make my work look bad!

http://www.michaelkenna.net/html/hokkaido_05/5.html

http://www.michaelkenna.net/html/hokkaido_05/11.html

http://www.michaelkenna.net/html/2007/hokkaido07/3.html

In fact, I love his work so much (and can’t afford his limited edition prints!) I went straight to amazon.com and bought one of his books, Japan, instead:

http://www.michaelkenna.net/html/books/japan/index.html

Someone also made a webpage dedicated to some of Michael’s beautiful work, and titled it “Silent World of Michael Kenna“, I couldn’t agree more. Some of his images with snow made me want winter to be here (well, ALMOST… I don’t know if I can stand another 6 months long MN winter!)

I honesty wish I had taken all the photos Michael had taken…They are just so simple, and yet you can stare at them for a long them and not get bored.

Since I went to look for my old website image, I found a couple of other screen shots. I think the look and feel of my old site is very similar to what I have now – I guess my vision has not changed much, though with new technology the current site is much more sleek and sophisticated!

Wedding Portfolio – my first wedding, using a combination of black and white films, and slide films which were then cross-processed to get a funky, edgy effect, which was one of my favorite things to do with slide films since you don’t know how the cross-processing will turn out! It is dependent on the film and the lab, and sometimes it’s more green based, sometimes more magenta based… though you really need a good lab for that, I once sent my Grand Canyon pictures to a lab in the US and they all came back looking like they had a green filter on, which is NOT what they are supposed to be like! For some reasons, I had such a difficult time finding a lab to do cross-processing work here (no problem back in Melbourne, Australia before I left in 2004). For more about cross-processing, see here. I love how rich and saturated the colors come out from cross-processing, and it was always exciting to get the films back from the lab to see how they turned out! Such a thrill that you don’t get from digital photography… it was like opening presents! It is difficult to achieve the same look in photoshop – close sometimes, but it’s not quite the same. I guess part of it was the uncertainty of it – that you don’t quite know what to expect.

The bride is a good friend of mine, and I thank you for trusting me with her big event, given that it was my first wedding! She did her own flowers too (orchid) which was beautiful – simple and elegant.

This was the portrait portfolio – this image was taken in a workshop (i posed her though) and I thought her eyes were very striking and it was one of my favorite images, though for some reasons my little sister didn’t like it and I had become defensive about it :p I still don’t know why she didn’t like it, but that’s okay, photography is subjective!

This was the “other” portfolio – another favorite of mine – of my mother’s hands.

All these images were taken with film… I know I know, probably a lot of the new photographers have never used a film camera before and that aged me (and I didn’t start young! :p) I still own 2 film cameras, one of them was a gift from Justin (then boyfriend, now husband) which in itself is another story in itself – it was a surprise gift. let’s just say I cried when I received it, not because I was touched, but… well I will have to save that story for another time or I’ll run out of things to write!

Engagement – Christy & Kevin

Christy actually booked me without a consultation – I was very flattered, as she saw me at the Wedding Extravaganza in Jan 2007, almost a year before Christy contacted me and retained my service!

So when we had Christy and Kevin’s engagement shoot a couple of weeks ago, it was the first time we really met! We decided to have the engagement shoot in downtown Rochester, MN, as Christy loves historical buildings. We started at Sontes, and walked along 2nd St SW and ended up around Calvary Episcopal Church. Usually when I shoot on locations, I may have a few spots in mind, but most of the time, I’ll just check the lighting, see what backdrops go well with the models’ clothes, and decide on a spot. So by stopping here and there, the shot took 2 hours but we had fun! Kevin is more of an outdoorsy type, so we managed to find some trees and grass as backdrop to reflect him as well

Here is the cute couple! I love brick walls! We took a few others here too which I won’t post here just yet… because I want Christy and Kevin to see their guestbook in person first, so this blog post is just a teaser! I love so many of the shots it was hard to narrow them down to just three for this post

This is one of my favorites!! Love the expressions and the interaction – two persons totally in love. I also have a thing for having ivy as a backdrop

This is another favorite! I cropped it so that it is more of a pano shot. It is actually kinda funny how we found this spot – Christy saw an image* on my website that she likes, it has tall grass in the foreground and background. However, all the lawns are neatly mowed in downtown!! So we have to be creative to find something similar and then I spotted this location, and Christy and Kevin was too nice to say no to my crazy idea so they had to cuddle real close to get themselves into the gap there They were very careful and no plants were harm in the process! I really love this image in b&w as the plants created many layers thus giving the image a very 3-D look. The challenge with photography is to capture something 3D onto something 2D. That is why lighting is critical, as the lighting and the shadows give an oject its dimension.

Can’t wait till Christy and Kevin’s wedding next month!

—————–

PS – this is the image that Christy saw – coincidently, the groom in this image is also called Kevin! Some of you may remember Jenny and Kevin, my couple from last year. In fact, their 1 year annivesary is coming up soon and since this blog started after their wedding, I should post a few of their images to celebrate the occasion!

This was taken at the Mayowood Trail, so no where near close to downtown. I think Christy and Kevin’s pseudo tall grass image turns out just as nice though – altogether a different image (as I try not to copy previous images… hey otherwise I could’ve just photoshop a new couple’s faces into an old picture instead! j/k) but the most important element in both images, which is also the common factor, is the love shown.

~ christa

Books: Candyfreak & The Butterfly Garden

One of my favorite places in Rochester is the Rochester Public Library. Yeah I am a nerd I love that you can borrow many, many books (previous library I had been to limited me to 3 books and I think 30 books at another one), that you can reserve items for free, and that they have a pretty good selection of DVDs too ( Project Runway, Bones, Numb3rs, Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,  Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and other recent moves… granted sometimes I am #72 waiting in line, but I am in no rush!) They also have a fabulous service called Next Reads – you can sign up for their monthly/bi-monthly email newsletter and they will send you a list of books under the category you like! Great way to discover some new books and authors.

Those of you living in Rochester have probably heard of Rochester Reads – The one chosen this year was Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations—One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin which is one of the most inspiring books I have read (too bad I couldn’t make it to any of Greg’s presentations when he was in town!) So I was curious to see what the choics are for next year.

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond caught my eye as I love chocolate (oops just remind me, I was supposed to write about that too)! This is a quick fun read. Since I didn’t grow up in the US, I haven’t heard of some of the candy/chocolate mentioned in the book (and hey where is the Mars Bar? Or Cadbury? )I still don’t get why Snickers are the most popular chocolate bar tho :p

Warning! Reading this book has a very bad side effect – it makes you drool and want you to go eat chocolate (or candy) as you read! In fact, that’s why I was craving chocolate and had to go get some (with chocolate, it is ‘out of sight, out of mind’… if we don’t have any at the house, then I am okay, but when we have them, then they go faaassstttt!) I prefer milk chocolate, but the only chocolate we usually have is dark chocolate chips for cooking, sometimes, when the craving comes, they will have to do…

And now, I really want to try the Five Star Bars mentioned in the book!

I few other links from the books (for my future reference in case I want to try other chocolate/candy mentioned in the book!)

Steven Almond

Candydirect – online rare candy depot

Valomilk – messiest candy bar

Idahospud

Goo Goo Cluster

Twin Bing

National Confectioners Association

Oh, the book. The book itself is a little slow sometimes and the author got ’side tracked’ at times. I wish the book includes some photos of the factory tour (for those who welcomed him there) or the candy/chocolate themselves (without having to go search for them online) – hey I am a visual person I like photographs!

——————–

Another book I’d recently finihsed, which couldn’t be more different to Candyfreak, was
The Butterfly Garden: Surviving Childhood on the Run with One of Americas Most Wanted by Chip St. Clair. Chip was abused by his parents (physical and emotional) as a kid and at one point, he wasn’t quite sure if his parents were really his parents. Apparently he had appeared in some TV shows like Good Morning America after his story was told, but I have never heard of him or his book before (I can’t quite remember how I came across this book… probably browsing on amazon.com and one link led to another…) While this is an easy read (in terms of writing style, since it is not a ‘light’ story AT ALL…), I found I enjoyed reading The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, and Running with Scissors: A Memoir and A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father, both by Augusten Burroughs more – both Jeannette’s and Augusten’s stories were more bizaare/dysfunctional, but I just like their writing style better. It does not mean Chip’s story is less significant though. Some found Augusten’s books too disturbing and couldn’t finish his books, but being a psych major, it just interested me.

Apparently there is a movie made for Running with Scissors but the review wasn’t very good. Usually I enjoy the books better than the movies anyway, with the exception of the Lord of the Rings – but that’s because I have not read the book and I don’t like reading fantasy books The cinematography for the Lord of the Rings was stunning though! Even though I don’t know anything about film making or videography (which is quite different from photography), I wish I could direct a film someday. When I read, I see the sence in my head and i have faces for the characters. Maybe that is why it is usually disappointing when I see the film version of a book because they didn’t cast the same person as I’d have chosen :p

Anyway, I admired that Chip St Claire’s dedication in being a abused children advocate. My favorite part of the book is on p220-221, and p236 (I won’t spoil it by posting the excerpts here). I am glad that Chip is brave enough to share his story and help others through his story and more. He has listed some helpful resources in his books and I’ll post the links here in case anyone needs them (though I hope no one ever does… but that’s probably idealistic…):

The St. Claire Butterfly Founcation – to inspire C.H.A.N.G.E.: Creating Harmony And Nuturing Growth Everywhere

Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation – help children in crisis

Justice for Children (JFC) – advocacy of abused and neglected children

KlaasKids Foundation – stopping crimes against children

PROTECT – protection of children from abuse, exploitation, and neglect

The Bay Harbor Foundation – support the arts, education, environment and nealth and human services

ChildTrauma Academy – improve the lives of high-risk children through direct service, research and education

Which famous photographer are you?

This this quiz!

http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?obj_id=164

Which famous photographer are you? Ansel Adams: Known for large scale silver gelatin landscapes especially of Yosemite National Park “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.”

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Ha! I love B&W images, but I won’t call myself a landscape photographer AT ALL! When I see some nice landscape, I keep wanting to put a person there to pose for me with the nice backdrop instead!

I do want to go to Yosemite tho!

Engagement – Susie & Craig

Susie and Craig are getting married in less than 2 weeks!!

They chose go to to the Plummer House in Rochester MN for their engagement pictures. We ended up having to do their shot on two separate days because it rained the first time! We got some nice shots that first day, but I wanted to take more. They are such good sports, since they actually don’t live in Rochester so they have to drive back a second time. We ended up doing the second shot on the 4th of July morning which was a beautiful day!

Even though I was only at the Plummer House just a few weeks back for Alex and Andrew’s engagement pictures, the flowers looked completely different already! The gardeners at the Plummer House is doing such a good job, that there is always something blooming at different time of the year!

Here are a few teaser images!

Initially I had planned to have Susie and Craig stood at another spot, a spot I had previously scoted out before the shot started. But when we got there, I turned 45 degree to my left, and saw this spot which is even better! Sometimes we really need to just look around to see what we would otherwise miss. I love how the plants framed them, and the lighting was just beautiful at that time. This is why I love shooting outdoors without studio lighting – you are forced to find good lighting and work around that, which means I’ll end up with a different outcome for different couple, even if we shoot at the same location.

This was taken on the first day when it rained… the lighting wasn’t the greatest (very low lighting since there was a big dark cloud), but I saw this spot which I knew would look perfect in black and white. I wanted to create a more moody shot and it came out exactly how I envisioned it! Of course Susie and Craig were great models which definitely helped

Sometimes I’ll scout out locations first, but most of the time, we’ll just walk around, then I’ll spot something that works, then we’ll just photograph there. This is a spot I have passed other times before but this time it really stood out to me when I saw the foilage. I love how the layers of the leaves create a great backdrop and the leaves and branches frame Susie and Craig perfectly.

Their engagement guestbook has been designed (exclusively by me) and is now being printed and binded by a professional album maker – I don’t make the album myself because I belief I should let the experts handle something I have no experience in! I love photographing and designing albums, but I don’t work well with glue… Can’t wait to see how the guestbook turns out!

~ christa

nice weather + good food = happy christa :)

i think i may have found the best french fries!

okay, i know it is subjective… so here is the disclaimer: i don’t like big chunky fries… i like thin crispy ones. so now you have a reference point – usually i judge how much i like certain french fries with mcdonald’s fries because that’s the style i like. i am not a big potato person but i can eat a lot of macca’s (that’s australian slang for mcdonald’s) fries.

and today i came across something better: thin, crispy, freshly made, and less salty too. that, along with a thick strawberry malt with some real strawberry pieces (the extra in the tin cup made 2 big glasses) and a tasty burger made a big lunch. in fact, i was so full that i haven’t eaten anything else since lunch today (and it’s now midnight). okay, i did have a piece of chocolate truffle a couple of hours ago – those truffles deserve their own post so i’ll write about them in another entry.

you are probably wondering where i had the fries

may of you in rochester have probably been there, as the restuarant has been around for a while now. but this was my first time and i’m glad we went! i really wanted to try their cream pie, but since i was so full (from the malt) i had to skip it. next time.

the answer is: Grandma’s Kitchen at 1514 N Broadway, Rochester, MN 55906. (507) 289-0331.

i felt like i was in some old movie set when i first entered there – it still has that vintage diner charm with the booths and stools. it’s a little gem in a town full of chain restaurants! (nothing against chain restaurants… hey i  just said i like macca’s fries… but i prefer trying out local, independent restaurants.)

PS – another fries (though straightly speaking, they are not fries…) i like are the homemade potota chips from Mc Goon’s Taix Co at 7 2nd St SW, Rochester, MN 55902. (507) 288-8130. they taste like potato chips in a bag – but served hot, a bit more ‘meaty’ yet still crispy.

PPS – i really don’t get french fries that often… i try to eat healthy food, but every so often it’s okay to induldge in some fatty food. life is too short not to enjoy yummy food