Aperture 1.4 {focused blur}

Very Excited

  It's been in the works for quite sometime and Jessica and I have been trying to work out all the details before saying anything but I am very excited to announce that I will be joining Jessicasprague.com and teaching an online photography class! It will be a six week limited enrollment online beginning course. This is a class for anyone who has a DSLR but is afraid to take it off of auto.  I've been getting a lot of emails from people wondering if they are ready for an event like CPR.  This class isn't a replacement for that event ( that event is an intermediate event) but it would be great to prepare you to go there! For more details about the class and when to sign up look for Jessica's grand reopening in just a few days!  If you thought her website was amazing before just wait until you see the redesign this week!  I always try to be very careful about who I choose to work with, I have had offers to teach online places before and turned them down but when Jessica and I talked about teaching this class, I knew it would be a great partnership! I've been so impressed with her each time we work together.  Her work ethic is amazing and her desire to teach people what she knows about digital scrapbooking is contagious! She is funny, and bright and if you haven't been to her website( I'm guessing most of you have)  you really should!

www.jessicasprague.com

  I have been wanting to teach a class like this for quite sometime.  Writing articles and teaching a few hours at CKU has been an amazing experience and it's one that I won't be giving up anytime soon but I've missed seeing the progression that a longer class can bring to students.  The amazing thing about teaching at a college was that I got to see the students go from never having picked up an SLR to really feeling confident in their ability to use the camera and I have the same hope for this class!  I'm so excited!

  If you want to see Jessica's comment about the class go here!

http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/blog/2008/5/29/countdown-to-relaunch-t-minus-7-days-news-sneaks.html

 

busy, busy!

To say that my life is a whirl wind of activity lately would be a serious understatement. It's been so busy, but a good kind of busy.  I kept putting off writing here because wanted to write about everything that has happened and that list became so big I knew I couldn't write it quickly.  Now I think I'm just going to have to give a quick update or people might think I've left the blogging world.   So here is a modified update of the last week or two.

  1.Last weekend was the stationary so and there were so many, many cool things to see.  I will post a few things I loved later.

  2. So, so many projects and deadlines my head is spinning so much time was devoted to that!  It's October in my publishing mind and focusing on Halloween these past few weeks was a bit odd but very fun!

  3.  Umbrella #3 in the series. These people came to stay with us for a week!

I'm not sure if I like the color or the sepia...still deciding on that one.  I guess I'll wait and see how the rest of the photo's go.  ( if you didn't read about this before, I am taking a picture of everyone who visits with an umbrella somewhere in NYC and then I'm going to fill a wall with them)

This is my sister Stephanie, her husband Larry and their baby Creed!  If you can't tell he is the sweet baby from below.  We did so many things with them! And it was really fun to have them visit.

4. One of the things we did was shop!  Larry watched the boys so Steph and I could head out.  One of my favorite stores here in Brooklyn is City Foundry.  They have a ton of cool letters off of old buildings but they are all really old and super out of my price range.  However this week they had some foam core letters made to look like metal that came from Broadway and were priced just right!  How cool is that?  A big letter S from an old Broadway set!  Perfect for our family right now!  Here is a picture of the shop I borrowed from my sister blog.

  5. This weekend was the Brooklyn Bridges 125 Birthday!  So to celebrate they had a bunch of activities in the park next to it.  One of them was an outdoor showing of Enchanted.  Here are a few pictures so you can see how cool it was!

Lying on an old flannel blanket with Grant and Cole cuddled up in between Mark and I as we held hands, with the Brooklyn Bridge all lit up( it changed colors to match the movie) a musical playing on a big screen and the Manhattan skyline in the background.  Could anything be more romantic or lovely or magical? Not to me.  It was an amazing family moment that I know I'll remember forever.  I guess it doesn't take much to make me happy if a free movie does it!

Well, that's about it for now!  I have to run and get back to work!  Hope everyone had a great weekend!

CK Contest

I just wanted to write a quick little post to let you all know that Creating Keepsakes is giving away a Nikon D60.  I'm may not be a Nikon user myself but it's a great camera and would be a fun thing to win! It's a package worth about 750 dollars and all you have to do is go here to sign up.

http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/contests/contest.ihtml?contest_id=351

  The contest runs until July 15th and you can only enter once so tell all your friends!

More photos

I've been behind on editing photos for a while and I came across these in my attempt to catch up.  These are of my sister and my nephew Creed.

I love this one of the two of them.

Stephanie had a great idea for this picture and I love how the shot turned out. His shadow is perfect!

I'm not sure how I feel about these two. he looks adorable,don't get me wrong, I was just trying some new processing.  I wanted them to have a vintage feel similar to some photo's that we have of my Dad as a baby.  I think I achieved that I'm just not sure that I like it.  What do you think?

Last one, Creed in his very fun and bright nursery my sister designed.

Hope you like them Steph!

Is that a real Picasso?

So, the Stringham family had a very excellent weekend!  We spent Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival.  They have a family street fair every year and we though it would be fun to check it out.

  The boys got to play lot's of games and win prizes like NY knicks tee-shirts and posters of the Giants team. They watched magic shows:

Cole LOVED the magic show.  He was clapping and laughing.  It was so fun to watch.

  They also had their faces painted. I wasn't sure how Cole would like it because they did it with air brushes but he insisted and he was did a great job sitting still, even the artist commented on how great the boys were.

The results were Fabulous!

Here they are all standing in the street and Cole hamming it up!

The food was also great.  The boys chose pizza as always but the rest of us went for Indian food!

  Wait, are you wondering who the extra person is in this photo? Meet Matt. One of my very dearest friends. I don't think that I have ever even talked about him here.  I met him on the third day of school in Drama class my senior year of High school he asked if I wanted to be his scene partner for a Shakespeare assignment and I was so grateful.  We moved to Utah the day before my senior year started from Hawaii. I was a total fish out of water in that high school. It was so different from school in Hawaii and I really didn't know anyone.

  We preformed Othello, and have been best friends ever since.  Even in college we worked together at a Mexican restaurant as servers for two years.  Good times people, seriously good times. I spent all of my waking hours outside of studying and working with Matt and our other best friend Jerusha ( yes that was her name, people were always asking her if she was joking when she told them it). And we caused much chaos and had many adventures.  He was my model for like half of my photo assignments in school. He was a great partner in crime.

  And lucky for me he lives in New York!  As he has for the last several years with his boyfriend Andy.  Isn't he fabulous looking?  I have to say he turned out much cooler than I could ever be.  And that's okay, because it's fun to have someone randomly call you and say, " Hey what are you doing right now, we are having a party with the models from Australia's Next Top Model. Wanna come over?"  Ummm, I was in my pajama's at home so I turned that one down.  But still it's fun to know someone who is doing crazy things like that!

  His boyfriend Andy designs the sound for Michael Feinstein's shows. ( He's a famous Jazz musician) and so Matt housesit's whenever they are all gone on tour for Michael.  He took us to the townhouse so that the boys could play with the cats.  It was the most beautiful home I have ever seen and as we walked in Matt casually throws in..."Oh yeah, I don't think children have ever been in this house so...."  Nice.  We didn't stay long but the cats did love the boys and the feeling was mutual.

You could seriously have a photoshoot in every room it was beautiful but I felt strange being there so the only other picture I took was of this:

Yeah it's a picture of one of the bathrooms.Why, you ask? Because those are Picasso's.  As in actual Picasso's not copies. Hanging over the toilet. What else can I say about that. lol.

After that we decided to head on our merry way home.  We had such a fun family day and it was great to see Matt again!

So last year I did a Spring Music mix post

And someone asked for a new one this year, it was fun to go through some of my new favorite songs and find the upbeat springy ones so here it is:

My 1st NYC in spring mix:

Love is Free  Sheryl Crow

Stupid for You  Marie Digby

Umbrella  Marie Digby

I'm in Love  Janet Seidel

SO-So  Brooke Waggoner

From My Heart to yours Laura Izibor

Sweeter than this  Katie Herzig ( my new theme song and repeat fav.  I love her voice and this song)

Back in Your Head (Live) Tegan and Sarah

Hideaway  The Weepies

Overboard Ingrid Michaelson ( no mix could be complete without one of her songs!)

Foolsgold Katie Herzig

I listened to this all day yesterday while walking around Manhattan and it was lovely, both Manhattan and the music were perfect.  Hope you like it!

  Also Stacy I just wanted to say thank you for all the tips you have been leaving me.  I don't have your email address but I wanted you to know that they are very encouraging!

  And Aude, email me!  I'd love to meet up for french pastries!

busy,busy, busy!

So much going on here. Grant had spring break last week and I gave the boys a list of activities that they could choose from, we spent a lot of time at parks and the activity they chose off the list was to go to the Natural History Museum. 

   Ummm....they were not amused or impressed.  Look at their faces in this picture. And no, that is not meant to be the Whatever W it's supposed to be three horns.  Get it? I think after seeing the movie A Night at The Museum they were expecting talking and moving things.

It was so big though that we haven't yet been to the space section or the children's exploration room so hopefully they will like it better the next time.

And they did really, really like the Water exhibit and I actually enjoyed it too.  I learned a lot for example Did you know that Americans use around 510 gallons of water a day while people in the UK only use 120.  Ummmm that's a big difference and it makes me sad that we waste so much water.  We will be working on that around our house.

    We also explored a few cupcake bakeries.  Which was an activity well loved by everyone. I'm thinking a fun family Saturday would be to go to a few different cupcake shops and vote on our favorite.  There are a ton here.  Sadly though New Yorkers seem to really like dry cake, and ummmm can I just say yuck.  This pretty cupcake below....dryer than cardboard, but still photographs well. lol.

Other than that I passed this on my way home from a business lunch. Don't mind the picture, I was trying to take it while defending myself from some guy who told me I had the most beautiful dimples he had ever seen and could we get coffee to which I held up my left hand and then he said and I quote, "I'll be your dirty little mistress".  To which I said, "Ummm lines from Grey's Anatomy don't work on me.  Thanks but no thanks." All of this went on while I was struggling to get my camera out of my purse so I could hurry up and take the photo. I think I'm a magnet for crazy. 

  Anyway, the late night show...with taxi's in front.  What's more NYC than that?

   And then I went to Tinsel and Trading Company. Hello, vintage trims, vintage flowers, and German glass glitter?  I think I'm in love. 

Here is a photo from the outside looking in.  See all those colorful things on the wall?  They are sample flowers on the wall of boxes and boxes of vintage goodness.

 

Photo Information

I received a few comments and a lot of emails asking for the technical information for the photo below of the couple kissing in Central Park so I thought I'd share a little bit.

The Camera:  Canon 20d ( It's not the camera that I normally use it's my old back up camera but I've been using it here in New York because I feel comfortable carrying it around I'd be more nervous to be traveling around New York with my more expensive new camera.)

The lens:  A lot of people asked me this one, it's a Tamron lens, specifically  the 28- 70 2.8.  I've been doing some work with them and I love the lenses that I've gotten to try.  The 17-50 2.8 and the 28-70 2.8 are almost constantly on my camera right now.

What actions do I use?:  I've been getting this one a lot too.  I actually don't use many actions for color.  I have gotten to the point where my own post processing is in tune with what I want it to be. I almost always use an action for my black and whites though because I have found a source that I love.  It's Barb from Jinky art's itty bitty actions.  Her actions have long been a favorite of mine but you do need to understand layers in photoshop for them to really work.   

  There are so many great actions out there though and there are a lot I have been dying to try I just haven't gotten to them yet.  But I will soon and I'll be sure to write about it here when I do if I find any that I really love.

  I can honestly say one of the best things I've done for my photography in the last few years was to learn adobe camera raw .  I've always shot everything in raw and it is amazing the options and the control that adobe raw gives you.  I love it.

The photo was shot at 1/500 at 2.8  I wanted to make sure to separate Emily and Jacob from the background, which was pretty but very busy.

Hope that answers everyone's questions!

   

I'm in love again.

It's true and I owe it all to New York I suppose.  So at least New York and I have that if nothing else right now. My camera and I seem to be back in tune, and it's making me so, so happy. I love photography again. For a while there I was worried I was so burned out on taking pictures I would never want to again.  And in case you haven't figured it out if a photographer doesn't want to take pictures it's sort of bad for business. But no, my camera and I love each other again and all is right with the world.  I think it's all the new back drops.  What do you think?

Umbrella series number 2

Spring is here!

So, it's been a while since I did a "things making me happy" post so I thought I'd throw up a list. 

First up, these pins made by, you guessed it, one of my BFF'S Sarah.  I love these pins so much I haven't even taken them out of the packages she made for them.  I have them on my bookshelf in my room so I can look at them each time I pass by.

Hello Twilight pins? Could anything be cooler? She actually made these for another friend but Chloe, Emily and I saw them and BEGGED her for a set.  ( I should note that she doesn't sell these, they were just for personal fun use.)

Then because I'm so good at begging, she surprised me with an extra set with quotes and pictures of things we have said or loved. So things like, "I love Jane Austen" or  " Sarah loves James McAvoy"  and the ever classic "I'm still growing as princess." from the awesomest show ever, American Princess. And they are all in fun colors and remind me so much of my friends that I laugh when I read them. 

   

Next up is my new t.v. obsession-   When we moved to Athens for Gradschool three and a half years ago it was so depressing to me.  It was tiny ( by tiny I mean they had a university, a walmart  and a few farms, that was about it)and in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't know anyone.  Mark was gone all the time for school and plays so it was just me and two very little boys.  I started watching Gilmore Girls.  I think it was in it's fourth season.  My sister had all the d.v.d's from the first 3 seasons. So I would watch a few episodes every night while I was home alone.  I wasn't working for CK yet so that left a lot of very boring late night hours.  It was the perfect timing for that show in my life.  I started seeing the quirky Stars Hallowness in everything I would do and see in Athens.  You know quaint odd little eastern city with lot's of characters to fill the town.  It really made me open up and look around and I made some very good friends there!  Anyway, the point is it was the perfect show to fill my hours in Athens and now I've found the perfect show for here.  Another WB/CW classic that has gone the way of the dinosaurs but still great nevertheless.

Veronica Mars

Veronica Mars is the perfect New York show for me.  She is peppy, vibrant and not afraid of the bad guys.  Plus I really loved Nancy Drew and lets be honest...no Mom? Great Father figure?  Cool best friends?  She is the modern version of those books. So I'm now going forth into New York with the same spirit of investigation and wit.  Or at least I'd like to think I am...

Next up, cleaning.  I mean we all have to do it and it's no fun so we might as well find things to like about it.  I found this:

Method dish washing soap in French Lavender.  It seriously smells like you are walking in a field of lavender in the south of France.  Okay I've never actually walked through a field of Lavender in France but if I ever do I'm sure it will smell like this.

And lastly spring time in NY- at least we are here for a few weeks of prettiness and nice weather instead of starting out in the heat of summer or the freezing winter.  And it's the perfect time to act out the final scene of you've got mail.  You know the scene where it's spring in central park and Meg is waiting and hoping that the guy is Tom Hanks? And it is then that some of the cheesiest lines of romantic comedy history are uttered.  "Don't cry shop girl".  It's true, I love cheese but even this is a bit strong for me. Still, sigh, I love that movie and now I can go and see right where it is filmed.  Good times people.