Trying to see if the new e-mail subscription gadget (it's on the right--scroll down a little bit) works. I've signed myself up and so the question is, will I receive an e-mail update about this new post...? I'll let you know. Although, perhaps you should just sign up and find out for yourself...
And since I can't post without a photo (of course!):
Spanky, how did you ever get so adorable?!
Yesterday the crew headed to San Francisco to, well, visit Russia. Well, at least we got a little taste of the culture, people, food, and vodka. (:
Held at the Russian Center in San Francisco, the 2010 Russian festival was a complete success. It was held in cool old building and decorated very appropriately with:
1. Photos of old Russians of importance:
And, 2. Beautiful paintings of Moscow:
Among other things we also discovered basketball nets and old vents in the gymnasium.
How could you not like this place?! (Or Polaroids...) Yes, it's the same photo, transformed with Poladroid. I will eventually get a real Polaroid camera but until then I will continue to just be a poser... sigh.
Especially when that room was actually decorated like this for the festival:
And when you could find such delicious treats as this for purchase:
Yummm...
Upstairs there were some pretty awesome performers. I couldn't get a lot of photos because, well, it was a performance and I wasn't hired to snoop around with my camera, but I loved the classic Russian culture in the old auditorium and couldn't help myself with this one. Ha ha. Anyways, this is some famous Russian dancer who also played the accordion. Coo.
We walked back to BART instead of taking the bus and, in the glossy post rain and the beginning of the night, I got this cool photo of, well, bonus points for anybody who can tell me what building this is. (:
Overall, a very successful adventure. (:
Russia? Yeah, I've been.
Ha ha, I wishhhhh....
Dear friends, let me just say:
You have no idea how much your life is about to change. In absolutely unbelievable, completely wondrous ways. How so, you say?
Drumroll, please:
I'm proud to present this amazing, FREE software. Both MAC and (pc) compatible. Beautiful.
POLADROID.
I'm so excited I can barely say it: it transforms any photo, yes, any .jpg photo you have, into a very convincible Polaroid photo. And it does it in the most legit way possible. Once you've downloaded it you need only drag and drop your image onto the camera icon and it spits out an undeveloped Polaroid (with a very realistic "click" and print sound). True to form, you must wait a few minutes for the photo to develop (although shaking it really does speed up the process), but it's well worth the wait.
The only downside to the program that I can see is that there's no way for you as the photographer/editor to pick which part of your original 4X6 image shows up in the Polaroid image. I got a few where the subject was completely lopped off and the image was rendered ridiculous. I have decided to be happy regardless of this problem. (:
Check out a few (okay, a lot) of my transformed images below. I got a little trigger happy, but absolutely cannot wait to print some of these out for real. Polaroid effects make everything look extra cool. Check it and be excited.
And another:
Lock. (here or here or even here).
Kenny:
The old, cacti boat:
Rebecca:
Yosemite:
Photoshoot for BARE magazine:
Berkeley at night:
Portraits of old friends:
And other old friends:
mhmmmm (:
Portraits of Jenni (:
Beach (this was from the red tide ocean adventure)...
And another from that day...
Roadtrip:
I've been wanting to get a Polaroid camera for aaages now. The cameras are cheap but the film is soo expensive it's just ridiculous. Sigh. It's a bummer that this program can't print out the photos for free too, but as it is, I'm pretty happy. Poladroid is amazing and until I get my hands on a real Polaroid camera (and truckloads of film) this will most definitely keep me quite happy.
Thank you, Poladroid! (go download. now. trust me on this one. :D )
When we got to San Luis Obispo, we headed up the mountain to where Kenny stayed early in the year, before the lease started on his house. Usually the mountain is so high that it breaks through the mountains and the view is breathtaking. We weren't so lucky in that way but sometimes when you're not lucky in the way you wanted to be, you end up being luckier in so many ways.
This was one of those times.
Besides lots of photos of cool stuff from up there that I probably wont get a chance to post, I grabbed a few shots of this old boat sitting in somebody's front yard that I just adore. It had been a while since it floated, but the old cacti growing up inside of it was waay more interesting that anything I could have found in the harbor. What wonderful luck!
Lock.
Go figure.
(:
That's probably the end of the roadtrip shots. I may get nostalgic at some point and post a few more as a throwback but I think I've shared my favorites and am looking forward to new horizons. :D I leave for Florida tomorrow. Yikes. I hope I get some pretty photos while I'm there! I'll keep you updated... (:
And, overall? The roadtrip was fabulous. Absolutely faaabulous. :D
The kind of photo roadtrip that Kenny and I take includes a lot of quick stops. We're driving along and then all of sudden we pull off onto some random side street. This random stop was such wonderful luck that I still can't believe it. We ran into the very very very cool California Mission of San Miguel Archangel. It was a photographer's dream--everything old and beautiful. In fact, just seeing the photos from this location really just makes me want to hit up every mission in California with my camera. One down, twenty to go! :D
I just loved this. The off white manages to be so beautiful!
Locks! Still such an attraction for me... I blame Jessica Claire and her amazing idea for the lock project. Once she helped me to see them, I find that I can't not see locks... (:
Every detail was perfect. Absolutely.
Cool story alert! : When they built the missions in California, they marked the road between each one with a cross carved into a tree. The cross on a particular tree in the area was grown over with bark and lost until a harsh storm knocked the tree down, peeling back the bark and uncovering the old cross. It's now displayed in the mission, for all to see. And it's so beautiful! So very cool! (:
From the Mission, we headed back along Hwy 101. It's the old El Camino Real and it's perfectly old school and wonderfully picturesque. (:
I kinda feel like this is a very classic, quintessential roadtrip photo. Score.
I have to say that despite all the beautiful things I see around me, one of my favorite things to shoot is still portraits of people. Poor Kenny. On our roadtrip I wanted so bad to shoot photos of people in the beautiful places we found that more often than not I forced him to, "Stand there!" for me and pose. He only puts up with it for a moment, but I always manage to snag a few shots before he loses patience with me. (:
But the upside of it all is that, lucky Kenny, I always get a few cool ones of him shooting. Exibition A of cool photographer in the field: [ :D ]
There's something so unavoidably cool about old cars...
This one is my favorite of these three. (:
But I'm diggin' the textures on this one. Especially with the rain. Score.
Vrooom...
Kenny and I took a very impromptu roadtrip down the coast to San Luis Obispo (as in, "hey, we should go on a roadtrip tomorrow." "okay. leave at 6AM?"). We drove down Highway One, leaving before the sun rose (yikes!) from Half Moon Bay and then coming back up Highway 101. The point was to collect as many beautiful photos as possible, which isn't hard when you live in the most beautiful place in the world (well, one of them anyways).This wasn't the kind of roadtrip we took, but I still thought it was fairly classic. It kind of makes me want to drive across the country one day. Not that I wasn't planning on doing that at some point anyways. But still.
Great White Heron. I honestly believe that herons are the most beautiful creatures on earth. mmm, take that back: they're second, after butterflies. (:
I discovered this one at Elkhorn Slough, just outside of Santa Cruz. Gorgeous.
Winery. Or something.
I could barely get the little birdies to sit still for me, but this one was sort of cooperating. (:
Maybe when I grown up I'll put a sculpture on my house too. :P
There are SOOOO many cool photos from this trip. There's no way I could ever upload them all here, but in the next week or so I'll be uploading a few of my favorites and I can't wait for you to see them. Check back for new photos! (:
Happy New Year and best wishes in 2010!
