This past weekend was so packed with activity I didn't have a chance to stop moving long enough to do any computer work at all. I sat down this morning with a backlog from 3 photo sessions plus enough family snapshots to fill an album.
First off, the photo I'm sharing with you today is one taken from my cousin's engagement session Saturday night. She was so good about letting me try different and experimental things. This is one I'm really happy with. I wanted to demonstrate this couple's love by showing them standing still and into each other while the world around them is bustling with activity. I used a really slow shutter speed and had my cousin and her fiance stand perfectly still. The tricky part was getting people to pass by us at their normal pace. Everyone wanted to stand back and be polite by not getting into the picture. They couldn't understand why I would WANT them to walk into the frame.
I have hours and hours of processing time ahead of me still. I hope to give my cousin at least 100 pictures to choose from and I took hundreds of shots.
Another session I had Saturday was tons of fun. We threw a bride into an inner tube and had her float the Comal river a little ways. I love what I've seen so far from that session and can't wait to process some of those shots and get them up.
Last of all, yesterday was Mother's Day as I'm sure you'll remember. After a very late night Saturday getting in from Austin (for my cousin's session) I was looking forward to sleeping late. That was thwarted by my darling daughter who decided to bring me breakfast in bed at the crack of dawn. It was their school assignment to prepare a menu for mom and then surprise her in bed. I wonder how many other second graders in my neighborhood got the same lovely surprise!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Rare day off!
I couldn't believe my luck today but it turned out I had a rare day off. Wow! I hardly knew what to do with myself. I managed to keep busy, however, and am now shocked that the day is almost over. Where did it go?! I ended up spending a few hours online this morning doing some website edits and creating some postcards for publicity. I sent those off to the printer and should have them in a couple of weeks. My dear neighbor and friend has generously offered to take some postcards to her OB's office when they come in. I'm starting a massive (well massive for me) advertising campaign and am hoping to reach out to the pregnant crowd. I started offering a "Baby's First Year" package that will include six photo sessions from pre-natal all the way up to baby's first birthday. I love pregnancy and nursing photos -- as is evident from past blogs as well as my Beauty of Motherhood gallery.
The Blaschke family had some trauma and some rejoicing the past 24 hours. Last night it seems our mischievious but oh-so-adorable Siamese kitten kocked over the finch cage and ate one of my daughter's three birds. There were many teardrops and tender moments of consolation. Daddy vacuumed up a plethora of feathers and put the naughty kitten in the garage for the night. This afternoon, however, my daughter was picking up her room and came across a scared, but very much alive, little finch huddled in the corner behind her dresser. This time we saw tears of joy as she scooped the little bird up and returned her to her cage with her family. Daddy, was of course baffled -- he had assumed the bird gone into the tummy of naughty kitten since there were very many feathers and signs of destruction all around and of course one missing finch.
On another note, the swine flu scare has run its course and the Comal ISD has announced that school will resume tomorrow instead of next Monday. It seems the swine flu has turned out to not be as bad as everyone feared and there have been no more cases confirmed since the initial two last week. I'm very happy that this bug is not going to be the killer we had feared. I'm also glad the girls will have school once again -- they were getting a bit bored and we were all getting stir crazy staying in the house. I took them to Chik Fil A for lunch today to celebrate our return to society. But we certainly sanitized our hands afterwards.
The Blaschke family had some trauma and some rejoicing the past 24 hours. Last night it seems our mischievious but oh-so-adorable Siamese kitten kocked over the finch cage and ate one of my daughter's three birds. There were many teardrops and tender moments of consolation. Daddy vacuumed up a plethora of feathers and put the naughty kitten in the garage for the night. This afternoon, however, my daughter was picking up her room and came across a scared, but very much alive, little finch huddled in the corner behind her dresser. This time we saw tears of joy as she scooped the little bird up and returned her to her cage with her family. Daddy, was of course baffled -- he had assumed the bird gone into the tummy of naughty kitten since there were very many feathers and signs of destruction all around and of course one missing finch.
On another note, the swine flu scare has run its course and the Comal ISD has announced that school will resume tomorrow instead of next Monday. It seems the swine flu has turned out to not be as bad as everyone feared and there have been no more cases confirmed since the initial two last week. I'm very happy that this bug is not going to be the killer we had feared. I'm also glad the girls will have school once again -- they were getting a bit bored and we were all getting stir crazy staying in the house. I took them to Chik Fil A for lunch today to celebrate our return to society. But we certainly sanitized our hands afterwards.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Lost data, a trip to stonehenge and more family portraits
This past weekend has been a bit of a whirlwind for the family. Last week was sad and dark. We didn't know what would happen with this Swine Flu scare, we were nervous about that plus we had a personal loss in the household. The weekend, however, picked up for us with a family roadtrip to Stonehenge II near Kerrville. I had been wanting to see it for a while but it seems we just could never fit it into our schedule. With the Swine Flu forcing all kinds of cancellations, we finally had a moment. On the way out we stopped at the Cave Without a Name -- which we had also been trying to make it to for a long time. We got a personal tour of the cave because nobody else showed up at that time. We couldn't have asked for a more peaceful trip.
I've been processing photos from that trip all weekend and had a really great family photo session yesterday with some neighbors of mine -- look for their portraits on the Family page in my gallery. Just when I thought things were looking up -- SMASH -- literally. My darling husband accidentally kicked over the harddrive in the middle of a download. Uh-oh. Now it's making a strange whirring sound when we turn it on and of course the computer is not recognizing it. The nice folks who helped us recover some lost data on the desktop computer a while back had some grim news for us. They can't recover it. It may be possible to recover them in a clean room at a cost of about $700. Ouch. Fortunately for me I'm anal about backing up and had multiple copies of most of my finished photographs on various online galleries. But unfortunately for me I hadn't burned any discs recently so I lost all the original raw files of a lot of photographs. Raw is like a digital negative of a print. I shoot in RAW and then I make magic in Photoshop and save the prints in JPEG format for publication and print making. I still have all the JPEGs, but the RAW files are gone. But what's really tragic for me is that I had some home videos on that hard drive that had not been backed up yet. I'm sick about the loss of those. But I haven't given up yet. It still may be possible to save them. We're looking into it. I did learn some valuable lessons to this. Back-up. Not just once, not just every now and then. But back-up fast and back-up often.
My poor husband lost a lot more than me in the accident. Years and years of writing. He hadn't learned the back-up thing yet. Or actually he did, just not as well as me. Wish us luck and if anyone has any ideas for us on how to save our files, let me know.
I've been processing photos from that trip all weekend and had a really great family photo session yesterday with some neighbors of mine -- look for their portraits on the Family page in my gallery. Just when I thought things were looking up -- SMASH -- literally. My darling husband accidentally kicked over the harddrive in the middle of a download. Uh-oh. Now it's making a strange whirring sound when we turn it on and of course the computer is not recognizing it. The nice folks who helped us recover some lost data on the desktop computer a while back had some grim news for us. They can't recover it. It may be possible to recover them in a clean room at a cost of about $700. Ouch. Fortunately for me I'm anal about backing up and had multiple copies of most of my finished photographs on various online galleries. But unfortunately for me I hadn't burned any discs recently so I lost all the original raw files of a lot of photographs. Raw is like a digital negative of a print. I shoot in RAW and then I make magic in Photoshop and save the prints in JPEG format for publication and print making. I still have all the JPEGs, but the RAW files are gone. But what's really tragic for me is that I had some home videos on that hard drive that had not been backed up yet. I'm sick about the loss of those. But I haven't given up yet. It still may be possible to save them. We're looking into it. I did learn some valuable lessons to this. Back-up. Not just once, not just every now and then. But back-up fast and back-up often.
My poor husband lost a lot more than me in the accident. Years and years of writing. He hadn't learned the back-up thing yet. Or actually he did, just not as well as me. Wish us luck and if anyone has any ideas for us on how to save our files, let me know.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Swine Flu scare
I'm sure everyone has heard about the swine flu scare that's plaguing our town right now. My children are home from school and we've decided to stay put and push everything else aside until this blows over. I've canceled all my sessions for this weekend and won't be going out at all. I hope we'll all look back on this a few weeks from now and say "wow that was a lot of fear over a small thing." Of course if it turns out to be a false alarm then everyone will say we overreacted, if it turns into a deadly epidemic, everyone will say we should have done more. In this case it's better to err on the side of caution.
I am worried about my daughter's first communion, which was supposed to be Sunday. I'm wondering if church will be canceled. If it is, then I guess her communion will happen later. The whole family was supposed to come into town for it and I'm sure they won't want to if New Braunfels turns into an epicenter of this thing. Visions of that movie Outbreak are running through my mind -- the one where the government surrounded the town and kept everyone inside through force and then planned on bombing it until Dustin Hoffman rushed in with the antidote at the last minute.
Let's pray for a Hollywood ending to this saga.
I am worried about my daughter's first communion, which was supposed to be Sunday. I'm wondering if church will be canceled. If it is, then I guess her communion will happen later. The whole family was supposed to come into town for it and I'm sure they won't want to if New Braunfels turns into an epicenter of this thing. Visions of that movie Outbreak are running through my mind -- the one where the government surrounded the town and kept everyone inside through force and then planned on bombing it until Dustin Hoffman rushed in with the antidote at the last minute.
Let's pray for a Hollywood ending to this saga.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Girl Scouts, Earth Day, sunburn, ouch
Earth Day was a blast today with my Girl Scout troop. We set up a tent at the New Braunfels Earth Day Festival to dish out sun-made s'mores and play a scavenger hunt game with the kiddos. The girls had fun despite our constant battle with wind gusts that seemed determined to knock us out. We had to rescue the flying tent several times and we had a nasty accident with the solar oven when the wind whipped it over, smashing its glass top into a million pieces. But we perceivered (did I spell that right). The girls earned several badges today and took home a nice T-shirt to boot! I managed to get a few good shots of the s'mores and the girls, but I'm a bit too sunburned and tired to download my pictures tonight. It'll have to wait until tomorrow.
In other studio news, I had a quickie session with another nursing mom this morning. I hope I was able to get a few shots for her nursing but it proved to be a challenge. This little one simply did not want to nurse this morning. This was the first time I tried to get shots of a mom nursing in Landa Park and I'm guessing in the future we'll have to save that for the teeny tiny babies who are not yet interested in the world around them. This little one was just entering that explore-the-world phase and had absolutely no interest in nursing when there were ducks to be tormented. She was a sweetie, of course, and I, being the baby lovin' lady that I am, chose to simply follow her around and snap off a few shots of her mischief. We'll see how they turn out.
In other studio news, I had a quickie session with another nursing mom this morning. I hope I was able to get a few shots for her nursing but it proved to be a challenge. This little one simply did not want to nurse this morning. This was the first time I tried to get shots of a mom nursing in Landa Park and I'm guessing in the future we'll have to save that for the teeny tiny babies who are not yet interested in the world around them. This little one was just entering that explore-the-world phase and had absolutely no interest in nursing when there were ducks to be tormented. She was a sweetie, of course, and I, being the baby lovin' lady that I am, chose to simply follow her around and snap off a few shots of her mischief. We'll see how they turn out.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Jayme's infrared
The picture you are looking at to your right was taken by my husband, Jayme Blaschke. It is an infrared photo of the Hays County Court House in San Marcos. Jayme is a big fan of infrared and has some amazing captures in the Architecture section of my site. You can find his blog at: http://jlbgibberish.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
This weekend's session
Well I've been Photoshopping like mad the past three days and I have the numb wrist to prove it. As I mentioned previously, I had more than 650 shots to sort through and from which to choose. I narrowed it down to about 85 shots that I like (all in all there were at least a hundred that I loved but some were so similar I had to choose between them). So on top of my normal duties as mommy, childcare giver, Girl Scout leader, and wife I've also been taking advantage of naptime and "Daddy's home" time to get these photos edited and ready for sharing as soon as possible -- with very little sleep along the way. I think the processing of the photo is my favorite part -- that's when the finished print really comes to life.
That being said, I'm a bit surprised by my choice of my favorite shot. It's this one. I did very little post shoot processing on this one. There was no use of flash or reflector, very little magical editing in Photoshop. This shot is just a simple use of available light from a window and I think it speaks volumes. What is she looking at? Did she just wake up on the day of her wedding and decide to try on the veil and dance around the room when something got her attention outside? Could it be her groom coming to see her? What also makes it special in my opinion is that Kristina is not wearing a drop of make-up. It's glamorous and seductive in the most natural sense possible. What do you think?
That being said, I'm a bit surprised by my choice of my favorite shot. It's this one. I did very little post shoot processing on this one. There was no use of flash or reflector, very little magical editing in Photoshop. This shot is just a simple use of available light from a window and I think it speaks volumes. What is she looking at? Did she just wake up on the day of her wedding and decide to try on the veil and dance around the room when something got her attention outside? Could it be her groom coming to see her? What also makes it special in my opinion is that Kristina is not wearing a drop of make-up. It's glamorous and seductive in the most natural sense possible. What do you think?
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