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!

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.

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)

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!