Justin and Mary - Walk Through a Wedding San Francisco

This was a crazy week. Still is, in fact. Not really a moment of spare time anywhere to be found.

But (mostly) I'm not bitter, because it's been amazing. You see, a few weeks ago, on a spontaneous (and rather expensive) whim I signed up for Justin and Mary's Spread the Love and Walk Through a Wedding workshops. Spread the Love was on Monday. It's a lecture-style workshop, and basically you just sit down and write notes as fast as you can for 7 hours straight. Yes, seven hours! And man, there was a lot of information. I was so busy writing notes that I didn't have time to take any pictures.

But if Spread the Love was hands off and pencils up, Walk Through a Wedding was totally different. First, Justin and Mary talked a bit about how they prepare for weddings and the whys of what they do. Then they taught us their method of shooting details. Basically it's all about side lighting from a window. And the results are pretty good. Then we got a chance to practice shooting details ourselves.

Our 'bride and groom' were Elizabeth and Ryan of Elizabeth Ryan photography, and they rocked out the fake wedding, happily posing again and again for us all.

Naturally, everyone was fairly trigger happy. It seemed like the group was pretty evenly split between Nikon and Canon shooters. Justin and Mary shoot Nikon, but they were happy to attempt to teach us Canon folk.

And we all got a chance to shoot the bride and her various 'fathers' walking down the aisle. (Left is Justin, right is Dean from Reno.)

THEN we went on to Bourbon and Branch for the 'reception', a 'secret' club/bar/I'm-not-sure-what hidden in the heart of SF. I had never been there before, and while it was a bit tricky shooting as there was zero natural light, it was really cool. And it gave me a lot of practice bouncing my flash, and shooting with an umbrella.

Here are some of the bridesmaids. I loved the styling of it all.

The details were killer!

And Julia was an excellent candy girl.

Some more portraits of the happy couple.

All in all, it was a great day! And I learned a lot. Thanks, Justin and Mary!

My New Favorite Toy

I'd like you to meet my new friend. Internet, meet my CitiZ by Nespresso. CitiZ, meet the internet. (Actually, you two have probably met before, right?)

I can't tell just yet if it's a dangerous obsession or the love of my life.

You see, what happened was a couple who are friends of mine was moving back to Austria (yes, I know, I'm so cool with all my international friends) and they had a coffee machine dilemma. Option 1: take it back on the plane, and have no room for clothing. Option 2: ship it, and pay almost what the machine is worth. Option 3: Leave it safe with Jessica until such time as they can come reclaim it. Fortunately for me they chose option three, and my coffee addiction was born. Or rather, re-born. Born again, maybe.

Anyway, the most annoying thing about it is that you have to use the proprietary capsules to make the coffee. But I can almost forgive this when I look at how nicely packaged it all is. I mean, look at all those colors! Every color is a different coffee blend. Some are regionals, some are different blends, some are roasted more or less. There's a whole booklet you can read about the different varieties. And I don't know about you, but I love getting education with my morning brew. I still can't really tell the difference between them all, but I have faith that I will be able to.

The kinds of coffee all have poetic names, like Capriccio, or Levanto, or Finezzo. And because they're so well sealed, I don't have to worry that the coffee is oxidizing. Because I always used to worry about my coffee meeting with that nefarious oxygen. Seriously, it would keep me up nights.

Okay, not seriously. But still. One less thing to worry about, you know?

And it comes with a milk frother. So I've been sipping on lattes and cappucinos galore!

Anyone want to come over for an espresso? It's on me!

No Time to Blog!

I'll be back tomorrow, I promise. Word of honor.

Hard Light

Not usually my favorite kind of light to photograph in, you can see why it's not very flattering on most people. Bright highlights, dark shadows. But I think it makes the cat look a bit demonic and kind of cool.

Mouseover Monday 3 - No More Weekend Posts?

Sorry for the lack of posts over the weekend; I was very busy with all sorts of photography stuff. I'm considering taking the weekends off of blogging, anyhow. Posting seven days a week tends to eat into the time I could be using to do other things. Still, I love blogging, and I really credit this blog and having to post an image every day with the progress I see in my photography. Plus, I tend to imagine that the world stops when I fail to post on a given day, which is really not the case.

Tough call. I think I'll try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes.

Anyway, about the processing: this is the beauty of Silver Efex Pro. I just love the flexibility of their black and white conversions. Maybe next week I'll post a Lightroom B&W and compare it to an SEP conversion, just so you can see the difference. It's staggering.

50mm, f/1.6, 1/80s, ISO 250 Mouse over to see the original.

Have you shot any good black and whites lately? I'd love to see them in the comments!

Thiebaud Cake

Had this super cool cake at the Blue Bottle Cafe at MoMA yesterday. It's inspired by artist Wayne Thiebaud.  When I googled him, I found this super cool fractions lesson using his paintings. Check it out!