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Magazine

Fun With Flowers…

California Country Magazine asked me to photograph the orchids and the process of growing and shipping the orchids, at Rocket Farms in Salinas, California. I had never seen so many amazing flowers in one place. It was a fun adventure and now I am the proud owner of my very own orchid, although I am very nervous, because I am not so good at taking care of things that don’t remind me when they need water and food. But if Rocket Farms can take care of thousands and thousands of orchids then I should be able to keep one alive – we will see how long my little one will last.

And for those curious photography minds who are wondering how I photographed these flowers… I held each one up in the air with my left hand so they were completely backlit by the light coming through the greenhouse ceiling and with my right hand I focused and pushed the shutter. It was definitely a shaky operation so I was happy for auto-focus and high shutter speeds. This assignment just proves the lengths I will go to, to avoid using tripods and lights.

Natural Dyes with Mimi and California Country Magazine…

It is nice to be connected with people who promote my photography, since I don’t do a good job of promoting myself. Ever since I returned from London, I have been meaning to take my portfolio around to magazines in the area, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet.

But luckily, Mimi, my soon-to-be-mother-in-law, is an amazing person with a wonderful lifestyle that magazines want to write about. So when Brandon, from California Country Magazine, called her and said they wanted to do a story about her and her natural dying process, she said, “I have just the photographer for you.”

It was so fun to have a taste of what real magazine work, and budgets, are like. The magazine gave me a shot list and an exact number of photos that they wanted… and when Brandon asked me if I would be “ok” with their day rate… I had to try and remain cool and not act surprised…. yeah, I guess that’ll do.

These are just some of my favorites from the day and what I learned about natural dying…

First… collect your plant material… Mimi uses black walnuts, dahlias, onion skins, marigolds and tansy (shown below.)

Here is a super simplified instruction list for making your own natural dyes:

Put your material in your pot…

bring it to boil…

cook for an hour…

strain it…

let it cool…

add a mordant (Mimi uses nontoxic mordants like alum and cream of tarter)…

add your pre-soaked wool…

bring to boil again…

cook for an hour…

cool in dye…

rinse until water runs clear…

and hang to dry.

Thanks to: Mimi for promoting me, and to California Country Magazine for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. I hope it is just the beginning of my magazine assignments.

You can buy Mimi’s beautiful natural dyed wool at the Pt. Reyes Farmers’ Market in front of Toby’s Feed Barn on Saturdays, or she will soon be at the Marin Civic Center Farmers’ Market on Sundays.

Another Comparison…

I apologize for being repetitive… but now that I have said sorry… here I go again… these are the Rollei’s version of the same weekend adventures… and my conclusion on the battle between film and digital… I like both. I think both have the potential (depending on the human making the decisions) to take really beautiful photographs… but they are different. They create different photos… and depending on what you want to photograph, you have to make the call. Or not, like me, and just lug around two obnoxious cameras and see what you get.

Here my cold friends are admiring the view for me, while I fiddle with the Rollei’s knobs, I think at this point, as their heads were blowing away, they would have preferred I stuck with digital.

And this is for Frank, he wanted the kiss…. and he almost has it.


Weekend at the Beach

My assignment this weekend… photograph a few of the beaches in Sonoma County… the problem: the wind chill factor felt like it was about 10ยบ and blowing at about 50 mph… so not the most conducive for enticing people to visit… especially when the article is coming out in the summer and photos show people all bundled and windblown… but it was fun nonetheless and these are my favorites.

I must be gaining confidence because I had the nerve to interrupt this young couples’ kissing session to ask if I could photograph them… but the double-fur-lined hoodies in the grass were irresistible.

This is my dear friend Heidi who went to great pains to take this photo… it was definitely not candid… as she would have preferred to check the view from the car.

Not normally a sunset kind of photographer… but sunsets with kites are pretty cool.


Taking the Rollei to Press

I received my first assignment (post-grad-school) for the Petaluma Magazine this month and I decided to bring the Rollei along. The pay isn’t great but it is enough to cover expenses of film and processing, and since this isn’t a full time gig, or even one I could think about supporting myself on, I decided to have fun and hopefully get a good published portfolio out of it, which will help for future magazine gigs.

This story is on a new restaurant in town (Petaluma) called the Walnut Park Grill and basically this magazine just gives new restaurants a good plug so the photos need to do the same and be well groomed and happy. Here are three of my favorites, I don’t want to reveal too many, but I am pretty sure these ones won’t make the editorial cut… I don’t think they show enough of what they want to show…

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….like lots of people dining at the restaurant instead of a beautiful sky…..

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…or the owner of the restaurant instead of the handsome Hungarian manager…

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…but how can they resist this one… cute kid, with cute red hair happily eating a french-fry… I couldn’t resist… I was all packed up and had already said my good-byes but the red hair pulled me back for more.

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