Dorena Lake in Black and White

Hello everyone!

It feels great to be posting again 🙂 Life has been a little busy with this new job and just life in general. I haven’t taken pictures in soooo long. Yesterday was my day off and William suggested going to Dorena Lake. Now this lake is absolutely gorgeous… during the summer. During the winter, however, it’s drained to prevent flooding, so it’s very muddy and ugly lol! What can you do to make ugly areas more beautiful?… BLACK AND WHITE!

In The Words of Julia Child…

“Cooking well doesn’t mean cooking fancy.”

Most people from all over the world know of Julia Child. I couldn’t agree more with this quote from her, these last couple of months I’ve gotten into cooking quite a bit. I’m not doing anything fancy, but it’s good food and good for you! We decided to start eating better, no to less salt in all of our food and way more fresh fruits and veggies. Sense I’ve started working, I’ve really missed being in the kitchen, experimenting with different dishes and how to replace salt. On one of my days off I decided to spend most of it in the kitchen 🙂 Of course, I had Frank (my Canon) with me to show little glimpses of my day. I didn’t capture a lot, but it’s a glimpse and I’m hoping to start showing you more of my dishes the better I get at making them!

We try to not have beans from the cans anymore, so this first shot are the beans before they go in a long boiling bath on the stove lol

This evening I made Roasted Chicken stuffed with garlic and lemons, so I just captured the garlic and lemon slices 🙂 I was wanting to take a shot of the chicken after it was finished cooking (it was so beautiful) but I had already cut it up by the time I thought of it 😦 I will try and show this dish completed someday soon!

A Trip to 5th Street Market

I hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day! I’ve never been much of a fan for this holiday, if that’s what you want to call it lol! It’s fun to get little gifts for people you care about, but it can be a little silly. William and I decided to go out to dinner really early to beat the crowds, it worked well because when we drove past all our restaurants at around 6pm the lines were wrapped around the buildings! Just crazy.

So while we were out and about, we stopped in at a downtown area where they have beautiful buildings and it’s just fun to photograph little things there.

William wasn’t expecting this shot, as you can tell lol! He looks so serious 😛

Jack Frost’s Vacation Spot

So as I’ve said in my last post, Jack Frost had paid us a visit, and decided to stick around! I’ve heard people say, in the last 50 years they had been here, they’d never seen weather like this in our little town. The ice had formed around everything, and icicles appeared off of power lines, cars, buildings and trees. Every branch was covered in ice, completely surrounded by it. It’s so beautiful but also very dangerous, tons of transformers blew out and trees fell! The power was out all night for us and for some people, they are still waiting for in to come back on. A very difficult work day for me, a long 8 hour shift with random power outages HAHA! I’m just glad I was able to step outside for a few minutes to get a few shots. This picture turned out to be my favorite.

More Snow??

Jack Frost paid us another visit! Snow was lightly dusted on the ground when we woke up this morning and it was raining and snowing off and on all day. Nothing quite as drastic as our last snow storm, but I’m hoping it won’t keep us from taking our little car around town HAHA! We really need to invest in a 4-wheel drive vehicle lol!

This week I was able to start working again! It’s exciting, but also hard to get back into when you aren’t used to it. But, I’m enjoying the independence and the money will help us in a lot of ways 🙂 I’m hoping it won’t keep me from my photography, but so far it hasn’t been an issue.

William and I will be enjoying a nice little mini vacation next week, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to post again, but I hope it will be sometime this weekend 🙂 Have a good night everyone!

Live Music and Good Wine

On my last post TWILIGHT WINE TASTING, we went to the beautiful Sweet Cheeks Winery for some Twilight Tastings. That night the talented Tara Stonecipher & Gregg Vollstedt were there playing their music. They are a local group here and I just loved her bluesy voice 🙂

Here are a few shots of Tara and Gregg and I had to try and get a wine glass shot as well 😉

Twilight Wine Tasting

William and I have been to Sweet Cheeks Winery a few times (Sweet Cheeks Winery and Not Another Wine Post!), each time there are different ways of photographing it’s beauty. We traveled to the “Twilight Tastings” and because it’s winter the sun sets a lot sooner than last time we were there.

These first two shots was the view before we arrived there and the rest is the outdoor area. Because it was cold and dark, no one ventured outdoors, so I was able to walk around and take pictures anywhere I wanted!

A Good Time For a Walk

I apologize for the delay in posts, it’s been another crazy week. It’s been more of an emotionally crazy week than anything else. My husband is going to Afghanistan for contract work again 😦 I hate being away from him, but this opportunity is a great one and I’m excited for him in that way. With William leaving soon and me trying to find work and we haven’t had time to go take any pictures, but today was another typical day here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s been cloudy, than sunny, than cloudy and sunny again haha! So while the sun was out I ran outside with William and my brother Ryan and I took what pictures I could. You guys are probably completely sick of this covered bridge lol, but it’s just so pretty I couldn’t help but get a different look on it this time 🙂 I’m still sticking to my goal this year and trying to find different ways of seeing and capturing areas or objects. So far I was happy with what I was able to get today.

A New Year A New Goal

As most of my you know, I don’t take a lot of animal shots (besides my cats of course lol). It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never really practiced. I have a decent stock lens that came with Frank (my Canon) so I thought I’d use it to practice how close I could get to them and different ways I can brighten their faces. Because I also don’t do portraits, I don’t work on brightening faces, so I’ve been using my flash more and adjusting everything for a flash on a sunny day! It’s so interesting lowering the ISO and raising the aperture just to get that perfect brightness on their faces. I’ve been learning so much on my own, I really hope in a few months to take a few classes, but for now, I like figuring out different tricks on my own 🙂

Any advise on nature portraits would be awesome, I’m very new at this and would love some feedback!

Here’s what I came up with 🙂

Revisiting the Winery Graveyard

Almost two year ago William and I ran into a graveyard while visiting a local winery. The Unexpected Graveyard was one of those moments where I was so happy to have Frank (my Canon) with me. At that point, I was taking all of my pictures on the “Landscape” setting on my camera haha! I was so new I had no idea what all the buttons and dials meant. So going back to that location was really exciting, just to see if I’d be able to make them any better. I’m not sure if they are any better, but they are a lot spookier! We have been experiencing freezing fog here the last couple of days. I was hoping the fog would be there when we got there, but I was so incredibly cold I was afraid I was rushing the pictures along. I hope I got the images the way I wanted to, it was nice being able to see that location again.

Here’s a shot of the winery not far from us, this is how foggy it was! HAHA