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September 13th, 2009

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August 30th, 2009

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May 9th, 2009

12:09 am - Round Five....... I was not surprised that he didn't get first. I was surprised that we got second though. I wasn't expecting that. So for the shoot he had to portray a High Fashion Australia. um. needless to say that had us baffled. But our awesome friend Carrie got us onto a ranch up where she lives and we got to do the shoot out there. It worked out well, except for the rain; which was kept away from my camera with the clever use of a rubber band and a trashcan liner. I think this is the best shoot we've done for this, I like the work even more than the MacDuff shoot, but not by much. Here's the best shot, and this is the general consensus, but feel free to disagree. fair warning, there's like 9 under there. ( and the rest ) Next week is an iPod ad, all happy an brightly colored. If any challenge could send him home it'll be this one. That and I have like 4 papers I need to get done before I even think about shooting him. And Keith has all the camera bodies this weekend, so even if I did have the time I don't have the equipment. But we have until Tuesday. Maybe we'll shoot monday morning....downtown? by some murals? hmmmmmm this may be alright after all, now to run it by Tyler..... Current Location: home Current Music: kashmir : ophilia Tags: gaia, photo, tyler

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May 4th, 2009

07:37 am - Writer's Block: How'd You Get Here? There are many roads to LiveJournal—how did you first hear about LJ? View 500 Answers I got one so that I could comment on the LJ of my favorite author George RR Martin, when I made friends with other people on here I began using it for real. Current Location: home Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Orgy : Pure Tags: lj birthday, writer's block

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May 1st, 2009

08:34 pm - We won again . . . So this week's challenge was so easy for Tyler it's really unfair to the other contestants. He had to have a head and shoulders beauty shot, and look angry. OK here's the thing, he can do Angry better than anyone I've ever shot, but he can't model with his body for shit. Hence, this challenge was custom made for him. I told him that if we didn't at least hit in the top 3 then I would totally give up. Not really, but then, there's no excuse for us not doing awesome. We shot him in the doorway of my friend Craig's jacked-as-hell garage. I was actually surprised about the win, I always am, I'm never confident enough in my shots. Anyway, here they are: The Judge's Pick: ( The rest ) Tags: gaia, photo, tyler

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April 22nd, 2009

08:34 am - Challenge Two So the challenge thingi I did the MacDuff pictures for continues, Tyler got like sixth in that round (out of 9). For the next set he had to be Terpsichore, Greek muse of Dance and the Chorus, and advertise chocolate. Don't ask, I have no idea. I thought it was a pretty weird challenge, but we shot it. And I would like to say that I am super disappointed in how these came out. I hate the lighting, the WB is off because we had to use two different bulbs, he really can't dance so he's super stiff, it was just frustrating. Imagine my shock when he got first for this round.....I feel like Pepper Brooks, "I feel shocked" indeed. ( and here they are ) So the guitar is a modern interpretation of the lyre Terpsichore is always shown with. I thought it worked well, but the judges were not such fans of it. Anyway, the next challenge is a Black and White 'beauty' headshot that expresses anger. I know he can win this one two if he just puts his mind to it. I'm totally psyched and I'll post those on Monday. Current Mood: accomplished Tags: gaia, photo, tyler

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April 9th, 2009

08:10 am - so batman and joker . . . Totally stole this, and it's worth it. Don't look if you're at work or if you're a prude. Though I think any prudish people would have been scared off by this point. Easily the best batman/joker photo of all time. http://photonails.ru/rus/gallery/batman_and_joker.html Current Mood: amused Tags: funny shit

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April 5th, 2009

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March 30th, 2009

11:09 pm - pre-shoot jitters I have a shoot on Wednesday and for the first time, really, ever, I have pre-shoot jitters. I'm so fracking stressed about this shoot, for good and understandable reasons. So one of my fave models calls me up and says "hey, I'm competing in an online modeling competition for shits and giggles, will you do my pictures?" to this I say, "sure" I then receive an e-mail from him with the guidelines and prompts for the first two challenges. The challenges sound like fun and I'll recap them after I shoot. More importantly are the guidelines: NO POSTPROCESSING OF ANY KIND!!!!!!!! No tone, density or white balance adjustments of any kind. NONE. I can resize, rotate and crop. That's it. To be honest this is really what I need. I know I can do it, I just don't like to think about the pre-production so much. And I haven't done this in a while, a long while. But I'm also really picky when it comes to my images, I know what I like and I know what I want the images to look like. So I'm having Keith pull my black crush-velvet back drop out of storage, just so that I know that my backgrounds are all the way black. I have all the props and equipment I need, and a private place to shoot. For equipment I'll be using custom WB and an off camera meter to fix my exposure settings. I have my trusty 5D and my 85EF, I might even break out the tripod just to ensure I get the crop that I want. For this challenge we're cutting it really close to the wire, the photos have to go in the same night as the shoot, so if I can get away with just picking out the 5 best and uploading them I'm happy with that. Once they're accepted by the judges I'll post them here, with the PP I would have done, were I allowed. Anyway, just venting, I'll let you all know how it goes. Current Location: home Current Mood: anxious Current Music: the ticking of my wall clock Tags: gaia, keith, photo

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March 15th, 2009

10:42 am - yesterday..... was different, in a VERY good way. We had guild workday (read: powerwashing pavilions and organizing boxes) and I had a blast! Literally, Jake (aka Vulcan) has a new GAS forge for Christmas . . . he let me play with it! ****squee**** my arms hurt like bitches, but I got to hammer iron into rings, it's more fun than it sounds I assure you. I told Jake that I want to do more iron work, it's a great workout that actually accomplishes something! He said I could come up next month to do some more, and he's thinking about having a workshop so that everyone in the guild who wants to learn, can. I LOVE JAKE!!!!!!! After workshop I went home, cleaned up Baby Chris (Jake and his wife Joanne live in the foothills, baby was a mess) and got set up for shooting Hugh the Irishman at Sequoia Brewery that night. Three hours and four gigs later I have some awesome stuff to work on. But more on that in a later post. When I got to the place I got set up, had someone try to hire me to shoot their wedding (I told her no) and then I noticed my best friend, Q. At 8pm he was already drunk, now, Q is an alcoholic, but he normally holds off getting really fucked up. But last night his whore of an ex showed up and made a point of being unusually happy, and he got unusually drunk. So drunk in fact that he fertilized a potted plant, I have only seen him this drunk on a handful of occasions, a small handful. Now, one of Q's best friends, Jester, says he's going to get Q home, and I watch them go. When out of the blue the jackass bitch that Jester had a kid with goes ballistic and says she's going to drive because they're in her car. Needless to say I'm pretty fucking far from happy about this, as she's also giving a ride to the bitch of a whore that hurt Q in the first place. Not to mention that she's a raging evil bitch in her own right and Q can't stand her. So I get my girlfriend Chris to her me drag him out of her car and into mine, and we take him home. We have to wake up his mom to get him into the house, but we get him home. what a night. . .but I had a good time. mostly. Current Location: home Current Mood: content Current Music: BSG Tags: drinking, photo, pub

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February 27th, 2009

06:51 pm - My car finally works!!!!! (finally) OK, so finals week (last semester) we were having our last study group for Art History class, and Tyler and I go pick up the pizza and beer, and I offer to drive. So he puts the tape for his Ipod converter into my stereo deck, so we can listen to his crazy collection of Japanese music, and it doesn't work. Not only does it not work, it gets stuck in the deck. We spend the next, like hour, trying to take it out. Eventually we give up and enjoy the pizza, and Chase and I enjoy the beer. Now at first it was an inconvenience, the stereo worked, but it kept trying to eject the stuck tape. It grew into something far far worse. A few weeks later I went to Oregon with Keith and Baby Christina. Naturally my car ends up sitting around for like, a week. When we get back my car doesn't want to start. So we jump the car and Keith writes it off as a fluke. The next day it won't start. So he replaces the battery and says my car is getting old and probably needs to be replaced. (it's a 90 Volvo, the thing will out last a tank if it's taken care of) I tell him that it's something to do with the stereo, and he insists that there is no way that my broken stereo should have any effect on the car starting, I give up on making my point heard and go on with life. That is until a month ago, my car will NOT start after sitting for six ours (about). Which means every morning I have to get Keith out of bed to help jump my car. Doing it alone is too damn hard and I feel that as the cars are his responsibility he should have to jump my car and punishment for not doing anything about fixing it. Naturally he gets pissy, and starts saying I don't take care of my car. Because, you know, replacing the battery should have fixed the car. It doesn't matter that I've told him every morning when he jumps my car that the problem is the stereo and that the load of it trying to eject the stuck tape while the car is off is running down the battery. But because I (apparently) don't know ANYTHING about cars, or electricity and how it works, there is NO WAY that that could be affecting my car. Yesterday (yes, that is nearly 2.5 months later) Keith removes the stereo from my car. And what do you know, it starts up with no issues today. I should probably be nice and not rub it in his face that I was right and he was dumb. But honestly, after the way he lorded over me and told me repeatedly that I was wrong when I was so obviously right and the way he's treated me regarding my last few shoots I just can't help it. I've been a real bitch about everything car-related for the past couple of days, and as far as I'm concerned he deserves it. Although there was some good that came of all this, for the past 2.5 months Tyler, Chase and I have been joking that "Tyler stuck his thing in my slot and got it stuck and Keith wouldn't do anything about it". I know I know, terrible, but you've got to be able to find the silver lining somewhere, right? and more often than not my silver lining is an "I told you so" and a dreadful joke! Current Location: home Current Mood: exasperated Current Music: robots credits Tags: keith, volvo

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02:54 pm - random haiku good lord you're so hot do you know how hot you are? I ache just looking SHUT UP I know it's not technically haiku because there is no seasonal reference. I just wrote it because I was bored. sitting on campus. watching some hot maintenance guy put away tables. and chairs. and reeking of sexy. stupid hot people. making me write bad poetry. I suppose I could do this and make it a real haiku: you're hot like summer do you know how hot you are? I ache just looking but I like the first one better, it's closer to the original thought. Current Location: home Current Mood: at the time of writing Tags: lit, school

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February 26th, 2009

07:03 am - It's the end of the world as we know it . . . and I feel fine. Ah, this is what woke me this morning on my alarm/radio thingi. Today cannot be anything other than a good day. I love that song, the whole message that the world is in a constant state of flux and therefore constantly 'ending' as we know it, is something that has always inspired me. I'll have to hope then, that this is a good omen as I have a job interview today. I'm pretty sure I nailed it on the phone, but I can always screw it up somehow. I'll keep y'all posted on that front. ah, well, LOST calls to me. I must go to it . . . Current Location: home Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: demonic choo choo train Tags: home, life, school, tv

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February 23rd, 2009

08:55 am - The San Fran Fiasco This past weekend I went to San Fransisco with my friend Chase to visit the Legion of Honor and the de Young art museum for our art history class. We got a late start on Friday, but made up for it with AWESOME pizza and beer in Vallejo with Chase's sister Chelsea. And I fell in love if Rivers Cuomo, the pit bull not the singer, I was already in love with him . . . all in all it was an awesome night. The next morning Chase and I cruised the farmer's market, had fried chicken and waffles and hit the coffee shop in the ferry station. While at the coffee shop we pulled op directions on Google Maps, copy and pasted it IN IT'S ENTIRETY to an office document and set off for SF. We had no problems getting into the city, and aside from the fact that left-hand turns are a rare and elusive animal in SF we had no problems getting around. It only took us 30 minutes to get to . . . wait for it . . . the Asian Art Museum in the Civic Center. So we went to park the car, figuring that we had just gotten a little turned around, for those of you that have never been there, this is about 4 miles from the de Young. The parking lot attendant tells us that we're in the wrong part of town and gives us 'directions' to the de Young. We are now 6 miles away from the de Young, and in front of the SF Museum of Modern Art. . . Chase was getting itchy, and had to pee, so we parked and found him a bathroom. I asked a cabbie how to get to the de Young, carefully write down his convoluted as hell directions and we take off, again. I'll admit that I may have gotten the directions wrong or turned them around, whatever the case, we ended up at Pier 39, 7 miles away from the de Young. . . not kidding, this all really happened. We end up parking and getting lunch, mmmmmm clams and sourdough, and then returning to the car, disillusioned and without focus. I decide that we should switch our focus to the Legion of Honor as it has more of the type of art we need to be looking at. So we set off to the tip of the peninsula, because I know that the Legion is near there, by a golf course. Well, we end up accidentally crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. SO we come back across, and some how or another we end up on Market Street, again. As we go through the city with no left turns and Chase mentions that he wants to go to Haight-Ashbury, so we get directions from the first Starbucks, because according to a social theory that I have, that is the BEST place to get directions, among other things. Chase agrees and we get directions that take us to . . . Haight-Ashbury. The rest of the day was, literally, down hill. We went down hill to Chelsea's friend April's house and drank beer and ate Kettle Chips. Then we went back to Vallejo and crashed. Begin Sunday. It's raining, I love the rain, except when I have no umbrella. . . yeah, good times. We go to a cafe for breakfast and I have avocado. I run on avocado, it is my fuel. I maintain that Saturday happened the way it did because I had no avocado. We decide that as the Legion of Honor pertains more to what we are studying in class than the de Young, and to forgo the de Young entirly. So I go online and get the directions from the LoH website. and what do you know, they get us there in record time. We perused the LoH and saw some really incredible work, I had the best time. I think Chase did too, I sure hope so after Saturday. So we get out of the museum and after getting a little turned around (yes again) we went to lunch with call_me_stan. So I know you're asking, "If you new someone who lived there, why didn't you call them on Saturday?" Yes, we could have called call_me_stan, Chelsea and April, my mom, I don't know why we didn't it just never really occurred to us. Anyway, we have a great lunch in Japan Town and take call_me_stan home. Then we hit the freeway and head home ourselves. Thinking back on the weekend the trip home was rather uneventful. We ate leftover pizza from Friday and sang along with classic rock, off key and badly. I had fun, Chase says he had fun. And we're already talking about going back! Although this time I think we might be better off hanging out with someone who knows the city ;) Current Location: home Current Mood: ditzy Tags: school, sf

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February 19th, 2009

12:10 pm - And it comes back . . . Keith (my husband) and I met in photography class. For a while it was something we could share, something we could do together and offer support for each other in. But as our respective styles emerged he got less and less supportive of my work, often refusing to discuss it because it was "technically unsound". His style was very clean, with near perfect exposures and placement, I mean that, to this day most of his work is textbook. Whereas I am far more intuitive and artistic in my work. I'll let the exposure slide to catch a moment, I'll ignore the white balance almost entirely because interacting with my subject is more important to me. I can fix those in PSD, I consciously know that I should be thinking about those things, but I can't bring myself to make it a priority past where it gets me an image. When I ask for his input on a shoot I'll get nothing but criticism and none of it constructive. When this happened before I just stopped shooting. I let go of it as something that would come between me and Keith and I chose him. I wonder now if I should have. My friend Tyler convinced me to go to an anime convention with him and do some shots of him and his girlfriend in costume. I figured it would be fun, and it was. I couldn't believe how much fun it was. I couldn't believe how much I had missed it. In the intervening 3 years I had done very few serious shoots, and almost always as and assistant of some sort. But there, in Sac, I shot for almost two days solid. I was happy again. A little more than a month later (this past weekend actually) Tyler's girlfriend, EB, came down and we did two photoshoots here. One went amazing and the other not so much. But I had fun, I was out shooting and doing things that I felt were fantastic. This morning I asked Keith for input on my work. I should have known better. I should have known that he hadn't grown at all and that there was no way he could get out of his own headspace far enough to support me. I already knew one shoot wasn't that good, and I had already discussed with the Tyler and EB reshooting it once we got the chance. But he felt the need to brutally tell me how bad my technical skills had gotten in the THREE YEARS that I hadn't picked up a camera for more than an hour or so a week. I know he was trying to help, but I need him to do it in a helpful constructive way. Not the way that gets me crying and posting to my journal. I can't do this again. I'm not going to give this up just when I'm getting it back. I need my photography. I talked to Keith about it after we calmed down a bit. He says he wants me to keep shooting and he's glad that I'm doing it, but that he wants me to shoot more like him. I need him to understand that I don't really want to. There are somethings I need to work on, but for the most part I think I'm happy with what I produce. I don't know. Is there therapy for married photographers? For learning how to talk to each other without being mean or snarky? well, I guess I just have to see how things proceed. Current Location: home Current Mood: depressed Current Music: VAST station on Pandora Tags: keith, photo

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February 9th, 2009

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February 8th, 2009

11:16 pm - Why does this not suprise me? Ganked from lunapitty You have a Sexual IQ of 153 When it comes to sex, you are a super genius. You have had a lot of experience, and sex interests you so you know a lot about it. You pride yourself on being a source of information and guidance to all of your friends. 'What is your Sexual IQ?' at QuizUniverse.com Current Location: home Current Mood: amused Current Music: the silence of a sleepy house Tags: quiz

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February 7th, 2009

09:54 pm - The first in many relatings of my three hours in Theater Apprich I thought to take theater appreciation for an easy A, and quickly discovered that I would probably attempt suicide because it would be more interesting. The instructor was quite nearly deaf and far to old to be teaching competently (and I mean mental age, not physical) As the class (which I dropped in favor of the second half of my Art History class) was dreadful in a darkly comedic sense, I will be relaying my notes to my journal, because in all actuality, it's too good not to share. Instructor: "What is your name?" Student: "Corey." Instructor: "What an interesting name, where did your parents come up with it?" Corey: "I was born in the 80s and was actually named for the Two Coreys." (sympathetic noises from the rest of the class) Instructor: "The who?" Corey: "You know, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman?" Instructor: "No, what do they do?" Me: "Have drug problems." (laughter from the rest of the class) Instructor: (looking around confused) "What? Did I miss something?" Yes I did transcribe the conversation in shorthand to my margin. Yes there is more (not of this, but of the class). Current Location: home Current Mood: amused Current Music: fallout 3 Tags: school

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11:17 am - My WHAT!?!?! I'm watching Wall-E with Baby Chris (it was her Christmas gift from Onii-Chan)and it gets to the part where he hitches a ride on the shuttle and goes into outer space. Chris is very much at the "what's dat" stage. So naturally, we discuss that 'dat' is the shuttle, the Sun, the stars, and she repeats everything I say, until we get to Uranus. NOTE: I was taught by my grossly over educated parents to pronounce it 'yur-ah-nuss' NOT 'yur-ay-ness'. I don't actually know if that's the correct way to pronounce it, that's just how I pronounce it. back to the story, Chris says "what's dat" and I say "Uranus" and in all seriousness she says, without missing a beat "my-ayness?" to which I reply, "no, no, yur-ah-nuss" and she says "my-ayness" this seriously goes on for the next minute or so. Finally I break down laughing, I'm laughing so hard I'm in tears, and I tell her what a wonderful, fantastic baby person she is and how much I love her. Then I hammer in that final nail and ask her to please try to say Uranus. Now, she's been sitting in my lap facing away from me this whole time. At this final comment she turns to face me, and completely dead pan says "no, you're a nus", to which I patently reply, 'no, Uranus" and the back and forth begins. ah, I love my kid, she rocks my socks. Current Location: home Current Mood: amused Current Music: MC Chris : Fett's Vette Tags: baby chris, funny shit

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