Morning at the pumpkin patch

When Elliot, Carl and I went to Taiwan last year, Erik got to stay home and spend the week with his grandma. During this time they went to several pumpkin patches and Erik couldn't stop talking about them. He loved "pumpkin man" and pumpkin patches and both of those came up frequently in his creative play. I couldn't wait for the following Halloween when I wouldn't be so busy and could do all the fun stuff with him.

Erik and I go to a mommy & me class on Friday mornings. This is my opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with him since Elliot gets me when Erik is in preschool. Today was a field trip day to Lombardi Pumpkin patch. I agonized for a long time whether to bring Elliot and cancel my sitter or just take Erik. In the end I remembered how much Erik LOVES pumpkin patches and how hard it would be to manage both of them walking and decided to not bring Elliot. I felt a bit guilty, but realized it was the right decision because Erik was hard to manage with just him I have no idea how I would have done it with two kids.

From the moment we arrived Erik was thrilled and totally excited in a hyper way. I could barely drag him away from these giant pumpkins to meet up with his class and go on the rides.

Once I got him to go inside he was so excited he wanted to see everything at once. He would not stay with me while I paid the teacher and just started running everywhere and picking up all sorts of pumpkins.

What is even more exciting is that there was a train ride involved through a sunflower field. He was totally captivated by the sunflowers, scarecrows and train that he kept running all over and pointing out all sorts of things. I could hardly keep him in one spot long enough to take a picture.

Once everyone from the class arrived we were able to board the train and look at all the cars and scarecrows. I think Erik asked me what each and every scarecrow was as we passed. (forgot to take a picture) I had to come up with a lot of creative answers. 

After more wrangling and running around looking at everything, we got to go to the petting zoo. He is definitely getting over a lot of our his fears. Erik had no problems in the petting zoo and touched every animal that would let him with one nice pet. I think he tried to pet every single animal in there and a lot of them were running away. I tried to teach him that if they run away they don't want you to touch them, he kind of got that point.

The last and most exciting activity was picking out a pumpkin. Erik got to pick out two, one for him and one for mommy. He showed no discrimination and picked the first two that caught his eye.

We ended our morning eating his favorite food, popcorn and just relaxing. We then went to the car to drop off the pumpkins, but Erik wanted to get in the car so I just went with it and left for home. All in all a good day at the pumpkin patch and one of several more trips to come.

Just a note about how I photographed today's excursion. I actually used my 24-70, 2.8 lens. I haven't used it in months because I always seemed to have focusing problems. I then realized when I manually metered I was more aware of my shutter speed and I manually control my focus. It seemed to have made a big different today. My images are just as tack on as when I use my 50 mm or 85 mm prime lenses. I was really happy with the results. Also I didn't feel like the camera was too heavy or too much of a burden for this small trip. Usually I hate this lens because it weighs close to 3 lbs.

A Day Trip to Santa Ynez

My sister-in-law turned 30 yesterday. I tried to plan a get away with Carl and I to go with my sister-in-law and her friends to wine taste, but Carl couldn't make it due to sitter problems so I went by myself. A kid-free day is so rare to me lately I just take it where I can get it and don't complain.

I got my camera back from the shop on Friday and thought taking a bunch of pictures on Saturday would give my camera a good test run and give me a chance to see how the repairs went. First thing to note, REMEMBER to double check your camera settings when you get it back from the shop. I guess I take it for granted that my camera is always set how I want it and I don't need to recheck anything except the ISO and exposure settings when I am taking pictures. I manually meter everything so those are the only two features I care about regularly. Well my camera was completely reset and I didn't realize it so all my pictures were taken in JPG yesterday. Nothing too dramatic, but gave me a chance to see how my exposure work when I don't have the leeway of RAW formatting. Also I took a couple of under exposed shots so I could bump up my shutter speed, knowing I could fix it in Lightroom and in RAW. So definitely some learning experiences on this trip. Its harder to fix an underexposed JPG than RAW file.

We started off the trip on a train ride from Burbank to Santa Barbara. I played around with my exposure in the train to see what I could get with the back lit subjects and the indoor setting using all natural light. Here is a picture of my sister-in-law that I got working in that environment.

Then we got off the train, and that is a good opportunity for a group picture. I risked it and only took one frame of the group shot because I think everyone was looking. Probably won't do that again, but we were in a hurry so I made a sacrifice. My brother and I are missing from this photo, but it is all of Annie and her friends.

The last of the people pictures I wanted to share is a portrait of my brother and his wife. It is fun to see how I have evolved as a photographer. About 4.5 years ago we were at this exact same winery and I took a picture of them in the exact same spot. Here is the side-by-side comparisons. When I took the original I was just starting to think in portraits and portrait photography.

March, 2006

October, 2010

The rest of the pictures of people were more for Annie than for my portfolio so I won't share those, but I did take some detail shots to test out some new shooting techniques and just have some fun. This first image is in the wine cave or the cellar at Gainey. 

It is still crush season because it has been a really cool year and the wineries can't harvest the grapes until the weather is very warm. It was raining all last week as an example. So the vines were still full of grapes. I have never seen netting on the grapes before, but this is what it looked like at Roblar. I am assuming they put on the netting because the grapes are right next to the parking and they don't want people sampling.

Then I wanted to see what it would look like photographing wine glasses. These are such reflective surfaces it really is hard to get a good photograph with the light bouncing all over the place and me being unable to control that light. I decided to take some pictures of "the pour" in a shallow depth of field just to experiment.

Cheers to a fun day of wine tasting, lots of fun picture taking opportunities and lots of good wine.

Telling a story

My camera is still in the shop, so here is another one from the archives...

The more I shoot this year the more I realize my style of photography is evolving and I am changing my interests. For the last 5 years I really liked shoot headshot, family type portraiture and it was a great challenge and very full-filling to me. As I start to shoot even more pictures of my children and bring my camera into my everyday life I realize my style is changing.

For years, I told myself I have no interest in being a wedding photographer. Working Saturday nights sounded horrible because it was my night off and I loved going out, but I was in my 20s then. Now in my 30s and with children I realize I do nothing on Saturday night so what do I care anymore? This thought got me thinking, is wedding photography really for me?

So this year I have been experimenting. Although I haven't been asked to any weddings or even asked to photograph brides-to-be, I realized I can still practice through other means. So for a couple months every birthday party I attended I would practice on the kids. Weddings to me are telling the story of that day in a very beautiful way. It goes from capturing the bride to all the little details. In all my photography I really try to do that, capture what that moment in time really means.

So here are a few pictures from some birthday parties I took earlier in the year. These first images are from Emma's 2nd Birthday. She was having a "Blue's Clues" party, and fun celebrating with her friends. It was my first party to experiment and it rained in the middle of the party. Also Elliot was sleeping in my ergo most of the time creating challenges while shooting.

  

   

The next birthday party I photographed was William's 1st Birthday. For this party I had just come home from a week in Ojai with the boys and both were sick the entire time we were there. So when I got to this party I was TIRED, but since this was a good friend I thought I would take some pictures. The settings on my camera were a little off, but I learned a valueable lesson. 

 

These next pictures are of Molly's 3rd Birthday. I think I was finally getting the hang of event photography and photographing children and the details. I feel like this day came together really nicely and I was rested and had Carl watching both kids for a lot of the pictures so I could remain focused.

The last birthday party I photographed was a party for four, three-year-old girls who all turn three two days apart. They celebrate their birthday together every year and I was determined to get at least one shot of all four girls. This was the final effect of all my practice and I feel like I was starting to get the feel of this event photography and really coming into my own. It definitely gave me the confidence to start thinking about going there.