soft

The first three images were shot with Logan's 50mm macro lens... and the last few with Patat's L-Series 50mm at f/1.2.

Open publication - Free publishing - More 2010

This is one of the books I designed this week. It's just a collection of personal photos from 2010 - most of which you've probably seen on my blog. I'll post my Montana book next! :)

p.s. sorry for all the updates to this post! The viewer wasn't working right...

sneeze.

photo by quinn.

Today I ventured outside. I haven't properly been outside in a few days, because every organ in my head hates pollen. My eyes itch, my nose itches, I sneeze, my nose runs, my eyes run, my throat itches! And then my brain tells me to run inside. :( But Zyrtec has helped a little... So today I tried it out. Still itchy, but I lasted longer than usual.

The day before yesterday I made a Lemon Chess Pie. As the recipe informed us, origin of the name is unknown! However, the pie was delicious...

Privet has bloomed. Did I mention that? Ugh. Allergies make me ashamed to be part of the human race which lives indoors for most of their lives. Surely we would have these reactions if we lived outdoors? We would be incapacitated for months! I should look it up and see what the facts are...

photo by quinn.

Next post I'm working on: Old family photos. I've been having so much fun scanning them in! I'm on 1986 right now... We were really cute kids. Of course, it'll be a few more days (weeks?) before I get to my baby pics. Anyway, I'm going to make a blog post of my favs. :) Then you'll know where our family got the photography genes from. Our parents took some really beautiful photos of us. 

Aja aja fighting!

- caroline

Note on what the heck I just said: I've noticed that in Korean dramas, people say "fighting" as a cheer, a replacement for "go [insert sport or name here]!"  "Aja aja fighting" is unique to the drama I just watched. :) Koreans are cool.

bokeh-mania

On Flickr, a fellow photographer (alyssakai) used a bokeh mask to make pretty heart bokeh in a few of her shots. I thought that was just so cool. I know this technique has been around for awhile, but I had never played around with it. Inspired, I set out to make my own masks.

Quinn and I decided on three shapes. Hearts, plus-signs and stars. Basically, you cut a small shape out of the center of a black piece of paper... You know what, I did a terrible job at following the directions, so check it out yourself here: DIY Create Your Own Bokeh

Since my bokeh masks were very lame, and held on by my own hand, there are usually some deep vignettes on the images. :P Kind of made me feel like I was using that fish-eye attachment on Griffin's old kit lens, which gave everything black corners. Bleh. But this was much cooler.

Sometimes the bokeh shapes aren't apparent. The next few pictures were taken without a mask - just regular pics, but all shot on 1.4/f. So pretty. :) I hardly ever shoot that low, but since you have to shoot on the lowest aperture with the bokeh masks, I thought I'd play around with it. 

Those big heart shaped leaves are violet leaves! There are tons of violet plants under the brush.

These white hearts are out-of-focus flowers. :)

Blue light leak up there in the corner. Hehe, fun!

Reflection in a hubcap. A VERY shiny hubcap.

Here are my silly bokeh masks. :P I literally just hugged them around the lens with my hand. It was all very make-shift! Anyway, there are my experimental pics. Enjoy!

Nighty-night.

- caroline

nikon

These are all photos taken with Amy's Nikon. Sara is seriously thinking about switching camera companies, and after using Amy's Nikon, I am on board. The pictures are so bloody sharp. It's ridiculous. Now, you probably can't tell from my 700 pixel wide images on here, but it's impressive. And nothing really beats a sharp photo... Well, a full frame 50mm shot is pretty sweet, but when you mix that with utter sharpness, wow. Those are some nice images.

On the right is the quilt that Mom made for Lucy. It is soooo cute. :)

She's so cute and ticklish. :D Her expressions change so fast. She went from smiling up there, to that epic straight face, to laughing again. So silly.

So, those are my favorite from the day of Nikon shooting. I love them all, they are so nice and sharp and clean. Mmmm. :) If only I could afford one myself!