Crab Salad Sandwich

I love to cook, but I am usually way too self conscious to share photos of what I come up with in the kitchen. More often, when I cooked for others, I would tell them, “I won’t post this online…but that doesn’t mean that YOU shouldn’t…” But, I feel like that may be even more self-serving.

So, you know what? Forget modesty. I’m dynamite in the kitchen. I love whipping up an awesome dish and sharing it with the people I care about. I love seeing people’s faces light up when I show off a carefully prepared plate. I especially love coming up with new recipes for my vegetarian friends so that they don’t have to miss out on a solid meal in favor of settling for another boring salad.

My buddy, Kyle, happens to be one such friend, and is the most frequent beneficiary of such concoctions. Since he can eat fish,  I whipped up one of my favorite creations: a sandwich with (imitation) crab, avocado, and homemade aioli. 

In summation, I rock at cooking and I can take cool photos of that food, so expect more culinary posts in the future.

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Happy Birthday, Jordan!

I’m taking some time today to wish this spectacular lady a, Happy Birthday. Jordan was a regular model on the site for a while, and she’s always been great to work with. We’ve done shoots in studios, graveyards, a river, and frigid cold, and she’s never been anything short of stellar. Hopefully, we can collaborate again soon.

Jordan and I got to take over a local Harley Dealership for about an hour.

Jordan shows up in a lot of my favorite shots of the year. She’s a fantastic model, great to work with, and I am so bummed that she moved so far away.

The Succubus

Getting back on track is easy when you have a bit of a backlog that hasn’t been posted. You might recognize the fantastic Samantha Novak; she’s becoming a regular on the site. We made the time to do a quick shoot in the cemetery with her new succubus look. Not going to lie, the red contacts caught me off guard when we met up.

Welcome to Night Vale: Live

  

                    I was lucky enough to run into my wonderful friend, Kate. She showed off her new poster from the merch booth.

  I think I need to start getting better at taking my own advice and allow for some personal time. I’ve been throwing myself into my school and magazine work so much that was forgetting that I’m allowed to enjoy myself every now and again.  Fortunately, I’ve awesome people like my friend, Lucy, who messaged me late the other night asking if I wanted to check out a live performance of one our favorite audio series, Welcome to Night Vale.

                A night of getting out of the house with a friend, and seeing some of my favorite actors performing exclusive material was exactly the pick-me up I needed. I’ve been feeling more relaxed, and more importantly, more productive for a while now. I’ll have to make it a point make mental health more of a priority. Maybe I’ll even make more time for blogging again.  

Succubus

 

One Last Event

 I had time to sneak in one last shoot out at Thursday’s before the end of the year.

Fall Fairy

Hey everyone. It looks like I’ve decided to break my hiatus with a fall foliage shoot. All of you remember Samantha Novak, right? She’s always a treat to work with and we both decided that we needed to sneak in a shoot to take advantage of the leaves while we could. and of course, she already had a   fairy costume that goes perfectly with the scene. I love shoots like this where I get to go crazy with different lighting setups and going all-out in post. After you’re done “liking,” sharing, and following this post, be sure to show Samantha some love over on her Facebook page.

Macro Test

I know that both my 24-70mm and my 50mm look great paired with my new D7200, but I’ve heard that any flaws in lower quality lenses, like my Tamron 70-300mm, will become more pronounced with the more advanced sensor. After taking my telephoto out for a test drive with new body, I can safely say that my fears were unfounded. If anything, it looks better. Since I now have less noise at higher ISO settings, it I can get away with faster shutter speeds and higher apertures, resulting in cleaner images overall.

Stargazing

I figured that this week’s meteor shower is as good a time as any to make a stab at doing a proper shoot of the night sky. Karen has been asking for some, and with the camera upgrade, I didn’t have an excuse not to drag out my tripod for some stellar shooting.

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Getting the technical specifics right was a little tricky at first. Focusing was difficult since autofocus was useless and I couldn’t make out the stars enough to manually  focus properly, so I had to resort to trial and error to get as close as I could. And as much as I was looking forward to using my phone as a remote via the D7200’s wireless connection, connecting the two was finicky enough that I spend as much time rubbing my phone on my camera to get the NFC to connect as I did actually shooting. Fortunately, I was able to just kick back and enjoy the evening once all the settings were where they needed to be.

In fact, firing off the occasional exposure from my phone, as I stared up at the stars was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in recent memory. I’m usually working on at least two things simultaneously at any given hour of the day until I just pass out late at night. And for all my love of science and astronomy, I’ve spent so much more time listening to Neil Degrasse Tyson talk about the stars than I have actually looking at them. But sitting out there in the cool, August air with nothing for company but my camera and the stars was a peaceful feeling I had almost completely forgotten.

Baking Bread

I’ve been spending more time in the kitchen lately, and my latest project was some simple French bread. After shamelessly posting a cell phone photo of my accomplishment online, a friend suggested I shoot it properly. So, I have my first attempt at food photography.

Hungry for more? Let me know in the comments.