Photo experiments with K

My last set of pictures from K's visit are the ones we took when trying different photography subjects. K had requested we do the oil and water thing that I did awhile back, and then I added some other things that I wanted to try or retry. It was super nice to have help from someone also interested in photography!

As I'm sure you've gathered, we played around with a black light on a few occasions. It was fun to see what showed up and how, like my shoes (proving that, no, I don't untie them before I take them off...I'm such a grownup).


Then we did a bit of light painting, which I talked about another time (in this post).

Only, instead of flashlights with colored cloth, we used glow sticks, which I felt was much easier (even if you can't turn them off to create spaces in the design).

K got really good at making butterfly wings, and sometimes I could capture a little of her in the picture.

She also did a better tornado than mine (not pictured; it was lame).

But how cool is my flower? It was so fun to be able to take turns trying designs--way more fun than doing this alone!

I can't remember what I was going for with this, but it ended up looking kind of like an open book.

The left is a stick that had three sections of color. The right was when I experimented with tossing the glow sticks so they created a waterfall effect.

The whole experiment was pretty entertaining and hilarious!

Next, we worked on the oil and water pictures. I was able to try some more fabric for background colors.

Unfortunately, I had lost my ring flash when we were doing these. I even texted my parents wondering if I had left it there in April. Embarrassingly, I found it later in a laundry basket (with clean laundry over it--I can never seem to keep up with folding my laundry!!). I'm glad it wasn't really lost, but bummed we weren't able to use it. We did use my other flash and a flashlight, though.

Most of these are K's photos.

The oil and water was bubbling a lot more than last time, maybe due to a change in the type of oil I had on hand. But the bubbles are cool too.

Then this was something I've been wanting to try for a long time--dropping colored water into clear water. We had been watercoloring a couple of nights before and noticed the cool patterns when we dipped the brush in the clean water. I think people use lots of different things for this type of image, but the right consistency of watercolor worked great. Since it was my first time trying, though, we had issues with lighting, the container used (and needing to constantly replace the water), getting the right consistency of paint and just catching the right moment when the drop was looking awesome. It was a lot harder than I thought and I'd like to work on it some more later.

Lots of people have said these look like jellyfish, and I agree. This one has a cyan background due to my photo editing. When I did an auto adjustment of Curves (in Photoshop), it changed the white-gray background to be this aqua color, and K told me to keep it, so I obeyed!

Finally (this has gotten longer than I thought!), K patiently let me try out a concept I had seen on Pinterest at one point. I have tried these light shapes in the past, but hadn't incorporated them into a portrait before. I loooooooved how these looked with the ghostly image of K in the back with the light shapes posed in different ways. She's just holding a string of Christmas lights, but she had some good ideas for how to hold them.

I was having a hard time getting the hearts to show up right, though.

I had much better luck when I switched to the butterfly cut out.

It was hard to narrow these down.

I think having the butterfly "hair" made it seem all fairy-like. This was really fun.

Okay! Thanks so much for looking at my posts/pictures of my time with K. :) Enjoy your week!

K's visit: Silver Falls and the coast

The next set of photos is from a couple of the little trips I took with K while she visited. I didn't know at first if she was interested in going to Silver Falls since she didn't mention it after reviewing her sister's video. But when I brought it up as an option, she seemed all for it.

Some blossoms growing on the sides of the cliffs near South Falls. I'm sure they love the constant mist.

I've taken almost every guest to Silver Falls (specifically South Falls, but sometimes a couple of others) because it's pretty close, cheap and usually something unique for out-of-staters. At least, I don't think I had ever gotten to hike behind a waterfall prior to moving here. It appeals to all ages so I really like it. But now I've gone so many times that I don't take as many pictures anymore. And I didn't really get any good ones of K in front of the falls, though I instagrammed one, I believe.

We enjoyed taking lots of pictures of the water droplets that had collected on the cliffside. It was misty enough this time of year that there were lots of little photo ops and I could've stuck around taking pictures there even longer. (The photo on the right is one from home, actually, but I happened to tack it on with the droplet one.)

A couple of days later we went to the coast. First we hit Tillamook Cheese Factory, since I had never been. I guess I don't have anymore photos of that since I included some in the video and on Instagram. (I sound like a broken record.) Then we stopped at two beaches, one in Pacific City.

It was sooooo windy on this beach. The noise and pressure were starting to give me an ear ache. The blowing sand stung our legs. But K loved it and didn't want to leave.

She was really into looking for sand dollars and was thrilled when she found this one that was mostly intact.

Leading out to the beach was this grassy area that was neat for photography. My camera must've gotten some sand or mist because it took a few hazier photos which actually looked kind of cool.

Then we headed to Lincoln City, and after lunch at Mo's we wandered around the little bay by the restaurant. This was more ideal--much less wind and a lot more creature sightings.

Like this little jellyfish! He was just a little larger than a golf ball. In the video (that again!) I have a photo of her holding a dead one, so you can get an idea of the size.

There were lots of sea lions swimming around and laying out on the shore in the distance, but it was hard to get a good photo.

The most interesting part of our time there, in my opinion, was watching the crab fishing! There were several people fishing along the shore and they were all very nice and I learned a bit about it.

Basically they have a special basket that they bait with either a dead fish or someone had a hot dog (I think?). It's attached to a rope hooked to the shore, so then they just toss it out into the water for about 5 minutes and then drag it back in to see if they caught anything.

The rules are that the crab has to be male and at least 5.75 inches at the widest part of their top shell in order to keep it. These rookies (their words) from Colorado were trying to measure their crab when he latched onto the measuring stick and he wouldn't let go! They finally had to knock him off somehow so they could set him free.

Once free from the trap, the crabs generally scurry back into the water. None of the ones I saw caught met the minimum size requirement.

It was a great day and I wish we could've had more time at the beach, but I was pretty tired from all the driving, wind and sun. I always feel bad about the fact that I don't go to the coast more often when it's relatively close, but it is over an hour and the road is kind of windy, so it's not quite as easy/convenient as it seems. Still, I need to get out there more often than I do. I just need to grab friends to do it, because it's not as fun all alone!

Portraits: My niece K

I thought I'd start off the photo posts of my niece's visit with her portraits. I took pictures of her every day, of course, but we specifically did portrait sessions on two occasions. The first was in a nearby park that used to be a golf course and has now just become kind of wild and overgrown. It's a great place for photos since there's usually not a lot of people around, and it's easy to park. K wore her new dress and I did her hair before we went out.

The back of her hair (with a stray piece flying in front). It was fun to fix her hair at various points during her visit.

Her hair quickly became windblown, but I just figured we could go with the natural look and I didn't bother trying to constantly fix it.

We also visited another park to change up the scenery. I appreciated K's energy and enthusiasm--she never complained that she was tired or sick of posing. :)

This looks like two girls in one photo.

Then, on the last night of her visit she mentioned that we hadn't done portraits (besides with black light) in her new dress, so we went out into the green forest that I thought would set off the bright pink-coral nicely.

We played around with a couple of scarves for fun. My parents just got that one for me in Mexico.


I could do tons of photo shoots with K because she's so easy to photograph! And she's great about trying different things. Thanks, K! I love and miss you!

More photos from her visit coming soon.

Video of my niece's visit!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

Before I post photos from my niece's visit, I thought I'd start with the video I made for her. You may remember I made one for her older sister two years ago (see it here) and she seemed to really like it, so I thought it would be a good idea to continue that idea of taking various video clips throughout the visit and putting them together with some photos as a sort of keepsake. Enjoy, and thanks for watching!

K goes to Oregon from J M on Vimeo.

Catching up

Hey! As usual, I haven't been blogging as much as I want to. I have lots of pictures to post soon, but first I thought I'd give a quick summary of what I've been up to. If you follow me on Instagram, you already know this stuff, but a couple of these photos will be new to you. If you don't follow me there, please do! Or just go visit that page and see some more photos of what I talk about here.

In May, I wanted to work on another timelapse video of lilies blooming, but they took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to open. I guess it wasn't warm enough. I do have some photos I might throw together into a video, but I haven't felt all that excited about them. That top image is one of them.

In non-me news, my younger sister got (re)married in mid-May! Here's a photo my older sister took. They seem very happy, and I am happy for them and my nieces!

Over Memorial weekend, I went up to the Seattle area to hang out with my friend Dan and his parents. Dan and I took a ferry to Vashon Island on one of the days and just explored the area a bit. It was gray and sometimes rainy, but I had a good time. It was very low-key and unplanned. This is the view under a dock we saw on one of our stops.

And I forget the name of this lighthouse and feel too lazy to look it up. :)

In addition to the Vashon trip, we hung out and played games, as usual. Oh and we saw beautiful blue robin eggs in a nest by the front door! (And they've since hatched, I was informed.) It was fun and relaxing!

More family news: On June 1st, my older sister's family arrived in their new home city--Houston, TX! My brother-in-law found a good job there and they are currently house hunting (though I think the search might be over as I type this). Big things are happening for my sisters, and I admit I'm feeling a little antsy for something big in my life as well. Spring and summer always get me eager for change. I am happy for R's family to have this new experience and live close to the water again, but it does complicate things to have my family spread out so much. I have a hard time visiting them as it is. But I hope that one day we might all live closer or form an arrangement that would give me the opportunity to see them all a lot more. We shall see. It's something for me to continue praying about.

Just last week, my niece K arrived for her "age 13 trip" to visit me. I had been looking forward to it for months, and I think it went very well. I can't believe it's over now! I have a lot to share about that in coming entries, but here are a couple of photos. Above is one from a portrait session we did in a nearby park.

Spoiler alert: we went to the coast on one of the days she was here. She seemed to like that the most. She loved looking around for various shells and sea life. (Note: those people in the photo are strangers.)

Immediately after my time off for K's visit, my department at work had a retreat for the first time (at least since I've been there). We went up to Suttle Lake. I had never been that far east in Oregon, so it was a fun experience and really beautiful scenery.

The whole team of us walked the trail around the lake. It was about 3.5 miles, which sounds reasonable, but felt pretty tiring by the end. Still, it was cool and we saw several interesting sights and forest creatures (I seriously spelled that "creachers" the first time.. ??).

Since then, I've been trying to relax and recharge. Even though I had time off, I felt like I needed a vacation afterwards. The weekend couldn't come soon enough. The weather has been gray and sometimes rainy, but I am thankful that we had great weather for all of K's visit and our work retreat. And now I have the excuse to just stay indoors and, as I am doing tonight, make chicken and dumplings.

So what's next? Well, I have lots of pictures to go through, I want to try and retry some photo experiments, I just accepted a freelance design project, Dan's visiting over the 4th, and my office is moving to another building in early August. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what this summer holds. Maybe another trip to Seattle. Maybe something big. You never know! (And no, I'm not hinting at anything....just wishful thinking.)