Death Valley: Golden Canyon, etc.

Hola. I'm back from my camping trip and I have a ton of photos (surprise!). But I'm narrowing them wayyyyy down and will show them to you in a series of posts over the next week or so. I'll tell you a little about my trip in the captions. I wish I had a more intriguing intro for you, but I'm not an intriguing person.


Saturday I flew into Vegas and my parents came to pick me up. We immediately headed to Furnace Creek to set up camp before it got dark. This was a scene on the drive.


These bushes are all over, but I really like them, so they show up in a lot of my photos.


The next morning we were awaken by lots of birds, mostly some sort of black bird and these doves. They coo like little owls all day long.


This is the other main type of bird--I think this is the female version of the black birds. I could be wrong; I'm not a birdologist.


We got a map from the visitor's center that mentioned several points of interest, so we headed south of our campground to cover a handful of them on Sunday. Our first stop was Golden Canyon, where we hiked the trail. Here are my cute parents! I have several photos of them posing at our various stops.


Wildlife sighting! My mom spotted this lizard, and we ended up seeing several more on this hike.


I just thought this was funny--in trying to catch a photo of him I got one without his head. It reminded me of a popular portrait style where the head and shoulders are cut out of a photo of an engagement picture (or other portrait). Maybe you know what I'm talking about, maybe you're thinking I'm insane.




I took this for the stripes, but there are also some crystal (like calcium?) deposits here. I don't remember why--my mom was reading the material provided with the hike, but I didn't catch every word.






I tried to include people in some of my photos to give some size perspective.




The photo on the right shows the Red Cathedral at the end of the hike. It wasn't all that red, actually, but I'm sure it is at sunset.

Okay, stay tuned for more deserty goodness! Have any of you been to Death Valley? What places did you visit there?

Snow + Friend Weekend

I have a few more snow photos that weren't in my other post. These additions were taken with my new lens and in the evening, so the color and sharpness are different.


Love the colors!


The trees look all fluffy.






Sorry for the repetition, but I love the colors!

Okay, enough of that! It's March!

As I mentioned, a couple of out-of-state friends came to visit me, so we did some Oregony things. Brenda had never been, so despite the weather we made the most of our time. Here are a few photos from that weekend.


We went to the coast when it was cold, rainy and SO windy. The sand was blowing over the surface of the beach, creating some cool effects.




Yeah, I took several photos here.




Brenda, managing the wind while she takes pictures.


The girls were walking backwards to avoid getting sand in their eyes and mouth.




On the following day we went to Portland. Brenda had read about a park that has statues of characters from Beverly Cleary's books. It happens to be a few blocks from Klickitat Street, where Ramona lives in the books!


We followed that with a trip to Powell's Books. Here's Brenda, perusing the shelves. The ladies seemed to enjoy the store and could've stayed for many hours! I like reading, but I'm just not one to want to stay very long in any store (I'm not big on shopping, though I enjoy most Target trips). I did pick up a couple of books at Powell's, though, and it didn't feel like we had stayed too long.

Overall, it was a great time with my friends and I'm so glad they could visit! Even though it rained a ton, I was just relieved that everything seemed to go smoothly and we were safe and healthy. A million things could've gone wrong (between airport trips in freezing temps, my photo workshop, three of us sharing a small space, pouring rain on dark, winding roads, etc.), but they didn't. Thanks, God!

Food Friday

Happy Friday!

This is two weeks of food photo choices.


02/18 - I was craving chili like mad and didn't want to wait, so I just bought some. I did make the chips out of tortillas, though, because that sounded more delicious!


02/20 - What's this? More tortillas? They're so delicious!


02/22 - I made some banana cupcakes so I could use up the quickly-browning bananas. I put cream cheese frosting on them and brought some to work.


02/23 - More tortellini! This time with a clam caper sauce. It was just okay.


02/26 - The lunch served at the women's conference. It was delicious! I could go for another croissant.


02/27 - After an afternoon on the cold, rainy, windy coast, we went to dinner at Mo's (a popular chain on the Oregon coast). This is the crab melt.


02/28 - Obviously having company means splurging! We bought some brownies and made them into sundaes.


03/02 - You're probably thinking I only eat various forms of stuffed pasta. You're probably right.


03/02 - I had this the same day, but it's not as pretty of a picture! That's why lots of things don't make my daily food photo.


Yes, I do eat vegetables! I just don't always photograph them.

Portraits - Dania

Hopefully you all got a chance to see Brenda's photos, so now I'm here to share Dania's. When I typed that sentence it just came to me that I completely forgot to do a few portraits of the two of them together! Oh well, I have snapshots.

I wasn't able to try as many things with Dania because my memory card ran out of space and the weather wasn't being all that cooperative. However, I see her a lot more than I see Brenda, so hopefully I'll have another chance to take pictures later on. What say you, Dania?

(Fun fact: Dania and I have been friends for about 24 years.)

While I'm talking, I will also mention that my plan was to take photos at various points during their visit so I could incorporate more outfits and scenery. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty sucktastic much of the time, so it wasn't possible. I'm just happy I was able to get these!


Like Brenda, Dania reads a ton, so I took book photos of her as well. I started with that, so I ended up getting a lot more book shots of her than of Brenda. I tend to hang out too long in the first pose/setup and then start moving at a faster pace after that point.










I loved the lines of these little blooming branches, but they weren't in the most convenient location. Dania was cool about trying to get in just the right spot, though.






This is kind of an outtake, but I just think it's so Dania that I had to post it. :)


This one also seems very natural Dania to me. It's not difficult to catch her laughing.


This is my favorite.

Thanks again, girls, for letting me practice on you! Who's next?

Portraits - Brenda

Two of my very good out-of-state friends came to visit me this past weekend. Of course I took the opportunity to practice portrait photography, and of course I will now bombard you with pictures. This is Brenda (who's much more consistent with her blogging than I am!) from Tennessee. Later I'll post some photos of Dania and general stuff from the weekend. It'll take some time to catch up.


This photo was taken during the grand total of 2 minutes of sunshine we experienced Sunday and Monday.








Sometimes I just can't decide between two similar photos, so I post them both. Right next to each other. It's my blog, so I can do that sort of thing.


Here I did it again.








Brenda loooooooves reading, so I thought I'd try using a book as a prop for some photos.


This is probably my favorite of the bunch! Brenda with one of her favorite books.

Brenda - thank you so much for coming and letting me try various poses and backdrops for your pictures. :)

Photography note: I just got a new lens (Sigma 30mm f/1.4) that I used for all of these photos. I'm pretty happy with it so far! There are much fancier lenses out there, but this is the nicest one I've had and it's amazing what a difference it makes in the color and sharpness.