A New Hobby

Let me start off by saying that I did not making a sewing joke in the title like I was really tempted to do. We'll leave that to the professionals (just wait for it).

I've never been interested in sewing. Like, at all. I've never drooled over sewing machines or read all of the how-to books or subscribed to all of the magazines (which all, by the way, are titled with terrible, terrible puns. I know this because I worked in a bookstore. Don't judge.). Anyway, what I have been interested in is DIY of every kind and this obsession has finally made its way to the sewing corner. See, I'm really tired of how much it costs to buy new clothes. I hate that you have to pay upwards of $40 for a new shirt of decent quality now days and while I don't really need anything new to wear, sometimes it's nice to have one thing that's fresh and fun to spice up a drab closet.

The one and only time I've ever sewn anything on my own was this past May, when I had to sew the three pieces of a stocking together to finish it off for my Mom, for Mother's Day. Since it was a present, I couldn't ask her for help and after sneaking her (very very old) sewing machine over to my apartment, I grit my teeth and prayed that I wouldn't screw it up. Not that a straight stitch is all that hard, but in my defense, there were a lot of curves...

I think the thing that really finished me off in terms of resigning to the fact that I'm now interesting in sewing, was discovering that there are so many free tutorials and patterns online. The one I'm currently drooling over? This Socialite Skirt tutorial over at Elle Apparel.

Isn't it absolutely adorable?!

This is the very first thing I plan to attempt. Even if I crash and burn, at least I'll be learning along the way. So now that I've decided I want to give this sewing thing a good ole college try, I need a way to...well...sew. Like I mentioned before, my mom's sewing machine, while nice and heavy duty, is quite old. And with age comes simplicity, which isn't a good starting point for someone who doesn't know a thing about sewing. So this is why I've been setting my sights on a new modern sewing machine. Nothing fancy, but one that has those built-in stitches I can take advantage of. Some might think this is cheating, but this is one time that I think I'll just embrace the advantages of technology over being a purist. Enter the beast:

Stylish and fairly priced at $85.00 on Amazon

I've been eying this guy for a couple of weeks now and was planning on saving up for it, and then my wonderful in-laws insisted on paying me for my sister-in-law's senior portraits I did this weekend (more on that later), so I have a little room to play. This is by far not a high-end machine, but it has excellent reviews and is a step up from the $35 Michley I was considering previously.

Once I order this thing, set it up, begin to read the instructions only to get impatient/annoyed and toss them aside, and give it a good test run, I'll give the tutorial a whirl and report back here with the results!



Oh. And now for the puns. I told you they were coming. And you don't even have to look that far. Turn your attention to none other than the packaging of this delightful sewing machine:

Sew advanced! Sew affordable!

Please Shut Up

I'm borrowing this post title from a blog post/article that Jon Acuff wrote a few days ago on his website. Jon Acuff is the man behind "Stuff Christians Like" and is also part of the mega Dave Ramsey team. His recent post caught my eye because of how true it is and how a very specific and important part of it applies to myself. It shines the light on a part of me that I'm not all that crazy about. Sometimes you need to hear the harsh truth to have the guts to change something intrinsic about yourself. Sometimes you need to tell yourself to shut up. This is what Jon has to say (bold added by me):

When I worked for Bose, we didn’t ever talk about Sony.

Why?

Because we didn’t have to.

We were Bose. We didn’t need to denigrate Sony or any other competitor in the stereo or electronics industry in our advertising and marketing. We felt confident in our technology, our science and our people. We didn’t need to prove how bad somebody else was in a reverse attempt to prove how good we were.

But sometimes that lesson is easy to forget, especially with the Internet.

It’s so easy to trash talk about other people right now.

To write blog posts that tear down other authors. To tweet criticism of other companies or bloggers or dreamers that we feel aren’t nearly as good as we are.

But by doing so, you distract yourself from focusing on the things that matter more. You waste valuable time and energy in jealousy and envy. You get distracted and discouraged and in the process look small and petty.

You don’t need to slam another public speaker to prove you’re a better public speaker.

You don’t need to talk trash about another author’s book to prove you’re a great author.

You don’t need to compare yourself to someone bad as a way to feel good.

Prove you’re the best by being the best. Prove you’re the best by working the hardest. Prove you’re the best by hustling and giving and serving and refusing to quit no matter what anyone else is doing around you.

Be Bose.

And along the way,

Please shut up.

Trash talk is a waste of time, and you’re better than that.

Good advice, I think. For me, it means time to stop comparing my work to others and getting discouraged. Time to just do my own thing and be happy about it :)

Vance & Vita Wedding

A couple of weeks ago I photographed a wedding for the nephew of Heather Dupuis, who is a good friend and basically an adopted sister :) Her nephew, Michael, is in the Navy and came in just for a few days to get married and then he and his new bride, Chelsea, headed off to California for their new married life near the Navy base. I just mailed them the disc of the images from the wedding and thought I'd post a few of my favorites here.

Through the Viewfinder

Recently I've been stumbling across so many interesting mediums for photography, both old and new. As a photographer, it's easy to get caught up in the newest lens or the camera body with the most advanced technology and we start to forget that there are other fun ways to capture moments in time. Here are a few that I especially enjoy.

WIDELUX PANORAMIC CAMERA

Source

The Widelux is a panaoramic camera that was first developed in 1948. It hails from Japan and has what is called a "swing lens" or "rotating lens" to accomplish the panoramic effect. When I first heard about this I thought it was the coolest thing ever and immediately jumped online to see if I could find one for sale. My disappointment set in when I discovered they run at an average of $1500 for a working model. The 35mm camera has a fixed focus, three shutter speeds (1/15, 1/125 and 1/250) and a variety of apertures and kicks out some pretty cool photos. The camera garnered a bit of extra attention when Jeff Bridges revealed that he's been using one since the 80's to take photos between takes on movie sets. In 2004 he published a book of his photography called Pictures. Here's a couple of his shots:

The Spare Room from the set of Crazy Heart

You can see the distortion that occurs with the Widelux. This diminishes the more horizontal the camera is held.

Maggie Gyllenhaal on the set of Crazy Heart

 This is what I would have fun with! I'd be making everyone I knew run from one side to the other.

I'm still keeping the Widelux on my wishlist, but for now it's out of my price range! There are other brands of swing-lens panoramic cameras available, most notably the Horizon (from Russia) and Noblex (from Germany), both of which you can find for quite a bit cheaper, but there's something about the Widelux that draws me in.


LIQUID IMAGE SCUBA CAM

This is an extreme sports cam from Liquid Image and it looks like so much fun! I came across it in a news article and it's a complete no brainer. When you're scuba diving, snorkeling or just having fun in the water, the last thing you want to do is keep track of a camera, even one that's "waterproof." I speak from experience...on our Honeymoon last October we went snorkeling for the first time and I bought a $12 underwater camera to document our experience. What I didn't count on was being more than a little freaked out by the whole breathing underwater thing and only being able to shakily hold up the camera for a dozen shots before getting out. Then there was the water leak. Somehow water got into our waterproof camera and ruined all of our pictures. See one of the better ones below:

Just what I wanted...a red tint on all of our pictures!

I imagine things would have gone a little differently had we been able to use one of the camera masks. They're hands free (the shutter button is on the mask itself) and you don't have to worry about running out of exposures, water ruining your pictures, or - heaven forbid - dropping your camera and watching it sink into the depths of the ocean. They offer different series of masks including wide angle, video, explorer, and a line of ski masks to document your experiences on the slopes.

A sample picture from the Scuba Series HD cam. Just look at the clarity!

The best thing about these cameras? They run from $49.00 to $349.99! I was blown away by their affordability. If I was a big scuba diver/skier/snow boarder, especially as a photographer, I would be lining up to buy one. The blue mask above is from their Scuba Series HD and it runs at $250. It offers a 5.0 Mega Pixel Sensor, shutter speeds up to 1/10,000 of a second and with memory expandable up to 32GB, you can store 36,800 images or 960 minutes (16 hours) of video on one card. This $49.00 option from the explorer series would be so much fun to let kids play around with in the summer.

LYTRO PICTURE REVOLUTION

This last one from Lytro is the newest and the most incredible. In fact, it's such a ground breaking concept that I almost feel like it's cheating, in a way. It's certainly going to revolutionize the photography industry if it actually works as advertised. See, it's so new that they don't have a camera yet available to the public, however you can reserve one on their website. No one even knows what it looks like, though they do say that it will be small enough to fit in a pocket.

So here's the concept. When you take a picture with any regular camera, whether point-and-shoot, DSLR, or film, your camera has to choose a point to focus on before releasing the shutter and capturing the image. It can be chosen manually by you or automatically by your camera, but there has to be a focus point unless you want a completely blurry picture. This is where Lytro blows it out of the water. Instead of making the camera pick one area of the picture to focus on, it creates what they're calling "living pictures" and allows you to choose which part of the picture is in focus...after you take the picture. In other words, with one single picture you can make multiple images that are all focused on different areas of the picture. Somehow they've figured out how to retain the entire range of focus all within one picture file to be manipulated at a later time. Like I said - if this works as magically as they say it does, it's going to be doing some major revolutionizing.

Below are different versions of one picture featured in their living picture gallery. Head on over and play around with it to get the full effect. It's a bit mind blowing but definitely intriguing.

via

This is the great thing about photography - it's half art, half science and because of that it will continue to expand and reach depths (literally in some cases!) no one ever though possible.

Mellow Yellow

On my daily stop at Etsy this morning I came across this lovely treasury by Hitchcock Ink. I've always had a soft spot for the yellow & gray combination, which explains my own bedding choices.

 



I particularly like the tissue paper pom poms from Sweet and Savvy Designs. I could see those hanging at a summer party or even as a summer decoration in my apartment somewhere....