Epic week for me right here. One that can only be recapped in photos and not words because I am in the middle of editing last weekends wedding.

While everyone was shopping for Thanksgiving staples like turkey, yams and cranberries I was poking fish. Buy the ones with the clearest eyes by the way. I loved the silver tones with just a spot of red. The sign shoved into the tub of ice read: “Take a photo!”

Tuesday I ran into this guy in the hallway, he was visiting the dental offices selling I’m not sure what but he did have the Clark Kent thing down, black curl down the forehead and everything.

I have a great boss who leaves me Thank Yous all the time. That’s right I get thanked for just doing my job, pretty awesome.

Me at work dreaming about the 20 pounds of potatoes I have to peel tomorrow. Wow my hair is getting long.

Dinner that night was Butternut Squash and Kale Risotto. I can jot down the recipe if you like (its in my head.)

My kitchen island is still the island of clutter.

Super A has a new habit of starting in our bed…. I have so many thoughts about this but for now I am just to tired to fight this.

Thanksgiving is here and I am working on two things.  Prepping for my wedding shoot on Saturday and making my side dishes. This year I am not making a turkey and I’m pretty bummed about it, but something tells me come Sunday I won’t be missing all the post cooking clean up.

First up is mashed potatoes, Pioneer Woman Mashed Potatoes << this my friends is the recipes that started my whole girl crush on PW. She has me at 1 stick of cream cheese and Lawry’s Seasoned salt. I have been making her potatoes every year since.

This year I was assigned yams which I thought were meant to be Sweet Potatoes so I made Pioneer Woman’s’ Soul Sweet Taters. And yes I did type the following:

Its a pretty dish with the vibrant orange and apple crisp like crumble.  These are sweet like candy, I would even suggest half the sugar, but the crowds may beg to differ as there were ZERO leftovers.

I also opted to make an Eggnog Pound Cake – its “almost” scratch and it takes like 5 minutes to make. Here’s the secret.

Better ingredients produce a better cake.

modchiks’ mom’s recipe below

We travelled up to my brother and sister-in-laws in our summer best, as temps were forecasted to be in the low 90’s.

I brought my film camera and because it took me so long to get this week up I already have the scans back. And let me just say I LOOOOOOOOOVE film. And here is something else that is worth mentioning and its pretty HUGE in my eyes. For the first time in like, ever my husband actually liked a photo that I took of him … and I quote “I actually don’t look like a ghost for once.” For the record I have a hard time capturing his true skin tones with his salt n’ pepper turned silver hair.

For the film lovers in the house I don’t know the type of film I used here, but if I were to guess I “think” its Fuji 400h (seeing the pink hills) when I pick up my negatives I will find out. But can I just say BRAVO to this little new-to-me Mamiya 645AF camera for NAILING the exposure.

I am completely obsessed with their two cats, these guys are REAL cats who primarily live on a diet of mice, gophers and small birds. You pet them and a cloud of dust envelopes you. I am truly amazed they fend off cars and coyotes. The last time I let Weebee out I found her taking a breather in the road behind our house (I still have a scar from scaling the cinder block wall to pluck her out of the bike lane.)

Digital

Film

The next day I had a family session at the beach. We were lucky and had access to a private beach, there were maybe 4 other people on this stretch of sand. And the weather? fughettaboutit. Beeeeeeeeeeautiful sunny skies. Not really the easiest to shoot in though. This is when you dig deep and try to remember all that you ever learned about white and shadow fill. As I sit here taking a break from editi said photos, all I can say is the film shots are perfect SOOC and the DSLR are sucking the life outta me with all this color tone issues. Le sigh. I am all but convinced that I could do a family session 100% on film. You know what the kicker is I just bought another set of presets from MastinLabs to help me to get the DSLR shots to look like the film.

Here’s a peak:

Canon 5D

Mamiya 645AF

iPhone 5S (vsco and instagram tilt-shift)

Mini Instax

At the end of the session I like to take a couple instant pictures, one for them and one for me.

and then there was the sunset….

I am truly blessed to in this world.  

The next day was GO DAY. Time to shoot a wedding.

I woke up and realized I couldn’t find my flash and had to make a last minute run to the camera rental store. I’m lucky I didn’t have to buy one. Can you tell I don’t do weddings often? Like ever? Well that changed when my sisters college roommate was looking for a photographer. I was more than happy to catch up on my wedding skills. Plus the location was to die for.

iPhone

Here’s a really grainy forward facing selfie just to document – HEY YOU DID IT.

So let me back up and tell you what I was feeling the day after, remind you this is BEFORE I got the film scans back. (see below.) I think my mom could maybe best describe that with the phone she made to me that night. She probably was thinking to herself, ‘Wow, super glad I called HER today.”  Sorry mom I know that was no picnic. what happened was panic had set in that morning when I uploaded the images. I usually make myself wait at least 24 hours before I even look at my captures. I definitely won’t edit for a couple days, I just need time to sit and think about things. I broke my rule and I looked and I wasn’t really wowed to be honest. What I saw was potential, photos that I knew would take hours of editing to achieve a “professional” look. A sentence to a week of on again off again marathon editing sessions and oh by the way I have a j-o-b too. I was facing an extended stay in the COD. The chair of death, that’s what us photographers call editing.  I could only hope that the film held some gems, but at this point I was a little deflated and insecure.

The next morning I dropped the 7 or so rolls, really frustrated I had so little to develop. I was conservative with the film camera. Anyway I cried a bit on the shoulders of the local lab guy and he assured me that something good was bound to come out of a handful of rolls. I promised the kids we’d see Big Hero 6, it was a good distraction. but then they got to the end and I cried in my popcorn like a baby. My shell was beginning to crack and all I wanted to do was sink into a big fluffy Baymax.

It wouldn’t be until 5 days later that I saw a little glimmer of hope. The scans were good. Really good.

More about it next week, I have to get back to the COD and then think about getting Christmas stuff out, but I should probably put away the Halloween decorations first.

Happy December and remember…

 

yeah I pulled Carl out again so if you are reading this in your inbox you have to go online to see this gem.