Some weeks ago, I received an email from a lovely lady named Anne. (Yes, I already knew then that she’d be lovely.) She wrote to invite me to spend a day in San Francisco taking photographs of the sights, followed by a 3-hour Lightroom workshop with the amazing Julieanne Kost the following day. Oh, and Adobe was sponsoring the whole thing. She then so kindly remarked that she thought I might need the break.
The disadvantage of being on Eastern Standard Time out here in the west is that your body wakes you up at 4:38AM and soon after, it wants breakfast.
The advantage of being up at 4:38AM is that you get to catch one of the most beautiful sunrises you’ve seen in a while.
Never mind that I was standing on the window ledge, in my pajamas, and folks standing on the street may have thought I was two shakes shy of a cocktail.
That’ll just the be perfect setup for the rest of my day.
Disclaimer: The above title is in no way announcing a post on how to shoot self-portraits. Thank you for your attention.
This morning, I was browsing the Food Photography and Styling group at Food Blog Forum (if you’re a food blogger or contemplating venturing into it, I highly recommend joining the community). One of the discussions started was about submitting photos to Taste Spotting and Food Gawker (if you’re a food eater or contemplating venturing into the vicious cycle of ogle-rumbling tummy-cook-eat-ogle again, I highly recommend browsing those sites).
When you submit a photo to either of those sites, one of the technical requirements is that you crop it to 1:1 aspect ratio. In other words, they use square images. And when I went through my existing photos to pick a few to submit for the first time, the biggest problem I had was that what I felt were my best photos did not lend well to square cropping. And often, I had to settle for my second or third choices because I couldn’t find a way to make my first choice fit nicely in a square. (And I didn’t want to just pad the sides to fake a square.)
If you were thinking that this might be a post about green tea ice cream, that won’t come until some time next week. I need some time to make it just right, and it’s almost there, but I know I can make it better.
Instead, this will be photography post. Because I’ve really been enjoying viewing the submissions to The Pioneer Woman’s Photo Assignment this week. Guess what the theme is.
I love the color green, and believe me, if “The Green Hut” had only managed to make a little more sense than the already-nonsensical “Ivory,” you might be calling me by a different name. Green also happens to be my husband’s favorite color. And as I repeatedly gasped in amazement at the incredible talent on display this week at The Pioneer Woman’s site, it also inspired me to take a quick look at my Flickr account and see if I had any old photos that featured the color green.
My internet friend Scott Thomas regularly posts photo assignments, and I always intend to comply but never seem to be able to make the deadlines. This time, I promised myself, I’m absolutely doing it.
Well wouldn’t you know it, I have about an hour and a half before the deadline, and I’m just writing this post now. Nice going, you over-achiever you.
The current assignment is “White.” I had no clue how to approach it, so I took the easy way out: food.
I write, cook, play music, and make pictures. Not necessarily in that order. I was born and raised in the Philippines, and it shows. That means I eat rice with every meal, love my cousins like my own siblings, and firmly believe that avocados are best eaten with cream and sugar.
If you want to learn more about me, here are 43 things I'd like to do. Here's a little something about my name, in case you were wondering. Here are some other places you'll find me:
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One summer night in 2010, our house burned to the ground and we lost everything we had. This is the story of what happened and how life and hope can always rise from ashes.
