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Jena+Ashkan : Engagement – Part II

December 21st, 2011

“How do you feel about zombies?” I started to recall all the zombie movies I’ve seen, and games played, before answering “more than favourable!?!” I do like my zombies, but not the ones that run super fast. My cardio is kind of weak so there is no way I can outrun them in a zombie apocalypse. That being said, Ashkan and Jena love zombies! On the drive to Elora for the engagement pictures, there was a heated discussion about the plot of the story. At one point, Jena was to be turned into a zombie and possibly eat Ashkan’s brains. But like in all good love stories, we decided to leave both Jena and Ashkan human, and let the zombies party on their own. Can’t wait till their Mexico wedding next month! Who knows, there might be even more zombies.

Cuba – Havana & Resort

December 15th, 2011

There is something to be said about that first step off the airplane when you land in a warm country in the middle of December. You can feel the warm humid air and think “Why don’t I do this more often?!?” It just happened that all three countries that I’ve called home at one point or another, were cold with lots of snow. So it’s very unusual for me to wear dresses in the middle of winter, and let me tell you, I can SO get used to that! I bet every Canadian (and other northerners) dreams about palm trees, sand, and ocean. Heck, I dream about that during summers as well. So here is the first installment of photos from Cuba: Havana and Paradisus Resort, Varadero.

Random Wednesday – Catching up

December 14th, 2011

Playing the ‘catch up’ game has never been my forte, especially with blogging. Writing about yesterday’s news, is like drinking day-old tea… great, now I can’t get that cold, bitter tea taste out my mouth… bleh! Why do I do this to myself?!?

Anyways, right before I left last week, I made instructional videos on how to use the new Lightroom plug-in for the 500px website. This information is probably relevant to only the geekiest of us all. It talks about how to export your photos directly from Lightroom into the 500px website, manage collections, and reply to comments. If you’re interested check these out.

Another neat thing that happened, was a small photo of mine was published in 24Hrs newspaper. My friends’ band, previously known as Kill Giants, has reformed and are now playing all over town with the new name Convoys. The ‘teenage groupie’ in me loves saying that my friends are in a band! I also know all of their songs, and can sing them off-tune really well, no joke. You should definitely check them out! Also, one of the band members, Jason, just made it to The Grid newspaper with his brother and their new Korean Taco bar. So proud of them!

Travel Notice

December 3rd, 2011

I will be away from December 3rd-11th on a destination wedding without a connection to the internet. I will get back to everyone once I’m back.

Adam

November 29th, 2011

A few days after my proclamation that I love photographing men in Kevin’s post, Adam contacted me saying that he needs a few photos. LOVE IT! ‘Ask and you shell receive’ is that how that saying goes? Well, I’m terrible at the asking part, but it works! Let me try this: I WANT TO PHOTOGRAPH A WEDDING IN JAPAN! Huh..huh? Maybe I should make a separate entry of all the things I’d like to do. Before I get carried away, back to Adam. He is one of the brilliant designers behind 500px website and their iPad app. Sometimes I wish I had his rad skills, but to each their own. Not only does he design well, he also photographs amazingly well. Adam thanks for making my job incredibly easy!


Jena + Ashkan : Engagement – Part1

November 25th, 2011

Oh, I’m so very excited about this one! Not only because we captured some fun photos, but also because my friend is getting married and I get to capture it all. Here is the story of how I met Ashkan. It was the first day of grade 10 in the new school. The first class was history. I was sitting at the front desk, middle row, he was right behind me. Like any first day of school, we got to play the ‘Find someone who…” game. Naturally, I turned around. I think my name went into the box “Find someone who doesn’t know who Martha Stewart is.” Don’t ask… Over the following years we shared a number of classes together, mainly English related. We did ridiculous group projects that involved Ash being dressed as a woman with stuffed animals for … ahem bosoms. [I still have the tapes, blackmail?]; built crazy mountains; drew ridiculous pie charts (twice) in each others yearbooks, and had all sorts of fun. Then, as it usually happens after highschool, we all moved to different places and lost touch for a bit.

While I was gallivanting here and there, Ashkan moved to Vancouver where he met, oh so gorgeous, Jena. What can I say, these two are just perfect together! Without being overly cheese-ball-ish, I’ll just say that you can feel the love when you’re around them! Here is the first part of their engagement photos, to be followed with more after.

Jena and Ashkan wanted to incorporate their son’s favourite toy into the photos. Too adorable!

Random Wednesday – Stickers and cold

November 23rd, 2011

Who doesn’t like pretty stickers?!? I know I do, but it is so painful to decide where to place them. I think I have ‘sticker’ commitment issues. I literally walk around with a sticker in my hand and look into all the notebooks, folders, boards, papers and try to think where to place it. Not being able to settle on anything, I stockpile them. Yes, hoarders style, one day you’ll find me under all the pretty papers and stickers because I couldn’t commit on any of them.

Last week, I published a review of the CottonCarrier vest and their Lite system over at the 500px blog. Instead of double posting it here, head on over if you’re interested in reading about my mini adventure with their products. I even used my brother as a model, making him famous one picture at a time! … or so I’d like to think. 

Lastly, I got a cold! It took me out for couple of days, but it’s getting better. And I thought that all of you should know, well not really! I’m more interested in finding out how YOU fight your colds, in natural ways that is. For the past few days I’ve been drinking a lot of herbal teas with real ginger, lemon, and mint in it.  Liquid green vitamins, oregano oil, and even iron was thrown into the mix. But at the end of the night I still took NyQuil so I’d be able to sleep. And sleep I did, for 11 hours straight, three days in a row. I would like to replace NyQuil with something more natural though. Any ideas?

 

Kevin

November 10th, 2011

I love photographing men. Everytime I get to work with guys it’s different. I even get slightly anxious, since it’s not my regular girly photoshoot. I don’t have the comfort of going through my regular poses, playing with jewellery, photographing shoes or other details. I can’t just ask a guy to twirl around! Photographing men makes me think differently. It’s a case of  “if I were a boy, how would I want to look”? Confident, strong, a bit mischevious or maybe a ‘guy next door’ look. Different scenarios, angles and light choices play out in my head. But, I’m not a guy, and I can never predict how the photoshoot will go. Which is great in itself, because it’s always fresh and exciting. I’m always pleasantly surprised when men reveal their personalities for the camera almost immediately. With ladies it takes a bit of time for them to get comfortable in front of the lens, to which I can completely relate. But with guys, they just bring it and I LOVE it!

I met with Kevin at UofT campus which he calls ‘home’ on a Sunday afternoon as any proper PhD candidate working in a lab would. Ahhh that brought memories of endless pipeting, centrifuges, protein assays and of good ol’ genetics days. I missed it, but not enough to return to the lab.  Kevin needed a few headshots and a number of other photos for different purposes, so we combined everything into one photo session. He brought forth so much ‘handsome’ that it was ridiculous! I was looking at the camera screen and thinking GQ and 007 at the same time, that boy has style! That’s what I mean when I say that I LOVE photographing men. Thanks Kevin for spending some time with me. You rock!

Random Wednesday – a bit of everything

November 9th, 2011

It’s been a while since I wrote a random update, so it’s about time to let you know about random randomness that goes on in my life.

Let’s start with RAM. I upgraded to 8GB all by myself. Impressed? My mother was! Cleaned all the dust bunnies from inside of my lappy, and had a sneeze fest while at it! Mental note: clean computer more often than once every three years. Thanks to the new RAM, we’re running more smoothly now.

Since I’m a health conscious freakazoid, I bought all natural Cilantro Mint toothpaste. No triclosan or fluoride! Seriously, what IS wrong with me? Cilantro Mint?  It’s… interesting, but good interesting. Also found a healthier mascara since my MAC one ran out and was causing all sorts of reactions anyway. It’s from Mineral Fusion and the only ‘iffy’ ingredients are phenoxyenthanol  (mild irritant) and iron oxide (irritant, but it’s a black colour for mascara). So far it works wonderfully, not a puffy eye in sight. Also, I owe you an update on Chinese Herbs that I’ve tried for my sinuses. They work! However, as I suspected they didn’t eliminate the problem completely. I also discovered that black tea and caffeine make sinuses a lot worse, same goes for citrus fruit.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim! Need I say more? I’m very excited about this one. It’s been 5 years since the release of Oblivion and this new game is coming out on Friday. Many things have changed in the past five years. I don’t even own a PC anymore, but I might just have to get one in order to play this. I mean… nooo, I don’t waste time on video games *shifty eyes*. Ok, but I swear this is the only one that I love. I’ve been with it since Morrowind days and yesterday I tried playing Oblivion on my Mac (MAC!!! Desperate much?)… I forgot all the keys and moved like a complete gaming noob.

I finally got back to my reading list. The number of books that piled up over the summer whispering “READ ME” every time I’d pass by the shelf is incredible. I started with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his “Love in the Time of Cholera“. Oh wow, I LOVE his writing style, attention to detail, and multidimensional characters. Not a huge fan of never ending chapters, but it’s a very enjoyable read. If you have any recommendations for ‘must read‘ books leave a comment, and I’ll add them to my list.

Nikkor 85mm f/1.4

November 8th, 2011

The ever so elusive 85mm is miiiiine. [inset evil laugh here]. Ahem.. I mean… nothing. I had it for a little while now, but never got a chance to write about this gorgeous lens. This was THE lens that I was hunting for a long time, and ever since it came out it went into an out-of-stock mode. I guess I wasn’t the only one craving for it. I’ve already took the lens for a spin during a wedding and a couple of engagement sessions, and it performed wonderfully, especially wide open. It’s very smooth with amazing bokeh, just like all the reviews mentioned. But purchasing three lenses in a row, and thus completing my lens kit, didn’t exactly give me time to appreciate each one of them separately. I just stuffed them into my bag and went to work. On what possibly was the last decent day of 2011, I went for a walk, camera in hand with the 85mm. That’s right! When no one wants to come out to the park with me, I take my next best friend and we have tonnes of geeky fun. Photographing people with the 85mm is amazing, but focusing on details is a bit more challenging. I usually border on a ‘macro’ side of things, so the large minimum focusing distance of the 85mm came as a bit of a surprise and needed some getting used to. Most of these were shot at f/1.4.