Another cute story that makes me smile…

Since it is after all Thanksgiving, I need to write about another cute story….

The other day my Blackberry Curve went blank… I needed to text a friend, and when I picked up my phone it was pitch black inside… So I figured this is the end of my lovely Blackberry. I used Vitaliy’s phone (with my sim card) just in case someone out there needed to contact me… Turns out that I was right.

I couldn’t stand using his Nokia, it was small, difficult to figure out, and it didn’t have the one thing that my blackberry did… A full keyboard. I had to go back to the old school texting… Boy did it suck! For me to contact Vitaliy I had to call his bother’s phone, because they were together, and that didn’t go as well as I had hoped for… you see they either didn’t hear the phone calling, or they thought it was dead, or they left it in the car… This lasted for just a day, but I got tired of it, fast!

So I’m all alone at home (well with Subie of course), counting the minutes till when Vitaliy can come home. Finally it turned five o’clock sharp, and I run to the door… Nothing… I wait around a minute or two, nothing again. So I head on back to my office… Forty minutes passed and I’m beginning to worry, since I can’t call to find out if everything is ok.

At last I hear the door open and I come out into the living room. I go off about how he had me worried and he just smiles… Then slowly pulls out the bag I wanted to see the most… Luis Vuitton! Ahh, no I’m just kidding… I wish, though… He brings forward an AT&T bag, and says he got something for me… I knew right away that deep inside that bag, laid an iPhone waiting to be in my hands.

Thank you Love! You made my day!

Of course I had to take pictures of it brand new… And the box was quite something!

Happy Thanksgiving to ALL!

Hiding behind a branch with four leaves

I’ve been extremely stressed out lately…  I’ve got bills to catch up on, emails to keep updated, friends to see, and most importantly keep updated with my blog and photography…  And much, much more, that only God knows how hard it is to keep sane.  So bare with me here…  Luckily with the help of amazingly yummy chocolate, the stress is dying off… Slowly!

Driving from town yesterday night, I remembered a very sweet memory that was made with my best friend when we were 15.  It made me smile then giggle remembering step by step, and every detail of what happened that late summer night.

The setting takes place on a long, mostly-deserted-during-the-day-but-completely-empty-at-night-road, out in the boonies, at around 9:00 pm.  Since it was summer, we decided to walk the two mile distance from our cousin’s house to mine.  When we left the sky was still lit, just a little, and we didn’t realize that it would take us that long to get home.  We plugged one of our ears with ipod earphones, and thought we’d make the walk a bit more enjoyable.

That deserted road that I mentioned earlier… Yeah, well it has a huge forest along one side, and a long chicken house along the other…  Thats it!  One looong road, with no curves.  When we finally get to this road, we walk against the traffic, like we’re supposed to.  And for every car that was about to pass us, we would go on the grass, stop and wait, then move along again.

I remember like it happened yesterday.  I’m looking down at the ipod, Allie is pulling my arm toward the grass, and we stop.  The car starts slowing down while approaching us, and when it passes it comes to a complete stop.  We start walking again.  For no apparent reason, Allie looks over her shoulder and calmly mumbles… “Oh hey, the car stopped.”.  I nod like it’s no biggy, and her words go in one ear and out the other.

Suddenly it hits me!  Every word that she just said goes through my brain and I shiver.  I spin around and notice that the car turned on it’s back lights, and was ready to back up.  This whole scenario happened in literally a couple seconds…  Once I realized that the car was about to back up the few meters that were between us, I just took off running down the road.  Once I heard it driving back, I screamed and for some unknown reason even to me, I ran to the chicken house where there wasn’t a single place to hide, instead of the forest.  Don’t ask what I was thinking… I was scared, ok?  During all this, Allie just stood there…  ”What are you doing?!”  She couldn’t understand why I was running away from a car…  But when she heard that scream, she freaked and ran after me.

I jump behind a “bush” (a branch and four leaves), and when she comes running I pull her down in the shadow.  Once we were safe in our hiding place, we hear a group of guys laughing, from the car.  They stop backing up and start driving down the road again.  We sit and wait.  That particular road that we were hiding away on, was part of a loop, that you could keep driving around in circles.  We keep waiting.  I was ready to start walking home again but Allie wouldn’t have any of it.  She insisted on calling our cousin and asking him to drive us the rest of the way.

Morral of this story….  I don’t have one, I just remembered and thought you’d like to know a memory of mine that is treasured to this day of my life.

Piperlime + Good Customer service!

There it stood, being all cute and green.  With the brand name written along the side.  ”It’s that one… Riiiiight there!”  I tell the woman in the post office.  I called the whole week to see if it finally came.  The tracking number indicated that it should have been there by now but FedEx hasn’t come around yet. So finally it stood right before me.  I grabbed the beautiful box with two arms and just hugged it there for a second until the guy behind coughed and gave me a look.  On drive home I buckled it up in the passenger’s seat to make sure that my quick driving wasn’t going to damage the content inside.  Taking sharp turns in order to not waste even a second I held the box with my right hand for extra support.  I took care of it so when I would get home I’d be able to take a picture of it. And then I opened it and put on those boots that I was waiting for forever! It was a dream like moment!

They sure got their branding right… Just read the card they sent along with the package!

It’s a game my dog and I play + Photo editing: Photography

I keep my eyes closed while I turn to the my other side. She jumps up and runs to look at my face, you know, to see if I’m waking up even a little bit. She sits, waiting gets boring so she starts to look around the room. I open one eye to see if she’s got distracted and see her walking off to the glass door again. I turn again, and she rein acts the same scenario. This goes on for a while, until she realizes that I’m not sleeping anymore I’m just fooling around. Thats when she jumps on my face and doesn’t stop licking. I’m telling you my dog knows exactly how to make me smile each and every morning!

So I’ve been getting a few questions about how I edit, and how different the finished pictures look compared with the straight out of the camera ones. I edit my pictures with Lightroom, I have yet to learn PS. But someday I will… Well actually I hope that I won’t have to because my pictures will be that good that they won’t need any adjusting. Never hurts to dream.

The images are from my recent engagement shoot, I would have posted from my other wedding and engagements but I realized that I deleted all of my raw images. So we’re going to have to work with these somehow. I’m just hoping that this will help at least one of you guys out there, so keep the questions coming…

The before is on the left, after editing is on the right…

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/400

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/320

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/400

 

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/400

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/250

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/320

ISO 320 50mm f/1.8 1/125

I absolutely LOVE glares!  The real ones… Only!  The only problem with that is the contrast is lost, so this picture shows the difference with contrast added…

ISO320 50mm f/1.8 1/400

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/250

Happy Monday!