Heather and Greg's engagement photos

While I love taking photos, I never consider myself a professional...not even close.  So, when Heather asked me to take engagement photos of her and Greg, I was flattered, and a bit scared.  I take photos of my yard, underwater and my family but something like this was a bit out of my comfort zone. I don't shoot a lot in manual mode unless I am experimenting.  I still haven't figured out benefits of having 2 lens yet.  Yet, I would give it a try.  Heather and Greg trusted me and I knew I could get a couple of good photos...at least in program mode. 

Heather and Greg met us on the Tacoma waterfront with Heather's 2 children, and her mother.  Unfortunately, due to timing, we got the sun directly overhead and that would make for lots of shadows. I shot a few with Robbie to see how the lighting was.  The shadows and sun were overpowering.  Beautiful day outside, horrible day for photography.

I warned Greg and Heather about my worries, but decided to proceed and see what we could get.  I brought a prop...some white roses for her to hold.  I wanted to see how they would work in the photos and they turned out to be a great add.

I took about 150 photos at all different places in the park.  We tried full sun, shade, water backdrop and grass. I took photos of them, the kids together, kids and grandma, and some fun family shots.  The hardest part is the creativity...getting them not to pose, but capturing the pureness of the moment.  While the sun and shadows got the best of a lot of the pictures, these are a few of my favorites.

While the sun and shadows were annoying, keeping Kylee entertained through the process was hard too.  She is 6 and she was good for about 45 minutes and she was done.  I brought out the secret weapon:  Robbie and Lily.  The 3 of them played while I took shots of Heather and Greg.  The photo shoot turned out to be a lot of fun and Heather and Greg seemed happy with the photos I took.

One of the hardest things for me to master at the moment is coming up with a good editing software.  While I have Lightroom, I still haven't made peace with it yet.  I have photoshop too, but have not loaded it to my computer.  I used Picasa to do most of my editing on these.

Bringing home and photographing our new puppy.

Lily, 8 weeks old.

I have owned several dogs in my adult life.  Sadie I raised from a puppy and she broke my heart when she died of hip cancer 9 years later.  We rescue Bradee 8 years ago as an adult dog and she passed away 5 years later.  Tom brought Lucy home from the pound 17 years ago.  She finally passed away in late April.  I wanted to wait a while before getting another dog.  Losing 3 dogs in 8 years was very sad for me...but I missed having a young dog.  My son and husband really wanted a puppy so we decided it was time, a lot sooner than expected.  They started to look and we stumbled on a litter of black lab/dane mix puppies out in Belfair, WA.  On June 15th, we drove out to the small town near Bremerton.  They had 3 female puppies and they chased Robbie all over the large yard where the puppies were living.  One of the black girls warmed to Robbie right away and became a quick favorite.  She bonded with all of us.  Katie said that we should call her Lily because the only black flower in my garden, and it matches well with my cat's name (which is Lucy, believe it or not!)  Lily stuck and she picked us too for her forever home and family.

Robbie bonding with Lily

petting behind the ears.

Lily was born on April 16th.  She is all black, but she has a little bit of brindle on her forehead.  She has a tiny patch of white on her chest.  She looks like a black lab, but she has long Great Dane legs.  Her mother was 90 pound brindle lab/dane, but her father was unknown.  Based on all the litter mates, it is suspected that the dad was a black lab.  It doesn't look like there are any other breeds, but I will have Dr Davidson (our vet) confirm on Friday.  Pit Bull mixes are very prevalent and I did not want a mix with that breed, mainly for 2 reasons.  First, for the dog's safety, I would never want her to be considered dangerous, just because of her breed and 2nd, I don't want us to have to worry about taking her anywhere, or having to worry about her being considered an "aggressive breed" or dangerous.    So, finding a dog without pit is quite difficult unless you go with a purebred, which we didn't want to do.  We wanted to adopt a rescue dog.   However, it was very important to me that we have a lab because I love that breed.  Even though Danes are very large, they are considered very calm.  This is a nice combination with the more hyper retrievers.  Even though we are going to have a big dog, this combination should be very good for us.  Lily will be a big girl, but it is already seems very calm and very sweet.

Robbie and Lily in the backyard.

Lily quickly attached herself with Robbie and followed him all over the place.  It allowed me to get some great photos of them together.  She seems to react well to my camera and one of the awesome things about the DSLR is the rapid fire pictures, which makes it easy for action shots.

You can expect to see a lot more photos of her over the next few months, mainly how much she is going to grow!

Rebuilding my yard and putting in flower gardens.

We moved into our home in May of 2004.  It is a huge lot with a lot of landscaping and interesting little areas with different types of plants.  When we opened the dive store, the lot was mowed but that was about it.  We just didn't have time to keep it up.  Weeds grew like crazy and the property became an eyesore.  I am sure the neighbors thought we were going into foreclosure.

April 2012 I started to bring it back to life, but in the process, started changing what had been there before.  Slowly, I have been converting it into a flower haven.  While last year was mostly clean up, this year is about planting perennials and attracting hummingbirds.

We love these frogs.  They sit in the front garden

Tom and I have removed a lot of old shrubs this year and planted roses, lilies and dahlias.  I am currently looking for 3-4 peonies and more perennials to fill up my garden.  Later this summer, I plan to till the back area and put in a huge tulip garden for the spring.

Throughout my yard, I am adding different things that our family likes.  For example, Tom loves presidential roses and strawberries, so I have planted both.  Katie loves lilies so there are lilies, and orange dahlias, which is her favorite color.  Our little dog Lucy passed away this spring, and we have a shrub in the back yard we call, "Lucy's bush" because she used to hide under it.  Robbie has picked out several flowers this year, and I make a point to get red because that is his favorite color.  Our whole family loves tomatoes, so we have a bunch of Early Girl plants in the back, along with sugar snap peas for Katie and Robbie to snack on.

While I love all the flowers in my yard, my first love is my roses.  I have climbers, miniatures, shrub, florabunda, 1 grandfloral and my favorite and most beautiful tea roses.  If I had to pick a favorite,it is the pale yellow with pink tipped "Peace".  I have one thriving in my back yard.  I seem to keep adding more, but I am totally out of room for roses.

Hybrid Tea Rose, "Peace"

My inspiration is drawn from several things, but probably the most dominate is from my friend and former mother in law Glenda Zundel.  She loved English Gardens and she got a degree 15 years ago from WSU in horticulture.  She loved all kinds of gardens and visited them all over the world.  She also knew all the birds that would visit her yard and had quite the collection of bird houses in her yard in Wenatchee.    Unfortunately, she passed away due to complications from back surgery last October.  I think about her often when I am digging in the yard and feel she is helping me.  She always had lilac, foxglove and hollyhocks in her yard, and there is a bunch of those in mine as well.  I hope, wherever she is now, she can see what I am doing and approves.

My photography goals is to not only document changes each year, but to get different types of photos using my 2 lenses.  I want to get some good landscape shots, but looking at macro opportunities as well.  These photos were all taken in program mode, using my main lens.  As my garden matures, I will post photos using my 50mm lens and manual settings.

Early this spring

I love this little area.  I keep adding to it...

I planted these last fall and they went crazy this April.  Can't wait to see what next year looks like!

From early spring.  Truly a "before" photo

Mason bees.  Very excited to see them.

Lilac tree in the front driveway

Peonies blooming in my south front garden

Calle Lilies!  Love these black ones.

This is my favorite garden area and it continues to evolve!

Our backyard area.

Veggie garden this year

Hummingbird on my feeder

Little backyard flower garden

attempting some garden art with an old baker's rack

Lucy's bush

Our front stairs

My property is full of iris!

The Macro Lens...ripples and all!

Last month, Tom and I spent a week in Puerto Rico on an incentive trip I won with 7-Eleven.  While the dive operators were horrible and very expensive, the diving itself was amazing.  For this trip, I treated myself with a new toy for my G12 camera and housing...a wet macro lens.  I got a screaming deal on it at the Tacoma Dive Expo in April from Fantaseas and was excited to use it on our trip.

Queen Angelfish in Puerto Rico

Using it was very easy.  It clipped very securely onto my camera and could be removed with bungie clips.  Probably the most difficult thing was that I didn't have a strobe on the camera.  The internal flash would not work with the diffuser so I was stuck without a flash.  Once I got a little practice with the lens, I found it had some advantages.

Looking up the wall at 90'

I sat the camera on the sand for this shot of the Caribbean crab.

at about 35'

at 35'.  Notice you can see the ripples on the surface as well as the entire school of fish, and sand.

I learned that the lens was a great option, but not to be used on every shot.  Since I love taking green (blue in this case) shots, it became very handy.  A couple of times, I put the camera in the sand and got photos which included ripples on the surface, as much as 40-50 feet away.  Also, the lens made my subject seem actual size, rather than bigger.

I was excited to take it diving the the Pacific Northwest and a few weeks ago I had a great dive with my friend Jay Schick at Day Island Wall in Tacoma.  No external flash, so it made it difficult to use at depth.  However, I did shoot some video and that lens ROCKED with that feature.  The female Wolfeel was quite the willing subject on this dive.

Female Wolfeel on the top of DIW, 55'

At the top of Day Island Wall, (55') I could get ripples on the surface.  LOVE it!  At 20', great color and ripples too.  I am going to love this lens once I get my external flash to use with it.

Jay, at our safety stop.  No flash, but notice the surface ripples.

The camera housing had difficulties performing at 60 feet.  The buttons did not seem to work properly and it was difficult for me to take photos at depth.  I am concerned that it is "wearing out" and needs to be replaced.  I knew that the housing would be temporary, and it is over 2 years old now.  I may need to invest in a new housing.  Before my next dive, I will lube up all the buttons better, to see if that helps.  If not, I will be in the market for a new housing.

I love the new lens but I need to get a new arm system for my strobe and get out there and shoot some more!

Emotional People photos

One of my favorite things to photograph, in general, is people.  I love candid shots, group photos, posed photos, and photos of people caught in a moment.  I love figuring out the best spot and lighting to bring out the best in a person.  I then love to share it with that person in the hope that they will love it too.  Unfortunately, my camera is not always welcomed by the person on the other side of the lens.

Cousins Greta and Robbie.  Neither was happy about getting photos taken, but a great family photo to remember.

A lot of times, people get angry when a candid shot is taken by a friend. I do not understand this attitude. People spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every year on professional photographer services.  It seems that the chosen photos, seem to be the most acceptable photos by the general public.  While I have no problem paying professionals for their work, and I love what professionals can do, I don't believe that they can capture a person's personality, or a typical look or action that a friend can.

I have gone through photos of my family over the last 15 years, documenting in scrapbooks and on the walls of my home.  The ones I love the most are when I can see the emotion in the photo.  I have a lot of pictures of my maternal grandparents, but my favorite was taken in the early 1970's.  I am assuming my mother or another family member took that photo.  They were sitting next to their car, and my grandfather seem to be holding my grandmother up.  It was a tender moment, and it seemed to show the love they had for each other.  I find that these photos, more than ones that were professionally taken, have more meaning to me and capture the emotion.

My friend Kyle, on his wedding day.

I went to a memorial service recently and there was a beautiful power point collage of photographs showed how this man lived.  They focused on him with his children and grandchildren and doing the activities he loved to do.  It was extremely comforting to everyone there, to see these photos of their father, grandfather and friend alive and enjoying his life.  These photos made people laugh and cry.  After seeing that collage, I have been thanking those who have taken great photos of me over the years enjoying my life.  I hope that when I leave this world, those photos will be a comfort to my family and help them remember not how my life ended, but how I lived.  Maybe that is why I love Facebook photos so much.  They are mostly of people...living their lives.

I have decided I am going to continue photographing people, especially my immediate family.  I never want my photos to show anger or upset, but the opposite.    I want people to love what I shoot, as much as I do and hopefully, I will get a few photos, that will make someone's day happier.  I only hope that others will understand why I have a camera in my hand all the time realize that just because they are having a bad hair day doesn't mean that the moment I capture is a bad one at all.

Photo sharing on the web...oh my...

Lingcod on 737 Artificial Reef, BC.  August 2012

I ran into one of the scuba instructors I work with at Lighthouse, Mike Penders, last night and he shared that a mutual friend and former student, Jesse Miller had purchased a new Canon DSLR and was taking it underwater with him.  The 3 of us had all be using the G10-12 series and while Mike and I were using the basic Canon housing, Jesse had upgraded to Iklite.  I am more into green water photography, while Mike and Jesse love to go out and take photos of the smallest stuff they can find.  I love to dive with them because we normally photograph the same stuff, but since our eyes and perspective is different, we come up with some cool versions of the same animal underwater.  Mike and I are instructors and love to teach, but Jesse has focused his energy into photography and has won contests with his photos.  Since I hadn't talked to Jesse in a while, Mike reminded me to check out Jesse's stuff on Smug Mug.  When I got home last night, I did and blown away with the beautiful images that he has taken over the last year.  What also impressed me was how nicely everything was presented on the website.  Since I don't have his permission, I won't publish his work here, but you can check it out on Smug Mug, under "Jesse Miller"

Mark and Kendra, August 2012

I started to think about the different options of storing photos on line.  I like the idea of it, especially if my computer or hard drive are lost or stolen.  I decided to Google the options and as expected, I was blown away by the choices.

Flickr seems to be the most popular and I have been using it for a while, but not consistently.  I have accounts on Snapfish and Photobucket but rarely use them.  I looked at Smug Mug and I think I liked it best because it is easy to use and allows me to grow my site into a website.  However, it isn't free like the others are.  I flipped onto Picasa because it is linked to Google and for free, it uploaded every photo on my laptop.    Besides the well-known sites, there are hundreds of smaller sites that offer everything from basic storage, to services for the professional photographer.  It is overwhelming, but excellent to know that there are options for everyone.


Most often, I use Facebook for storage and sharing, but the quality of their display isn't great.  But, for showing off snapshots, it is easy and quick, and I know that it is a great way to make sure my friends are able to see photos.  I think I will bit the bullet and just go ahead and jump into Smug Mug but not until I get everything watermarked.  For now, just look for my photos on FB, Picasa and maybe Flickr.  Let me know what photo sharing site you like best and why.

Editing with Lightroom 4...@#$%!!!!

When I bought my G12 2 years ago, I thought it was time to also get a good editing program.  I did a little research and decided Adobe Lightroom was the right choice.  I got a great deal on an educator's version and I got a book and started to learn how to use it.  I quickly discovered that it was way beyond anything I had used before.  After a few weeks, I quit using it because I was having a hard time trying to use it quickly to do basic editing, and I realized I did not have the patience to be able to spend hours perfecting a photo.  I went back to Microsoft's basic edit program so I could crop, and I did not edit anything.

With the new camera and my desire to enter a few photos into contests, I knew I would have to go back to Lightroom.  I got a free upgrade to LR4 but I am still struggling on how to use the program quickly.  I have managed to create a watermark (see below) yet, I can't even figure out how to put it on a photo, let alone find my photos after I edited them.

My solution to all this is to take a class.  My friend Wenmei Hill teaches a class on Lightroom, so I think I will enroll as soon as she announces her next class.  My husband also has Photoshop and will be working with it next quarter so he may also have some tips for me.  Until them...not sure what I am going to do other than swear at my computer.

My watermark