Happy Halloween 2009!

I love Halloween. I can’t remember a lot of costumes I wore as a child, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and Barbie come to mind, since I was a tomboy growing up, such girly costumes are pretty funny choices for me. One costume I always wanted to find and never did was Firestar, one of Spiderman’s Amazing Friends (the other being Iceman) from an animated show I liked. If I were to wear a superhero costume now it would probably be Dark Phoenix, though I’m not sure how many people would get the full concept.

I remember one year when I was older my mom had me hand out treats instead, and we were giving out money (dimes maybe) instead of candy. One group sent a large gorilla to scare me, and even though I knew it was a parent, the children were screaming in delight that “Daddy got money, too,” I think I made their night.

Last year I had an elaborate zombie costume. I did my own makeup and for daytime had it white as above, for night time I used makeup that was white in regular light and glowed in the dark. When I went near a black light parts of my costume that were white also took on their own eerie glow.

It always impresses me when someone wears a costume that’s such a good disguise that you can’t even recognize them. I’d met Larry a few times, yet still took a few minutes to recognize him in this amazing Ozzy Ozbourne costume:

This year my costume is sort of a two-in one theme, a skeleton / undead ghoul figure wearing an escaped prisoner outfit complete with dangling handcuffs and handcuff earrings. My friend Colleen matched me by dressing up as a police officer. (The next three photos all taken via iPhone).

I wore the consume on two days, with a few variations on Halloween)  My skeleton gloves (one which disappeared before Halloween, I still have no idea where it went), and a ball in chain (the anklet part is still around my ankle) I kept with me on the Friday beforehand.  As for the latter, it broke literally five minutes after I put it on, and though I tried to fix it, and my friend Colleen put a strong jump ring on it to try to fix it, it still kept coming off. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be part of my costume.

Two quick detail shots from my friend and fellow photographer, Amoreena‘s, party (also via the iPhone):

Moment Makers: Facial Expressions

Today while looking for a topic, I decided it was time to create a new blog category for myself: Moment Makers. In, this category, I’ll take an aspect of a trait that makes the momement stand out in pictures, such as timing, beautiful (often directive lighting), and in today’s edition facial expressions. I went through my photo library to find two very different photos and to tell you the back story behind the expressions that for me make the photo.

The first photo was taken of a man who works on Fisherman’s Wharf as a street performer. He at first wouldn’t even give me a name calling himself Silver Man. Eventually, after talking to him for a while, he said I could call him Evan, though I’m still not sure if that is his real name of one he just chose.

I photographed him and interviewed him for The San Francisco Daily as part of a story on the proposed plans to license, regulate and reduce the number of San Francisco street performers. Evan was undecided on the issue, on one hand, he was in favor of having decreased competition, on the other hand, he didn’t want to pay a license. Both while he performed and while answering my questions he seemed to have a focussed angry energy, which I captured in his photo above.

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While I was a student at San Jose State University, I had the pleasure of photographing Sam Donaldson who came to speak as part of the Radio, Film and Television Department’s 50th Anniversary celebration. I can still remember how his talk started, he came into the room to a standing ovation. Sam immediately waved it off telling us that we shouldn’t do that as we, too were journalists. Despite his years of hard work, he was seeing us that moment as potential equals, and he really reached his audience in that moment.

After he shared with us things he had learned in his career, it was time for question and answers. It was apparent that my fellow students had done their homework asking him about how journalism had affected his personal relationships with his family, what it was like to be the reporter on certain stories, and he seemed to relish all the questions, giving each a long and informative answer. I see in this photo the seriousness and dilligence he brought to his field through his work in his facial expression.

Search Engine Results, Part Two

Continuing along, with yesterday’s theme, my Yahoo search on my name also came up with some photos from my time as photojournalist at The Pinnacle in Hollister, CA, which later became known as The Weekend Pinnacle.

Every year 12 photos taken by any of the photojournalists (or even reporters if they contribute photos) on staff, are selected by the editors as Photos of the Year. Three of mine were selected in 2007. These photos will appear a bit smaller than others in my blog, as I am using them full size as they are on the page of The Weekend Pinnacle.

The first photo was taken when I received the assignment to go to the hills as far up as I could drive and take photos of the first snow on them.  Ironically it was one of the photos that I took near the beginning of my journey (showing the differences between the lush greenery and the snow capped mountains) that was featured.

The second photo was from a half-day shoot with Nathan and his mother Victoria. Though Nathan has autism, his daily life is quite similar to other children of his age. Here he is playing with bubbles with his mother, one of his favorite activities.

The last photo was taken during an interesting week for the paper. Our sports editor was on vacation and during his absence we were encouraged to photograph sports that were not featured often in the paper. I went to San Benito High School, and photographed members of the track team including this one of Jason.

As things online are not saved indefinitely, I was not able to find a lot more on these stories. The paper does not save actual pages, yet I did find the full story, along with some other photos of Nathan that I took here:

http://www.pinnaclenews.com/news/contentview.asp?c=206399

Search Engine Results, Part One

I decided to do a search on my name to see what would pop up. While usually I use Google for this, I used Yahoo as my search engine instead. I found some images from two papers I have worked at that I was pleased to still see online. I will share images from that search today, and tomorrow.

These images were from an assignment for The Santa Cruz Sentinel to capture Nocturnal Sunshine, a group who would be going to Burning Man in 2006.

The dancers shown are Kelly Picker (above) and Keith Barefoot (below). Working as a photojournalist really helped me adapt to different light situations with different restrictions.

For obvious reasons, flash and movement could prove too distractful to these dancers. I was permitted to move somewhat, but for the most part had to stand very still.

This shot of Keith was my favorite for the series, and the one I thought would be chosen for the cover.

Instead, they chose this one, which also worked very well.

The finished product is below.

Topical Tuesday (1)

Welcome to the first Topical Tuesday. Every Tuesday, I’ll ramble on about a bunch of random topics that catch my attention. On weekends I tend to work, run long distances and work on projects, so I’ve often referred to Tuesday, my night to relax, watch guilty pleasure television (90210 and Melrose Place, shows I’ve watched also as originals), enjoy sushi and reflect, as my Friday.

Last week I attending my first meeting of the Silicon Valley NACE, National Association of Catering Executives. Their monthly meetings are held at different locations, the October meeting was held at The Stanford Park Hotel.

The hotel was the site of Molly and Jeremy’s wedding that I shot two years ago. Here are some album pages from their wedding featuring this beautiful hotel.

The blog is coming along well. I like how easily I can put in photos (a must for me), and it will encourage me to add even more photos and entries. In late November or early December I anticipate adding some videos as well. I’m still learning how to effectively use pages, and I may be switching templates sooner rather than later, perhaps even something customized soon in the new year.

I don’t watch a lot of television. Until recently, I didn’t watch any by myself, watching it sometimes with friends such as House M.D. with my good friend, Colleen, who also works with me as a second shooter on some events. With Tuesday being my Friday, I found myself watching Melrose Place since re-debuted, and since it’s a lead in show 90210.

When they were originals I really enjoyed Melrose Place (I even bought a Melrose Place: The Final Episode T-shirt on eBay, in extra large, the only size I could find, though I’ve since misplaced it). I’ve seen the first and last episodes of each, and many of the episodes. While I still think the originals were better (and I’m still puzzled by the decision to bring Sydney back to have her murdered before the opening credits on the first episode), I am enjoying both of these guilty pleasures.

I really need to check out some new restaurants. I’m a bit spoiled as there is a little restaurant strip mall near me with both great sushi and Thai places. I keep reading reviews of places I’d like to check out, like one yesterday for a good Ramen place (traditional Ramen not the noodles sometimes eaten by college students on an extreme budget). If you have any good restaurant suggestions, please let me know.

Perhaps inspired by Halloween, I decided to look for a horror book in the library. Anyone who knows me well knows I take out a lot of books at one time, and end up reading most of them, and often choose a wide variety of subjects. I found a copy of John Saul’s The House of Reckoning.

I’m pretty picky on my horror writers. I enjoy Stephen King, but mostly his really early stuff which seems more realistic (for horror) and thus scarier. Dean Koontz has really surprised me with his endings, a lot of his readers have said on forums that they end suddenly and are really not in line with the story and I have to agree.

John Saul’s work, while I haven’t read a lot of it tends to really stick with me. In a way it’s almost too perfectly written for that reason. Still, I brought the book home. When I opened it, it seems the book jacket was put on wrong so the book is upside down and backwards, kind of a creepy (though probably unintentional effect). I’m enjoying the first few chapters.

In California we have all these phone laws, you can’t talk on the phone while holding it (hands free talking is ok), and you can’t text while driving. The way the law is written, you’re not supposed to read texts either, which makes sense, yet many people I know use their phones for reading off directions.

As far as I know there isn’t a law yet against taking a photo with your phone while driving (though maybe their should be). Yesterday I was on my way home when I noticed a truck hauling two mail trucks. Though it’s unsafe to drive using only one hand, I decided to try to take a photo as long as I was stopped.

Murphy’s law being what it is, the traffic, which is normally stop and go, seemed to stop and go so that I couldn’t get close enough for a good photo (and when I finally got close enough I had to be in motion to keep up with traffic). I did snap off this photo when I first saw it, while it’s more a picture of my dashboard with the truck in the background), it was all I could get at the time.

Joined Together: Diana and Chih

With my new blog working great, here is my catch up wedding blog post of Diana and Chih’s wedding.

Chih’s sister, Meghan, was rehearsing her part of the candle lighting when I walked in.  If you look closely you can see her enjoying her last stick of gum before the ceremony.

I had the opportunity to be a third shooter on this wedding. The primary shooter, Terrence Bishop, had found me in his friend’s list on Facebook as a person local to San Jose (Terrence is based in the LA area). It was fun shooting with Terrence and Nichanh Nicole.

Ceremony: Mountain View Buddhist Temple

Reception: ABC Seafood

Chih looks solemnly on as his dad gets his boutonniere.

Diana wears a radiant smile as she is escorted down the aisle by her father.

Diana wore a second dress for the reception. She and Chih danced to “Endless Love”,  twirling around the dance floor like professional dance instructors and ending with a big finish.

Race Day Volunteer

This entry will be my first test of the publish with a future date option of the WordPress App. Right now it’s 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, if this works it will publish at 12:30 p.m on Sunday. (The photo above was taken on race day as I got to my station. Though it’s grainy and all orange, I kind of like the gritty effect.)

Today is my first time volunteering with a marathon. In 2008, I started working out in a regular basis. New Year’s Day 2009 was my first race, a 5 mile run to start off my new resolution.

I have run two half marathons and two marathons this year, and each event has had great volunteers. Since I’m still in recovery mode from my first one, today I will be giving back to the running community.

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Volunteering was a good and instructive experience for me. I was placed at the intersection of Bird and Minnesota Aves. It was so close to the meet up place I walked there (assignments were given out randomly at 6:15 a.m.)

I got to see the start of the race and the runners at their freshest and near the end, my station was in mile 2 and mile 24 of the race as much of the race was run back on itself.

Notable points included:

– The male pace leaders (two run by me the second time almost in line) and the female leader were all separated by the rest of the pack by a lot.

– I saw very few people with water belts (like I wear), and none of those that did were near the front

– Near the end of the day, everyone had less energy: runners, spectators, and volunteers like me

– Even though my cheering (my job to both cheer on runners and guide traffic/keep street traffic away from runners) wasn’t always original peppered with phrases like “Good job!” “Looking good/great!” “You can do it!” and calling to the runners by name, by things on their shirts or to the pace groups directly, it seemed appreciated by most people.

While I still enjoy running more than being a spectator or volunteer, I will definitely volunteer or help out with future races in some way.

Hard to sleep

Sometimes even though I need to let myself get sleep, I’ll will myself to stay awake anyhow. This may happen with a good book, photos I need to edit, or an album design.

Last night, even as my eyes teared up due to lack of sleep, and the minutes before my long run of the week (6 miles in this case) flew by, I found myself fascinated and still working on my new blog.

I think I was extra inspired by the fact that I had added pictures and words to it by iPhone, the first time I mobile blogged (unless Twitter is considered a mini blogging tool to you).

It’s not a perfect way to blog, in fact a lot of what I was doing last night was making some photos I’d added larger, and Ive had to uninstall the WordPress App once already. Additionally, you have to remember photos are displayed  only at the end of the blog, and in the reverse order of how you load them, say you choose photos in order 1, 2,3, it’s displayed 3, 2, 1 in the blog (though entries done on computer do not have this issue). Yet I can see lots of uses for it, blogging on the road (say if I was just walking around enjoy the Berkeley campus like I was when I took this photo, I could still be blogging, assuming I had an Internet connection), quick impressions of an event as a teaser from that event, and more.

I also checked out this blog on the iPhone, it looks pretty good, it’s interesting that the caption border box disappears. Here’s how I first saw my site via phone.

This is my first blog post via phone, later edited a bit via computer.

Blogging as a habit

According to stats from my old blog, I started blogging in 2006. Although that was my first year blogging, it wasn’t a major blogging year for me, having blogged only 16 times, or on average a little more than once a month.

engagement image, from my first blog in 2006

In 2007, I was a lot better, having tried for a long time to blog every day, finally running out of topics and letting blogging becoming less of a habit. Though I did blog after that year, I never really gained as much momentum, even as I saw what a wonderful tool blogging was for other photographers including Becker, Jessica Claire, Jasmine Star, Scarlett Lillian, Susan Stripling and other photographers whom I greatly admired (both in terms of their work and their blogging proficiency).

With this, my first WordPress Blog, I’m changing how I’m blogging literally. On this, my day two, I’ve found a theme I can use for a bit (though I do have plans to update to a different one soon), found it much easier to add images (ironically one of the big reasons I stopped using Blogger was I was having issues loading pictures in, a big issue when you’re trying to have a photo blog), and an easier way to have links added so they open into new pages. I’m still a WordPress newbie, yet it’s been an A grade service all the way.

Probably, I’ve just not been blogging (even though I’ve had some great things and events to blog and even took photos last year specifically for blogging), as it became a habit for me not to.  I know a lot about habits having started a great one this year, endurance running. I workout in some form 6 days a week, Monday through Friday at Community Bootcamp (generally two days of weight excercises, three of cardio) and run a minimum of 6 miles each Saturday, resting only on Sunday. If I can wake up early each day to do that, I can blog more, a lot more, so I will.

I’ll leave you with some running photos of me for now, and to remind myself that good habits can be made and followed on a near daily basis.

a collage of shots from my first half marathon, Santa Cruz, CA

running the Golden Gate Bridge at my first marathon

New Blog, New Start

Hi, I’m Danielle and welcome to my blog! This will be my temporary home on the web for now, until I put out my new bigger, bolder and better blog.

As the main photographer for Not So Still Life Photography, I have the honor of photographing weddings, bar- and bat mitzvahs, quincenaras and other happy events.

This blog will show those, and talk about other aspects of my life including how I use some of my favorite brands, Leica,  Flip Video and Apple, both for business and personal use, reading (I’ll read pretty much anything), and running.

This year I started running and have now completed 2 marathons, the last was the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco, CA. Here is the little blue box everyone is excited to get at the finish line and its contents (taken with my iPhone).

tangible reward as NWM finish

The pendant says “Run like a Girl”. Coming later a race day photo taken of me.