i am lea

today i took an amazing class with Tracey Clark, co-founder of the Shutter Sisters, at the Tea House Art Studios. Besides Tracey being an amazing artist and a total inspiration, the women I met today were so positive and inspiring themselves. It was so nice to talk and create with other women with similar interests. i'm a little disappointed that i won't be able to join them for tomorrows session but i am looking forward to future get togethers or even simple written exchanges. i feel rejuvenated in my photography efforts and that alone has made my day amazing!

So today was the first time I've worked out in at least 3 years. I actually dusted off my exercise clothes put on my running shoes and headed over to my over-priced, over-crowded too-far-away gym. I ended up working out on the elliptical machine because there was a ridiculous line for the treadmills. I worked out for 45 minutes, came home and refreshed with a shower and I feel fantastic! I'm thinking I might check out the "Latin Spice" class next time...

highlights from the week 3/28/11 - 4/3/11:

• felt accomplished at work until friday hit when my computer decided that it was a good time to crap out on me with 30 orders pending processing
  
• husband cooked dinner 3 nights
  
• got a call from the other driver's insurance with the payout for my vehicle $3k - thank you state farm
• scale said i lost 2lbs - thank you scale!
• paid a large sum of $$ on a looming debt - feels great!
• celebrating my sister's birthday with the family, nice time until trace broke a glass while "window shopping"
  
• helped nephew practice driving skills
• went to movie and dinner with bree, Limitless was cool
• visited with kim and her family (newest edition sarah), trace and joey play pretty darn well together!
  

it's amazing the whole process of pregnancy and birth. and though i've seen it first hand before and even experienced it myself, i still get teary-eyed when that little bebe finally enters this world.

my girlfriend kim's birth experience with sarah was quick and uncomplicated. kim was a super woman and handled each contraction with calm and grace. she did finally chose to get an epidural but almost immediately after the epidural she was ready to push and though she was tired and numb from the epidural she was able to give birth to sarah without any complications. congrats to kim and steve and big brother joey, sarah is the perfect addition to a wonderful family unit. and thank you for letting me share in this special moment in your lives.

ugh I hate when things fall by the way-side but they do. And already my attempt at blogging has been one of the things I have neglected. We've had a pretty busy summer, with a trip to disneyland, wedding planning and several paid invitation jobs (i'm just as surprised as you). The summer has rounded out a couple of birthday parties and sprinkles of baby showers. Trace has taken it all with stride, while his mom and the house have not fared as well.

My photography has taken a back seat, ironically after I purchased an oh so sweet Canon 7D (yum), to my invitations. I've been paid for 2 jobs and just finished a 3rd for trade. I have to start working on drafts for a 4 job which I'm excited about! But now all of the things I've put off like business cards and websites and photos of my work are all knocking at the door to get done.

breathe...

that's all I can do to keep it all straight. Honestly, I sometimes totally freak out and other times I shrug it off, what can I really do about it, stressing out is not going to change anything.

Some how things will all work out, more importantly if you don't see a post from me (and in all honesty I'm not sure anyone is reading this), I'm around just busy!

Lea

He may not look it from this photo, but my son has become a possessed child. He has daily tantrums, you know the kicking screaming, tears and if he's really pissed at me biting kind. And in all honesty it takes a lot of control on my end not to want to swat his butt every time he turns into the demon child. It's time outs and discussions, but it's exhausting...case in point. Trace woke up last night around 1 in the morning and I thought he might have rolled out of bed (he does that on occassion), so I went in the room and didn't bother to turn the light on. He was sitting up and whining. he started crying for water and I grabbed the water bottle on his nightstand and unscrewed the top and handed it to him. It was dark so he couldn't clearly see it and continued to cry and the crying became more frantic. So, I turned the light on and handed him the water bottle, he pushed it away and started crying for milk. I told him no, that it was late and he was asking for water so he can have water, but he didn't need milk at 1 in the morning. He proceeded to start screaming, ear piercing screaming, the kind of screaming that scares you half to death if you are suddenly woken by that scream (as happened to gene). I walked out of the room and shut the door, I didn't know what else to do. Trace started screaming for his dad. I went back in his room and picked him up and rocked him and had a 5 minute conversation about how we can't do this at 1am. He sniffed and nodded his head and I gave him some water, laid him back down and he fell fast asleep. I crawled into bed and even while writing this all I can say is WTF?!

the photo above was taken this past saturday, the hat is from Goorin.com

back to my photography homework. My favorite subject is of course my son Trace (yah think?). So my homework for tomorrow nights class is a traditional portrait (see yesterdays blog entry) an environmental portrait, photos of photographers I admire, photos of where I currently am in my photography, a portrait of an inanimate object (I must personify the object) and an environmental photograph of me at work. So the last two I'm stuck on...I don't really want to take a picture of myself, blah and then there's the fact that I was sent home today so I don't infect everyone in my office. And the whole inanimate object thing, yeah i am just not that creative...see today's photo...

I personally like this photo, it has a hint of brooding, slightly mischievous and a little quirky, but in reality it was simply my son's way of asking for another clementine. But I can also critic it pretty harshly too, the light/exposure is off, the table horizon is a little slanted, the photo crops half of my sons head off, the contrast is drastic...but I can't help but be drawn to this photo...so this is the one I will be using for my environmental portrait...

I tried a couple of other scenario's but they all failed miserably, I thought of doing an environmental of my son in the grocery store with the aisle of canned and boxed goods surrounding him while he pitched a fit in the cart (because he hates sitting in the cart these days). But it's so not ideal to take a screaming crying babe into the grocery store and subject all the other customers to his tantrum while I seize the moment and take photos of his hissy fit...

I am obviously wearing myself out. I now have a cold in July. Work has been busy and then you add in my hectic personal life and it's no wonder I've been coughing all weekend. I hate being sick, I can't manage my day-to-day stuff and try and get home work done, keep the house clean and work on my side business. I did manage to hold it together for my first official consultation! I even managed to get out a quote, honestly I'm pretty nervous about it. What if it's too much in the client's eyes? What if it's not enough to cover actual costs? What if I can't live up to the client's expectations? I've ran the numbers several times, but you just never know if actual costs matches up with the clients budget (especially if they don't provide you that number).

My WW diet, yeah big failure so far...I haven't even logged one day of what I've eaten.

I also managed to squeeze in two pieces of my homework, (I have like 5 things to do), below is one of the assignments a portrait. I'm pretty excited about this one. I shot this in Manual mode (I typically shoot in aperture priority, and ended up with a pretty sharp photo. I did do some adjustments to the photo in photoshop but again I'm really happy with it.

So anyone who knows me know I'm really digging photography right now. In fact, I'm taking my second level photography class now! But I have to admit, I'm mediocre at best. I'm practicing, but here's where I get stuck, I'll take tons of pictures in RAW files, but I take forever to process them. Sure I could take them in jpg and edit/upload them a lot faster but I love shooting in RAW and my DSLR is so old it doesn't have a jpg/raw mode. The photo above was taken June 19th, and the only reason I posted it was because my girlfriend Anouck was persistent in asking for the photos from Fairyland. My other gripe about photography is getting a tack sharp image of a toddler, it's like trying to photograph the Locke Ness Monster. They move so quick and avoid eye contact with the camera a good chunk of the photos I take end up being garbage. The photo above is a rare moment for me and while this has definitely been edited I love the end result.