I feel like I have been very focused on Photography for the past year and half so I have decided since I miss creating art I will start a challenge of making vlogs documenting creation of a tiny art piece, celebrating ending this year and starting a new soon. 

I shot these on a Saturday early morning while location scouting for a photoshoot the next day. I rolled out of the bed at 6:30am and last minute decided to bring my tripod to test out some self portrait images - funniest thing is the minute I step outside the house it started raining! Somehow I decided I was still going to check the park out and by the time I arrived there it became sunny again! I am very happy that I didn't give up because not only I found some really nice locations on this walk, this self portrait was very helpful where I got try couple different features of the camera and get more comfortable with them. 

The news of the day is that I have learned a new way to organize and pick images on the Lightroom! I have been using this software for about 5 years now and I am utterly surprised how I am still learning new things about it still - so with the new system I have been able to cut down the time I spent in editing and picking the final selections. Here is how my new editing process goes:: I go through the session from the long shot perspective and just pick my favorites with a "star" system. Second round I zoom in on the images and go through and delete the out of focus and blurry images. Third round I go through and pick my favorites out of the list once again - with this phase I keep in mind these will be the work I would not cringe being in a publications or printed copy and I marked them "6" or in Lightroom automatically colored "red", then at the end I only end up editing the "red" category and once I am done I will browse the "star" list once more time incase I wanted to add in any other images to the "red" category. Very simple yet effective way to cut down editing time.

I took these couple weeks ago with the Fujifilm XT-2 on the iPhone remote app and I realized I want to start a new project to take my own self portraits more often - I already take my own images out and about but I am thinking more in a form of a monthly project where I actually head out the house and plan the shoot for the sake of the shoot itself. 

This weekend I found a new coffeeshop after a solo location scouting session that I found the concept pretty unique. Apparently the owner is a working mom with two toddlers, so she established this place in order to be able to work while she can have an eye on the kids - the coffeeshop has a built in kindergarten / nursery and the entire building is child proof. I loved how all the functional spaces were repurposed with children in mind and the sitting area was comfortable and distraction free. I was able to finish editing an elopement photo session in one sitting and submit it to the client before leaving. I will definitely return for hopefully more productive editing session in the near future.

This is the most sentimental camera I have or will ever own - because it is my dad's only ever camera! All through out my childhood every single picture that is ever taken of me was with this camera - somehow Josh found this with such a good discounted price and it came with a 50mm 1.4 lens, however for this shoot we used a 50mm 1.8 that has purchased me a while back and we both regretted and agreed to never use the lens again . . the pictures are not sharp enough and I don't think did this camera any justice - I am patiently waiting to see what 1.4 lens can create with this camera body on a new roll of film I am testing at the moment. We shot these the same day he bought the camera - after work we came home and straight went to the nearest shopping center while there was a bit of light left and finished the roll to test out the camera - I love the result and I cannot image what Portra 400 or Fuji Pro 400H will look with this camera on a 1.4 50mm lens. 

These days during the week my new job is taking pretty much all of my energy, I am surrounded by completely new people in a role that is very different from my previous position so pretty much after work I am mentally drained to the point I cannot do much more than just a couple house chores. What I love about it is that I am able to get off work consistently at 5pm no matter how busy things are, which is very unlike my old job where I had to work weekends and overnight! While I am doing my best to learn as much I can and set up my routines,  I  have to move with the flow when it comes to my side hustles, hobbies or chores - one task at the time - this weekend was the laundry day - as soon as I ate breakfast on Sunday I started working on folding and sorting the laundries and organizing the closet till sunset which was about 6 to 7 hours long process. The backlog was more than a month overdue! I had literally a piles of clean clothes on one side of the bed that I didn't have time to fold and put away - I also finally used the steamer, and it was completely a game changer, lets just say pretty much anything I could de-wrinkle was introduced to the streamer today . . even though it took me all day to organize everything in the closet, I feel super productive and ready for the week with one less item on my to-do-list! 

This was the first time I used Canon AE-1 and I have to say this shoot made me fall in love with this camera. I have bought this roll of Fujifilm Pro 400H for over 5 years when I first fell head over heels with medium format film camera combination with this film . . obviously since I couldn’t afford a medium format camera I oped out for something cheaper and Canon AE-1 was my first purchase - however it took me many years and actually 2X to shoot this film (the first time I didn’t properly put in the film so none of those pictures were saved). The camera itself is so easy to work with it, the metering was pretty spot on, my only issue with it is what I frame though the view finder while shooting is not quite the same with the final images, it seem to be giving more on the top the images than I intended - other than that I have absolutely no complaint about this camera! The film thought may have been expired because it came out much darker than I had hoped for . . I was dreaming of a light and airy finished when shooting these . . oh well . . I think I will use another roll to test out the color again.

This labor day weekend slipped through as well - I had no idea it was coming . . I really want to slow down and simplify my life however with the wedding planning and the training for the new position at my day job and photography and makeup projects there is so little place left in my head for anything else. In the midst of all that somehow I had this wave of inspiration to study Jewelry making at the local college, they have a two year long Jewelry & Metal-Smithing Program that definitely appealed to me . .  then I thought about it more and realized even if I take one class a semester - meeting at least twice a week with labs after work 6pm to 10pm, so I won’t be coming home probably till 11:00 pm and I have to be at work 7:30am sharp the next day and we are heading to winter when days are getting shorter so I decided last minute to forgo the idea. 
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Here is the example of how this weekend has gone by: 
On Saturday I had some technician issues with transferring the Fujifilm photos on lightroom so after hours of research trial and error I lost the edit on a set, but I was able to save another set - so I am happy about losing one set but that means I have one additional set to edit. On Sunday I had a wedding makeup gig, a bride and 4 bridesmaids makeup, they were the lovelies and most relaxed party, I really enjoyed doing their makeup and getting to know them. Right now I am getting ready to edit the elopement session I shot couple weeks back - we shot that session on 3 different cameras. Sony, Canon and Fujifilm so trying to make a smooth color transitions to make the final selection look all the same is the challenge for this set.