This year Josh asked for a fruit pie for his birthday cake, so I bought him one and made him another. The one I made was almost pre-made, unfortunately because of my job I was not able to do more. I bought the pie crust and the filling and cut the fresh fruits and poured a pack of boiled jello over them and set it in the fridge to harden. The result was pretty legit visually, but it didn’t taste very good - it tuned very sweet. Hopefully next time I will be able to make one from scratch! 

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. 

Over the summer I tried to dabble in night photography, however I soon realized how complicated the process is and after a test shot we pretty much abandoned the idea - Hopefully one day I will find the courage enough to edit the test shot to share them.

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! 

We visited Waco at the end of summer, most of our friends had gone to see Magnolia Market and we wanted to check it out for ourselves. We arrived there at lunch time and ate at the Table before heading to the Silos, where we got ourselves cupcakes, drinks and checked out the store. However, what caught my eyes the most during our trip was not the Magnolia establishments but just down the road on Webster Avenue I found an abandoned factory that took my heart away (see below) I immediately jumped off the car and went browsing the site. It was a charming red brick building with broken windows and tall ceiling that created unique lighting inside. I kept wishing I had my tripod and my favorite lens to take advantage of the opportunity. Hopefully one day I get to return to use this space or something similar for a photoshoot. 

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.