Uncommon Objects which is a well known antique shop in Austin, hosted a pop-up flea market in their backyard for Christmas bazaar, these images are from our visit. the images above is what Josh took on his film camera and the ones below are on my Fujifilm XT2 on 50mm 1.4 lens. This Christmas Josh gifted me this generous gift of this lens and I couldn't be any more grateful to him. I have been using a 50mm 1.4 Nikon lens with an adaptor with it, but it was not an auto-focus lens and made it very difficult to shoot for professional work or even out and about because the focus would be all over the place if I didn't pay extra attention which took fun out of the actual shooting process.

I absolutely love Toy Poodles, before I met them I have never cared about the pet breads. I used to think caring about a dog bread is the silliest thing, let alone to shop one, while there are many abandoned dogs waiting to be adopted at the shelters. It was not until I met these toy poodles that turned my heart and soul around. These dogs are not only hypoallergenic, won't shed, super smart, very affectionate and cuddly and they hardly ever bark. In fact I love them so much that I have been in a search for adopting more for the past 2 years at the shelter sadly I have not been successful. The only and the biggest issue I see with them is their bad teeth - poor Chien Chien is having almost rotten teeth and one is almost loose and we worry of the may have caused infection so we are in the process of making appointment to take them out. It breaks my heart because she doesn't have that many teeth left in her mouth as is, in the next month we will find out more. 

Josh took these images on an expired film that his grandmother gave him on his last trip to Lost Angeles. I absolutely love the color and tons of these picture, it is such a beautiful surprise, previously the film that I have seen expired had a pink or red tone but I am not sure how these turned darker shade of yellow.  We shot these on a Sunday walking to a coffeeshop at sunset time, this winter has been very stressful because of my job I found myself thinking about work around the clock and spending even weekends and after hours working to make deadlines so after this shoot I worked on woke deadlines till late at night - Sadly I did not get a chance to prepare for Christmas and the holidays this year as much I wanted to. 

Photo Credit: Self-portrait with Tripod

This year the winter has been wonderful, it is not the cold that gets to me, but more the lack of sun. This years has been one of the sunniest weather and there is a nice balance between super cold days and 70 degree weather so I am a very happy girl! I took these self portrait on a tripod in our neighborhood park - I remember the weather had just started to get chilly in late November and I was so excited to feel the chilly weather and wear layers and warmer clothes. 

Photo Credit: Self-portrait with Tripod

Visiting a pumpkin patch during fall has been a dream! Fall has always been the busiest month for me, when I was in school I couldn't imagine doing anything else but to go to class and work on the weekend and find sometime to actually study and when I started working as a makeup artist and Photgrapher it got even more busy - with wedding season and family portrait and back to back events from Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas I never got a chance for the past 18 years that I have lived in Austin to check out a pumpkin patch field to get in the spirit of fall. But this year finally my long waited dream came true! I have been trying so hardly to slow down everything as my office job has definitely took over my life left very little room for anything else. One weekend in fall when Josh was traveling and sadly because of my job I couldn't travel with him so I decided to check out a pumpkin patch farm on my own! I packed my tripod and drove about a hour outside of the city to Barton Hill Farms in Bastrop, Texas! When I arrived I realized to my surprised the entrance tickets to the farm were all sold out, but since I was only one person I was able to get a ticket and get inside (note to self buy tickets ahead of time). Then I found myself in a heaven of fields of corn and pumpkins - the whole farm was set up as a photoshoot backdrop, sunflower section, hay rolls corner and my favorite corn field, not to mention couple antique cars and carriage decorated festive for the season. They sold food and snacks and had play grounds for kids, games all over the place and a small zoo with baby pigs and goats. I absolutely had a blast and  definitely hope that I can go back again every year. 

Photo Credit: Self-portrait with Tripod

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. 

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.