I was going through a lot of the pictures that I’ve taken in the past year, TRYING to organize them, and I found a few that I just wanted to share on my blog. The first set of black and whites I took around this time last year (2007) with Jeannie’s Nikon FE using Ilford HP400 film.

The second set are a few pictures from Thanksgiving last year. My family gathered around the television to watch a historical event: my mom and older sister playing Wii tennis. Neither my mom nor my older sister has ever played any sort of video game console, which was made even more humorous by the fact that the Wii is a riot to watch people play for the first time. Good times, no?

Ah, and finally, the final picture is a picture I took of Jeannie while starting to play around with a photo technique known as “painting with light”.

This is the new look for our living room.

Alrighty folks. After much teasing (I don’t believe I’ve ever done two teaser blogs for an engagement session), here are some of the highlights from my session with Alex and Joanne. It’s always cool going through a session because it’s like getting an opportunity to relive the events. With those sentiments comes the feelings of what I want to express as I post-process the the images to their final presentation. This was really an amazing experience, and with the weather being the nicest it was all week in both Santa Barbara and Monterey, I got to work with some beautiful light as well as amazing clients. [Photo/Techy note: the Monterey session (with the plane) was taken in the morning. With the cold air, I love the morning light right now.]

Another teaser set from Alex and Joanne’s session.

I included the last picture (which Jeannie took) because it helps to remind me that sometimes a great picture is ALL about sentiment and not because it’s beautiful or technically brilliant. In this picture, I had told Alex and Joanne and jump on the count of 3, but Alex jumped early. I’m in the picture to the right shown by the arrow (on the ground to get my nice angle), there’s the Monterey Jet Center sign in the back, and with the trucks and planes set way into the background, it really brings back that entire experience for me. It’s not a picture that going to win any awards (sorry, baby!), but it’s a picture that I love. It’s all about falling in love with a picture for some weird reason that doesn’t really make any sense anyway, isn’t it?

Jeannie’s really been into the book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma. From what I can gather, the author (Michael Pollan), went through some research to figure out where food comes from, and how it is made. His results, unsurprisingly, are rather unpleasant and grim. The biggest change we have made in our house is to reduce our consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, which is basically a highly-processed sweetener made from corn (see King Corn). Apparently, it’s very bad for you. He went on NPR to promote his new book, and I actually listened to this 35-minute piece. Mr. Pollan makes some very interesting points about nutrition as well as living a balanced life, particularly realizing that when he says “food” he means REAL food, and not the processed stuff that simulates food. This is just another part of deconstructing our very fast and manufactured lives in search of natural sustainability.