Wish you were here!

My favorite things combined:  Landscape photography and People Photography…all in one great weekend. These pics are from my weekend photo adventure and workshop with Mark Behrens and a bunch of wonderful photographers and models.  On Saturday we traveled around to a bunch of different wineries and vineyards searching for the National Geographic moment.  We had the advice and teaching of a wonderful landscape photographer, Dean Gustafson.  He helped me capture the below photo along with several other ones, below.  Very nice man. Here’s a few more shots of the landscape portion.

Napa Winery Tower

Rose in Sunshine

Fog rolls into Napa Valley

Hot Air Balloons over Napa Valley

What a great time we had in Napa Valley this weekend.  The whole weekend was devoted to photography.  Saturday was spent studying landscape photography with the help of landscape photographer Dean Gufstason.  I learned so much from him.  He is an excellent photographer (click on his name to go to his web page) and was extremely helpful and kind.

Sunday, we journeyed up to the private Behren’s Family Winery where we literally had the run of the place.  I have lots of photos to edit, but I’ve put a few here for your enjoyment.

I’ll probably do a little slideshow later on and I may add some more to the blog by way of a light box, or something.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  Thanks to Mark Behrens for putting the whole thing together.  Disneyland for photographers, indeed.

Staying close to home with my family.

Here’s the annual Mom’s Day Photo, taken after my three children took me out to lunch at Bricks in Placerville.  And it wouldn’t be my family if they didn’t harass me with at least one photo of them goofing around.

Went to a high school play that my youngest son participated in. (That’s him in the back top tier of the risers and wearing the cool vest, with his arms outstretched.)

We also celebrated my oldest son’s 26th birthday at our house…That’s him, with his darling girlfriend, standing under the Happy Birthday Banner.  That banner goes up for every birthday and then I make the birthday person stand under it for a picture. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of that banner.  Woe be to me if I forget to hang it up.

I got a portable off camera Beauty Dish, which I practiced with a little when I had the family around… Here’s my daughter with Obie T. Dog (the “T.” stands for The).  Beautiful light. Even more beautiful gal. (Yes, I’m biased, but she is very pretty and funny, too.)

Then below is my daughter with my youngest son, who will be graduating from High School this year (sniff, sniff…insert tears.)

Then I did a little personal work with scenes around the house and around the area…

Here are some emerging Fiddler Ferns in my front yard.

I drive by this scene every day.  I love those two old cars and I have photographed them before, but this is the first time I’ve gotten the barn and the pond in the background.

And then on the way home from my Mother’s Day lunch yesterday, I saw these donkeys in a field with some birds riding around on their back.  I just had to stop…

This week I will be officially starting My Beauty Campaign (assuming the weather holds up), doing a photo shoot with a couple of college gals (assuming the weather holds up) and attending a workshop (assuming the weather holds up…)  You know what they say about “Assume”.  It makes an (insert above picture) out of “U” and “Me”.  Ha!

Sometimes it does a photographer good to have her picture taken.  She finds that her empathy for her clients increases dramatically. Looking into the cold eye of the camera and having no idea what I look like puts the fear of God into anyone.  But, I knew I needed to update my profile pics, so I set up my lights, combed my hair and put some make up on.  Then, I practiced some poses in the mirror…none of which were good.  After that, I set up my camera with my remote shutter release and began taking pictures.  Sheesh!  Of the pics I took,  I liked this one the most, so I am going to use it for a while. (I discovered that fake laughter is not my thing…it looked like I was convulsing.)

So, to my clients…I promise to remind myself of this experience and treat you with the utmost respect and sympathy.  If I can do it, you can too.  I promise to give you a great experience, you will have fun and I will make sure you have wonderful and beautiful shots that you will love so much that you will want LARGE canvases of them hanging on your walls so that you are reminded on a daily basis how great you look.

“If you could see what I see”, then you would see how beautiful you are.

Black Bear and cub.  Unusual to see a blond Black Bear.

This is a slideshow using images and video I made over two weekends in the Lake Tahoe Area.  We visited Sorenesens, Hope Valley, Taylor Creek, Emerald Bay and some other less known areas.  At Taylor Creek we were treated with a mother bear and her cub fishing spawning salmon out of the creek.  It was very exciting to see.

Kokanee Salmon.  The stripes are actually shadows cast by the weir.

Enjoy.

I had the pleasure of joining a workshop put on by Betty Sederquist at Venezio Winery and Coloma.  It was a very hot day, but lots of fun.  Betty is a wonderful photographer and it was an honor to learn from her.

It was a little too early for color in the vineyards, but we all got some great shots anyway.

We also went to the Blacksmith shop on Main Street in Coloma.  The Blacksmith on duty (a volunteer) was great and allowed us to take lots of pictures of him.  This shot was taken with available light only.  Large opening behind me and to camera right and left.  This allowed wonderful natural light to surround everything in the Blacksmith shop.

After the Blacksmith, we went up to the old Emmanuel Church.  They were preparing for a wedding that day, so we had to be fairly quick with our photos.  Fortunately, the bride placed some flowers at the alter just as we were leaving. They were simple and beautiful.  I wish I could have seen the wedding.

Then, we went back to the winery for some wine and cheese tasting.  The wine was good and the cheese (from Dedrick’s Cheese Shop in Placerville.)  It also allowed us some time to cool off and relax because around 5:00 we headed back outside to take some pictures of some models in the vineyard.

All in all, it was a great day.  Thanks, Betty.

My husband is a part time chef.  He frequently makes our dinner.  I especially like his Sunday night meals, but that’s not the point of this post.  My husband made the food for the wedding in Lake Tahoe a couple of weeks ago. My daughter acted as sous chef.  My two sons and my niece served the food.  The china was from the groom’s grandparents.   It was a family affair.

The food was fun and delicious.  The bride and groom wanted to stick with food from their heritage.  The bride’s heritage is Irish and the groom’s heritage is Cornish and Scottish. So, my husband scoured the internet to find tasty servings from the United Kingdom.

There were three kinds of stuffed potatoes (Irish), Irish Soda bread with smoked salmon and a cream spread (Irish and Scottish), bangers (Cornish), potato pizza (Irish) and other goodies.

The food was a big success.   The bride and groom loved the food and so did the guests.  My husband and daughter were heroes. Of course, they have always been heroes to me.

All in all, it was a beautiful family wedding.  Much success and congratulations to my brother and my new sister-in-law!

Last weekend was a very special weekend for me and my family.  My brother got married.  He married the beautiful Eileen on Emerald Bay in South Lake Tahoe, CA.  I got to photograph it and my husband got to cook for it.  It was a gorgeous day and the boat was a lot of fun.   We left the dock from a beach on the Nevada side of the lake between Nevada Beach and Zephyr Point and were in Emerald Bay within the hour.  The ceremony took about 20 minutes and then it was back to the dock.  We found a pretty cool place to take some bridal portraits after the boat ride and I hauled my off camera flash system with me.  It was worth it (see above).

The wedding party consisted of my brother (the groom), his adorable wife, her daughter, Keely and my brother’s son, Cameron.  The colors were red and white which was stunning with the blue water of Lake Tahoe, the blue of the sky and the green pines on the nearby mountains.

After the boat ride, everyone headed back to our cabin for the reception, which was held in our back yard.  Above is a picture of my darling family (sans me and my husband).  Note the formal posing.  Living with a photographer must be tedious for my family because they take every chance they can to give me a hard time.  Fingers and hands are always an issue because if you aren’t careful they can either look like claws or sausages in a picture.  So, I’m always reminding my subjects to watch the way they pose their hands.  So, here they all yelled “Claws and sausage fingers” and gave me their best poses.  Sigh.

It was a great wedding and a fun day.  We did have a tiny incident that could have ruined the day.  There was this small speedboat that almost hit us as we were exiting Emerald Bay.  How you can not see the huge yacht that we were on is beyond me.  I think the couple that were in the speedboat were pretty drunk.  Anyway, the captain of our boat hit the horn and made a hard right and the speedboat saw us and swerved off just in time.  But, other than that, the wedding went off without a hitch.  Hat tip to my husband:  the food was amazing.  I’ll post some pics of the details later.

The groom was equally fun and dashing.  (And so were his Groomsmen.)

The wedding and reception were held at a wonderful Placerville, CA restaurant, Sequoia Restaurant.  The restaurant was originally a beautiful old Victorian Home that was been wonderfully restored.  The light coming through those old windows was a photographer’s dream.

A wonderful time was had by all who attended, including me.  Thanks, Jesse and Jackie, for letting me be a part of your wedding.

On Saturday I participated in Scott Kelby’s Third Annual Photo Walk in Old Town Sacramento.  Worldwide there were over 33,000 photowalkers at over 1,100 locations.  Our groups was allowed into the Sacramento Railroad Museum before it was open so that we could use our tripods and not have to deal with tourists.  So, I got up at 4:30 a.m. to be in Old Sacramento by 6;15. There were about 50 photographers who were able to roust themselves out of bed in time to be there.  It was well worth the effort.

We were lead into a large auditorium and given the rules of the museum.  Then, the drama began.  Dave Henry, the leader of our walk (on the right above), called for our attention to be drawn to the solid wall behind him.  As it began to rise we could see that there was a large window behind it.  Unfortunately they forgot to turn off the lights in the auditorium, so all we saw was…ourselves and a fain outline of a large locomotive. Always having my camera ready, I snapped this picture.  The quality is not so good, but you can see the walkers superimposed over the locomotive.

We only had about 2 1/2 hours in the museum before it would open to the general public.  At that point we would no longer be allowed to use our tripods.  Since the lighting was very dim in the museum, a tripod is a must in order to get a nice crisp photo. I wandered around with my friend, a wonderful photographer, Roger Aylstock, for some of the time.  But, as photographers do, our interests lead us in different directions.  I found this wonderful gentleman (above) who was willing to let me take his photo in front of this beautiful train.  (Keep in mind that I know nothing about trains…my brother, Andy Thomas, is the train person in my family.)

Here are some of the shots I took.

At the very end, they took us outside where they had fired up the steam engine for us to photograph.  What a treat.

Now to decide which one to submit for the contest…