Put a Cork in It

I love looking at other photographers work. It gives me ideas for concepts in my own work. Yesterday I was looking at a tourist magazine for Mendocino County that featured wines. There were several spots(that's a pun) in the magazine that used wine stains as an embellishment to the page. I decided to improve upon the concept by creating my own image using a wine cork as the main focus instead of the stain. Here is the result.

God's love and blessings for the upcoming New Year to all of you,

chris

Three Pears

I love pears. They are one of my favorite fruits to eat. My mom gave me some pears at Christmas some of which got munched already. Today with the weather still being a little funky I decided to do some stock /fine art photos of the pears. It helped to have Lenore work as my fruit stylist. We liked one of the images so much we are thinking of framing it.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

A Tiny Break in the Weather

Yesterday it was pouring rain most of the day except for a short two hour period in the morning. The sun came out and the mountains to the east of us shone in the sunshine with snow. Lenore and I went downtown and worked out together at the gym. On our return trip I noticed that the water in Willits creek at the bottom of our ridge had risen over two feet during the time we were gone. Wow!

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Christmas Flower

Lenore was given an Amarylis flower by one of her students just before Christmas vacation. By Christmas it was blooming and had three large red blooms. I knew I really wanted to photograph it. Today I found some nice soft lighting in my office and I created some images of it with a nice green background placed behind it. What a beautiful flower.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Let it Rain, Let it Rain, Let it Rain

Christmas in my part of Northern California was rainy, very rainy. One storm front after another has come through. I got a Christmas present from Santa early on the morning of Christmas day in the form of a triple spike power outage. The lights went off and on three times in about ten seconds. Needless to say it knocked out my computer. The first four or five start up attempts were only met with the blue screen of death. After a bit of work over a few days I coaxed it back to life.

Here are a few images of the weather. One from my back window of the St.Francis Castle redwood and a couple in my front yard on Christmas Day.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Happy Birthday Jesus

Every year at our house when we celebrate Christmas we commemorate the birth of Jesus by baking a cake. Though in some years I admit we have resorted to pie. This year Lenore made a beautiful cake called a "Hot Milk Baked Coconut Cake". It was so pretty this year that I decided to photograph it.

Wishing all of you God's precious love and a "Merry Christmas",

chris

Portraits

A mixture of portraits over the past few days. When I got out of the car at Annika's friends house there was this cute cat wanting me to pet it so I obliged. As payment I took a few images. When I got home there were some mushrooms to be captured onto the cameras sensor.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Badgers Modeling Career

Badger acted as a stand in model today when I was shooting portraits. He will do anything for a little praise and a dog biscuit. He sat there so patiently while Lenore positioned him and put a Santa hat on his head.



God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Personal Icon St. Francis Castle

There are some locations that I tend to photograph over and over because they are great spots. My personal favorite is one that I recently named St. Francis Castle. It's an old wind topped Redwood tree on a local ranch called you guessed it the St. Francis Ranch. It's easily my most photographed icon because it is one of the first things I see from my bedroom window most every day. It's in the first group of trees to push its way above the foggy mist in the morning so it easily grabs my attention.

So it was this morning when I arose to check out the mornings sunrise. There it was poking its blunt top up out of the fog into the first rays of sun. Once again it reminded me of a castles tower rising into the sky. I propped my camera onto the window sill and created some more images of my most favorite personal icon to photograph.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Nite at the Movies

The heavens have opened and the rain has been coming down. I haven't done very much photography the past week as there have been very few breaks in the rain. I wanted to photograph the eclipse but was totally clouded in. Though I heard later that if I had driven off of the ridge I may have been able to watch it.

Tuesaday night we decided to go to the big city of Ukiah and watch the Narnia movie "Voyage of the Dawn Treader". Here in Willits the small town I live in the movie had just gone from the big screen to the small screen. Lenore wanted to see it on the big screen and as it turned out it was a wise decision. When we got to the theatre we found out that they were showing the movie in 3D. The movie was great as I'm a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia books.

After the show was over I was waiting for the ladies to come out when I noticed the neon theatre sign piercing the nights sky. I grabbed my camera and braced it against the car roof for a few images. Afterwards we went out and had Japanese food at O Harus A great night out at the movies.

God bless,

chris

Badger Dog

With the lights still up from our Christmas portrait session I decided to take a few images of Badger the worthless dog. Actually he's not entirely worthless as he wants to please everyone and he wants to be petted constantly. Plus he makes a great foot warmer on cold days. Which is what he is doing right now as I am typing.



During our image taking he kept licking his chops as he really wanted that doggie treat I had in my shirt pocket. it sure kept his attention that's for sure.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Playing With Lights

I just tried a different background using our tree as the backdrop. I decided to see what kind of effect I could create using a wide open aperature on the camera settings
God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Merry Christmas

I/We spent the past few days creating our family Christmas Card. Yesterday I created the background using an ornament and a tree branch that I found on the road. Because we haven't had any recent snow I had to use spray on snow. I also used a stock image of some snow falling from my files.





Today was the real production of wrangling Jay and Annika and the three pets all into one spot for a portrait. The cats and dogs weren't all that cooperative as you can imagine. After two short sessions and some drama we finally were able to create an image that was usable. Jay and Annika were really helpful in being the animal handlers. Lenore was part animal handler and mua as much as the kids would let her.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Portrait of a Fallen Giant

On my travels on my way homeward yesterday I stopped to photograph the fog filtering through the forest. I was really drawn to an old fallen Redwood Tree. What's left of it anyway. Fires and a slow deterioration of the years have reduced it down to this beautiful moss covered mass on the forest floor.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Frosty Serendipity

I was headed downtown to buy some more toffee tins when I noticed it had frosted last night. When I looked down to my left there was an open meadow just waiting to be photographed. I had a great time photographing frost covered leaves and other things.
This meadow has been off limits to me for over five years as a the homeowner who lived above it was a little on the paranoid side. He has recently moved on opening up a great spot to photograph that is very close by. Hopefully the new owners when they move in will be photographer friendly.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

Playing with Matches

There is just something fascinating about flames. They can be a comforting or a horrible sight to see. Even a simple matchstick has an incredible beauty in its flame. I love the shape, colors and textures of a matches small flame. I decided to create a variety of images of matches in first a static shape and then later in its explosive form when it ignites and then following that the fluid burning shape and then when its finally extinguished.

In the making of these images I made sure that I had a non flammable work space and I had a safe secure location to place the spent matches into.

God’s love and blessings to all,

chris

Tea Time

Last week I got a postcard in the mail advertising a High English Tea at a nearby bed and breakfast. As usual I was drawn to the photography on the card which depicted a cup of tea. I looked at the image and immediately wanted to create my own better version of the image. I trip to the Dollar Tree got me started. For a couple of bucks I was able to pick up some doilies and some pink/red linens. Combining that with some of Lenore’s grandmother’s teacups and I was pretty well set.I tried a variety of both vertical and horizonatal compositions with different doilies.

Let me know your thoughts on my imagery. Please leave a comment below.

God’s love and blessings to all,

chris

There’s No Place Like Home

Our internet has been down for three days so there hasn’t been any way for me to put up any blog posts. My ISP guy called me yesterday and said the transmitter went out and they are trying to revive it.
Today was a busy day with working out and Christmas shopping. I had my camera with me all day and I didn’t find anything worth my eye to photograph. Finally on the home stretch I found an image worthy of clicking the shutter release. As I approached the entrance to our driveway I noticed shafts of light shining through the drifting fog. It was a pretty sight. It just goes to show that there is no place like home.

God’s love and blessings to all,

chris

Atomized

Lenore got a perfume atomizer from a friend who went to Italy. This afternoon I spent some time creating some images of it. Glass is one of the more difficult things to photograph. I have some ideas for improvement as this was my first attempt at this one. Tomorrow night I'm going to create a better one.

God's love and blessings to all,

chris

It Tastes Soooo Good!

It's that time of year when many of us celebrate the birth of Christ. One of the ways I love to do this is to show some appreciation to my good neighbors up here on the ridge top where I live. I give the simple gift of home made Peppermint Toffee. This is the third year I have done it now and I'm finding it to be rather addictive. Also Lenore always steals a few tins from my hoard 'er stack to give to friends at work.
There are lots of requests for the recipe so I can direct you to my instructional tutorial on how to make it step by step. If you are a photographer you can also look around at some of my older photography tutorials.

http://diyphotocheapodepot.blogspot.com/2009/12/take-break.html

God's blessings to all,

chris

The Great Salmon Run

I took another walk along Willits Creek this afternoon. Willits Creek is a small tributary of Outlet Creek which in turn flows into the Eel River. I saw more salmon than I have seen in over twenty years. It was really cool to see the females digging out their redds (nests) to lay eggs in. A wonderful afternoon.

God's blessings and love to everyone,

chris

Playing With my Nails or Colorful Stock

Yesterday while cleaning up the kitchen I ran across a pile of Annika's finger nail polish she hadn't put it away. Well one thing led to another and soon I was painting my nails. Had you going there didn't I? All the bright colors made me want to create some kind of images. Out came the lightbox,lights and material for sweeps and soon I had a regular production line going making some bright stock imagery. I compiled them into two poster images for easy viewing sake.

Please let me know what you think. Just leave a comment.

God's blessings to all,

chris