Tag Archives: photography

Just a Day in The Life

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Not much to share. I missed my Monday post because I haven’t done anything newsworthy lately. Monday I had a busy day.

I started the day with a photo shoot for Christmas Cards at my friend Nancy’s house. We hung the stockings on the mantle and moved the love seat in front of it. Then we squeezed everyone, including the dog, into the love seat. It took more time to set up than take the pictures…kind of like cooking that Thanksgiving meal..hours of cooking for 30 minutes of eating! LOL. But I got to try out my new studio light set and it made all the difference in the world..no shadows..no motion blur from the puppy.

Then it was pack up and head to my next shoot. This one was a location shoot but at the last minute it canceled so I met the family for a consultation instead. Probably a good thing because it took longer to get to work than I expected and if we’d actually done that shoot I might have been late.

Finished the day off by working overtime 3pm – 8pm. So as you can see, not much to talk about and not much time to write even if I did have something to say.

I’m not going to give away the picture that the family chose for their cards but I will share one picture of  Dawn. I love her eyes in this picture.

By the way, that’s not “dirt” on her face…it’s one of those temporary tattoos of a dog. 🙂

Prepping for Thanksgiving

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My sister gave me a challenge last week. She said she wished I had a turkey for a Thanksgiving card.

Well I do have a turkey picture but I decided I wanted to be a bit more ambitious. I decided I wanted to have a picture of a Thanksgiving table all decked out with food and candles and wine glasses.

I have a table. That’s the easy part. I have wine glasses and nice china. So now I need the food. The biggest  food item is, of course , the centerpiece of the meal, the turkey.

Now since I plan to eat the props I want to be sure the turkey comes out nice and golden brown and doesn’t just look good, but also tastes good. I usually cook a mean turkey..nice and brown and very moist…perfect…except the last 2 turkey’s I cooked didn’t cook evenly. I think my old oven is nearing the end of its days.

I wanted to get the best price I could so I went to Walmart and bought a frozen turkey. Usually I buy fresh but this isn’t really Thanksgiving Dinner..it’s just a “fake” one. 🙂 So frozen will do. I had a gift card too.  Gift cards are like shopping with someone else’s money so I become more free with my $$$.

Next to the frozen turkeys was an electric Turkey roaster. If I hadn’t had the gift card I wouldn’t have even considered it but now I thought..could this solve my old oven problem?

Into the cart it went.

At home I unpacked it, wiped it down as instructed and marveled at how big this thing was.

Mr. Turkey was in the bottom of the refrigerator defrosting. 3 1/2 days later the turkey was thawed and it was time to try out this new gadget.

The turkey was a small one. 13.5 lbs. and the chart said to allow 15 minutes per pound. That works out to 3.87 hours so in goes the turkey and I settled down to wait. Smells good!

Too bad you can’t scratch and sniff.

Times up. I lifted the lid and there was a beautiful golden brown bird except it’s drumsticks were sagging away from the body and when I lifted the bird the wings fell off!

Boy this turkey is definitely cooked! As I transferred the main body to the serving platter the whole thing collapsed. If anything this turkey is overcooked. It certainly isn’t ready to be a centerpiece of a holiday table picture. But is it edible?

I whipped out a knife and sliced a tiny piece just to see…ohhhh soooo good. It was moist inspite of being over cooked…and tender. The bottom of the roaster was filled with drippings. Lots of gravy to be made there.

So looks like I will have to try again to get that centerpiece Turkey for the picture . I might not get to it in time for this year’s Thanksgiving. After all, how much turkey can one person and 2 cats eat? At least there’s always next year.

For now I’m enjoying my early Thanksgiving feast with a squashed but tasty turkey centerpiece.

You can order greeting cards at www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com and www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com.

The Daily Blog

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I got an email from WordPress the other day. November is blogging month. I forget the actual acronym but the point of the excercise is to post something on your blog every day. Yikes!

Maybe if I didn’t work full-time I could pull that off but somehow I think my entries would become a bit mundane…8:am alarm went off   9am coffee and toast…etc.

They say if you don’t have anything to say post pictures. Ok so here’s a picture. It has nothing to do with anything…I just like the Peanuts Family. 🙂

They suggest you post your stories of going “over the river and through the woods ” for the holidays. That won’t work for me because I work most holidays. Let  people with young children have the day off. Those kids won’t be little forever.

So the bottom line is this time of year is hard to find good stuff to post, especially when my theme is “travel related” for the everyday person. So like most everyday people I don’t travel 365 days a year. I get my 2 vacations and some little mini vacations but by this time of year I’m ready for a rest.

This year in addition to working between 40 & 50 hours / week I’m trying, in my spare time, to get the holiday card line together.  I’m trying to be sure my local supporters get their  photo shoot for their family portraits to go on their 2012 Christmas cards.

It’s not leaving much time for writing so I don’t think I’ll be able to meet the “post -a-day” challenge from WordPress. I’m sure you’d rather have quality over quantity.

Are any of you bloggers that follow me trying to meet that challenge? Let me know. I’d love to know what you think of that goal and if you are able to meet it. Maybe it will help me on those days when I just don’t have anything of substance to share.

One more food post

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Ok, I get it. You like the travel posts better than the food reviews, Ahh if only I could afford to travel enough to keep you, my loyal followers, satisfied.  Every now and then I have to unpack my suitcase and spend some quality time with my cats, work some overtime to replenish the travel fund, and recharge my own batteries.

I love traveling but I subscribe to the  Go, Go , Go philosophy of travel..so much to see, so little time. I would never be able to hang out on a beach, I’d feel like I was missing too much.  That’s not to say a beach vacation isn’t a perfect one for  a lot of people…just not me. Since my vacations are so high energy sometimes I need to get home and back to my normal routine to recharge my batteries. That’s when finding interesting topics to share becomes a real challenge.

So the bottom line here is that I have one more food tale for you then I’ll leave that subject for a while.

The Sailing Cow Cafe has closed up for the winter season now. The last weekend was Columbus Day which seemed early this year. As part of the last weekend festivities they had a band and the invited me to come down to take pictures of their customers. They called it Photos on the Beach by Dusty Roads Photos.

My friend Nancy and I went down for 10 am and stayed until 3pm. It turned out to be a beautiful day, if a bit cool by the water. The Cafe had us put a sign in the window and gave us a table outside to set up a display. Nancy is a power house when it comes to talking to people. She was busy handing out my business cards and brochures while I talked to the people who stopped to look at the cards and pictures I’d brought for display.

Everyone was enthusiastic and we gave out a lot of information but that was as far as it went. No one was up for a picture of themselves. Oh well, as far as publicity it was a great success. We met 2 women trying to get a dog park off the ground. They were very interested in the pet photography side of my business. I got ideas of things to make another such event more successful.

Being at The Sailing Cow from 10:00- 3:00 meant we had a chance to sample the food. We had muffins for a quick breakfast and all I can say is WOW. They were great. The breakfast menu had all the usual breakfast items and they looked good too but we wanted to keep it light. Others must have felt the breakfast was good too because they had a full house.

After we finished our agreed time frame (10am-2pm) we stayed a little longer to listen to the band and have a quick lunch.

One of the owners had told us they made the best onion rings so I had to try them. They were great. Very thinly sliced and fried crisp… they were excellent. The side order was easily large enough for both of us.

On a more healthy note we shared a turkey wrap. Getting a jump on Thanksgiving. For once I remembered to take a picture before we dug in.

Well, that’s all the food reviews for now. I promise to try to find something more exotic to tell you about next time. 🙂

Remember: for all your unique greeting card needs visit: www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com

Holiday cards are coming. For a more “commercial style” check out the offerings at: www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com

Sometimes I feel Like “Dumbo”

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You remember “Dumbo” the Disney elephant that could fly as long as he had his “magic feather”? Well, I think I lost my magic feather. Let me explain.

About 2 weeks ago the chain of camera stores that includes Ritz Camera were put on the auction block. Everyone thought they would be bought out and reorganized but instead the top bidder was a liquidation company. Now they have less than 5 weeks left to sell all and clear out. My first reaction was shock. I think everyone at my favorite Camera Store in Hingham felt the same way.

To make myself feel better I headed off to Nantasket Beach to take some whimsical pictures of Hawaiian bobble head hula dancers. It was a nice day and I really enjoyed myself.

I couldn’t wait to get home and put the results on the big screen of my computer. Everything looks good on the tiny LED screen. When I uploaded to the computer I was confused and   horrified.  How could I get such grainy shots on a bright sunny day. I grabbed the camera and checked the settings. What a knuckheaded mistake! I had the ISO set way high from shooting interiors the day before. I haven’t made that kind of mistake in over 2 years!

A few days later I was back down to Ritz to see how everyone was doing. I had a few remaining prints to pick up. I’m not sure where I’ll get my photo processing done now. I didn’t stay long because I had arranged a photo shoot with a young lady that would like to do some modeling. So I was off to Nantasket again to get some late summer beach pics with her in them for Stock Photos.

It looked like I got some great shots and I was all excited. Home I went to check them out on the “big screen” monitor. OH NO! They were all blue!

How could that be? What is going on with me? Once again I reached for the camera. ISO correct…check, white balance on Auto…nooooo.  I had set the white balance to incandescent the day before and hadn’t reset to auto or even sun!

That was when I thought of Dumbo and his feather. I haven’t been able to take a decent picture since I found out Ritz was closing. These people have been my mentors and friends, not just clerks and salespeople. Over the past 2+ years my photos have made huge improvements just by getting a little hint here or a suggestion there, all done with kindness and gentle support. They have celebrated my successes and laughed  with me over my goofs. They have been my photography gurus always ready to answer questions or give me a boost when I was feeling discouraged or insecure. Now they won’t be there anymore.

So it seems Ritz was my feather. As long as I knew they were there I could fly. But now that they are closing I seem to have regressed…or in the Dumbo analogy…lost my feather.

Dumbo’s little mouse friend convinced him he could still fly and with time I’m sure I’ll get my groove back . To my favorite  Ritz Camera store in Hingham, I will miss all of you. I wouldn’t be where I am today without all the help you’ve given me.  I hope you all find doors open for you and new paths to achieve everything you want. It isn’t the end (even if it feels like it now) but an opportunity for new and greater things.