Blackhawk Museum Roundup

Here are a few more shots from the Blackhawk Museum.  Sometimes, I just can't help myself!

Be sure to stop by our booth at First and M Streets in Livermore this weekend if you're in town for the Livermore Wine Country Festival!

Who doesn't love a good pink car?

Happy Friday folks!  Hope to see you over the weekend!

The Smiley Face Project - VW Bus

A while back, American Express ran a commercial where each scene was a photo of everyday items formed into a smiley face of sorts.  Josh and I thought this was pretty neat, so I've embarked on The Smiley Face Project.  It's an ongoing thing, and I'll post photos as I take them.  First up, the VW Bus!

Yellow Cars

I used to drive the end-all of yuppies car-- a bright yellow Ford Escape.  Yes, yellow.  I like bright colors, and, well, I have a tendency to lose my car in parking lots and especially garages.  It usually results in me starting at the bottom of the garage, and simply walking up the floors until I find it.

In any event, I have a tendency to get a little attached to my cars, and the Bananamobile was no different.  So, when the time came to trade it in, it was a little bittersweet.  I drove home in a brand-spanking new Jeep Wrangler, which I LOVE, but felt more than a little bad when the salesperson told me that my beloved Escape would likely be scrapped for parts.  Poor Banana.

Then, down in Monterey on my wedding day, as I walked over to the hair salon, I glanced to my right and saw to my complete disbelief my Bananamobile right there in the parking lot!  It hadn't been scrapped for parts after all!  I like to think it was there to wish me a happy marriage, but that's just me.  Here's another yellow car that happily wasn't scrapped for parts.

Upcoming Event - Livermore Wine Country Festival

Come on out and see Twisted Rock Photography at the Livermore Wine Country Festival for a weekend of good wine and food, family fun and fine art!  Our little gallery booth will be in the intersection of First and M Streets, and we'll be featuring a wide variety of works on various media, from flowers and architecture to animals, classic cars and landscapes.  We'll have canvas gallery wraps, metal prints and framed metallic prints ready to hang, as well as loose matted prints and greeting cards.  Josh will also have his debut showing with Sunset Fanfare!

What: Twisted Rock Photography at the Livermore Wine Country Festival
Where: First and M Streets, Livermore, CA
When: Saturday, May 1, 10am-6pm and Sunday, May 2, 10am-5pm

Hope to see you there!

Blackhawk Museum

It's been a very busy two months at my place.  While kicking off wedding season with shows, meetings, and some truly fun and fabulous couples, we've also been putting together a new booth for Twisted Rock Photography, and building up new inventory for the Livermore Wine Country Festival (more on that soon!).  I'm told most people like to take the entire winter to do this.  We somehow decided to go with two months.  As such, the UPS man and I are really getting to know each other, our living room has been transformed into a veritable art gallery, and I'm just now getting around to blogging the rest of the photos from our Easter visit to the Blackhawk Museum.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

My favorite era for the automobile is the 1930s through 1960s.  I love a big, curvy land yacht, especially in an outrageously bright color.  The lines and contours flow effortlessly, and nothing can beat the variety and style of the hood ornaments.  I know it sounds totally un-environmental, but I love those cars.  Here's my plea to the auto industry: We've come a long way since the 50s, so let's build really good-looking cars again, but with more efficient engines and today's technologies.  Bring back some of that classic styling!

In any event, the Blackhawk Museum has a great collection, and, as Josh said, I must've had a really good time shooting, because after 15 minutes, I was still only 5 feet into the gallery.  On to some photos!

My dad used to have an 80s-issue Oldsmobile with a linear speedometer.  Granted, it was digital, but still not nearly as stylish as this one.  And, hello, mint green!

I spent a ton of time with this Plymouth Fury.  I love the Fury logo, and the fins, but with the eight bazillion spotlights above, finding an angle that worked took some finagling.

Happy Monday, folks!

Pleasanton Wedding Faire and More Upcoming Events!

Thanks to all the brides and grooms, and their supportive families and friends for coming out to the Pleasanton Wedding Faire today!  We had a great time talking with all of you, and for those of you who hopped into our photo booth, the photos came out adorably!  Look in your email soon for the final products.

If you're in the area, be sure to come see our fine art work at the Livermore Wine Country Festival on May 1st and 2nd.  We'll be in the intersection of First and M Street-- look for Twisted Rock Photography.  We hope to see you there!

Upcoming Events - Wedding Faires

If you or someone you know is getting married, come on over to Pleasanton on Sunday and see us at the Brocade Wedding Faire!  Sign up for our raffle for a free wedding photography package, and hop into our photo booth for free portraits!  The fun and excitement starts at 10am at the Pleasanton Marriott and continues till 4pm.

Hope to see you there!

Blackhawk Museum - Preview

Here's a sneak peak from our visit to the Blackhawk Museum in Danville....

Happy Tuesday!

Saguaro National Park, finally!

I admit it, I've been a bad blogger lately.  Life has simply gotten in the way, in a good way.  We've been preparing for wedding shows and art festivals, and doing the usual photo archive organization-- look for new galleries and new photos on both the Twisted Rock and Wedded Bliss websites in the coming days!

As anyone who's read this blog for a while knows, I love love love the desert.  There's just something magical about it for me, and we try to visit the various deserts of the west whenever possible.  We squeezed in one such weekend visit back in February, during the rainy season in Arizona.  Now, I mention this because as we boarded the plane that sunny Friday afternoon in the Bay Area, with light jackets and t-shirts packed, we were aware of a forecast of rain in Tuscon, but, hey, it's the desert, how bad can it be?  We've been through storms in Death Valley before, and it's a lot of wind, and not a lot of moisture, so we weren't worried.  What we should have been thinking of instead, however, was the snow storm we drove through at the Grand Canyon back in November, but hindsight's always 20-20.

When we drove down to Saguaro National Park on Saturday, ready for a day of hiking and photo-taking, we were optimistic about the weather.  Clouds were rolling in, but I was thinking of the fantistically soft light and interesting skies I'd have for photographing the cacti.  We hiked a solid five miles out in relatively good weather, and life was good.  Then, all of a sudden, the skies opened up, and seas of water dumped down on us (yes, seas).  I'm not sure I've gotten as wet and cold as we were that day even during snow-melt river crossings while backpacking in the Sierra.  Five soggy miles later, we dove into the white Mustang convertible rental car (convertible to enjoy all that rain, of course!) and praised whoever it was that thought heating cars was a good idea.

And now for the reason you're really here, the photos!

In the desert, things don't decay like they do in rainy (really rainy) climates, so skeletons of saguaros past hang around for a log time...

While the saguaros were the main attraction, the saguaro forest is home to a large number of other cacti and plant and animal life.  One of my favorites was the aptly named Fishhook cactus.

Happy Thursday, folks!

Susan and Kelly - Portraits

A couple weeks ago, I met my good friend Susan in downtown Palo Alto for a quick portrait session.  In a short time, we borrowed a staircase, a courtyard, and a very surprised man's dog, all in the name of creative photography.  Susan is a dog person.  Her dog, Kelly, was a rescue dog, and Susan regularly volunteers at the San Jose Animal Shelter.  Kelly passed on to Doggy Heaven about a year ago, but we did a pet portrait session late in the fall of 2008 on Stanford University's grounds.  Here's a mish-mash of photos from both shoots.

This was one of my favorite photos from our Palo Alto shoot--  it just captures Susan's Susan-ness!

I grew up in Michigan, and though the fall foliage isn't quite as impressive in California, we had some great colors to shoot with Kelly.

Being the star of a photo shoot is exhausting....

Yosemite - Rafferty Peak, The Long Way Around

I'm pretty much in a constant battle to keep up with my photo catalogs.  It's not that I don't process my photos right away, because I do, at least nowadays.  The problem is that I didn't way back in the day.  A word of caution to those who who take lots photos-- don't download them and then just think to yourself, "I'll go through those later."  I apparently said that to myself in 2007.  A lot.

In any event, I've been going through my Yosemite catalog, and found a whole bunch of photos that got downloaded and forgotten.  Today's installment is from a cross-country route we took from Tuolumne Meadows over the pass above Elizabeth Lake, down the Echo Creek canyon, then up to Nelson and Reymann Lakes, a quick summit of Rafferty Peak, then down the northeast drainage back to the Rafferty Creek trail.  It was a fantastic hike-- lots of solitude, gorgeous views, and fun and exciting route-finding.

Mountain Biking and Cows

A few weeks ago, we spent a day cleaning and tuning up our mountain bikes.  Since then, we've been taking them around to the East Bay Regional Parks in our area as much as possible.  The only drawback I've found to the parks is grazing-- most of the parks are located in oak woodlands, which is apparently the good life for the Bay Area's cattle (remember those "Good cheese comes from happy cows.  Happy cows come from California" commercials?  Yeah.).  When it rains, those cows really like to use the same dirt roads and trails that bikers and hikers do, and the cattle herds turn the trails into veritable swampland, which then dries up to become a massive study of bovine hoofwear.

Usually, I'm perfectly happy to rumble over the dried hoofprints, but yesterday we managed to find a still-mucky area, with one little dry path through it on one side.  Josh lead the way through, emerged on the other side unscathed and continued to plow on up the hill at hand.  I, on the other hand, somehow managed to hit a hidden fresh cow pie.  I never even saw it.  It churned up under my wheels and bits and pieces went flying all over.  And landed on my knee.  GROSS.  I stopped to try to wipe as much of it off as possible in the grass, and it quickly became apparent that my knee wasn't the only victim of the cows-- my shiny white bike now had smelly greenish-brown spots with grass sticking out of them all over.... Yuck.

Needless to say, my bike and I both got hosed down after the ride, and I'm definitely not the bovine population's biggest fan.  They are, however, fun to chase around with a camera....

Have a hopefully clean and dry Wednesday, folks!

Upcoming Events - Wedding Faires

I recently made the potentially questionable decision to appoint my devoted and driven-to-success husband to the role of "Director of Business Development" for my photography business.  (He calls it a hostile takeover...)  This is not to say that he's going to do a bad job, not in the least.  In fact, he's likely to outperform every other business development team the photography world's ever known.  You see, my husband is what I like to call a Man of Action.  Once he gets it into his head to do something, he's going to get it done.  Like right NOW, and nothing's going to get in his way.  Our free time is definitely on the run.

So, with both wedding and art festival seasons upon us, Josh went ahead and started getting us signed up for every event he could find within 50 miles.  So far, in a week, we've gone from zero to three events, with two more applications pending, and a host of others in the "when my head bobs back up above the waterline" category.  Needless to say, we'll be making a lot of public appearances this spring and summer!

To help everyone keep track of where we'll be and when, I've added the "Upcoming Events" section to the sidebar of my blog.  Check there for dates, times and locations for our busy schedule!

On the wedding side of business, we've got two wedding fairs planned in March and April.  The first is in Concord on March 28, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, and the second April 18 in Pleasanton at the Pleasanton Marriott.  Both shows run from 11am to 4pm, and you can pre-register for a trip to Las Vegas and other giveaways at Brocade Weddings' website.  Tickets are $10 at the door.  If you're engaged, or know someone who is, wedding shows are a great way to meet a lot of local vendors in one place, and to get a feel for some of the amazing weddings you can plan!

San Francisco Zoo - Birds

Flamingos never cease to amaze me-- they're a whole lot of bright pink bird impossibly balanced on tall, spindly legs.  The flock at the zoo stares you down like no lawn ornament ever could....

Peacocks are another of natures great displays of bright colors, and they wander around the walkways right next to you at the San Francisco Zoo!

A waldrapp ibis perched high above in the African aviary.  These birds were held sacred in ancient Egypt, but are now critically endangered.

Happy Thursday!

San Francisco Zoo - Giraffes and Polar Bears

Giraffes have always been one of my favorite animals.  I don't know why, but they always seemed like a friendly, gently sort of animal, and the ones at the San Francisco Zoo didn't disappoint.

Polar bears, and bears in general, have somehow grown near and dear to us.  We've only seen one truly wild black bear in the wild (and he was in a BIG hurry to get away from us), but we're always on the lookout when we're up in the Sierra.

Happy Tuesday!