3 little delicate rolly-polly pigs

left to right: Kassidy's pig, Natalie's pig, lucy's pig.

I thought this was really sweet of my kids. A while back they discovered a little collection of pig figurines that belonged to Chad from his youth. For Father's day they all made him a pig out of clay to add to his collection. While taking this photo the head of lucy's fell off, I had to lick it and stick it back on. Relax people... I liked my finger, not the head ;)

If you knew someone had a pig collection you might think they really dig pigs, thats what I would think. People were always giving him pigs so it had to be, right?

Not actually. Come to find out someone gave him a pig thing-a-ma-jogger once and after that everyone always thought he had a thing for them. Snowball effect! I bet he mentioned wanting a pot belly pig once and whammo!

Pig collection!

p.s.- he even had a pig phone. It's true.

seeing.

a portal to the outside

a portal to the inside.

hair and space and other lovely things.

I've been itching to sew again. My machine has been packed away for over a year now. 

It's not that I ever really wanted to stop sewing, it's just that I got busy with other things... plus we live in a really small house and pulling out the machine and everything that goes with it is... well, to speak plainly, space consuming. When fully engaged in a sewing project there is much to be found on the floor, add that to the bucket of kid garb you will normally find on my floor and yeah... its major. 

Let me just tell you, I am a fabric addict. I LOVE beautiful fabric. I still have drawers full from before but I decided I would start anew with this...

The apple picking dress from Oliver + S paired with a lovely fabric from Joel Dewberry's Heirloom line.

Of course I have my favorites when it come to fabric designers, Joel Dewberry isn't usually lumped in with them but oh man when I saw this I could just feel it in my bones! This was it!

I posted a couple photos on my flickr and got an amazing response. I was so happy to read such fabulous comments. I think my favorite comment was  "This is the first time I have liked that pattern. That fabric is Gorgeous and the girl too."

I mean who wouldn't be excited to hear things such as that!?! 

Oh that hair! We talk about cutting it daily, She and I. Somehow we just never get around to it. And we go back and forth, sometimes she's for it and I'm against it, and then other times vice versa. 

Today it's vice versa.

I should probably tell you its not naturally curly and ridiculously awesome. I curled it for her. Normally its just kind of ratty on the ends. It really does need a trim.

I've been spending hours and hours lately pouring over patterns and fabrics. Guess what?! I found a few new fabric designers I am in love with. You see, this is what happens when you go on such a long hiatus! 

Laura Gunn has some beautiful stuff in her Magnolia Lane and Poppy Collection that I am pretty excited about. Also really liked many of Dena Designs fabrics. 

And how did I ever not know about the lovely Tilda? With her I am excited about alot more than just her fabrics! She has all kinds of things to keep me busy :) 

I probably never mentioned before how I want to make dolls have I? No, I don't think I have, but now you know! I want to do them with Natalie. I think she could really get into something like that!!  She is always asking for my fabric scraps. I hesitate to give them to her wondering how on earth she will make good use of them, occasionally I just find it chopped up in a pile on the floor. Honestly, its painful even if it was a scrap! I could have made a  pocket with it! Making dolls could be just what we need ;)

I shot this (or something similar) on film. There is something about how the light hits her face... ah love. Can't wait to see the film image. I kept thinking when I was looking at this that I wished I had focused more precisely. It's hard to tell on this small sharpened image but her face is a little soft. *crossing fingers that I did better on film* 

I woke up with a sinus infection today. It felt like the worst kind of torture ever because it was such a beautiful day today. I don't know why but sinus infections ground me. I am just useless as ever. Anyway I could see how gorgeous a day it was from the windows and it was hard to not be bitter having to lie in bed and watch the day go to waste.

Well if I could say one nice thing about today it was that I had some fluffy pancakes with sauteed peaches on top paired with some fresh squoze grapefruit minneola juice. yum. Yes, I fudged on the gluten free today. 

oh I guess I may not have mentioned that I went gluten free. Well more on that later, but basically I am doing it in support of my daughter Kassidy, who has many troubles in school. Just something were trying. You've got to try when it come to your kids... you just have to. 

:) J

coming soon

Some much needed Lu on the blog.

+ I've started sewing again.

<3 Jill

Things that happened today

inside

outside.

make sense?

or in other words...

one side of the door vs. the other.

<3

jill

I have really good ideas.

We did something a little out of the ordinary this year for Christmas. 

I had such a magnificent plan.  (Chad would disagree on the magnificent part)

Poor little Kassidy hates her room. The walls are pink. PINK I tell you!!

We would spend all of Christmas eve painting over the pink walls kassidy so detested and surprise her on Christmas morning with pretty new bedding and walls. 

If we were going to pull off this surprise we were going to have to be a little sneaky. 

Soooooooo... we spent the night at grandma's house.

Yep, late at night we loaded up our sleigh and hauled everything over to granny's.  Except the walls... they were drying. Huge thanks to mom and dad for keeping the girls busy all day while we worked :)

By 2am I was rethinking the brightness of my magnificent plan... also Chad wanted to kill me.

And even though it was a ton of work, I didn't get to see my kids much, Chad wanted to kill me, and we got almost no sleep...

it was worth it.  

I am positively positive that this will be one of the kids most favorite Christmas memories :)

and Kassidy's room looks amazing... when its clean.

btw, have you ever seen such a huge-normous fake Christmas tree in your whole entire life?!!

me neither.

If you scroll back up to the top and take a look at the first picture again, I'd like to point out the horse that lucy is holding, it was a Christmas present from her sweet sister Natalie. Natalie is my crafty kid. She made that out of socks. (seven to be exact) It's actually really cute. 

... incase you wondered where all the matches to your socks are, consider that you too may be living with such a crafty child ;)

[dis-kuhm-bob-yuh-leyt]

Somebody informed me that today is December first.

>..< 

(blink blink)

sigh.

I'd like to express my general feeling on the matter as described below.

and this.

November? Helloo... hellooooo.

where did you go?

The key to life.

Today is november 26th.

november.

it is november.

Take in a full account of our attire, then send us no flowers.

Today was gorgeous. I lived in the world today. 

happily.

The children are happy.

The old man in the chair is happy.

happy us.

happy.

happy.

happy.

people i love filled with happy.

sunshine is happy.

purple sunglasses. longboard. hands up high. on a high. 

happiness.

crashed.

This is what me and my family did today. 

I love them. 

Go into the world and BE HAPPY.

:)

compare.contrast

Man structure.

       

God structure.

      

I enjoy both.

"View from my Toilet"

Should be the name of a book. yes?

not mine though.

I thought I would share with you my new working process, or in other words... the view from my toilet.

I recently found out that my working process needed some improvement.  Before it was, shoot > make a contact sheet > choose what to print > make final print.

I really just didn't know any better.

But along the lines of not understanding the worth of my work I also have a really hard time knowing which photographs are worthy of printing. makes sense right?

This is where my critique class has been ever so helpful. 

new process.  shoot > make contact sheet > grab ANYTHING that sparks my interest, make a proof print > live with it > make a full size test print > final print.

The moment Jim uttered these word to me I knew it was just what I needed.  

I think the key here is living with the images. In addition to living with them I will be rearranging them, looking at them in different ways, and paying attention to which images speak to which.  And all this from my cozy little toilet room. I am certain a new spot is in order, but this is it for now.

I love this. Anything that slows the process down is a very good thing.

I feel perfectly content just making proof prints to live with for the rest of the semester.  Shhh... don't tell Mr. W.

Just kidding, you can tell him. I've worked my tail off this semester and have plenty to show for it ;)

* this girl ain't worried about it *

A rare glimpse

at my ugly handwriting.  (you can thank me later)

...it's because I'm struggling with something.

I am sure I mentioned the critique class I am taking over at Art Intersection, yes? Well...

I found myself going into one of my almost unintelligible rambles last week as I expressed my frustration with finding value or importance in any of my images. 

Sometimes (alot) I think, how could this possibly matter? 

It seems an awkward position to be in. So much passion for something and yet a questioning of it's value.  

My instructor, Jim, thankfully interrupted my ramblings, and asked me to do something.

He told me to write.  Take your notebook here and just start writing, he said. Write down everything that comes to mind, anything at all pertaining to the need to photograph. write write write, don't stop. See what happens. 

So I did.

Is it the final word? no.

It was 30 minutes of my brain putting forth effort.

Is it informative? Yes.

Things came out I didn't expect.

Will I write more? obviously.

I pulled this part out and gave it a little highlight because reading back through I paused on it, this thing which was pulled from within.

In that statement I find something real. Something I need.

:) jill

zombies i love + on a sugar high

I'm really lucky.

Natty B. likes to play school. even dance school.

She teaches Lucy dances over a period of months and then she has a recital.

yesterday was the recital.

song: Monster Mash

location: trampoline

costume and makeup by Natty B.

girls, girls, girls...

just one more. 

ok, in

3... 

2...

1...

nice one.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

it counts.

today me and lucy played a game.
it was called guess what animal I am


I'll start...
j: i start with b, i'm black, and i'm blind
l: A BAT!


ok you go...


l: I start with j
j: jackrabbit?
l: nope
j: giraffe (she's only 5)
l: noooooo (but smarter than i thought)
j: jack russel terrier?
l: ok its jrrr


completely. impossibly. stumped.


j: i dont know, what are you?
l: A JRAGON!


ah, mystery solved.

In a beautiful world.

Looking out the window of our San Jose hotel room Monday morning, I found myself a titch disappointed.  Oooooof course. It just had to get rainy on us. 

I distinctly remember looking at the 5-day outlook and it had a big yellow sun on each and every day. Promises had been broken.

I know you know what rain does to my hair. It's frizz-diculous is what it is. 

So I knew it was going to be an ugly day (me, not the city)  I accepted the fate and drove myself and kassidy into San Fran for our last day. 

If you've never driven into San Fran it is the most amazing sight. You come around the corner and suddenly there's hills and hills of beautiful buildings as far as the eye can see. It is gorgeous!

Over the city that day was lots of pretty fog. Why do I love fog? I do not know, maybe I don't get the pleasure often enough, but I find it really beautiful.

We really had no plan to speak of. What we did was, we saw tall buildings, exited the freeway at a random street, then drove aimlessly down it until we stopped at a random meter, in front of a door, connected to a building, of which we didn't know what was behind. But on the street next to our car happened to be a sandwich board advertising an art show they had on display. 

I thought, hmm... I love art.  How convenient.  And that is how we began our last day adventure in San Francisco! 

Now I want to tell you that even though it misted (not rained, misted) on us the WHOLE bloody time, and my feet sloshed in my shoes with every footstep, and my hair was a frizzy mess, and I was wearing a jacket over a hoodie over a sweater, over another sweater over my t-shirt... the moment I stepped outside my vehicle I knew we got lucky. Ohhh so lucky. 

Lucky for the fog.

Lucky for the rich beautiful saturated colors.

Lucky for the people walking by with their umbrellas.

Lucky for the lights reflecting off the street.

It was going to be a great day.

I cheater posted these color film shots on facebook, but the photo below, the one with Kassidy in it, I saved just for you, my favorite blog reader :)

Some favorite moments:

Golden Boy Pizza.  Away from the mega hustle and bustle, sitting at the wall covered in stickers and graffiti with my girl Kass, letting my feet dry, waiting for my pesto vegetarian pizza. totally cheap. totally yum.

Paying for parking just to find a bathroom. I had to go so bad, every store we went into pointed us out the door. When we finally did find one we also found a photo booth. *worth all 500 pennies*

eating a coconut macaroon dipped in chocolate made by the guy who dropped my change 3 times because... ahem.... I made him nervous. (?) No idea, but I'm thinking it was the big hair. 

Getting lost. like really lost, and laughing at ourselves when we ended up back in chinatown whilst trying to locate our car. (We were at Chinatown earlier in the day, and we thought we were in a completely different area, but apparently in all our circling/driving the wrong way down one way streets, ended up parking one block from it.)

Have you ever been lost? 

After I tell you this you're going to want to go out and buy an ipad. It saved our lives.

We drove round and round trying to find a place to park. We were somewhere in the middle of all the really tall buildings, thats what I knew. I finally found a spot on the street at a parking meter, just like I wanted. Then we started walking, aimlessly. we turned about 2 or 3 corners and I thought oh no! What street did we park on?? Kassidy didn't know either. So we noted the current location, figured it was pretty close right? Corner of blank and blank. Yeah... because we forgot that about two shakes later. 

We're a sad case.

One lucky thing. I remembered when we parked, as soon as I got out I started looking around for something interesting to photograph.  There was a bridge that went over the street. I only noticed it because people were walking across it with their umbrellas. And I also knew I took a photograph on California st. (see above) so I zoomed in really close to that area and found the bridge that crossed over the street! I dropped a pin and hit directions. led us straight there. 

Did I mention I drove the wrong way down a one way street?

We may not be welcome back.  

I <3 you SF.

I coming back.

The all new ART paper by Ilford

I woke up this morning and the first thing that went through my head was I gotta do a blog post on the new Ilford Art 300 paper.

Not that I am in anyway qualified to do a real live review on any product, but it's something I bought, used, and have opinions about. Maybe someone out there is on the fence about buying it since it's description is, well, confusing to say the least. They throw out words like matt and eggshell in the same sentence. huh? exactly.

Lets start with the extreme buoyancy of this product. This stuff floats. Like if you wash in a vertical washer it sticks up a good inch out of the water. Its not really a problem, I just wasn't expecting it. I mean it is a problem, in that you need to find a way for it to stay under, but it's not that difficult to solve. I just laid some plexiglass pieces over the tops to hold them down.

I printed 3 of my images on this paper. I scanned them to give you a bit of a visual but again its not really fair because its a scan... and scans are crappy, but then also the paper has this texture which makes it look quite grainy in the scan, when in fact it is not at all a grainy image. You can see that I included the whole of the image, all the way to the edge of the paper, and it is indeed textured.

These are they...

I love the way these printed up. This paper does a really beautiful job with the blacks and contrast. I mean really beautiful. The tones are perfect. In the description it says, it has a cool base colour and warm image tone.  I wasn't sure what that meant. The example photo on the box looks really warm. Kind of a rich brown, I don't find that to be the case in real life.  I can see that its not a cool black, but its not brown either. its a warm black and thats really the only way to put it. But definitely black.  

The thing that throws me off about this paper is the texture. If you look at the print straight on the texture is really noticeable.  And sometimes usually I don't really like all that texture. It seems to give it this furry look. Really hard to put in words.  But then if you take the print and tilt it, and look at it from an angle, even a slight angle, it transforms into shimmery wonderfulness. Honestly, any furriness it had disappears completely and you are left looking at a gorgeous print, almost as if the light picks up the little slivers of silver. It's really something to see! That particular quality about it excites me. But the texture not so much.

it is also very heavy/thick, which is nice.

So is it worth the $1.42 per sheet, plus shipping and/or tax?

I say yes. 

I won't print all, or even most of my images on this paper, but I think certain images will look really beautiful on it. 

And if you're a darkroom printer I think its definitely worth a shot. I mean, you just HAVE to see the gorgeous silvery shimmer. It's like nothing I've ever seen, not that I've seen much of anything really.

For reference, the paper I usually print with is Adox premium fiber based paper. Which I do quite love.

If I have any film shooter, darkroom printer, blog readers out there, I'd LOVE to hear back from you how you feel about this paper.

My local camera store doesn't carry it. I ordered it online from Freestyle Photo. I use them quite a bit, they are really great, I get all my paper from them and a good lot of my film.

Also... lots of exciting things happening in my little world of photography that I will talk about more later, but I just started a critique class over at Art Intersection with Carol Panero-Smith and Jim Hajicek. AND... I also just signed up for wet plate collodion workshop with France Scully Osterman! 

yeah yeah, more later :) !!!!!!!!! 

(I can hardly wait)

saved (for later)

that's disgusting.

I've been soaking in the charms of 

San Francisco.

Never in my entire life have I seen anything like it.

I'm in love.

I have to go back.

note to self : bring floss 'ems

See how she looks at him. Looove that.

While looking through folder after folder of old photos in search of something particular...

 I found a photograph of my mom and dad that made me smile from ear to ear.

I'm the middle child.

I don't particularly look like either of my parents.

People usually settle on me being a "good mix" of the two...

but just this one time I see a little bit of myself in my mom <3 !!

I've seen this picture before.  Looking at it always makes me wonder...

What is the dealio with the matching outfits?!


hehe.

MOM: if you're out there, please explain.

Love your guys's guts.

jill

{Disclaimer: now that I've come out and said I don't look particularly like either parent, I am quite positive I will get all kinds of you look just like your ......... !!!!!    Don't believe it. All my life I've been the mix. }

WANTED

opinions!! 

for all those who care to dish it.

one is film. one is digital.

I was going to make you guess which one is which but since to me it's so obvious which is which (its really not fair to the film image, scans of images are so horrid) I will just tell you...

the top one is digital and the bottom one is film.

There just something different about film, they say. I can't put my finger on it. its just different. analog.
(if you ever wanted to see a side-by-side of film vs. digital you're in luck... I got one right here :))


furthermore if you ever wondered what a crop sensor is doing to your photos this is a prime example. Both images shot with a 50mm lens (or the equivalent... don't make me go into the specifics of shooting medium format) my digital is a crop sensor. Both images taken from the exact same spot. Look at all the real estate you're missing out on!

The question is... which do you prefer and why?

I feel like the scanner did an exceptionally terrible job of scanning this one in. Wooo doggies.

I can assure you with certainty the actual print does not have a blown out dress.

You don't have to be a photography expert to have an opinion. I welcome all opinions :) !!

Chad and I have differing opinions on this one.  And incase you wonder why I have one on digital and one on film, my film camera is a Pentax 6x7 and I don't trust the light meter one iota. And since I don't want to put out the money for a hand held light meter I use the digi to proof the shot.

This photograph very much belongs with the sunrise collection from the previous post.


Talk to me people!!!

how I make my case for sunrise vs. sunset

I rest my case.

 If you've never ventured out into the breaking morning light I strongly urge you to try it.

It's the prettiest light of the day.

<3 jill