For the Love of Nikon

I recently purchased a Nikon D90 and several lenses to feed my developing photography addiction. My beloved Konica Minolta Dimage Z6 finally bit the dust and I'd been wanting to upgrade to an SLR for quite some time. This may just be the best purchase I have ever made! Since acquiring it I've taken 3000 something photos and I'm loving learning about how to get different effects and play with the focus on it. Shots that I used to have to set up a tripod for I can now take as regular snap shots!

Since Adam and I are moving in together this month, we thought it would be nice to take some "family" photos.

The "parents" with the furry spoiled baby.



A closeup portrait


And a romance shot.



I also got the camera just in time for Adam's sister's wedding last weekend. Nothing like a wedding to act as an opportunity for you to learn how to use your camera!

Savannah

I recently spent a weekend in Savannah visiting my old roommate. It's always fun to go back to a place that you used to know intimately well and revisit it with a fresh new perspective. One of the things I always loved about Savannah was how close together everything is. It's easy to see all of the main sites the city has to offer in one weekend and yet there is always something new to discover when you come back for a round two. Living there for four years I loved that I had my bank, my job(s), my school, and all of my friends all within a mile of each other. Everything was within a short biking distance, a feature that is very hard to duplicate in a city the size of Atlanta. I do miss commuting to work on bike and don't think I'll ever truly get used to being in my car all the time.

One of my main goals for the trip was to re-shoot a panoramic I'd attempted to take of River Street back in college. The series of photos I used on the last try were good enough for me to use as a reference to paint this for my watercolor final,



but it didn't stand on it's own as a photograph. Parts of it were out of focus and I'd done a poor job merging the seams in several places. So, on my last Savannah excursion, I took the ferry back over to Hutchinson Island, took a new photo about every ten paces, put them together in Photoshop, and came out with this:




A much better result!

I also got a picture of the Talmadge Bridge lit up at night that I was rather pleased with:

Easter time!

It is a wonderful thing to have a pet bunny around during Easter....

They take the cutest pictures!



Happy Easter everyone!

Sewing crafts

So I'm VERY delayed in posting these, but I'm still very proud of the way they all turned out so I'm going to post them anyways. Last Christmas (yes, Christmas) I got very crafty with my presents for everyone (primarily out of a need to save money this year). First, I found this adorable stuffed bird pattern on Spool, downloaded that and converted my apartment into a bird factory over Thanksgiving weekend. Here are a few of the results:



I ended up making about 20 of these little guys. I added the little wire legs so that they would be able to stand-up on their own. A part of me still wants to make more, especially after I saw this BEAUTIFUL bird mobile idea on Design*Sponge, using the same bird pattern. However, while my crafty heart says "yes," my tired fingers say "no." At least for now.

I had already made birds for my coworkers for another occasion, so I had to come up with something new to give them for the holidays. For them I drew out a simple star pattern and then designed a monogram for each of their initials. Using my light table, I painted each of the monograms onto a nice muslin fabric and sewed them into ornaments. For a very impromptu project, I was very pleased with the results!



The good thing about them is they don't have to be just for Christmas. Several of my coworkers came back saying they were using them as door hangers so they could leave them out all year long.

Snow!

So Atlanta was buried under a whopping 6 inches if snow yesterday. A friend of mine who is living in the UK commented that it was even colder here than it is where she is in Bradford England. It snows so infrequently here that a snow day still feels like a gift to me. In a sense, it's God telling me I need to calm down for a day, go run around outside and build a snowman. I got absolutely nothing accomplished, but who could when you have views like this outside your apartment:





My thoughts exactly.

Well, if it was not a long time in between posts before, it definitely has been now. I've been a busy girl. Since my last post, I've moved into my lovely apartment in midtown Atlanta and have been spent a good bit of my energy decorating it to my liking. I hired my friends to help me paint it a bright green and blue color and am so pleased with the results. This is my first apartment that is only mine and I went all out on personalizing it. The place is only 550 sq feet so I had to get creative with how I set up my work space.



I also painted my kitchen/ living room bright green which gave it a bit of an art deco flair






As an additional side project, I found this great dresser at a thrift store for $35 and had a great time designing and a painting it to my liking. In my haste to get started I neglected to take a before photo, but I'm quite pleased with the after.




It sat in my bedroom untouched for several months before I was able to get to it. Needless to say, I'm thrilled to finally be able to use it for its intended purpose.

Another recent addition to my life is my pet rabbit Bruno. He is the new love of my life and I see him being a great source of material for future illustrations.



Oh wait, he already has! :)



Life has been treating me well. I've picked up some new clients that have been keeping me very busy (in a good way). I'm hoping now that I've finally gotten my life more situated, I can update more often.

Long needed update

Well its been quite awhile since my last post but that does not mean that I have not been busy. For on, I recently finished another mural in a little boy's room. The baby's parents had selected a vintage cowboy print bedding set and wanted a mural on the wall that mimicked the style on the print. For the main wall I painted a scene of all the cowboys gathered around a camp fire. I also included portraits of the three family dogs to add that personal touch. Over the changing table I took the conostoga wagon design off of the bedding set, added a horse in front and had one of the cowboys driving it. And since I had so much fun painting the dogs I had each of their faces sticking out the back! Finally, over the crib I had a cowboy spinning a lasso that spelled out the baby's name. All in all, I'm very pleased with the final outcome.





I've been doing some of my own paintings as well. This one is a panoramic of Harbor Town on Hilton Head Island South Carolina. I go there with my family every summer and this is among one of my favorite places to go on the island.


As well, I've recently opened up an online store on Imagekind.com (the link can be found on my side bar) where I'm selling artist prints of each of my watercolors. I'm very excited about this and if all goes well with my watercolor gallery, I'll most likely open up another for my digital work.

And of course, as always, I've been taking a LOT of pictures.

Rain!

So after a summer of extreme heat and no rain, the trend finally broke and the sky opened up. Finally, hope of a reprieve from the water restrictions we've been under! We know what this means.... Photo-op!

Nothing like raindrops to make everything twinkle.





I'm thinking the last one may make an interesting christmas card. Could be interesting.