Since I’m not dressing up this year, I thought I’d spread the Halloween spirit with some creepy photos! This spiderweb was spun outside my garage, so there was no good reference point I could use, but it was so big it was bigger than my entire upper body! Thank goodness there was no enormous spider or else I would have been too freaked out to take a picture! Happy Halloween!
Archive for October, 2009
Happy Halloween!
October 31, 2009
The Lake
October 28, 2009Earlier this month, Frank and I took a nice stroll around Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, better known as The Lake by locals. The loop around the lake (~three miles) is really popular, and there are always walkers and joggers. For the foodie, my favorite muffin shop (which taste more like cupcakes because they add icing to some of them, yum!) is located along the lake called The Gingerbread Construction Co. It’s sad that it took us so long to visit the lake even though it’s a two minute drive from our house, but the mosquitos were really bad this summer, so I didn’t want to go. Guess what, the mosquitos are still alive and biting even in this weather! I was a little upset that I didn’t use bug spray, so we just walked faster.
The leaves are just starting to change color.
I don’t understand how these maple leaves bypass the yellow phase and turn from green straight to red, while some maple trees turn yellow, then orange, then red. They have to be different species right? Anyway, it looks so pretty!
I love how the little dog is staring at the big dog. He looks like he wants to go for a swim too but thinks the water is too cold.
I absolutely love water reflections and how peaceful the water is. Supposedly the lake isn’t suitable for swimming but it looks clean to me.
The lake at sunset. The sun’s reflection on the lake was blinding, but I couldn’t stop looking at it either!
California
October 23, 2009I was so excited to visit the Central Coast of California and Santa Barbara for the first time! It was so fun and relaxing and I did not want to leave! It definitely to be a lot more laid-back from the hustle and bustle of the East Coast.
Fishing boats in Morro Bay. I’m so mesmerized by the amount of junk in this fishing boat. I wonder there’s even room for fish on the boat?
Morro Rock at sunset. Don’t you just love sunsets? Right when we were about to be seated at a restaurant, I took a look outside and saw the most gorgeous sunset, so I ran out of a restaurant and took a quick shot. I thought I could take more sunset pictures the next day, but it turned really foggy. Apparently foggy weather is not just in San Francisco!
Our hotel in Santa Barbara had a lagoon with all kinds of wildlife, and I stumbled across this litle turtle sunbathing. I was hiding behind a big bush so I wouldn’t scare him away.
Most palm trees grow straight, but these palm trees were really slanted!
We stopped on the side of the highway and watched the waves hit the rocks. I think I could have spent all day here!
The seagulls were flying really low and really close to me!
I wonder what this bird is thinking?
The beaches in Santa Barbara are special because they face south instead of west, so you don’t actually see the sunset behind the water. I never knew that!
June and Jason
October 21, 2009Frank and I were so excited to attend the wedding of his good friends June and Jason, who have been dating for ten years! They tied the knot on Sunday in Morro Bay, California, and it was such a beautiful, intimate wedding! The ceremony was held on a hotel terrace overlooking the bay, and if you look really closely, you can spot the fishing boats in the background. After the ceremony, we moved indoors for the reception, and instead of dancing afterward, we sang karaoke! Half the time we were cracking up laughing instead of singing because the Korean karaoke we were using misspelled some of the lyrics (“berrer” instead of “better”) and the melodies were really off. Then bride and groom sang Sonny and Cher’s “I got you babe,” and it was so adorable!! I had a blast at this wedding!
I love how flowy and romantic this dress is!
Another shot of the dress because I just love it so much!
Love the lime green accents at the reception. It’s so bright and cheery!
June laughing as the boys were singing the Beatles song “Hey Jude,” but substituting the Jude for June. =)
This is one of my favorite pictures. He’s such a good singer and put in so much emotion in his singing.
I love this shot too. They are so cute together!
June and Jason, we wish you all the best as you start your new lives together as newlyweds!
Crystal & Cody
October 15, 2009Crystal and Cody are such a cute, laid-back couple, and they got engaged just two weeks ago! They are getting married in Washington state, so they wanted to find a local photographer to take some engagement photos. I was so honored when they chose me! Crystal attends school in Vermont, but she came down for the weekend to take pictures. We couldn’t have picked a better weekend to take pictures at the Boston Public Garden because the weather was gorgeous!
I love how these photos turned out!! There are so many cute places to take pictures at the park, and the fall leaves make it so much prettier (though the leaves hadn’t quite peaked colors when we were there). I heard that almost every couple in Boston takes pictures at the Public Gardens, and we ran into quite a few of them on our shoot! Congrats on your engagement Crystal and Cody!!
Click here if you want to see more!
Photoshop actions
October 13, 2009I recently won a set of actions from JHP Photoshop Actions. For those who have never used Photoshop actions before, they are awesome! They save you lots of time in post-processing. You can even record your own actions in Photoshop, but I prefer to use actions available on the web (why spend all my time inventing something when someone already invented it?). JHP has three available action sets, and I was lucky enough to try them all! I had a lot of fun playing with them, and I wanted to show you what you can do with actions. All the pictures on the left are straight out of the camera, and the ones on the right have had actions applied to them.
Here’s a photo of a goose I found walking in the middle of the road without a care in the world (taken near Fenway Park). I applied the Majestic action from the Creative Lab set, and I love how it gave the photo some extra oomph.
There are a lot of flowers in the picture and it’s a little busy, so I used Golden Harvest from the Creative Lab set to desaturate the colors and give it a nice yellow tint.
I took this picture looking into someone’s yard, but the fence was in the way, so I just made it part of the picture! I used Instapopper from the Color Lab set. This is my favorite action because I love giving my photos that extra pop! If you want to go for a more subtle look, you can always tone it down by reducing the opacity of the effect in Photoshop.
There are also several black and white actions in the Creative Lab with varying amounts of contrast. My fav is the B&W contrast, because it’s the perfect amount of contrast. I love the diagonal branches of this tree, and something about it reminds me of an enchanted forest of a fairytale. And wouldn’t this be the perfect tree to climb on?
There is also a Retouch Lab set, which I didn’t play around as much, because I have so many pictures of friends blessed with beautiful skin and don’t need any retouching! The retouching set also includes actions to lighten/darken areas and to reduce noise, which work really well.
Here are some coupons for my readers who are interested in purchasing the actions.
Complete Set – 20% Off
Color Lab – 10% Off
Creative Lab – 10% Off
Retouch Lab Offer – 10% Off
Sam Adams Brewery
October 8, 2009My friend Phil was in town this week, so we decided to take a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery. I rarely ever drink (I can’t remember the last time I’ve had beer…years perhaps?), but I love touring factories. I also read that the tour was really interesting and informative, so I was excited to visit.
When we first arrived at the brewery, it was really small. The brewery shares space with other companies and restaurants, so finding the tour building wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t until we took the tour that we found out that most of the beer is bottled in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and the brewery in Boston is mainly for PR.
Here is our tour guide in the first room of the tour, where we got to sample three different kinds of barley and smell hops. The dried green herbs below are hops.
The first barley we sampled tasted like Grape Nuts, the second type tasted like toast, and the third barley tasted like coffee. I think the barley is all the same but they were all roasted differently.
This was the second and last room of the tour (if you don’t count the bar afterwards). This is the entire brewery!! There’s no bottling center here, so the beer they brew here goes into kegs.
When we first entered the bar area, there were pitchers of beer on the counter, so everyone thought it was self-serve. Then the tour guide came in a few minutes later and freaked out because we were supposed to wait for her to pass them out to each table, and by then, most of the beer was gone already. Haha!
We each got a 7 oz. souvenir glass that was filled up 3 times with (from left to right) Boston Lager, Octoberfest, and 6 AM pale ale. The 6 AM pale ale is a beer that was brewed by one of their employees, so it’s not for sale. It’s called 6 AM because it was brewed with coffee, and you can really taste the coffee!
There was also a lesson on beer tasting at the end. This is when we all held up our glasses and looked at the clarity of the beer. Cheers!
