Cammy had her first day of school this morning. She was so cute. Full post on that coming up real real soon. My baby is going to big girl school.

full posts coming all the way around!

Which lens is best to have on hand?
The one at home.

Which camera is best?
The model a step up from the one you just bought.

When will the right camera for you be available?
Probably next year.

When will it be affordable?
When it is obsolete.

What camera do ‘fools’ buy?
Yours.

Should you shoot RAW?
No! Shoot jpeg and get it right the first time you fucking moron.

Should you shoot jpeg?
No! Sliders and presets and curves! Shoot RAW you fucking moron.

What must you improve?
Your workflow.

Of what must you have more?
Screen real estate.

Where does no one want to be?
In front of a computer.

Where does everyone want to be?
Out shooting.

How much light is there?
Not enough.

What must the light be?
Natural.

What must the colour balance be?
Neutral.

What must the subject matter be?
Interesting.

What do adjustments make your photograph?
More interesting.

What must the background be?
Blown out.

What mustn’t the highlights be?
Blown out.

What must the shadows be?
Punchy.

What must the flash be?
Diffuse.

What else?
Soft.

Like this?
No.

Now?
No.

Now?
Just turn it off.

What’s the meaning of it all?
Self-redemption through an endless stream of pouty self-portraits on Flickr. Also weddings.

Funny thing is as much as I have on my plate, (don’t even get me started on Camm starting school in two weeks,) everything is falling right in place the only thing that has truly slipped has been the blog. I am truly sorry for my absence. I am working on getting caught up enough tha I can tell you all the cute stories that are still happening to me every day but today is not the day, this whole week is looking pretty skeet on time. Maybe I’ll get caught up while I am on my way to Chicago.

A girl can hope.

In the mean time, know that I am always thinking wonderfully happy thoughts for you. I’ll catch you in a few days guys!

Cammy and I went to Grants Farm with her classmates. My little ball of wonder fed an elephant! My kid is just so awesome. Some days I am just in awe of the people they are. Especially Cammy. She is just so full of curiousity, and is so happy. Just a well of good tidings. She is so full of confidence and is not afraid to say what she thinks and how she feels. I know her life is a work in progress but somedays I am proud of hte job our support system has done wth her as a person, and who we have all helped her become.
She went to an great birthday party last week it was just four girls and the birthday girl, and it was held so that at the end of the day so there was enough time for bath and a story then it was bed time - GENIUS! I tell you!
Bri has beena little sick lately - just a tad under the weather. The occasional fever, mostly just sluggish and not able to keep many solids down (fun times!) but all in all she has bounced back well. She’s taken to the outside and wants to spend allof her time outside - which is a mixed blessing as my kids both love being outdoor but htey are both like candy for mosquitos. So we are trying to work out a less chemically HARSH was to fight that battle.

Jerry and I went to dinner with our friends again tyesterday. Its downtown restaraunt week which we like to use to try new places, I think we found a serious contender for best place to take a group of people who you love and don’t mind sharing a fork with.

Mosaic.

It was so good it gets its own paragraph break. We tried almost everything on the menu. Thing that left a lasting impression, the Sea Bass, the Kabob, the lacquered Chicken (we had to order anything that made us think you were ordering food from HomeDepot.) It was Mojito special night and we ordered the Watermelon Mojito (cause how could we not?) and the blueberry Mojitos were AWESOME. The thing I like most about our life right now is that Jerry and I have a blended family that is truly blended. My friends and family adore his and vice versa. I love that we don’t go out with his friends on Tuesday and my friends on Thursday. That we can call them all and they are excited to get together. We had very interesting table converstaion. We watched the olympics on a 45 in flat screen near our table we made pleanty of comments about the clear violation by china if they think anybody is buying that someof those girls are 16. And while I don’t want to turn tape recorder some of the classic lines of the night were…

• Give me some of that sweet gravy! (it was soup)
• Oh.. you see how that gymnast is lookin at that other chick? Shes plugged into the Hatrix.
• (from a vegetarian) I really do remember meat! (us to the vegetarian) that meat you didn’t eat? it was awesome.
• Seriously? You can get a pole in a box? Yes, a stripper pole in a box, yes over at … they sell em, I bought one as a gift..

It was the kind of night that you think the stars have to be aligned to have happen but we have these kinds of good times everytime wehang out with our friends, so I can only count myself as extrememly blessed to have them in my life.

In photography news the “Its Intimate” portion of my work, is truly coming along. We will hopefully formally launch in the next few weeks. I am about to announce holiday session specials for cards and I am looking for Senior ambassadors, so if you know any High School Juniors who are interested in getting a great deal on their senior session please feel free to forward my information to them.   

Funny thing is I have gotten way more interest from my portrait sessions than I thought that I would. And I sincerely thank you for that. I appreciate all that you do and how forgiving you all have been as I work the kinks out of my process. Your feed back has been invaluable - good and bad, I want to hear it all, and I thank you for taking the time to tell me what you honestly think.  I am attending a seminar that I am hoping to learn more about this side of the art and will hopefully make for better experices for both you and I.

I’ll be posting more sessions in the near future, I am sort of working on finishing some of the other elements of the site and that has taken priority, so bear with me more stuff is coming soon!

Dear Dear internets its been a long day.

*just a note that my nifty little feature I’ve been trying to use at the bottom of my posts should now work - click a picture and tell me if it expands the image for you
I stayed home from work today and got to be with little Miss Bri. Who was STOKED by this turn of events. She kept coming to check like - “hey, you’re still here! Sweet!” then she would walk off to find something else to get into. Did you catch that? my little girl is WALKING ALL OVER THE PLACE! its barely been a week since she took her first step and shes just flying all over the place. She likes to hold a finger still, mostly because she likes to be holding on to you. Shes the most independent dependent person I’ve ever seen.

We went to church Wed. after noon, just because. More because lately I’ve needed to go for me. my husband gets my restless spirit and has been very understanding and open to attending where ever i want to go. I expect I’ll probably try and make bible study this week as well. We’ll see. He’s been very concerned about me as of late and I’ve tried to explain that the first year of any business is a little nerve racking.

All in all I have such little room to be nerve racked, my biggest complaint - things are not moving at HYPER SPACE drive speed. YET.

And that’s a good thing - I’m using this time to get my kids acclimated to longer stretches of me being home and doing the mom thing and then the periodic two or three day stretches where I have a shoot every day during what used to be us time. I’m also making a point of spending more time with the family as individuals. Cammy and I spend a little more time together, I encourage her to help with dinner even if it will cause things to hit the table a little later than planned. I have recently been reminded that over planning in general is probably not the best option for us a family. We have always worked better as a shifting unit. Now if I could just earn enough for somebody to come and do our laundry, I think that is my success point. When i can comfortably say I can afford for somebody to come and do our laundry I’ve done what I need to do, in the mean time I think i may take a page from a friends book and just BUY new clothes. Seems so much easier somehow.

Cammy is such a teenager stuck in the body of a four year old. What pray tell do you do with such a creature? I am not the mom to her I want to be. And I am working on that. Cammy is the kind of kid who should be in all manner of extra circular activities. This fall that is a MAJOR goal of mine. To find the things she would like to get into and well, get her into them. I think we are gonna try a sport, probably dance and swimming, and an art, probably music. We have a piano, she likes to play it. Maybe we should nurture that.

Husband isn’t blogging enough for anything I say about him to be a spoiler over on his blog. I expect alot of his peeps read here cause otherwise you think we’ve fallen off the face of the earth. He’s been workin up a good little storm. He gets along with his coworkers from what I can tell. Its hard not to like Jerry though, you sorta gotta work on that. He’s taken to role playing on line, which I think he enjoys it gives him creative ideas for his writing. So i’m hoping to encourage his writing more. We are both starting to work out more, although since Jerry is a man - his efforts are visible WAY faster than anything I could ever, ever hope for. But we are well, he is a joy to love.  Some days are more interesting than other but man, he does make them colorful.

We went to dinner with our grown up friends the other day. Once a month we make a point to have dinner - not date night mind you but dinner with adults away from the kids. Date night is great and all but it takes more than one night a month to keep things movin around these parts. So once a month we go to dinner with our grown up friends who don’t have kids. Some times its a little more financially taxing cause the night starts off with you 25-40 dollars in the whole from paying a sitter and your single friends they don’t quite get that. Ours are getting better though we had a FANNY-tastic time. Our chosen location was Vin de Set in South City.

We’ve eaten at its sister restaurant on many an occasion but this was our first time there. Things I would recommend, the cheese plate was excellent. Our waiter made perfect recommendations. I had the duck which was beautifully prepared. Funny cause i love ducks in general, it seems odd to me that I order duck when ever I can.

three different people ordered the pork tenderloin special and while it was good, the tender loin that Adam order WAS OFF THE CHAIN. Literally, they easily must have laid a chain next to the plate to prove the point it was so good.  i don’t know if the company made the food better but MAN, we had such a good time. It couldn’t have hurt the meal that the company was awesome. Some of the pictures below are my favorite ever of my friends, yes they aren’t PERFECT but they capture them perfectly.

Now speaking of Perfect I am posting a new session this weekend I had the joy of photographing MommyMae and her beautiful family. She is the most calm beautiful pregnant person I have ever met. I was like DUDE- if it had been like that for Bri we might be having another one! Then reality SMACKED me across the face for saying such a thing. She has three beautiful kids including twin girls who are such genuine characters. I’m looking forward to posting those images soon.
Also we have a little giveaway, i think we’ll do that on Monday so do keep on the look out for that. It is Photography related as it should be over here.

The next few weeks are gonna be a doozy I have two seminars, a field trip with Cammy, TWO additional maternity shoots and This months boudoir shoot!!! I am soooo excited. If you are a bride reading this you get a lovely little discount if you book this particular session. If you are interested in booking a session during my marathon boudoir session This Aug 23rd and 24th please shoot me an email at Pinxit photo at gmail dot com for information.

Why not? is a perfectly good life strategy! Be peaceful be photographed..

bestest buddy spoken and bestest hubby

Napi

hubby

maury - midlaugh...

angela and adam

Trish the Ti of famous couple TiTo

Tony, To of the famous couple TiTo

jenni-belly1

9:38 am  uniformtrout: Yarrr!
                               me: ?
                uniformtrout: okay …ARRRR! Avast! who be this? …ARRRR!
                               me: um - who are you? not that ARRRR isn’t right up my piratey alley
9:39 AM  uniformtrout: aye  i thought so. …ARRR!  we got botted. …ARRRRR!
                               me: botted?
               uniformtrout: it be always people wit’ fish related screen names …ARRRRRRR!   i keep gettin’ a parrot makin’ people say things like “ahoy”   or in this case …ARRR!  yarrr …ARRRRR!
                               me: its been real
                uniformtrout: Avast! okay
9:40 AM                  me: shakes head I am so gonna blog this today..

Few notes.. I could have put a picture of Marcus Patrick with his clothes on.. but why?? I like him naked, thats sort of his appeal for me right now. Shallow but honest I know. Even WOBL’s can be a tad shallow, and he is a tad more nekkid that I expected when I viewed that image large.. but hes got great ken dolls.. 

Heres the meme:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name? Raquita
2. What is your favorite food? sushi
3. What high school did you go to? riverview gardens
4. What is your favorite color? purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? marcus patrick
6. Favorite drink? pom mojito
7. Dream vacation? hawaii
8. Favorite dessert? brownies with ice cream
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? photographer (does this mean I’m a grown up? maybe I shoulda put clown in there)
10. What do you love most in life? my family
11. One word to describe you. per the husband - ignition
12. Your Flickr name. Raquita I stopped hiding behind fake names years ago (no offense to those who use them there are very valid reasons why people do and should use them.)

1. Boudoir Sessions, 2. デパ地下寿司, 3. Evening along the Yarra, 4. Just an Orchid, 5. MARCUS PATRICK, 6. Pomegranate-raspberry mojito, 7. Botanical Gardens - Hilo, Hawaii HDR, 8. Cho Cho Cho, 9. Showtime!, 10. Latest Family Portrait, 11. We have ignition, 12. Not yo mama’s cakes

Anywho many many thanks to all who have dropped by to tell me what they think of the new digs. I am still constructing my arse off, but it is so worth it. I am glad I didn’t hire anybody to do this for me, although I so started to.
I’ve got tons on the stove right now, burners full blast - but while I am working I thought I’d Post an additional image from my session with Adam and Angela. I love doors, nad I try and find as many of them as I can to shoot in from of.

I am feelin pretty good but I still got a ways to go! To my clients who are waiting for the client portal to go live - that should be completed tonight, fingers crossed. In the mean time I wanted to say thank you to those who have been so helpful and gracious (ahem HOLLY!) And show a few images in our new giant picture glory!
Expect full posts on Tambora and Lindseys session

A full post from my session with Lisa from Midwestern Mommy and her beautiful family. Her son is such a sweetie..

and a post about my weekend we went to the magic house!

Thank you again to all those who have helped and sent well wishes my way. I so appreciate it so much so that I do beleive we will have our first giveaway this week - STAY TUNED!

***I have a small hicup with a plug in so to leave a comment you have to select the actual post title then scroll down to leave a comment - it will be fixed this afternoon/evening