Let sleeping dogs lie...

When the wife and I got Orly, we vowed to never let him on the sofa... EVER. Or on the bed.

A few days ago, we were both so tired that when Orly jumped up on the sofa and laid down, we simply did not have the energy to push him off and scold him.

Now he's made the sofa his new home.... but at least he's quiet and sleeps for up to a few hours at a time.

BAD mommy and daddy for breaking the rules. But how do you say no to a face like this?

Mom's Birthday/Christmas photoshoot...

In light of the Advent Conspiracy, my family has decided to skip the whole gift giving of presents, and take up giving of presence instead. My mom asked if I would take her out to shoot some photos. I let her use my wide angle 18-70 a few times, but she mostly used my 55-200 and she made some fantastic shots with it.

As for the very few shots that I took that I actually liked, here they are:

Santa Cruz, CA

First Portrait Shoot

Finally had my first portrait shoot. For some reason I'm super interested in flash/strobe work, as opposed to non-flash work. I don't know why, and I should probably get used to shooting photos WITHOUT flash first, but I just love it.

Here's a few shots of my cousins from the weekend. Enjoy!

Busy busy busy!

Seems to me that I've been FAR busier than I ever expected to be at 27 years old. Unfortunately, that takes its toll on my picture taking opportunities. On the bright side, on top of the new D300, I picked up a wide angle 18-70mm recently which I really love. Simple but cheap. Still figuring out a few things on the new camera (WB, EV, ISO noise levels that I find to be acceptable, etc.), but I'm having a great time.

Here's a few I took recently that I don't think are all that bad:

Howard at Ed's Gourmet in Santa Clara, followed by Gabe. I wasn't comfortable with adjusting exposure for these shots... hence why they are a mess. But the 35mm f/1.8 certainly helps a lot.


And here's a few more choice photos of Orly. Can't go wrong with photos of Orly. He's hard to capture because he's a puppy, so he moves like lightning, and the flash often distorts his fur color. Without flash, well, he's a blurry black mess, despite his deep chocolate colored coat.

My wife...

...she really doesn't like it when I take photos of her, but with the new gift she allowed us to purchase, how could I not? So expect lots of beautiful photos to come in the following days.

I've been very busy with the dog, the house, and generally being tired from daylight savings time. But despite that, I've still had the passion to get out there and snap away. And I've been doing that pretty regularly. As far as pictures go, I've been none too impressed with what I've come up with with the exception of a few of the dogs. But I am certainly excited now!

But thanks to my beautiful, wonderful, understanding and supportive wife, I picked up a new (to me) Nikon D300 today with approx. 34,xxx clicks on it. Plenty of life left, a 6fps firing speed, and man... am I excited!