Growing Excitement

Well, less than two weeks from now, Jacques, Erin and I will be on our way halfway across the country!!!  I am very excited for this opportunity at a road trip, even more excited than I am for the reason for making the trip in the first place!  Which is to finally pick up my stuff from my old apartment from way back when.  I've been waiting for TWO years to make this happen, and I'm finally in a place to do it.  I mean, it's only stuff.  But it's more than that, it's a part of me that I haven't been able to access every day for these past two years, a part of what reminds me of home.  I know Jacques must think I'm just being crazy sentimental about a few pieces of furniture, DVDs, books, photo frames, etc... but I can't help that I'm a sentimental person.  And it's better than the alternative. :]

Anyway... so I know this is supposed to be a photoblog, but I've been hit with a crazy amount of inspiration and creativity lately, so I'm going to share some recent designs that I've made within the past week:

Made for a St. Patrick's Day themed SOTW!

Oh, Zachary Quinto...

Originally made for a video-game-themed graphic battle against a very good long-time friend of mine!

The majority of these were made on a whim, for graphic battles and contests on a graphic design forum that I've recently joined: Jasper Designs.  Which means that I've been bitten by the PB bug again.  I hadn't realized how much I truly missed the forum era until now.  I knew I'd missed the incredible activity that my own forum once had, but I just didn't realize exactly how much.

That's about all I have to report right now.  Life has been good, I've secured my first ever paying design job of building/designing a website for one of Erin's friend's mother's graphic design company, so that's exciting!  Plus, I've been maintaining my dad's website as well, which is getting a lot of traffic.  And also, I recently redesigned my own portfolio website.

Things are going well, so far!  Hope everyone has a happy St. Patty's Day tomorrow!

Gone to the DARK Side

Okay, first off, sorry for that very cheesy Star Wars reference. But it's true, I randomly decided to switch to the darkest design this blog has ever seen. Not to mention the ONLY one it's ever seen, since I haven't updated the design in over 5 years. That's also a reason I wanted to update, to add some more recent photos in the header up there. The old header had definitely run its course. And I actually love dark designs, so I figured it was time, since I've stayed in the light for this long. (Any and all feedback on the design is completely welcome, btw!)

Anyway, I also wanted to share something I put together yesterday, after being instantly inspired by an awesome quote I saw randomly on the web...

This actually spoke to me because I am ALWAYS finding that I compare myself to other photographers, who are far better than I am. And if I let it get to me too much, it really brings me down a bit. But I try not to dwell on that... in most cases, those photographers have much better equipment than I do also... instead of just having a point-and-shoot camera, and an old Sony from 2003 where the main feature is the Carl Zeiss lens. (Though I'm not saying it doesn't do an amazing job most of the time)

I'm going to remember this quote whenever I catch myself comparing to any photographer other than the one that I used to be. :)

Side note: Also, if you've noticed, the URL for this photoblog has changed, to reflect my portfolio website's URL (www.aprilbridges.com) so I apologize in advance for any confusion this may cause regarding the previous photos posted. I will be updating my copyright image shortly to reflect this change!

Signs of Spring

So I think my recent enhanced interest in food photography is dwindling a bit. I'm not sure what sort of kick I was on in the first place... I started out thinking it would be a neat idea to use the photos as a reference to go along with our menus that we still have yet to make... but then I realized it might be a bit tedious in the long run. I'm not sure, I might still do it that way, because it's always nice to have a mouth-watering photo of the meal when planning? Let's just say that's the reason I was so adamant on getting photos of every meal.

I still got a few photos though, not nearly everything, but I'm also only taking photos of the foods/meals that we actually prepare with some effort, not the kind where you just take pre-packaged food out of a bag and cook it. We had an amazing steak and mashed potatoes (with sweet white corn) tonight, but I didn't catch a photo of it.

This past Monday, I noticed that we have a cherry blossom tree right outside our house! This is the first time it has bloomed since we've lived here and I love cherry blossoms, so I was excited to see it. And of course, first thing I do is run inside and grab my camera to get some photos. The sky was bright that day so these are the best close-up shots I could get.

Oh and I also got this shot of the sidewalk running along the front of our house...

Those flowers are so NOT pretty in person, but given the right angle, they made a pretty picture.

So now on to the rest of my food photography from this past week:

I was actually pretty proud of these pizza-shaped cheese quesadillas that I made. Food-wise and photo-wise. They were better than I normally make them, plus they look good in the photos as well. (to me, at least!) The side of sour cream may seem a bit odd, but ever since I worked in a taco place way back when, I always dipped my quesadillas in sour cream, although those usually had chicken in them too. That just stuck with me, I guess.

Next, a simple breakfast one morning -- scrambled eggs with toast:

And cheese nachos. I pretty much just put this together one day for lunch because nothing else sounded good and I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time cooking anything. A plateful of tortilla chips and shredded colby jack cheese and 45 seconds later, this is what I had.

Small snack of granny smith apple slices drizzled with a caramel topping sauce from Smuckers. I washed each piece off with water before pouring the caramel on, so it appears a bit too watery and kind of absorbed into the apple, but it was still good.

And this last series of photos are from today's banana bread baking experience (it was my first ever). We tend to buy more bananas than we actually eat, so when some of them turned VERY ripe, I wanted to find a use for them, instead of wasting them by just throwing them away. So I found this simple and easy recipe for banana bread. I tweaked it slightly by adding some chopped walnuts in the batter, plus adding a very thin layer of dark brown sugar + more walnuts on top.

Ingredients used.. mainly taken to help me make sure I had everything I needed.

Right before being put in the oven to bake for an hour.

Fresh banana bread!

It made the house smell SO good!

It tasted SO good! I can't believe I've been missing out on banana bread all this time. Now I'm kind of hoping more of our bananas will turn brown soon so I can make another loaf! Haha.

Food... for Thought?

Today, I decided to start experimenting a bit with food photography. I'm not really sure where the inspiration came from with this, but the best guess I can come up with is the fact that I'm stuck in the house every day (until we figure out the car situation, which is a whole 'nother story) and I just really had a strong urge to take some pictures. I'd started out taking photos of the dogs [because they're always entertaining and I love photographing them] and other random things around the house:

Nappy, looking cute as ever!

Guinness and Nappy cuddled up with each other.

 But I got to thinking that sometimes food can look pretty amazing also.

I decided to make some simple Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for lunch, and halfway through boiling the pasta, I realized that I'd forgotten we didn't have any milk. And I HATE mac&cheese without milk... so I figured I would try my best to find a substitute. We had some Velveeta cheese in the fridge, so I cut up some cubes of that to make up for the lack of milk, plus used a little extra butter. Once the pasta was ready, I stirred in the butter first, making sure it was completely melted before adding the Velveeta cubes (at this point, I also added about a handful of shredded mozzarella cheese). After that, about half of the powdered cheese packet that comes in the box. When it was nice and creamy, I poured a serving in one of our bowls  and topped it with more shredded mozzarella cheese. Then did my best to get a good closeup shot:

Creamy macaroni & cheese, tweaked from Kraft's version

I think I did pretty well for my first ever serious attempt at capturing the beauty of food.  It was really good too.  Though I'd peaked my interest a bit, and I was still a little hungry, so I also put together a quick salad.  This time, I captured the ingredients I used as well, just for the fun of it.

I used two leaves of romaine lettuce, baby carrots and olives (chopped) and topped it with what is rapidly becoming my favorite salad dressing: Tuscan Italian with Balsamic Vinegar from Trader Joe's.  It's amazingly good and adds alot to a simple salad.

Quick & simple salad

That photo didn't turn out as well, to me.  Arranging a salad for photo purposes is definitely NOT as easy as it looks.  I kind of ended up getting fed up and just hoping this would turn out alright. I hate the lettuce sticking up in the middle of the picture (at the bottom) but oh well. It was fun taking photos either way.

Planning on experimenting more throughout this week, maybe even including dinner meals as well.

Now I just need some more decorative bowls! =]

Happy Valentine's Day!

So in the spirit of Valentine's Day, here's what I've been doing all morning... :]
(Full-view recommended)

And now I'm off to lunch because I'm STARVING!!
Hope you all have a very happy v-day!

Empty Promises & a Pinterest Virgin

So the "something special" that I mentioned in the last post that was supposed to happen today isn't happening. We were going to go to the Chinese New Year Parade over in San Francisco's Chinatown. I'm really bummed about not being able to go because it would have been an experience that was both fun and new for me. Plus, it would have been a great photo opportunity and a reminder of the times when we used to use weekends for fun trips like that. Damn the financial instability! Oh well, maybe next year?  -sigh-

Other than that, there's not much else to report. I'm hoping to possibly start on getting the garage cleaned out today or tomorrow... but we'll see how that goes.

Oh, I did start up an account on Pinterest though.  I'd seen the site before but never had the desire to get into it, then I received an invite yesterday from a friend who figured it would be something I would like and I couldn't resist. So to start off, I went on a (mini) pinning spree from Kirkland's... I love each and every decorative item that they have!! I would seriously buy the whole store if I had the funds. I'm using Pinterest mainly to bookmark recipes that I want to try, to help us focus on saving money by not eating out as much. And also pinning stuff for the house; decor, furniture, anything and everything I see that I like. I have to admit, it's addicting and kinda fun!

Scare + Sickness + Randomness

So 2012 didn't start out easy for us.  We had a scare with one of our Irish setters, Mari, towards the middle of January when she started acting a little off: not wanting to eat (which is very unusual for her, since she usually tries to eat the other two dogs' food) and being more lethargic than usual, plus some blood in her stool.  We apparently arrived at the vet too late for them to keep her overnight (more like, they just wanted to get home since it was closing time -.-) so we kept a close watch on her and weren't really sure if she would make it through.  But she did... and shortly after all of that, Jacques got violently sick for a couple days.. then a few days later I got violently sick.  Everyone's okay now, but it took about 2½ weeks for things to get back to normal around here.  And now I can't believe that it's already the beginning of February!

Anyway, since I last updated I haven't really had the chance to take any photos.  We've been busy with the sicknesses that came upon us, plus we have also been trying to save up to buy furniture for the new house so we haven't really gone out and done anything besides for that.  And with me not working at the moment, it's going to take longer than planned.

So I've kind of gone through my photos from 2011 and picked out a [VERY] random selection that never made it past my "editing room."  Until now, that is!

Plane taking off in the snow in Pittsburgh, PA.

Random sunset... I think this was around Tracy, CA.

Snow-covered flora in Bethany, Oklahoma.

Just driving through Brentwood, CA.

Random closeup, of the outside flap of a purse of mine.

Scene in Yosemite National Park.

Fallen tree in Yosemite National Park, at the Mariposa Grove.

Just me being a poser. :]
(And I cheated, this is actually from 2012)

There is something special possibly planned for February 11th, though.  So hopefully, I'll be updating around then with some photos of something that I have never experienced before!  -crosses fingers-