Laurie tried a suggestion for wavy hair from one of her fashion magazines. She wanted me to do some quick photos without me taking the time to set up flashes and backdrops. I wanted to at least have a backdrop, but since I have my backdrop system at the office for a video project on Monday, I pulled out my old canvas backdrop, used a combination of light from the window and a small, shoe mount flash unit on the camera, then started to quickly work through some poses, but the flash was taking several seconds to recycle (batteries were low from the Q~Lesque shoot o Wednesday), so I got a a few stern looks from Laurie for taking too long between shots. Our quickie fashion shoot turned out pretty well, even with the uncooperative flash.
2012 ended with a beautiful sunset. Laurie walked by the window and said “Oh! The base of the Sandias are on fire!” I grabbed my camera and made the 1/4 mile dash to the river bank just in time to get the red as it faded with the last sunlight of 2012. As I walked out of the bosque, the last sunset of 2012 was quite dramatic, as was the morning light offering beauty and promise for 2013.
I start the new year with my 600th consecutive post on WordPress, and 908th consecutive post since I started on CaringBridge in July of 2010. According to WordPress’s annual report, I had over 10,000 views in 2012 from people in 83 countries, — the US, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and Russia were the top five. Thank you all for a great 2012 and I look forward to an even better 2013.
One of the first things you can put on your calendars for 2013 is the musical comedy, The Wedding Singer, presented by Devon Frieder and Warehouse 21 Productions. It starts this Friday, January 4th, and will run for two consecutive weekends. The show is directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder, with musical direction by Erik Joshua Clack. The Wedding Singer is based on the book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy with music and lyrics by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.
The shows will be presented at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, 6320 Domingo Rd. NE Ste. B, Albuquerque, NM 87108 (Central & San Pedro by the Fairgrounds). Show dates and times are:
Friday, January 4 at 7pm
Saturday, January 5 at 2pm & 7pm
Sunday, January 6 at 4pm
Friday, January 11 at 7pm
Saturday, January 12 at 2pm & 7pm Sunday,
January 13 at 4pm
Admission: $15 Adults, $12 Students. Special Front Row VIP Seats for $25.
To Reserve Tickets in Advance, Call (505)-216-6014
The last five photos are from a promotional photo shoot I did for the show last week, and Three Guys and a Guitar I posted on December 28, 2012 was one of the photos from the session. From the 10 minutes of rehearsal I saw before the shoot, and my interactions with Devon and the cast, The Wedding Singer looks like it will be a fun-filled production with lots of music and dance, and a friendly cast of whacky, colorful characters.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a lunch hour than photographing a beautiful woman. Meet Tiffany Paleo, make-up artist, actress, singer, wife and mother. She’s as sweet as she is beautiful, and delightful to work with. For you women who like to be pampered, Tiffany is available at Katharoz Boutique to help you with all your skin care needs — 505-227-1224.
Laurie and I attended the annual holiday party for the Friends of Medieval Studies at UNM tonight, which featured a concert by Música Antigua de Albuquerque — they were wonderful. Música Antigua de Albuquerque will be performing “Stella Nuova” on Saturday, December 22th at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, 601 Montaño NW in Albuquerque.
Mark April 15-18, 2013 on your calendars. The 2013 Medieval Spring Lecture series is “Medieval Myths and Monsters”. This promises to be a superb lecture series not to be missed.
The dress rehearsal for the Messiah was tonight and it sounded wonderful with the orchestra and soloists. Tomorrow night’s performance is sold out, but there still might be tickets available for Sunday afternoon’s performance. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern thought Laurie’s new black velvety dress was a great color and texture and had to be involved in the photo shoot.
First of all, if you didn’t make it to the performance of “A Winter’s Journey” by Quintessence Choral Artists of the Southwest tonight, they are performing tomorrow, December 2nd at 3:00 pm at St. John’s United Methodist Church, 2626 Arizona NE. The concert was fantastic and the “Jingle Bells/Hallelujah Chorus” medley is not to be missed.
On the way home from helping Tristan get ready for Goth Night, Laurie are I were wondering how we fit so much into the day. Laurie made two chocolate, chocolate chip angel food cakes first thing this morning, then we did a photo shoot of her outfit before she ran off to choir practice for the Messiah. I hung the photo backdrop from the ceiling, extending the width by 3 feet and allowing me to take down the stands. Then I gathered up parts from different water filters and put together a new water filter to replace the one that broke from a hard freeze a few weeks so I could run drip systems when the hoses thawed out. I cleaned out vines and scraggly growth from what we call the “north house” garden, worked on the bathroom remodel, went to the post office and Lowe’s, and herded cats. After Laurie got home from the rehearsal, she cut up the cakes and I bagged the pieces so we could freeze them, then we got ready to go into town. We did another photo shoot of Laurie’s outfit, and went to pick up Tristan. Tristan had to try on some new clothes we ordered that came in yesterday before we headed to the photo show. We finally got to the ANMPAS show, but we missed Susan (one of her entries is the triptych on the left side of the B&W photo below). We went to the concert after the photo show, which was great, as I already mentioned, then we went by Target so Laurie and Tristan could get some clothes and makeup. I was one of a couple dozen men pushing shopping carts behind their women in the clothing and makeup isles — all of us men looked rather bored and longingly glanced toward the tool department. Three hats, exercise tights, a pair of shoes, various shades of lipstick and an eye shadow kit later, we headed to Tristan’s to help her get ready for Goth Night. Tristan had sworn off make after the years she performed Flamenco with Laurie and I, but makeup is a necessary part of Goth Night along with high heeled footwear and corsets.
In the first photo, Rosencrantz was playing on the backdrop, jumping around and attacking the folds. Meanwhile, Guildenstern was hanging out on the couch with Cthulhu — both of them look like they could use corsets. The third photo in the series is of Susan’s triptych of the demolition of the houses on our property. The rest of the photos include Tristan and Cat getting ready for Goth Night, and then both of them all made up, dressed in proper Goth black, corseted, high heeled, and ready to have a great time.
For Fashion Friday, Laurie wore her new purple dress, chunky sweater and riding boots. After we got home this evening she put on her new exercise clothes and warmed up with a stretch and cooled down under a black, fuzzy jacket.
Suzette came late to the Messiah practice tonight, sang and few bars and left. Then she called me and asked if I wanted to photograph some sexy girls. They were rehearsing for a Cabaret show in January, and wanted photos in costume. I certainly couldn’t pass up the opportunity of photographing sexy girls, so after the Messiah rehearsal, we stopped by and got some photos. The lovely ladies were wonderful models, and I ended up with so many nice photos, I had a really hard time deciding which ones to post — I started with the images that seemed to fit their Cabaret characters best.
Laurie got a whole new set of really cute clothes. I had been pestering her to let me do a photo shoot of her in her new clothes, but we had colds, and with Messiah practice and all the other stuff we have going on, time for a fashion shoot wasn’t available. We finally decided to set up the back-drop and flashes and do a fashion shoot of whatever Laurie’s wearing right before we leave each morning. That way she doesn’t get worn out changing clothes and posing over and over again for one fashion shoot, and we’ll get all the different fashionable combinations she can put together. As you can see in the first photo, Rosencrantz loves getting in on photo shoots.
This was also “Car Crash Monday!” There were two crashes on I-25 on the way in this morning that had traffic all backed up. But that wasn’t enough for people who where hungover from excess of turkey, Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals — there was another, apparently major, crash on the way home that had two lanes on I-25 closed at Paseo Del Norte. Fortunately, the “nanny state” electronic billboards NMDOT has been installing on the freeways warned us about the two lanes closed ahead of us on I-25 in time for me to exit at Jefferson and drive over to Alameda, which had almost zero traffic because all the rush hour traffic was still backed up on I-25.
My new 17-40mm ƒ/4 ultra-wide angle zoom lens was delivered this afternoon, so I tried it out downtown (and on the rib roast I picked up on the way home tonight — we are having standing rib roast instead of turkey for Thanksgiving). The lens is sharp and has good edge to edge detail, even wide open at slow shutter speeds. The photo of Liz in Patrician Designs was shot at 17mm, ƒ/4 at 1/20 sec at ISO 100. Liz is a little soft because she was laughing, but the sharpness and depth-of-field is impressive. I bumped up the ISO to 400 when I photographed Megumi in Cafe Giuseppe (1/30 at ƒ/4). I photographed the mutual life building at ƒ/11 and One Up at ƒ/7.1. The rib roast was a little more work. I used two flashes, one on the camera, the other in my hand. At 17mm, I was about 3 inches from the roast, so I had to use manual focus, hold the camera with one hand, while aiming the flash with the other (I was too lazy to get out a tripod, which would have made doing the photo much easier). The exposure was 1/160 at ƒ/5.6 ISO 400.
Off Center & Not Even 