Happy Holidays!!!

meow.


I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday!
-Kiley

Friends I miss

December is one of my favorite months not necessarily because of the holiday, but because of what the holidays bring. Most people I know are fairly scattered across the west coast and I don't get to see them nearly as much as I'd like to. But, when December rolls around I try to get in as much people time as humanly possible (and photographs of people). Most of the below images were taken during past Decembers.

Jackie + Billy's Engagement pt 2

See part 1 here.

Pogonip park has an old lime kiln that you can walk on top of that makes me feel like I'm walking around in the trees. It provided one of the best back drops for the photo shoot. The leaves were amazing  thanks to Fall - the background would have been a little boring if everything was green. These are the things I think about when taking photographs.

This pose and that dress makes Jackie look like a ballerina :)

           

For the photo below, I very very carefully attached my camera to a fence (I left the tripod in the car *sigh*) and set a timer. Then, Jackie and Billy posed while I threw a pile of leaves in the air and jumped out of the frame just in time for the shot. It was ridiculous and didn't work that well. More often than not, there was a leaf in someone's face. I also have some cute photos of J + B throwing leaves in the air and trying to kiss before all the leaves hit the ground. Also ridiculous to do (I think we tried it 5 times or so before giving up) but really cute. I'm going to make the best looking one into a gif.

Never leave home without a tripod. 

yay!

Jackie + Billy's Engagement pt 1

I am so excited to share this! Two lovely friends of mine asked me to do their wedding photos. As a thank you for giving me such a wonderful opportunity and to give an early wedding gift, I offered to do their engagement photos.

We hiked around Pogonip park on a very warm Fall day in Santa Cruz. Jackie and Billy picked great outfits with a vintage feel for the photo shoot.

We made little bouquets from the forest!

Jackie's Bouquet

Billy's Bouquet

Pogonip has a lot of rock stacking and beautiful moss covered boulders (which you can see in this post). It made for a great setting during the shoot. One difficult thing to deal with was the low lighting and shade - I try to keep things looking as natural as possible when it comes to lighting and I'm very anti-flash, but it was difficult to keep things clear and colors warm. Luckily I was able to bust out my new f1.4 stop lens which is perfect for low lighting.

Being cute as usual.

Part II on Monday - have a great weekend!

Tumblr Funblr

I have a tumblr for my photography (find me here at klmletitberaw), and I found a few things lately that I couldn't help but share:

I feel this way when there is only one cat on my bed.

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I would hang this and many more of Kirsten's Illustrations in my house.

Kirsten Rothbart Illustration

I really enjoy creative fish tanks.
I use vases from goodwill, but boy this old TV sure is a good idea!  

There wasn't an original source for this, only backtracked it to here 

It's a book vending machine!!!!! Get a random book for  $2

Scribner Books. 

Every day all day.

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Light from the Magic Hour

Dusk, sunset, magic hour, whatever you want to call the last hour of sunlight just means beautiful lighting all around. It's my favorite lighting to shoot in, especially during winter. Is it just me or are sunsets just a tiny bit more gorgeous when it's cold outside?

Sand like a water color painting.

Zac!

When is your favorite time to shoot? I also like the morning light... but I am a bed bum.

Why I love my state...

I love California because I can go from forest...

...to the coast in a matter of minutes!

It's a tiny bit weird to me how similar my feet and stance are in both of those photos. Even the shoe laces match.

Flickr Favorites #41

This weeks flickr inspiration is from anna verlet shelton.

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I had a really hard time with picking just 4 images. I ended up choosing some of the softer film photos because I'm a sucker for the way film can look like a painting or a dream. These shots are especially interesting to me because they timing is part of the beauty. The horses running in the bottom photos, the lighting in the trees,  the boats and surfboard around the lake - these are all captured at a very specific time and not something that can easily be recreated. A lot of anna's photos are like this, I highly recommend you take a look here. 

Fungus Identification #02

Welcome to the exciting world of mushrooms! This was the hardest mushroom to identify and I'm not even sure if I have the correct name for it...

This time I used glass instead of paper to make a spore print because the spores where white. 

This is what the spores look like over a black table. The mushroom was pretty tiny so I had a hard time getting a good picture. Next time I'll use black paper instead of glass...

So, I think it is some kind of Tricholomatacae, which is frustrating for me to identify because it's a huge genera and there isn't really any solid taxonomy for it. But in my attempt to get as specific as possible, I narrowed it down to marasmuis cohaerens. Is that right? I have no idea. I'm going to name it painius inmyassus.

Nick found a very interesting fungus that I thought was pretty gross looking. I didn't take a picture of it myself, but here is an image of it along with the description. He found Black Witches Butter, or exidia glandulosa.

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VOTE!!!

Happy November!

Hurrah for leaves and hikes in the forest!

In the works

Something creative I have done in quite a while is play with photoshop... I did this the other day in response to a friends poem. It's a rough draft, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I go from thinking it's funny to stupid and back again.

Fungus Identification #01

A new series post all about mushrooms!

Found this little guy on the edge of a lawn and underneath a rosemary bush.

Staining yellow when cut.

Making a spore print underneath the glass!



Lovely chocolate brown spores. You don't have to put a glass over a cap to make a spore print, but it does help with creating detail. You can see each line of the mushrooms gills in this print.

After consulting my identification book (I use Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora), I found this mushroom to be a yellow staining agaricus, or agaricus xanthodermus. Very common on lawns, sides of roads, meadows, pretty much all over the place.

Flickr Favorites #40

This weeks Flickr inspiration is: gears aka e mccown

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There are many beautiful nature and landscape photos on gear's photostream, put I was particularly caught up in these 4 soft and intimate polaroids. They're a small peak into a stranger's life and creative through process. The set up, the lighting, the actions are all so natural yet a little dreamy. And if you do end up taking a look through gear's photos, you'll see plenty of the super adorable white dog (in the second photo). 

Have a wonderful weekend!

p.s. If you'd like to share photography on flickr favorites, please email me at letitberaw(at)gmail(dot)com.