• Welcome to my world!

    Hello and welcome to the Not So Still Life Photography Blogsite - blog and website combined. I'm Danielle Stolman, a wedding and event photographer in San Jose, CA. Hit refresh to see more photos of me at the left - some silly, some serious.

    My blog will showcase work for my clients including engagement sessions, weddings, bar- and bat-mitzvahs and other happy events. I'll also share glimpses into my personal life including running (I completed a life long goal and ran two marathons in 2009, as well as two half marathons, and several shorter races), volunteering, and day to day life. Feel free to see more of my wedding, engagement and photojouranlism other work.

    If you'd like to talk to me about photographing your event, feel free to email me at Danielle@NotSoStillLife.com or call 650.759.6796.

Harold Davis Night Photography Workshop, Part One


I attended a wonderful workshop with renowned photographer and author, Harold Davis. Though the main focus of the instructor was night photography, we had many hours together to discuss strategies for photography and safety, and to shoot our surroundings, the former naval shipyard on Mare Island, in daylight hours both to appreciate its beauty and to have photos to contrast with those we would take later. I captured so many I wanted to share on the blog that I will be splitting up this entry into two: today day shots and tomorrow shots from the actual night part of the workshop.

At first there had been some concern as to whether the workshop was even going to happen at all as there had been so many rainy days beforehand and even the day of was slated to be a potentially rainy day. Luckily, even though it was sprinkling the workshop was still on. Harold told us it was fortunate that it had rained as it gave us a great first thing to shoot, the puddles still left on the ground and the reflections in them.

At first I just photographed literally the assignment of the buildings reflected. Then serrendipity struck when another photographer happened to walk so that his reflection accidentally ended up in the puddle I was shooting. As I looked at the result I realized I had a great new assignment for myself, photograph the other photographers and their water reflections. Some of my favorites were those of Harold taking a photo, and later, after I told him and showed him my photos thus far, posing with his camera.

This next shot I debated putting on my blog. Most of my photos I have the whole person in them, or at least if they are cut off here or there it’s in a traditional way (i.e. a head and shoulders shot). Yet, in this non-camera aware photo taken a split second before she moved, one with the top of Susa’s head not included, I love the expression, the toughness in the part of her face you can see, her strong clothes and posture even as she pauses to take a photo, so I included it. I think it’s an better photo of her than a camera aware full image of her would be.

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of all the don’ts on the signs and the inviting colors of the day all around. 

Another of my favorite puddle photos was this one which had some small ones and a larger one spanning the photo.

I was struck by all the beauty around me of different colors, patterns and objects, like the cranes.

Perhaps not surprisingly some of the best and most interesting things to photographer were well protected by gates and chains. Both of these were photographed with my small lenses right through the respective gaps in the fence.

Although we were really supposed to stay in general sight of each other another photographer, Jennifer, and I decided to go exploring all over. I really enjoyed the beauty I found in this alley way from the texture of the bricks, to the colors of the moss, and with the sun peeking in at just the right angle. 

Another great photo I found was this behind the buildings. Even though this area was overgrown and had some debris in it, the reflections and colors really made it stand out for me.

This last photo captured the effects of the windy, rainy days preceding it. Coming tomorrow, some of the night time shots from the workshop. 

Food Photography – The Counter and Layang, Layang

I definitely think I’d fall into the category of people known as foodies. I love good food especially food that is beautiful in terms of presentation as well as tasting wonderful. I recently had two very different meals in which the presentation was just perfect.

The first was at my favorite burger place ever, The Counter in Palo Alto. The Counter allows customers to really customize their meal in ways that even places like Burger King, with their famous “Have it your way” slogan, don’t even come close to approaching. The Counter lets customers choose their burger type (beef, chicken, turkey or veggie), then bun type or greens, and finally toppings, cheese and dressing, each with a staggering number of choices. I’m also partial to the sweet potato fries.

While at The Counter I only had my iPhone handy. I know there’s an iPhone App called Best Camera, after the fact that the camera you have with you is the best one for the situation.  That being acknowledged, each camera has some limitations, and as far as I know the iPhone one does not have any way of taking great macro shots, yet.  I was reasonably happy with its close up work on the burger and I like the shot I was able to get of the whole plate as an overall shot.

The second meal was at a new restaurant and food type for me. While many of the Meetup groups I belong to are for photographers and wedding professionals, a new one I joined, Dining Around the World, is open to anyone who enjoys trying new food. The group only allows a small number of attendees at each so everyone can have a chance to talk with each other. The first one I was able to attend was Maylasian food at Layang Layang.

When I’m at new places I like to really search the menu for something to have. While sometimes I play it conservative and order a dish I’m very familiar with, I decided to order only things I couldn’t easily get at another place to really try out the food culture.

I started with a Kacang Merah, a red bean ice drink. I’ve had red bean ice cream before, so I figured it would be delicious and I was right.

When I photographed the dinner, this time with a Canon Elph point and shoot so I could get more macro details then I had with the iPhone, I photographed it highlighting the top of the drink, and used the fact that the straw would be distorted by the lens shape to make it look as if it were leading into the glass. One of my dinner companions, Stephanie, then took a photo of me with the glass in which you can see the beans better in the bottom. If I had not had this photo taken of me, I would have taken another highlighting the beans in the glass, the way I did with the burger above, however, after I saw the photo (even with the characteristic red eye of point and shoot cameras), I realized it was a great accompanying photo by itself.

Many people at our table ordered fish. It was amazing seeing the differences in colors and textures and how elegantly they were arranged with the entire fish, eyes and all, in both platters.

The group shared a few dishes so I was able to try some fish, shrimp and soft bread with a wonderful exotic dipping sauce.  For my own entree I zeroed in on something I’d heard about yet had never even seen outside of a menu: an entree served in a food shaped nest. After I found out I could definitely eat the tarot nest, I ordered this, Sarang Vegetables.  It was as flavorful as it was beautiful.  As with the other photos, the camera allowed me to get some great details.

Topical Tuesday (14)

What a great and busy week it’s been. One of the highlights of my week was attending the much anticipate launch of the Wish Upon a Wedding Charity. The group will match bride and groom couples, one of whom is terminally ill with vendor vendors for a small yet meaningful wedding of their dreams. While there I got to meet in real life fellow photographer Lisa Whalen, who I only knew as a Facebook friend. Here she and I are in a fun photo strip as taken by The Laugh Box. (The actual strip looks better than this scan, however, it does have interesting textual quality to it as a scan).

Inspired by the photo booth strip from above, I made a collage of Villa Montalvo shots I took with a Canon Elph so as to just take a few photos and leave the official photography to that night’s photographers, Alisha and Brook Todd. So here is the location as lit up by Got Light, music and music by Ken Constable.

Observant readers of my blog may recall that I’ve blogged before about my friend, Michael Denning, and his work with Art of Chaos. This Friday his group again did a show at First Street Billiards, this time for relief for Haiti. While I had brought my Leica to the first show, I decided to go low key on this one and took the point and shoot for this event as well. The group raised over $3,000 in one night.

Here’s Michael explaining his Zentangle, a piece of art made up of many symbols, that took him many hours to create.

He and the other artists featured live painting of their work in progress. I really enjoyed seeing the colorful displays and how into their paintings they all were. Here are in order, Lindsay Bryant, Michael Fowler and J.D.

On Saturday I was in Palo Alto and was treated to seeing volunteers planting trees part of a city beautification project. It was great to see people of all ages work together on this great cause as shown in these photos taken with my iPhone.

San Francisco Zoo Trip

Even though I live about an hour away from The San Francisco Zoo, and my friend Colleen lives about half an hour away, it isn’t somewhere either of us have visited often, so on our recent trip when we went to visit the animals and take photos, we took a long time walking around and stopping at all the exhibits.

As we parked across the street at Ocean Beach, we first observed some surfers. It was a very cold day, and rumored to be quite rainy so there were not many out. This surfer in the above photo appears to be all alone out on ocean in this photo, and was pretty much the only person standing on a board at that time. Then we made the harrowing trek to the zoo (across two lanes of traffic) to visit the animals.

The lucky giraffes don’t have to look hard for their food – branches are brought in and placed around where they roam so they have easy access to it. This one looked especially hungry.

Hasani, the young gorilla below, has an extended family in the zoo. His mother, Monifa, doesn’t display maternal instincts, most likely as she’s never seen another gorilla mother and child (as she would have in the wild). So first the zookeepers, then an experienced gorrilla mother, Bawang were brought in to mother the little tyke. He seems to be doing quite well, and even has the attentions of many other gorillas to watch him.

These animals were content to ignore all the people looking at them and taking their photos as they groomed one another. At first I was shooting this at their level, then I notice a huge flight of stairs that allowed people a much better view.This zookeeper gave a great talk on the American Bald Eagle. The bird seemed to be trying to listen to the story, and even looked directly in the eyes of his handler.

One of the best parts of the zoo is seeing animals relatively up close that you would run from in the wild. This rhino, whose skin texture is complimentary to the rock background, instead of charging at an enemy, spent time pushing a ball around the enclosure.

Volunteering Rocks! Helping out at Second Harvest Food Bank

Volunteering Rocks,! A new group of wedding professionals who enjoy volunteering their time together, had their second event this Tuesday at The Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose (also the second time volunteering with this organization.

The first person I saw when I arrived was Robbie Schlosser of The Magnolia Jazz Band, who I had met before at a Silicon Vally NACE meeting. We were joined by Volunteering Rocks! members, as well as volunteers of other organizations. Our group leader, Rich Amooi, the owner of Hey Mr. DJ, arranged for members of our group to work together at the various jobs that were being given out.

One of the jobs was described as requiring two people who would be communicating with each other the whole time. I suggested Christina Romero, the wedding coordinator owner of Elegant Occasions, who I had just met and talked with a few minutes before take that job and we did. We had to assemble and line up boxes to be filled with food donations.

Christina and I made boxes so fast that a few times we had to slow down to let others opening food and filling them catch up. During one of our purposeful slow downs, I noticed Oren Arieli of Awesome Shot Studios taking videos on a Flip of our group, so I decided to start using my Leica to take some no flash photos of the group. Here’s Oren posing for my camera.

Rich did a great job taking videos and even captured a hilarious one in which he asked me to demonstrate making a boxing and I joked the tape gun would fail on camera, and it did (I’m trying to add the video here, should hopefully be up soon). I took this shot off one of his videos of me, in which he was interviewing me on the good shots I was taking, which started with me smiling as I reviewed a good shot on my viewfinder.

After he put down the video camera, Oren showed up in quite a few of my photos. In this one he’s clowning around while I was taking a quick portrait of Vince Ramirez from ProSound Entertainment. Vince and Oren have a little Facebook dialog going on this shot in which they claim it looks like Oren is being hatched from the box.

A quick portrait of Christina, Amy Frugoli of Twitterpated Weddings, and Lindsay.

I made a collage of photos of Rich, who decided to juggle cans for some fun shots.

At the end of the night our group, left, along with another group we had worked with, came together for a group photo. It was such a pleasure to work with such great and hardworking people. I had a lot of fun and look forward to the next Volunteering Rocks! event.

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