On April 19, 2009, I ran my first half marathon, the Santa Cruz Half Marathon and 10K. I had chosen that race as I loved the city, and as it was the birthdate of my late dad who loved running, and only later did I find out that it also happened to be the official marathon race the running group I would later join was running as well. That day was hot and humid, and I definitely felt a real accomplishment as I did it. I wanted to run it again this year to commemorate it on April 11th, unfortunately I registered too late and could only get into the 10K. So I came up with another way to commemorate my first long race: I’d run a 5K, a 10K and then a half marathon, all within a series of 8 days.

Both long and short races have their merits for me. A short race can be a great start to the day, and the spirit is often one of happy everyone can join in and do this kind of feels. The longer races being more challenging have been aid stations (water, gels, bananas, etc.) and often have better finishing awards usually a medal, occasionally a necklace. Still each of the races I did in these eight days was a lot of fun for me.

I ran the Spartan 5K walk Run (April 10) the Santa Cruz 10K (April 11) and the Mermaid Half Marathon (April 17).

As a 3.1 race, my first race was the shortest race I’d ever entered. As it was at San Jose State University, where I obtained my degree in Photojournalism, and my good friend Jess was going to be walking it (as part of training for the Wharf to Wharf race), it was a good warm up event for me. As the online instructions said to be at least an hour early I was..and was the first runner to register.

It was expected to rain that day, though all we had were sprinkles. As the announcer tried to warm us up by telling us we were lucky as it wasn’t raining as predicted several people myself included helped her with the obvious punchline of “Not yet!”. The race was two and a half loops around campus. Despite starting off too fast, a hot dog start, I finished the race at a good pace for myself.

The next day, it was up and at em for my 10K in Santa Cruz. Unlike last year, it was very cold and it was raining before the race start. It made for a gloomy sprinkly 10K race. The local tides splashed many as we ran by.

I was enjoying the run and the scenery very much, when all too sudden I saw this:

As I headed back, the rain started coming down a bit more forcefully, so I was grateful as I saw the Santa Cruz Boardwalk in the distance and a bit later the finish line. It started pouring soon very after, so thanks to a happy accident of fate I wasn’t drenched that day, as I would have been had I been in the half marathon.

I then had less than a week off of races before my largest in the series, came up.

To my delight I found Ada, shown with me below, who had emailed my running group about the Mermaid Run a discount coupon. We ran together the first seven miles or so, then as she has a faster pace than me, I suggested she take of and maybe I’d catch her..and that was the last I saw of her until the finish line as I was finishing and she and her husband say we coming in (as they were enjoying their chocolate chip pancakes), and cheered for me.

The course was amazingly beautiful. I enjoyed the wildlife and landscape during my run.

Since the announcer was announcing everything by the time I got to the finish, she even announced that I was taking a photo before I ran across the finish line.

As promised the necklace was beautiful and unique.

A friend was just chatting with me about how so many people, including both of us, were born in March. On Saturday I was at The Poor House Bistro helping two great friends, husband and wife Rachel and Aki, celebrate their mutual March 12 birthday. Aki, a harmonica player who always wears suits onstage, looked especially dapper in his birthday gift, a Stetson hat.

Rachel wouldn’t tell anyone what the present was in advance of Aki opening it. The only hint she would even give me was that it was something that he needed, yet he didn’t know it yet.

One of the coolest features of the Poor House Bistro as a venue is that as a restaurant it has an all ages audience. Rachel enjoyed dancing both by herself and with a daughter of a friend, Allison. It is hard to tell who enjoyed the dancing more.

]]> http://www.notsostilllife.com/topical-tuesday-20/feed 1 http://www.notsostilllife.com/topical-tuesday-19 http://www.notsostilllife.com/topical-tuesday-19#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:03:42 +0000 admin http://www.notsostilllife.com/?p=1975

Although I don’t often watch award shows, I was delighted to get an invitation to Matt and Karie’s Fourth Annual Oscar party. Even their entry table was perfectly coordinated and detailed. While I knew I wasn’t going to get the prize for most correctly predicted Oscars, in part as I hadn’t seen that many movies nominated this year, I knew it was going to be a great time and I was right. One of the coolest parts of the party was having a small but vocal group react to the nominees, entertainment and speeches. It was kind of like being in a Mystery Science 3000 episode, though the TV show wasn’t that bad, though there were moments of pure groaning from our audience. 

While I was right that I didn’t win the prize for the most correct answers (copies of all ten movies nominated for best picture, I didn’t get the least amount right (3 in this case), either. I predicted 11 right, not bad considering I’d gone off of things I’d heard about the movies, or the the cases of some of the documentary and foreign categories, titles I liked. 

Our host Matt, read off the winning name, left, and it turned out to be his sister, Raeanne, right. 

Although I’ve lived in San Jose for a number of years, I’d never been to Hawgs Seafood Bar until this week. When my Dining Around the World Group picked it as their spot of the month, I couldn’t wait to try it out. I had the oyster shooters and the dungeness crab and prawns angel hair pasta.

On Saturday a few members of my running group decided to run a new route, all over pavement/concrete through Silver Creek Valley Road and along some beautiful golf club, country club and residential areas. It’s a testament to my desire to get new photos and have new running experiences that I went, as it was billed as 7 miles with huge hills.

The first hill at the beginning looked especially daunting. You can see how steep it is by comparing how big the houses are in front, with those near the top of the arch. We ended up walking a lot of this hill and did the run/walk/run pattern mainly after it, with some walking at the end of our route as well.

In the middle of our run it was pointed out to me that Highway 101 was underneath us, so I took a photo of that as well.

This wasn’t a particularly significant place on our journey, yet the arches framed the palm trees and bikers so well.

Since my last Topical Tuesday post, I attended three new first ever/launch type events. The most recent was yesterday’s Dream Wedding Show bridal fair in Sacramento to promote Wish Upon a Wedding, the nation’s first wedding wish granting organization for brides or grooms facing a terminal disease. 

On Friday I attended the launch party for Izzy Magzine, a new online bridal magazine for unique and independent brides. I really love the theme of the magazine and have at least one bride coming up this year whose wedding might be perfect to submit for this. I was especially happy that the party was in Villa Montalvo, which had coincidentally been the site for the Wish Upon a Wedding launch party in January. The party started at just the right time, 6:30 p.m., and the dramatic sky provided a great contrast for the multilit structure. 

The outside photo will serve as just a small sneak peek of the event. Inside the even had a lot of style going on, and I’ll be blogging all about the party and including many photos I took on Thursday.

The last launch event I attended last week was the Bay Area Wedding Photographers and Wedding Professionals Get Together Launch Party at Motiv (pronounced motive) in Santa Cruz. I love Santa Cruz, it’s a beautiful town, there are almost always musicians playing outdoors (my favorite was the flute player who was simultaneously jogging and playing), great places and people, and parking easily findable. 

I’ve never been to Motiv before. Our well packed party took up the whole top floor private room, and we even had two bartenders pouring us specialty drinks including a chile margarita which was just the right amount of spicy. The room was a great mix of familiar faces and new friends to meet. Many of the attendees were photographers, and I met wedding planners, florists and DJs as well. Everywhere I went people were smiling talking and happily posing for photos. 

If you are a wedding event professional, please join us for our next get together, on Thursday April 1, 2010 (seriously) at Vbar at Hotel Valencia.

The last two Topical Tuesday photos of the week, were just finds that I found were very funny. The first one was on a truck I saw in the parking lot for Motiv. I’ve always loved this saying a lot, and the particular way the condition of the sticker and the truck is, really drives the amusing slogan home.

The second one just cracks me up. It caught my attention at a Burger King in Vallejo off the 80E where I stopped for a quick breakfast on my way to Sacramento to support Wish Upon a Wedding at the bridal fair. I noticed it as I’d just attended the Silicon Valley NACE meeting, “Pairing Port, Wine and Chocolate” a few weeks ago. While I’d never considered these food items as paired in the same way, it does make a bit of sense and is so unique that I uploaded it to my Facebook page and even had one person asking if this was a real photo, it sure is.

The images above are familiar to me, taken from Asri’s makeup application, by her talented makeup artist, who happened to be her sister, Sami, for her Indian wedding, and in fact one somewhat like the top one is in my portfolio link above in the wedding slideshow. These photos are unique as they are the first two to be in my blogsite with a specific actions on them from The Totally Rad action set.

It was suggested to me this week on a photography forum that I belong to, the Digital Wedding Photographers (DWF), that I check out this particular action set, and the above photos, both quite different from the original were made just from the ones in the sample demo (the first to bring out certain colors and highlight certain parts of the photo, the second to have a sharp Infrared film like look), then with a few small finishing touches of my own in Photoshop, are my first results.

This was also the first week I’ve tried using the More/Cut tag in my blog so that it both makes the length of the blog shorter and allows clients and visitors to see all the topics from five days at one time, and scroll quickly to ones they are most interested in. Yet another great suggestion from a fellow photographer. It’s great being in communities where others are so willing to offer advice from experiences.

I couldn’t resist trying one more portfolio photo with the action set, so here is one of my favorite engagement photos ever with some actions to really bring out the texture of the fountain in front of Sonny and Lindsay.

A photographer friend outside of the DWF group commented that my watermark looked nice and clean. I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to get a more complex logo designed to go where the current NSSL rectangle is, after all it was taken literally from the former framing design I used even before I started the blog this January, yet as for now, I’ll be keeping it as is. That being said, if anyone knows any great logo designers please let me know, I may be looking to get it redesigned later this year.

The Silicon Valley NACE group had their February meeting, entitled “Pairing Wine and Port with Chocolate” at The Golf Club at Boulder Ridge in San Jose. I’d been looking forward to this meeting for a long time, both having had other plans during the January meeting, and liking the topic subjects. The view of the Club and their surrounding areas show why this is a popular place to reserve for weddings and events. 

The inside was breathtaking as well. On Friday I’ll check in again with some photos of the amazing decorations and chocolate at the meeting.

While at the engagement shoot this weekend, I noticed some caution tape blocking off part of the parking lot so that it could be used for an event to bring in a local aquarium. Being a visual person, I studied it from all angles and noticed how it could be viewed as protecting the wildlife if you were at just the right angle.

This year especially I’ve been enjoying spending time outdoors and thinking of how we have to work harder to protect our undeveloped land so future generations can enjoy it. Due to time constraints, I didn’t have a lot of time to photograph it as I had to join the group in photographing the couple, so I only took a few including this one on the left with the forest blurred to symbolize what would happen if we don’t protect it.

After the session with more time, I took the one on the right with more things in focus to symbolize protected land. As I was photographing it, a little boy ran into it, and knocked on piece of tape down. His dad offered to replace it, yet since I was going for a “found in real life” piece, I told him it was fine. Indeed, only one piece suits the second one better.

I spotted these two beautiful dogs outside a coffee shop, reminding me how important it is to have a camera with me, in this case a point and shoot, always. Their owners offered to move, yet when they tried the dogs wouldn’t even stand as still as they were in this photo. I love dogs especially those with two eye colors. Seeing this again reminded me of people with two eye colors and wondering what someone with heterochromia, the technical term for having two different eye colors, would put on their drivers license. Google is no help with this one today, so if someone knows, please feel free to comment on it below.

I’ve been enjoying attending a lot of networking events lately. I’ve found bringing a point and shoot to them allows me to get some good, even some great shots of details without stepping on the toes of the official photographer. Sometimes out of habit I’ll ask if they mind if I take some shots for the blog, which I’d always do if I had the Leica with me, and I”ll get the “why would I mind if you shoot with that little thing” look.

On Friday I went to the 2010 Kickoff of the Silicon Valley Young Professionals group at The Capital Club (on the top floor of the Knight Ridder Building)  in San Jose.  

The club was full of people in all sorts of industries making connections. I think it was the first time I’ve ever seen the club using the low key decor for an event. It’s amazing how beautiful the club looks on a regular basis.

At 17 stories up, the view of the buildings below is just spectacular.

While the night grew darker, I took a few shots of the San Jose Capitol building which has been finding its way on my blog a lot recently. While I would have preferred to have used my Leica on a tripod for these shots, they turned out pretty good given the limitations of the camera (which I had to use on full zoom to get these).

“You stopped to take photos where?… That’s dangerous!” was my friend Colleen’s reply when she saw the above photos. Its ironic then that I took them on my way to her house, on Lawrence Expressway. While I admit pulling over to the side of the road had some risk, I was pulled clearly over, was mostly watching traffic, and well I’d passed the leaves so many times I just knew I was going to do it sooner or later.

They were taken with my iPhone, which while it was the only camera I had really handy at the time for a quick stop, got some great textures especially on the second photo. I took five shots and these were shots one (on the right) and five, respectively.

Today I had to type the word communication out twice. In those two instances I managed to with the help of spellcheck catch it spelled wrong five times in those two instances. It just cracks me up, I’m an above average speller, I just type way too fast sometimes. I’ve also managed to grow my nails out a bit, probably contributing to the problem.

This has been an odd week for me in that I haven’t gone to Community Bootcamp despite the classes going on. (Around the Christmas holiday this also happens, yet that I plan on). While running I managed to twist my right foot under two times, once last week and once on Saturday when I was trying to re-establish my routine with a 15.5 mile run with my running club. I ended up taking today off as a result, and though my foot is feeling mostly better, I’m still not sure if I’m going back tomorrow or not. It will really depend on how it feels tomorrow at 5 a.m.

In the meantime, I kind of feel like these critters, who I photographed at a hike that I do still mean to blog – banana slugs.

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.