Moved Back to Bay Area!

We've just moved back to the Bay Area from Austin, Texas. My husband just finished this big project there, you can see it on his website if you like: http://www.ezrawheeler.com/ It's the White Cliff project. We've lived in Austin on and off over the years, and went back there to do this project and test the waters for staying permanently. After some weighing and seeing how things are going there, we decided the Bay Area and the landscape of Northern California was just too engrained in us to give it up. It's our home, so we are so happy to be back!!

The move back was long, we had to drive at 55mph for the moving truck and unlike all of our other adventures across the country we couldn't stop to dilly dally.  It was hard to look out on this vast landscape and not take any side trips. Stuck in the drivers seat, I could at least enjoy the views.

One of my favorite things about Austin

Is the Wyld Wood shows. http://www.wyldwoodshows.com/ My friends Amy and Andrew are huge music fans. So they put together these shows in their back yard (they have a huge back yard). Everyone brings a blanket and picnic dinner for the event, gets to listen to great music and enjoy the evening. 

Shooting with the Panasonic GX1 at Enchanted Rock

On a recent getaway to the hill country we went to Enchanted Rock and I got to shoot with my husband's recently purchased Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX1. He got this camera for shooting at the job site, as well as for shooting pleasure (he is an architect). This tiny camera will also take his Contax G1 rangefinder lens's with an adapter, and with it's manuel settings, has lots of control. It has a pretty large sensor for being such a small camera, is 16mp and able to shoot in RAW mode. Add all of this up, and it's a great camera. I mostly shoot with the zoom it came with.

When we visited it had been raining a lot and the everything was alive. We hiked the giant pink granite rock right before a huge rain cloud rolled through. I was having so much fun shooting the intense dark sky and the incoming rain that my husband had to run over and tell me that I should probably put the gear under my rain jacket because we had about a minute before being dumped on. 

These are my snap shots from the day. I found the iPad guy very amusing. I was trying to be very casual about taking pictures of him, but I think I scared him off in the end.

The End of Summer in Austin

One of my favorite things about Austin is the Greenbelt, a huge swath of wild land (809 acres) that snakes through the middle of the city, surrounding a seasonal creek. For much of the year the creek is dry, not a drop of water there. It's still a great escape to wilderness when it's dry, but when there is water in the creek, especially in the hot summer months, it makes an amazing secret oasis.

This September has been very mild, days often in the low nineties, some have even been in the 80's and we've had rain, which means, you guessed it, water in the creek. I went for a walk there the other day with my sister. We were wondering if we would see water as we started out on our hike. A few minutes later, through the trees, a stranger (who we never even saw), says "Water at sculpture falls, about a 20 minute walk up the trail." Ok, that was our goal. A few minutes later we were on the path that is next to the creek bed, but no water there. After at least a half an hour (the 20 minute report was very optimistic), we finally came out of the trees at sculpture falls. And there was our oasis. A small gathering of various types of people had found the place and were making the best of a Tuesday afternoon, so we joined in.

See more photos at http://www.smcintyre.com/

Hill Country Getaway!

I finally got out of Austin! A nice little jaunt to the country side. My friends arranged a girls trip to the Hill Country over Mother's Day weekend. We stayed at a house in Center Point, a small town on the Guadalupe River.

The weekend was all about relaxation, laughing, and also FOOD. Mary Louise Butters (of Butters Brownies) was along with us for the weekend and her family has a ranch nearby. We were invited to the Ranch for dinner, and what a treat! This family loves it's food-smoked a pig for the occasion! We also had skillet cornbread, roasted turkey, two kinds of cole slaw, rosemary roasted potatoes, pound cake with berries and cream for dessert. We ate out on their patio which has amazing views, overlooking the valley.

The next day I meandered home, stopping here and there to take photos. I've always wanted to stop and photograph those hay bales! It was Mothers Day, and a perfect way to spend it was wandering around in a field in the middle of the country. Why don't I do this more?

See more photos at http://www.smcintyre.com/

New website up!!

I've been working on a new website, and it's finally done. Now I'm stumbling through social media after listening to a teleconference Monday on social media marketing. Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Website. Could take a full time employee just to keep up with all of this stuff. Now, on to an e-mail blast!

Check out the new website and don't forget to share it, or you can just 'like' me on FB! Or follow me on Twitter.
http://www.smcintyre.com

Bad weather makes good photos...

On our Bay Area Christmas trip this year we decided to go the beach one day. At that time of year the weather at the beach is a very hit or miss-that is if you're looking for sunny weather. On this day we had very heavy fog, it wasn't quite what you would call rain, but it might as well have been, everything, including my camera was getting soaked. I put it under my jacket in between photos (until I got smart and went to get an umbrella out of the car). Despite, or maybe because of the weather, I loved this day. It wasn't just that it was beautiful. I looked around and saw all of these people completely enjoying themselves; kids playing in the sand, families playing soccer, groups huddled around fires, who cares if it's wet and cold? An authentic Northern California day. 

see more work: http://www.smcintyre.com/

 

Hipstamatic love it or hate it?

It's crazy how easy it is now to create interesting imagery now. I used to carry a Diana camera around, complete with a changing bag, a light tight bag that I would use to load and unload film with. I couldn't do it in the day light because the paper backed rolls of film wouldn't wind up tight enough, so the film would get exposed when taking it out of the camera. I would process my film, none of it straight, usually cross processed or pushed 3 stops. After getting the rolls and contact sheets back I would go to the dark room and print the ones I liked the best. Because this whole process took a certain amount of knowledge, time and money, it was somewhat unique. And I loved it.

When I got an iPhone and started seeing Hipstamatic imagery about, it was not just annoying, it kind of made me angry. Making plastic camera images was now available to just about anyone, you didn't even have to care about photography to do it. For the first year of having my iPhone, I wouldn't even buy the app. I was happy with my Shakeit Polaroid and a few others, intentionally avoiding the Hipstamatic, like it was developed just to be my menace.

In an effort to make peace with new technology, I've started using the Hipstamatic recently. It's far from perfect, I always want to tweak things and I don't like most of the lens and films. But the ones I use, I really love. I must admit that I don't have time now for dark room, and for the most part, even shooting film. So it makes me extremely happy to take these quirky little keepsakes.

Most of the time I use these:

Color: the John S & Blanko film 

Black & white: Lucifer VI and Black Keys

See more work: http://www.smcintyre.com/

These were taken with a Diana for a book I did on New Orleans.

I always took my Diana on my travels. The photos above and below were taken in Spain.