Mundane Mondays and Why This Is Not One!

We've both been hired on at a new 9-5 office job, which starts today!  You might get to thinking, if they are photographers who are trying to build their photography business in one of those most competitive markets in the USA, why are they wasting their time with a 9-5?

A couple reasons, actually.  One, to continue building out our photo gear kit.  We have very good gear right now, but we have run into a bit of a lack of selection as we have been out there.  If camera lenses are to a photographer as a brush is to a painter, we would very much like to have a couple more brushes, and lots of time to practice with them.  This is a minor one, but we feel it's important that we have reliable access to whatever creative supplies we might feel we need.  Hence, the dedicated darkroom in our small living space and the cabinet full of wacky vintage film cameras that we love to put some film through.

Two, better schedules than working in food service or similar industries, which all invariably ask for people to be there during the best times to photograph:  late afternoon/early evening, and weekends.  At this new gig, we will be done by 5 (It's actually an 8:30 to 4:30 once the training is complete) Monday through Friday, and able to run sessions much more reliably and consistently in the after hours.  We're definitely excited about this, not to mention having days off together so we can go on more motorcycle adventures!

Three, continue networking and learning about business.  This is more of a background activity for me (Anthony) but since I'm the one that does most of the behind-the-scenes kind of stuff (numbers, etc) here at Voir L'Amour, I need to continue pushing myself in this regard and learning about how to simplify and streamline our business model to maximize our fun and keep our enthusiasm high about the whole thing.  So far that has been quite easy as we have had great clients (like you!), and haven't hit any real snags.  But, as we expect to continue getting busier, the stress level may rise a bit and I'd like to stay running smoothly.


Lastly and probably most importantly, we will now be less than 3 miles away from our very favorite Indian deli/restaurant, Punjabi Tandoor!  If you're ever in the area, let's get lunch!

Headed back home.

That's what my Facebook post was all about yesterday after more than a week away from our apartment and life.

I'm still re-adjusting to the lack of cell phone coverage and the lack of paint fumes, so I'll just post up one of my favorite shots from the trip as the pool at my parent's house was finally warm enough to jump in and stay in for more than the time it takes to get out, but there will be more reflection to come.

Internal conflicts of a forward dreaming mind

With the teasingly warm days interspersed with these annoyingly cold ones, it's like dating the invisible man. Why won't summer come and put away these winter coats?

Today was a snuggle under the covers and tax your brain kind of day. As you may or may not have noticed, the blog is a lot simpler. The theme has changed and now it actually matches our website, a bit! (And there is a link to it.) The website, meh, is still incomplete as of today, but soon, lovelies, soon it will be complete! Mwahaha-err*cough*erherm...

With all of that working it's magic on my little known coding brain, I've been tossing around the idea of doing a Groupon (or something) to get the ball rolling. Not to say that is isn't already! We're starting to get requests more and more often! I'm excited my the number of inquiries! My hesitation for the Groupon? Well, besides selling 500+ (as another photographer just did yesterday!), I ran one at my restaurant and, well, the people who bought the coupon were 70% Awful! Only 25% ranked Normal and a lousy 5% were Good or Better!

My grading scale must be confusing. For a restaurant? How am I grading them? Level of complaints, difficulty dealing with complaints/person, person trying to wiggle extra coupons out of you and getting angry when you don't give it, tips, listening/attention skills, and finally, personality/kindness levels.

Kind of hesitant? Maybe. I have a lot of friends who buy Groupons or Livingsocials and some are tough characters, but none would be disrespectful. Heck, I buy them, too! I don't know. It sounds like a great way to jumpstart the networking and open up opportunities with people whom we may not have had the chance to meet with otherwise! It's a big deal! (Ka-dun-cha!)

There's a lot to do before then, I know, but gah! Internal conflicts of a forward dreaming mind, indeed! What say you, lovlies? Would you be Game?

Tart Panna Cotta

Here at the Voir L'Amour house, I usually wake up first.  Those days that I do, I'm on coffee duty.  We usually use aBodum Kenya French Press in our daily routine.  After a fair bit of experimentation (the tastiest kind!) and narrowing down what was actually viable for week-day caffeine capers. On the weekends when we have more time to put into the process, I'll fire up our espresso machine and revel in the tiny little shots of deliciousness.

Coffee, once doled out, inevitably leads to the question of "What is there to eat?" and that's where my darling Chelse comes in. She's an experimenter in the kitchen, and I'm usually signed up for support/clean-up duty. That suits me just fine most mornings.

This all is back-story to my attempts to break out of the norm and do something different when I do cook. It's either straight-laced and boring "American" food like I'm familiar with from going out to eat as a kid in Wisconsin and Minnesota, or it's something fairly exotic as a first try.

Here is my latest first try. Tart, almost bitter, not apologetic. Loved it! It's a bit too much, but I could definitely see myself enjoying the 110% flavor somewhere on the Amalfi coast as the sun sets after a beautiful day. So if I'd like it there, why not here in San Diego?  Blood Orange Panna Cotta.

Worthy Weekend

Some big things have been going on with us at Voir L'Amour Photography!  Last week we had a session that we got to "sit in" on, as second shooters, and we attended a meeting at Kettner Daylight Studio with the Youngrens and Janis Foley as hosts to Gray Photography from Nashville.  We're still needing to work on our attitudes towards just jumping into conversations with new people, so we didn't meet everyone there, but we're definitely getting better as time goes on.


Now onto today:  It's early afternoon on a beautiful late March Monday in San Diego (read: slightly colder than the rest of the year, and mixed clouds in the normally bright blue sky) and I'm in the "studio" AKA our living room.  I've got my trusty camera by my side, and I'm ready to go out on 2 different sessions today.

One is just for me, my personal work of wandering the city and learning about it and about what attracts me to living here in San Diego.  This hasn't really led my photography in any new or unexpected directions, but sometimes I learn something about myself in my meanderings, and some times I just learn to have fun absorbing a space and time and not worrying so much about what I "should" be doing, or how much more fun I could be having somewhere else.

The other is an engagement session that my friend Tina has set up, and I'm fortunate enough to be second-shooter for her.  We've done 3-4 of these style sessions thus far, and I'm really glad to have the experience.  It's definitely one of those situations in life where you might know where you want to go, but you don't know exactly the way to get there, or how much there is to learn along the way.  She has been very inspirational, and hanging out with her and her incredibly driven mindset could not have come at a better time.

Here's a shot from yesterday's session (same situation described above, with myself and Chelse as second-shooters/assistants) with the wonderful couple that hired Tina to shoot their wedding.  Chelse and I are going to be doing the photo-booth at their reception, so check back with us in about a month for some of those photographs (once we can show them, of course!).  These folks were super fun and cute, totally witty and yet classically San Diegan in demeanor.  Lots of fun at La Jolla yesterday!

Learning, a day at a time.

Anthony here.

Some days, I feel as though I have nothing limiting the amount of To-Dos I can do, not even time.  The ball keeps rolling even if I step away to update my Facebook status or get a laugh from Youtube.  Some days, like yesterday, seem to drag on and on without any actual progress being made.

To change it up a bit, I hang out with my friends and do a bit of low-level networking.  Touching base with folks I've known for quite some time.  It gets my mind off my as-seen-by-me failure of a Wednesday, and puts it right back where it should be: the present and the future.

I will keep trying.  I will keep finding more people to shoot.  I will continue to get better at just connecting with people.  I will remember the progress I have made and not dwell on the fact the business formation hasn't gone exactly to plan.

Our Story of stories

How I met Anthony is a moment that I'll never forget. As it must be with you!

Ours was a blaringly sunny day at the romantic setting of the Salton Sea.

Let me back track a bit to put you in my shoes. A friend and I had ridden our motorcycles up to Yosemite for camping for 5 days. It was the beginning of April and pretty warm in the San Diego area, but fairly chilly at night. What the heck, it's spring break and we may as well give it a go!

By the time we get out of L.A. we both had on as much clothing as humanly possible to fit beneath our gear. Did this deter us? Heck no!! We ride for hours. Taking food and gas breaks, a few random stretch breaks, but we'd burned a day in L.A. already, so we only had a few days to camp and then ride back before school and work.

Get up there at around 11P.M. to find, oh look! Snow!! The gates are closed, however and we're not about to dive back down the mountain to find camp grounds. So we push our bikes down this dirt trail and leave them at the top of this slope, where we bed down on the ice with 1 tarp and our sleeping bags that were not meant for anything under oh, 60*F? Not funny.

Let's say after falling into the lake, having soaking wet shoes, nearly being blown by horrendous winds into the center divider, making the trip back to a friend's house at 2AM. for a photoshoot that she wanted to drag me on to model with her at 5:30AM, doing laundry while showering and catching maybe 2 hours of sleep?

I was looking my best for this photoshoot... the day before my birthday.

Now, Salton Sea. This smelly, dead sea filled with trash, bird poop and a rotting building we shot in. The theme? Sort of psycho killers/Mad Max-esque.

I was looking the absolute best I ever had:




Anthony walked up out of a the building and all I saw was tall, handsome goodness... who thinks he's way too cute. He had on these huge orange-ish sunglasses, his camera strapped to his back, his jeans were tattered and he is breezes by without so much as a glance, or a hello.

And then two motorcycles are pushed into my view.

Alright, I can admit, I asked about him, talked my friend's ear off about how cute he was (just as she was to me about another guy there), and sort of stalked him around the area. Seeing if he'd take my picture. He did at one point, but it felt like he was playing the tough, quiet guy. Hard to get. And I was down for the challenge!

Lunch break and he disappeared for an hour or two. Minor bummer, but with 10 models and 7-8 photographers, it was bound to happen. After exclaiming that something was "Epic", I went gracefully out of the trailer with one step to get another boca burger and fell straight to the ground. The boots of my heels hooked the stair and down I went like a bag of lead onto my knees. And who should be walking up to witness this? Anthony. Holding another model in his arms.

Game over! I thought. He's one of those tall, handsome guys who only likes short women! Just my luck. Getting up, I slinked away and prayed he didn't see me/wouldn't remember my pathetic attempts to woo him.

His good friend was also shooting that day. He mentioned to MY good friend that he was interested, just shy and having a bad day. My friend mentioned that I was interested and that we should all grab dinner that night.



Excitedly, he and I began talking after the troops reported back to base. He jumped in the car with us to head for food, but had to stay behind to shut down the trailer and clean up.

Needless to say he missed dinner. It's surely over now. I barely even knew his name. I'll never hear back or get his number now!

But, Ta-Da!! My awesome and amazing friend spoke to another photographer and made sure to pass along my number to him. If he was indeed interested.

The next day, I get a phone call.



And that's that. Romance, packed with action, knives, guns, drug lords, photography, good friends, and a one of a kind love.

This is our story. Tell us yours!

Sunday Spent Away

Anthony here.  I had two very important things to do today.

1. Taxi-man for my better half to her place of gainful employment.
2. Don't blow anything up.

I decided to head to Balboa Park's Botanical Garden, thinking that if I was surrounded by cool green plants and peaceful (read: Quiet!) plants slowly making themselves fat and happy on the recent rains in the area, I would have little ammunition to blow anything up with, and even less desire to do so.  I must know myself pretty well, because I didn't have any urge to do anything more than take pictures.*

(*I don't condone nor endorse any sort of blowing up of anything.  Unless you're talking about giant bubble-wrap.)

So here is what I came back with.  Sorry there aren't more people, it seemed everyone either had little kids along, or were in large family groups and I'm not big on interrupting family time to try and sneak in some headshots or something for my own gain.  Especially since we're in a fairly major and popular tourist destination.  I also don't take pictures of random people unless I get a chance to talk with them first.

So, a successful Sunday for me.  We even got in a good cook session, a birthday party for her aunt, and had a couple nice beers with the dinner we made for the birthday party crew.  Bulgogi, I had a black ale, and she had a red rice ale that definitely had hints of it's shared lineage with sake.  Quite a fine day.

My Best Friend

Here she is:

She is truly, truly the definition of "better half" for me, and every day I appreciate her being there.  The little things she does, the little ways she shows me that she is into me.  How she's so comfortable being a completely goofy dork around me is a great reminder of what we've both put into this relationship and how grand the results can be (even if grand means you end up taking more pictures of yourselves making fish faces or really anything that wouldn't ever be sent back to families) when it's a priority for both parties.

Life wasn't meant to be perfect, even if it's something we all strive for.  She makes me want to strive for it more than anything else I've ever had in my life, including all of the nasty high-school teachers and college exams I've ever taken.  She makes me want to be at my best every day when I wake up, and reflect upon how well I did every day before I let myself sleep next to her.  People always say, "I just knew...I can't explain it..." when talking about the one they wanted to spend the rest of their life with, and let me tell you friend, I can't explain it, and I know better than to try.

Today was a very busy day, and I've been up since roughly 2AM, so I'm shutting off my computer and am going to give myself some quiet time to clear my head and hopefully get ready for a full night's sleep.  Tomorrow I am going to scan in some of the images I just got back from Dwayne's Photo Processing on some of the last Kodachrome 64 ever processed.  If there's anything I think you folks might be interested in, I will share it here.

Does overnight bouts of rain make anyone else restless?

Late Coming

Anthony here, wrapping up 2010 (almost a month late, I know!) with some thoughts and one of my favorite images of myself, and more importantly, the last big group shot my family has taken:

Los Angeles M.O.M.A.

Our (Chelse and myself) Christmas season was super busy for the first year of the new decade as compared to years prior.  We had 2 family gatherings to make, work schedules to shuffle around, a few photography testing shoots to plan and get under our belt, and the typical housework that goes with decorating and un-decorating after the holiday has been celebrated.  Don't forget to add all of the pure time spent regarding presents.  Thinking about them, forgetting appropriateness levels for the various recipients, wrapping them, deciding after wrapping to change recipients, going to buy them, finding them online, perfecting their locations under the tree, watering the tree so they look good, and oh yes, writing your own list of "Wants."

We did all of this last year ('09, seen above) as well, but had less decorating that we were directly responsible for, and work schedules that were a bit more flexible but we made it work both years in a grand fashion, at least in my opinion.  We had an early Christmas morning with Chelse's family (picts to follow), then headed up from Chula Vista (south San Diego) through abnormally light Orange County and LA traffic to get to my parent's place in west Los Angeles.  In all the hustle, I forgot to bring my camera so you'll just have to imagine how good all of the food looked.  My parents had spent Thanksgiving in London, so we had a British-themed Christmas meal complete with all of us staring at the tiny Marmite container not knowing how to make the first move, as well as meat pies, peas and an assortment of Brit beer.

What did I take away from all of this hustle and bustle?  We are very lucky for very many reasons and we could (and probably should) spend every Thanksgiving just reflecting on how awesome our lives really are.  My little brother, Nic, spent Christmas in Alaska this year, communicating with us and his girlfriend (all in SoCal) and friends outside of the Air Force via Skype.  We had a car to travel with.  We had fantastic food both at my family's gathering and Chelse's.  This list is nearly endless, so I won't bore you with the rest of it, but rest assured, we are well cognizant of our good fortune.  I hope you are able to reflect upon similarly blessed good times and happy moments spent with the important ones in your lives, readers.

Another aspect of live that I learned during this time with the important folks in my life is that there is a time when a camera is a huge hindrance to just absorbing the moment and forgetting all the stresses from daily life.  Family time can be stressful, even with an absolutely awesome family like mine, but it's guaranteed to be more important to you than you ever think it is while you are there, so put the camera down while at the dinner table and as you are opening presents, at least for a while.

Images here would definitely distract from your own recent memories, so flip back through the prints you made of your own family's gathering (you do print some images, right?) or page through the digital album and be ready to make some amazing memories for reflecting back on during the hustle and bustle of Christmas 2011!