Monthly Archives: June 2010

Click on the title of the blog post to view the entire entry.


my new friend the Swallowtail Butterfly

I have a new friend that lives outside my back door. He’s been there for 24 hours now, just shifting position and fluttering his beautiful wings about. I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, but for now I’m calling him ‘Mr Swallowtail”.

_mg_3698-4

I inhaled so hard when I noticed Mr Swallowtail for the first time yesterday you’d think I just witnesses someone getting shot in front of me. My entire family has always been filled with nature lovers, and I think it’s in my genes to be fascinated by plants and animals. There is so much joy to be had in the natural world that surrounds us, if we would just stop and take a moment to experience it.

_mg_3686-1

This is where he is currently living, the last time I poked my head out the door:

swallowtail

“May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun
And find your shoulder to light on,
To bring you luck, happiness and riches
Today, tomorrow and beyond.”
~Irish Blessing

Pug Party

As promised, photos of pugs. By the way, for those of you who are new, there is an entire category on this blog devoted just to pugs. Just click categories in the menu above and scroll down to pugs. Enjoy. :-)

Fiona & Hendrix.

pug-party-016

Zen.

pug-party-043

Bean. Most pugs look a bit like gremlins, but Bean *really* looks like a gremlin.

pug-party-039

Bean in front of the carousel.

pug-party-069

Manu. Poor sweet guy had a not very happy life before coming to live with his mom now. It made me sad to hear he was ever mistreated, as this little one has a heart of gold. I mean look at this face.

pug-party-030

More Manu with his mom, who he clearly adores. I had to post this shot on the right below because I got a chuckle out of the fact that Manu’s mom’s nailpolish matched the wall behind them. Although I like to say that I ask all of my clients to paint their nails to match the color of walls we will be shooting against, I can’t take credit for it.

pug-party-062

The infamous Frank. Frank has his own blog, and you should totally go check it out (Bean is on it too!). Oh Frank, you are so handsome.

pug-party-0711

Pug tail! This one belongs to Fiona, the lone fawn pug in the group.

pug-party-0881

pug-party-093

Diza. Manu. I big time dig the happy accident shot on the right. The random abstract imperfect shots always seem to be my favorites. Those and the shots of hilarious goofy dogs. Like, um, the one on the left.

pug-party-048

Fiona & Hendrix and their parents. How cute is this family?

pug-party-100

On the topic of pugs, I’ll be pugsitting Fergie’s boyfriends Charlie and Seymour all day on Friday, and I’ll be tweeting about it and posting photos of their adventure all day, so if you are game for some laughs follow me there. The last time I pugsat them one of them ended up standing on my coffee table chewing up a Christmas card, while the other chased Fergie around and gnawed on her tail. It should be fun.

June Seattle 2010 Workshop #8 Review

I finally got all of my photos from my various cameras downloaded and processed from the Seattle June Workshop that took place 2 weekends ago. We ended up with the best weather weekend we’ve had in Seattle all year, and I think I speak for all of the attendees when I say we couldn’t have been more thrilled! I also have to say that after teaching 8 of these things, I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of it. This was by far the smoothest workshop I’ve had yet, and reinforces my decision to keep all future Cowbelly workshops in Seattle. I’m still super excited to teach with Nichole in NYC in August, but am so grateful I’m not doing it alone!

Anyhoo, A huge thank you to the 15 wonderful people who flew in from around the country (and New Zealand- hi Lisa!) to come and learn from me. You guys rock and I’m loving getting to know all of you even better on the BBN. And another huge thank you to the Hotel Max, who provided the *perfect* meeting place for our workshop. And I can’t forget my dad, who brought Fergie down to the hotel as a surprise for the attendees. She hung out with us during our last few hours of the workshop, and I nearly cried I was so happy. I was thrilled that everyone got the chance to meet my baby girl. So all in all it was a great workshop and I can’t wait until the next one there in September!

Without further adieu, here is a photographic review of the weekend. (Pardon the crummy quality of some of these shots- they were taken with my little P&S on a very high ISO setting- woopsie).

What happens when 15 pet photographers meet a sweet dog named Snickers? This!

p1030634

How much do you love Snickers? :-)

snickershappy

Friday night we had dinner and drinks at the ColdWater Bar at the Westin Hotel. We had delicious dungeness crab mac & cheese (yum) and some apple martini thingies that I’d like to make again at home. It was a pretty cool space, but I think our entire wait staff (bartender included) were totally thrown for a loop with having a large group like ours. Saturday we had lunch at Von’s downtown, which is this cool, old institution of a restaurant, with all kinds of random junk hanging from the ceiling, including this lamp made entirely out of post-it notes. I also have to say that during lunch that day I laughed harder than I think I have in years, when the topic of alternative uses for dog hair came up. We’ll leave that for another time. lol

p1030637

More of Von’s ceiling. They even had the door of a Seattle police car hanging over the table I was sitting at. Pretty awesome.

p1030643

Then Sunday we took the monorial over to the Seattle Center for our Pug Party. It was so. much. fun. I mean, the Pug Party was fun too, but I’m talking about the monorail ride here. I think I was more excited than anyone else there. But then, I was also the one that wanted to go on the rides once we got to the Seattle Center. Here I was trying to get them all jazzed, and they were like “whatever… dork”.

p1030668

View of the Space Needle from inside the monorial, and view of the inside of the monorial headed toward the SC. I love that thing!

p1030678

Pug Party!!! We had a whole buncha pugs, and a buncha their owners, and with a buncha photographers and some friends thrown in, we were quite the group! Y’all know how much I love pugs, so I’ve decided to do a separate post of just pug pics. Stay tuned for that.

_mg_2227

Can you see all of us photographers reflected in the wall behind Bean & Frank? We were their ‘Pugarazzi’ for the day.

pug-party-070

BEAN!! Bean is a puppy. He is hilarious and adorable.

beanrunning

If this next shot doesn’t make you laugh out loud you are dead inside.

_mg_2174

Coolest workshop group portrait ever!! Thank you guys again for coming, I had a blast!

workshopgroupportrait

Cowbelly Workshop Class of 2010

September 17-19 Workshop Registration is now open

Registration for the September 17th-19th Cowbelly Workshop in Seattle is now open (yippee!). Please see the register page of the workshops website for information on how to register, or the weekend schedule page for more information on the workshop. As with all past workshop registration days, we expect to receive a lot of emails and have many questions to answer, so it may take us a couple of hours to get back to everyone. Thanks in advance for your patience. Hope to see some of you there!  :-)

Top