Author: Dawn Blanchfield

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Puke this!

Weird. My last post, which contains a mere 43 words, somehow got the attention of “diet girl” who left 3 programmed comments. Now my photoblog, dawnblanchfield.com, gets spam comments all the time, but they usually consist of gibberish. I’ve never had that problem on elfini. Is this a WordPress thing? Where did “I Lost Thirty Pounds in Thirty Days” aka “Amazing Weight Loss Story” aka “My Amazing Weight Loss Story” come from? Did she find my site because I mentioned ‘I feel a bit like throwing up’? Is she trolling the internet for potential bulimics? “Hey, don’t ruin your esophageal lining; try my sure-thing diet pill?“

I would delete the comments, but at least she is telling me that I have an obvious talent for blogging and not jumping on the “Yeah, you are a pain in the ass” bandwagon.

So, short week and the weekend is upon us again. Sweet. Or not. The office is so quiet and peaceful… Kyle is supposedly going to his dad’s this weekend. We’ll see how that pans out. Chris is going to be busy working on the boat for his upcoming camping trip in Ventura, which I don’t want to talk about. So, that leaves me and Erin to wile away the hours. Won’t that be fun. Me and a screaming monkey. Any painting, photo-editing (and I have a lot of it to do!), scanning, yoga, or absolutely nothing, will have to be done in the very short window of Erin’s nap. At least the temps for the weekend are only supposed to be in the high 80s. We might be able to spend a little time outside. Which is a good thing because I’m pretty sure Erin’s plans consist of bike bike pool bike screaming screaming tiggerpooh belle bike bike pool bike ad nauseam.

I predict any tweets I manage to post this weekend will be short and to the point:
“Hot… dying…” or “Screaming won’t stop… ears bleeding… what?!” or the always popular “Baby for sale.”

Enjoy your weekend!

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Wait, this seems familiar…

Last night I took Kyle shopping. Clothes shopping. My god that child is a pain in my ass. Until I realized that he is just like me. And now I have to reconsider the above statement.

Kyle has another band concert tonight. (Although I’m pretty sure we just went to one of these last month) But this time around they aren’t wearing the ‘band shirts’ we had to purchase at the beginning of the year. And may I just point out that there is a new shirt every year! I would be more upset about that if Kyle didn’t out-grow things so quickly. And that is exactly why I am upset about the decision to not wear the band shirts for this concert. I’m almost positive I can explain myself.

For tonight’s performance they are suppose to ‘dress up’. Kyle said black slacks, white shirt, and then he started babbling on about a tie and I proceeded to have a low-grade flashback. Oh yes, we’ve been here before. 3rd grade school concert. He wanted to dress like Chris (aah ain’t that cute) so I took him to the mall. Ended up at Nordstrom’s and bought him a Perry Ellis dress shirt and a silk tie from Italy! I spent big bucks on those items and he only wore them once! I was not about to do that again.

Kyle has just had another one of those pesky growth spurts. I don’t know how or when it happened, but I am looking at him eye-to-eye now. Not cool. The only pair of black pants he has, barely fit. He wore them yesterday for their concert at an assembly, and I’m surprised he could walk or breathe. And he doesn’t have a white shirt. I was going to have to buy him clothes. Clothes he most likely wouldn’t need to wear again until next fall. Which means they won’t fit anymore! I told him there was no way we were going to Nordstom’s again. And he wasn’t getting another tie!

I took him to Kohls. And there was a sale going on. Joy and happiness. Black pants – check. White dress shirt – check (a Men’s Small!). And since everything was on sale, and nothing he owns fits him anymore, I told him to find some shorts. And this is where the fun began.

There were racks upon racks of shorts to choose from. The boy was stalled. “Kyle, what do you like?” “I don’t know.” “These?” “No!” “How about these?” “Ugh, no!” “Well what do you like?” “I don’t know…” Feel free to start banging you head on your desk in sympathy cause we were getting nowhere fast. I quickly figured out the main styles he didn’t like (browns, cargo pockets, anything I would pick) and pulled a gray plaid off a rack – “how about these?” “uh, okay, I guess…” and he reluctantly agreed to try them on and then admit that wearing them would not in fact kill him… Great! One pair down. Let’s get a couple more shall we? Jeez Louise. What an ordeal.

But we finally left with black pants (that may be worn more than once if he gets invited to an extra fancy summer BBQ), a white dress shirt (that should fit for a least a year right?) 4 pairs of shorts, 1 pr swim trunks, 2 polo shirts and another long-sleeve dress shirt (“for when we take him out to a nice dinner!” Oh sure, we’ll get right on that).

The funny thing (or not if you’re me) was later that evening when I was telling Chris about our shopping experience. I said “He can’t tell you what exactly he likes, but he sure as hell knows what he doesn’t like. And I wasn’t even half-way through the sentence when it hit me. oh. my. god. That is me in a nut-shell. Which logically would mean that I am a pain in the ass. And yet, that can’t be right…

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d) All of the above

Two nights ago on twitter, Zack Arias posed the following question:

“If you could photograph anyone you wanted to today who would it be?”

Wow. At first my brain started to scroll through the people I know that are close by, then I read the question again. Anyone you wanted. Hey, this is one of those ‘if you could have dinner with anyone – living or dead’ questions… Time to expand the search parameters. The first person to pop into my head was Iggy Pop*. Probably because I had typed his name twice already that day. But come on – look at the man! He so… sinewy. The lines on his face so deep. He would make an awesome subject. Plus I could ask him where he was in Oct ’65. And you might think for that very reason I would say Ted Nugent, but much as I would like to question his whereabouts (and get a sample of DNA), I really don’t feel inspired to photograph him in the same way as Iggy. See above.

I told Chris the question and all he said was “George“. As in Clooney. I was surprised that I hadn’t thought of him. His is one of my favorite visuals**. And yet, he hadn’t made the short list.

There are so many ways to approach this question. My mind was frozen by the possibilities. Do you choose someone for how they look? Someone you look up to? Someone famous? Do you make that choice just for the chance to meet that person? I thought about all the photographers whose blogs or books I am reading; if I chose Joe McNally would he teach me how to light the photograph? What about one of the many bloggers who make my laugh (and sometimes cry) everyday?

Can I choose my dad just so we can be together? Even for just an afternoon? I miss him.

Would Neil Gaiman tell me a story while I set up? Would John Lydon spit on my floor? Sean Connery could say anything he wanted to me. Wait, are these people coming to me or do I get to travel to them in this dream opportunity? It would be cool to see the Kremlin and Putin’s sour puss… Who lives in New Zealand?

* ok, to be completely honest, Zack himself was the person I thought of first. He and his wife just seem like cool people you would want to hang out with. And he is rockin’ that facial hair!

** I just did a google image search for George and well… dayum. I gotta go. oh, you’re welcome!

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Split personalities and well-lit toes

Second post since the upgrade and I’m already facing a conundrum…

Hmm, I’m not sure how to go about discussing this without revealing my master web-site plans. Oh well, just know that all I speak of will take time. Lots of time. And if it happens earlier than that – consider it an early Christmas present. The plan is to change dawnblanchfield.com from its current incarnation as a photo-blog, to a website proper. Meaning a home page with links to photo galleries, About page, blog, etc. The galleries will be set groups of photos organized by themes, only updated occasionally and treated as more of a portfolio. My big question is the blog. I had thought about starting a new blog for the website that is about photography only. Leaving the elfini blog as a stand-alone personal blog that I would only quietly link to from the About page. Maybe. Or should I just include elfini as part of the site and post the photography related entries here? What to do what to do…

I’m sure you have an opinion- please post a comment with your thoughts! I would set up another poll, but the results display from the last poll came out all wonky in WordPress so I’ll skip it for now. I’m tired of tinkering.

So, since this is the only blog I’ve got right now, I’ll proceed with my photo-centric ramblings. If you don’t care, at least scroll down and check out the very nice photo of Chris’ feet!

Photographer Chase Jarvis* recently posted a To-Do list of sorts for photographers on his blog.  Shake Your Tree Today is a list of ideas (or a kick in the pants) to get your creative juices flowing.  And it is chock-full of brilliant!

I think I just did #2 above. 

I love #6 – which says to rent a piece of equipment you’ve been wanting to learn about. Although that could be very dangerous. I still haven’t recovered from my experience with the D200! 

I’ve kinda been doing #10 already. Except I’m reading about current photographers such as Sally Man, Joyce Tennison, etc. Thank you local library – I feel a book review coming on! 

#17 – check.

 And #18 is responsible for this:

nicely lit piggies

My camera just happened to be on my desk as where Chris’ feet. And who could resist light like that?! Not a photographer.

I’ll politely decline #19 for obvious reasons. #21 is definitely something I’m going to be working on in the very near future (see master web-site plan).  And I will do #22 tonight!

6 out 22 already in the works. Not bad eh? And that wasn’t too painful to you non-photogs out there was it? Maybe it really wasn’t that different from a normal** post of mine. Just with less baby and more feet. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot Kyle’s feet! I would definitely need a full-frame camera for those boats.

* I’ve discovered some amazing photographers recently and added them to the Photography link list on the right. Check out Chris Orwig’s Wave Riders galleries! His site is extremely well done and a wonderful example of what I aspire to do. And Zack Arias’  Photo Critiques have been a very educational. Plus, his wife is about to have a baby – she’s 15 days over-due!

** don’t call me normal! or an engineer.

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Maiden Voyage

Hello! You made it. I guess the directions to get here that I left for you weren’t as vague as I had feared.  Quick – click Add to Favorites right now! Okay… onward to the WordPress blogging platform test drive.*

As you can see, elfini is now a sub-domain of dawnblanchfield.com. No more typing elfini-thescenicroute.blogspot.com. Man that url sucked. I just didn’t know any better when I first set up that blog. I would love to get elfini.com, but that is taken by some Turkish spoon maker or something. So here we are. I’m flexible. (shut-up Chris!)

Well, what do you think about the new digs? Do you like it?** Are you as freaked out by change as I am? I’m surprised I’m not drinking vodka from a sippy cup by now. I had been thinking about making this change for some time now. Then we ended up staying home this past weekend, and instead of working on my painting, I got creative with code. I’m not sure what prompted me to start this process, but once I had exported that first file from Blogger there was no turning back. I was muckin’ about in .xml files, FTP, MySQL, .css, and what the hell is .php?! Wait, don’t tell me – I don’t want to know. Finally, after much weeping and nashing of teeth, 2 1/2 days later it was finished. All previous posts from Blogger are now here. I’ve added the links, badges and widgets. I’ve got rotating header photos. Fancy. And I’ve got ideas for Phase 2 of my master web-site plan. I can say no more about that though, because I know you… you’ll be expecting it all done by next Wednesday! And that just ain’t gonna happen. As Chris would be more than happy to tell you, I get a tad “focused” when I’m doing web stuff (ok, any kind of stuff). So, I think after I get this posted, I’ll take a little break from blog tweaking. Download the pics I took of Erin in her new pool yesterday. Too cute! Maybe poke around the NAPP site now that I’m finally a member. Read my new book.  Aaw hell, who am I kidding? I’ll hit publish and have Photoshop opened before this file has even loaded. I have a problem. Admitting it is the first step right?

 
*Yes, technically I’ve been blogging with WordPress ever since I started the Dawn Blanchfield Photography site. But that is a photo blog and uses a plug-in (YAPB) to add the photos. So, I never written a post proper. Wow, you people can be picky. Slowly step away from the literal…

**Really, what do you think? Like? Don’t like? Is it too wide for your monitor? How about the colors? I’m not thrill with the way the Twitter Update widget looks, but that’s a part of the theme I can’t seem to edit. But I will say that Atalualpa is the most user-friendly theme for customization I’ve run across.  5 stars baby! Anyway, Welcome Aboard! Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.