To Be Announced...

If you're coming here for the first time, I regret to say that I've pulled all of my posts for a while. I apologize that I have nothing to show right now. I'm at a crossroads. Perhaps I'll put them back sometime, but I've made no decision yet.

Thanks for your visit and also for your understanding.

~Velvet

More Nudes

I've wanted to shoot nudes for ages, but have been finding that it's not always easy to get people to sit for you, even with all their clothes on. Still, this is a start.

Climbing Photos for Dan

Dan from Dan's Blah Blah Blog asked to see some climbing photos, so here they are. It was kind of hard to find any good photos because I'm the photographer in the family and on any of the more impressive climbs we're too busy paying attention to safety issues to be snapping photos (which is as it should be; we're nothing if not safety conscious). So, for what it's worth, pics of me climbing.

I was ice bouldering with a buddy. I loooooove ice climbing.

Safer bouldering. Don't make any assumptions about the hat because:

1. I don't follow baseball therefore I have no team that I root for.

2. I wear it because I was born in New York State.

Short climb, sweaty mid-summer day. Top-roping to clean the route (collect the gear that was used to protect the leader as they climbed up) and break down the anchor and rappel so that we could move on to another climb.

A cold, November day. I remember my fingers being rather numb.

This time, leading (putting the protective gear in as I climbed).

I'm up there. Just follow the rope.

Update: Oopsie! I forgot to credit these photos because they were obviously not taken by me. These were all taken by The Mister except for the ice climbing one. That one was taken by my friend, Jeff.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Scenes from the Back Yard

More shots with my Holga, this time scenes from our back yard. I was just exploring the late afternoon sunlight coming through the trees.

forsythia in bloom before the blossoms dropped

some of the fruits of our woodchopping labor

hand-me down from a neighbor whose daughter is now in college
(grass just starting to green up)

I Heart My Holga

I shot these photos in the past few weeks with my Holga, which is considered a toy medium format camera which'll set you back a whopping $25 or so. (The link at the bottom of the page has a photo of it... minus the rubber bands that *ahem* some people use to hold the back on.) I swear that I haven't had this much fun with a cheap, plastic, "Made in China" toy since I was, oh, seven years old. Each Holga has it's own personality (read: defects) thus their unique "quirks". Aside from the vignetting which is one of the normal beauties of the cheap, plastic joy that is a Holga (note the black in the corners of the shots), I'm noticing that mine tends to do a double exposure of sorts in the lower right corner. But enough of my enthusiastic blather (did I mention that I love playing with this thing?).

Below is a picture of the magnolia tree in our front yard (see my other blog for a photo of the tree in color and in the context of the front yard).

This is at a park down the street from our house.

For any camera/photo buffs who haven't been introduced to the Holga yet, take a few minutes to read the Holga link above... it's funny and it might just make you want to hop online and order one. If you do, happy shooting! Oh, and though most of the modifications are no longer necessary to make it photoworthy (the Chinese were actually paying attention to the online modification sites) some of the tips are handy to know.

Snaps from Shanghai

Several years ago, we took a trip to China with my husband's family and my mother. I'm going to throw a few handfuls of photos from that trip up here for fun and I'm going to start with a few snaps from Shanghai. The first three photos are from one of the gardens (or just outside the entrance in the case of the first photo).

These next photos are both from the same temple.

London in Black & White

Again, here are some shots I took in London, only this time in b&w.

Again, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. I like this one better than the one in the previous post.

Iron fence with gilded finials... I don't remember where this was.

Horse fountain at Picadilly Circus

Same fountain at Picadilly

Juggler at Covent Garden

Ruins of a Christopher Wren church

This photo is generally unremarkable, but I thought it was funny when a Mallard Duck came swimming into the frame. I don't remember ever seeing a duck in a fountain anywhere else. Ever.

So, there we are for a while. There are more London photos, but it'll be good to take a break for a while and do something else. Another location, perhaps, say France or China? We'll have to see.

More of London

Here are a few more photos from the London photos that I wanted to share. Here again is, of course, the ever photogenic Parliament.

At sunset...

... and forty minutes later.

Crown Imperials in Hyde Park

This is Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a very long operating pub/restaurant that several fairly famous figures in history used to frequent and which was rebuilt after the Great London Fire of 1666. I couldn't resist and actually did eat lunch here.

This room was in the outer perimeter wall of the Tower of London.

I saw these vines during one of my meandering walks through one of the neighborhoods near our hotel. I thought they were pretty neat.

That's it for this round. More to come some other time.

Just... Grass

Just a light post and a light photo. This one's a little over 3 years old. I forgot about taking this picture until the film came back (there's that "film" stuff again). When I got the prints back, I was interested to see how the texture translated in B&W.

A Boy and His Frog

This wasn't a staged shot... he really fell asleep just like that. This photo reminds me that I really need some sleep. Have a good weekend, everyone!

London

Just one of many images that I took in London over the years. I've got some selecting and scanning to do, but want to post some photos of the city that's close to my heart. Coming soon... some of my snapshots of London.

Have a nice weekend!

Pasta: Black & White or Color?

Okay, I shoot a lot of black and white and when I shoot digital, I end up turning a lot of the photos into black and white in the end. However, these were actually shot on film (remember that stuff?) and haven't been changed at all. So, same event, different film types.

etiquette drop-out

In general, I'm all for black and white. However, for these photos I've yet to make up my mind. Which (if either) do you find more effective? I'm torn.

don't. touch. mommy's. camera.

So, what do you think? Color? Black & white? Just makes you wanna go wash up?

Other Prospective Profile Photos

These two self-portraits were both contenders for my profile photo, but I decided to go with another one. Still, I like these two and wanted to post them anyway. I was going to post them both at one time or another (I already posted one on my Misfit blog)... might as well get it over with now.

Any thoughts?

Boy Meets Manhattan

There's nothing like the view of the street from the 24th floor to get a kid's attention. I took this on my son's first trip to Manhattan to meet some of my husband's family. This was near Lincoln Center.

Welcome to My Photo Blog

This blog is just a place for some of the photos that I've taken in my life, from snapshots to studio photos. I claim no particular talent at photography, but it does something for me that little else does... let's just call it shutter therapy.

Just a little background on photography in my life. My father gave me a 35mm camera when I was a young teen and it was love at first shot. Since then, I've started collecting more photo equipment of different kinds and have been teaching myself some technique, though I've got a long way to go to get where I want to be regarding photography. It's still all trial and error.

Hopefully there will be something here that interests you. To me, it's photo play.

Again, welcome.