Greylock Mountain and Trevor Lee McGee.

Yesterday Trevor (boy in the black and white photos below) took a trip to Greylock Mountain where we laid in the grass, dog watched, and walked around. We ate ate good meals and cruised around with the sunroof wide open.

Check this hobbit-like boy out at
tmleephotography.blogspot.com












and now for the iphone photos...











I appear to have captured the sun's strength and love within my skin and my shoulders (the right one in particular) and nose are glowing.
I don't hate it (aka. I love it)

Iphone Photo Geekout.

taking photos with the iphone is fun. cute. and a lot more discreet than a DSLR with a telephoto lens. and thanks to the creators of apps, you can even edit!

i recently downloaded 2 photo apps.
first being the Camerabag app which has filters that give photos a holga look, polaroid, infared, black&white, fisheye, lolo (which boosts the colour saturation), and a few others. it's a ton of fun.

second being Polarize (which is free) and allows you to turn your photo into a polaroid and then tag it! i love being able to caption photos!




this was taken yesterday evening at sunset and i used the LoLo filter from Camerbag.
mmm...front porches, beers, good lighting, and friends.






this is probably my favourite iphone photo ever. i wish i could blow it to poster size and hang it in my room. (LoLo filter)





Poloraid filter from Camerbag.




Andy the Giraffe took this with my phone with the Polarizer.




Helga (aka. Holga) filter on Camerabag





Lolo (works great for images with greens and yellows!)






Helga filter





LoLo filter




LoLo filter (the night we handed in our final portfolios)





Andy took this with the Polarizer, and captioned it.




My friend Trevor Lee McGee, Polarizer app.



While I was editing my Red Stripe bottles, with the Polarizer.





Iphones are cool. If only I could learn to text properly on them....


Yesterday I made the big purchase of a ColorMunki, for colour calibrting my monitor (and future projector). The before and after of my monitor was EXTREME, to say the least.
I really enjoy buying things for my business. I also re-designed my letterhead today (still working on it). I think about these things all the time. Like, while I am eating, before I fall asleep, while people are talking to me...all the time.

my time for moving back to cleveland is coming soon...!!
i'm ready to giddy up.

Dizzy Des, Terminator, birds.

This is Dizzy Des, a very cool girl that makes really funny jokes.

This image was part of a set for The Flock Apparel, which I would hiiiighly recommend you checking out and supporting.


These are before and afters.
Oh, the magic of Photoshop.

According to my metadata, this was shot at 3.20am...I was SO exhausted. I am not a very good late-night person (well, not when I wake up before the sun). Anyways, I wish I had chosen my background better and swept the floor a little bit. Alas...




There was a lot of little speckle clean up on the floor, highlight and tonal tweaks in the background, and then getting those blasted bicycles out of the way (way easier than I thought it would be). I even took the chipped nail polish off her fingernails.

I turned this in for a personal submission in my final portfolio.
(which has been turned in, and now I await my final portfolio review session)

On a more mainstream note- the movie Terminator is awful. So, completely terrible. I love cheesey action movies. Not this one! Waste of time, money, and talent (or lack thereof).


Sometimes on facebook chat I get overwhelmed by all the open chat windows (plus Lightroom, Photoshop, etc being open) and so I will just log out with out finishing any conversations. I do this, not to be rude, but because internet talking is ridiculous. And...I really want no part in it. So if I have logged on mid-convo with you...I apologize. I just can't handle it and I forget to make my thing "offline".

Last night I slept a grand total of (somewhere between) 60-90 minutes. Wawaweewa. It was a pretty great night though. And the birds outside my window at 4.40am were INCREDIBLE. They were so loud! It was as if every bird in western Mass met in my backyard and they were chatting away. I tried to isolate each bird noise and listen to the pattern repeat itself...surprisingly difficult.

And now sleep time comes
(I'm so excited to go to bed that I might not even be tired. sike).

Commercial work! Everyone loves glass!

This is for an ad design I had to do for my final portfolio, shot in the Commercial studio at school.
Truly...I enjoy shooting commercial.

It's so chill to just come to school (wearing leggings, of course), set up the lights and the scene, listen to some tunes, maybe sing along, shoot away, problem solve, tweak, sing along some more, probably drink coffee out of my huge thermos....
it's relaxing; much like colouring in a colouring book.




So to get this shot, here's what I did...

Step one- went down to Ryan&Casey's liquor store to pick up this beautiful batch of Red Stripe.
Step 2- mixed karo syrup and water in a spray bottle
Step 3- sprayed the Red Stripe bottles and let the mixture harden overnight (well, for a few days really).
Step 4- shot it.
Step 5- drank it. I haven't completed step 5, but the beer (still covered with dried karosyrup droplets) is waiting in my fridge.

Voila!

Maxlouski.

My friend Maxlouski is a great photographer.
This is what he looks like.










I am almost completely finished with my school assignments. What a mellow feeling!
I launched my website today so take a look,
sararenee.com



About my new blog header:
Andy Bardon took that photo of me yesterday and was gracious enough to let me use it as my Bio photo on my site.
Concerning Andy, One- Andy is a very nice human. Two- He is a strong man and can pull me around on slick floors when I am wearing only my socks. Third, and lastly- he is tall like a giraffe.

This is Andy,




I think I'm going to make a hot water bottle (the air has a sting of cold in it today) and read a book in bed.
I LOVE NOT PROCRASTINATING!
and I love Hallmark .
and I love leggings. external harddrives. photoshop. mannequins. putting itunes on shuffle. chris pino's headphones. my brother (who totally graduated college this weekend). having short hair. the fact that i am going to TN in 2 weeks. dreamweaver. the 5D MarkII. shooting wide open. naps. printing. being barefoot at school. grins.
end list.

Limted Edition-One Time Print for sale!

This is what's real!:
From now until June 1st, I will be taking orders on the following print.





The print size is 11x14,
and the cost is fifty dollars (that covers packaging, shipping, and handling.)

I will only be printing 25 of these!

Fluffy.
The Fluffinator.
My best friend and a part of the original logo for SR-Photography

It's history!



TO ORDER:
Send an e-mail to
sarareneemurray@gmail.com with your paypal account information.
If you don't have a paypal account, it is probably time to create one.
Serious e-mails only pleeease!

Thanks and I hope you are all somewhere warm and enjoying the Spring blossoms!
As Stephen Jenkins said "I love you all for you are all made of lions."


LOVE!
SR.

Sara&Tony&future baby!

Today I was lucky enough to have a shoot in the AMAZING green/gold light we've been having every evening.

Sara and Tony (as pictured below) drove up and we made these photos!
They are a GREAT couple and very few other things in life make me as happy as seeing a loving couple.
I loooove them. Everything is golden and whimsical and I like that.
























There's nothing quite like making photos/memories/fun.
I like it very much!

And now, back to final portfolio scramble week.

Fluffinator.

This rascly wabbit is twenty-one years old and is named Fluffy.
And I am still sleeping with him.

He head fits into the nook of my neck and chin perfectly.



I think this first shot is going to be used in my final portfolio as my conceptual still life.






and then how about this for a tentative promo piece?
the fonts definately need some work, but I feel Fluffy is a good representation for my business (except that my business is wedding&portrait driven...).






Images were shot with a Canon 5D, 85mm f1.2 (which makes me drool!).


I'm currently in the Imagin Lab at school, starting to print images for my final portfolio.
Pretty EXCITING stuff. It's like being on a nervous/excited high. I don't hate it.

I'm stoked to use some of my friends in my portfolio (Ourtna&Lyton, Brett Wise, my dad, cousins, etc).

This portfolio is due MAY 20 (really really big day) and after that is PARTY TIME!! Sike. We will have optional emphasis classes, and then we have the reviews of our final portfolio. Let me break this down:
we show up on to school, dressed to impress. We sit in an auditorium with our group members and whatever family/friends we choose to bring with us for moral support. There is a mysterious black curtain on stage and behind it is your (or a classmates) prints (11x14, matted). Behind this curtain are three established photographers, who have been flown in to judge and critique our work. They grade your work for technicalities (if it meets the assignment guides), and then critique it based on...whatever art standards they have in their heads.
Then, you pass or fail.

I don't feel nervous.
But I do a little bit.

Saradon/Branara

I mean, how many girl's have brothers who fly them to Florida for an all expense paid weekend?
Maybe just me.

This weekend I had the rockandroll time of flying to Orlando, FL to hang out with my brother and his friend Tuck. We went to the pool, spent one entire day at the beach (where I fell asleep like a baby and swam with the jellyfish), ate at this restaurant that specialized in high-end red meat!, looked into indoor sky diving (but decided against it), jammed out to the new Britney Spears, checked out Ripley's Believe it or Not, and did I mention that we spent an entire day at the beach? Because I really, really enjoy water and wind.

When I am out in the sun freckles develop on my nose. Since my BB Ourtna loves the beach and wasn't there, I named a freckle after her.

Oh! how about this!
A man smoked a cigarette on my airplane! This is the same man who, was sitting directly behind me, took his shoes off and the smell made me dryheave 2.5 times. Smoking cigarettes on an airplane...bad idea.




This is Black Murray.
(sidestory: he called my Brother "Big Murray" and then started calling me "Baby Murray", so clearly his name would be Black Murray).
Taken in the Orlando airport.





Big Murray (aka. Brother)


My brother delivers packages. Rule number one, no names.
Trasnporter himself.



And I guess this is Baby Murray.




Smile all around. My brother and I are REALLY, REALLY funny when we get together.







This photograph sums up the entire weekend:




These two photos were taken within days of each other. Long hair...I'm not cut out for the matinence.






To explain the lack of beach photos...
I am at the point in my career where I can't afford a new camera if something were to happen to mine. And mine cost a chunk of money. And bringing my nice gear to a place filled with oil, gritty sand, lots of water, children, and 90 degree weather...seems like a bad decision.
I am wanting to get maybe a Canon G10 (which shoots RAW!) to bring around for things like this.


Fact about me: I hate air conditioning. Really, hate it. It makes my whole body shrivel and hurt. and...I hate it. While at the hotel my brother said "Gah! Why is it so warm and clammy in here?" and I said "Oh...I put the thermostat on 75".

I have a good family, an awesome life.
Voila!


ps. Saradon/Branara
are blends of my brother's and mine names.
Titles for our potential kingdom.