Brian and Jenny's engagement photos

A couple of friends are getting married soon and they asked me to shoot their engagement photos. I told them I'm not a professional, which means two things: 1) I couldn't offer a guarantee on quality and 2) I wouldn't accept any compensation.  In the end, they walked away with about 90 shots to choose from (cut down from the 250 I snapped), and I got some experience in the business without the pressure of having to satisfy a paying customer.

Plus, it was fun.  I would do something like this again way before I agree to, say, videotape a wedding, which (at least for me) ends up being a lot more work with less polished results.  I'm not saying I want to dedicate my nights and weekends to volunteer photography jobs, but once in a while I enjoy a creative challenge and I do like the idea of developing my skill set. If you are interested in setting up a free shoot with me, send me an email.

The fine print: I don't have any formal training, I use an entry-level SLR, and Veronica still receives priority booking :-).

2010 recap

2010 was the year little Veronica joined our family. Caring for a baby was a huge change for us and we're still defining the new "normal," but the time since her birth on October 24th has been filled with more joy than I could have possibly imagined. Our first few days with her, in particular, were the best of my life. I will always remember sitting in our sunny living room for hours and hours just watching our Vera-bean sleep. We shut out the rest of the world, listened to a lot of gentle music, and became familiar with this new person. It was absolutely love at first sight, if not earlier.

Most of the rest of the year was spent preparing mentally and physically for Veronica's arrival, but we did manage to travel a bit during the pregnancy with trips to Sonoma county, Washington state, France, and of course Minnesota. But you know what, my favorite place in the world remains here in Santa Barbara.

In addition to the birth, other notable milestones included celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary and R's 30th birthday. There has been so much reason to celebrate this year.

Hobby-wise, writing and video work have been on the decline, but my fun with photography has been on the rise. Veronica has been a huge inspiration and my new favorite subject for photos. I started a new web site in 2010 to showcase some of the pictures I've been taking of her. Free time has been short, but editing photos is so much quicker than editing video for me, so I've been fitting it in. And I just love having a record of our little girl growing up.

It has truly been an awesome year. Very few days go by when I don't think about how blessed I've been. What more could I want? Happy New Year, everybody!

Change of scenery

Here are a few non-baby related photos I've taken around town recently, just to freshen up the look around here. I'm not quite ready to begin writing much yet, but I'll probably post a brief summary of the year-in-Jeff at some point this month. Keep checking over at Three Peas for the photo story in progress.

Right number

Here's some proof that our daughter's name was on my mind well before we gave it to her. This little clip from "A Series of Wrong Numbers" was shot in 2006:


But my love of the name actually dates back much further than that. Let's just say the whole thing is destiny.

40 weeks

Nobody told me we were going to get the absolute sweetest girl in the world when this whole thing started! I am such a happy, blessed, and proud papa to our little Veronica.

There's some action happening over at Three Peas, if you haven't checked it out already.

39 and a half weeks

It is happening. I'll let you know after it happened. Until then, enjoy these final pregnancy shots.

39 weeks

It really felt like something was going to happen last weekend, and then, just today, the feeling backed off. I wasn't sure I'd have the opportunity to post a 39-week photo, but now I'm thinking there may be a 40-week one as well. (Don't count on it, however. Labor will probably start as soon as we stop expecting it.)

This photo is more low-key than the previous few. Perhaps it's fitting that it was taken at home since we are "hunkering down" now... finishing our preparations... beginning to wait. Last week at this time, I didn't feel ready for a baby and I was stressing out over it. I'm sure everything would have worked out fine, but I'm glad we had the weekend to wash some baby clothes, make some exchanges at the store, and sort of say good-bye to our non-parenting lives.

There was also a dramatic change in the weather. An unusual stretch of gray days made life in general seem out of the ordinary, like the setting of a story we'd be telling for years to come, a birth story. This afternoon Santa Barbara is back to its usual sunny self and I feel more at ease. But it could change again... I haven't looked at the forecast. I never do out here.

300

No, not 300 weeks pregnant (I can't even imagine that). Rather, 300 blog entries. Sorry to switch counts on you.

How's this for a nice bit of symmetry? My 300th post comes exactly two years after my 200th post. In that entry, I discussed the future of Midnight Toast (called Jeblog at the time) and listed some goals for the site. Being on the brink of a big life change right now -- and at another multiple of 100 -- makes me think tonight is the perfect opportunity to do something similar.

My big announcement is that I started a new blog called Three Peas in a Blog. There's a permanent link in the menu bar at the top of this page. The design of the new site is still under construction, but I'm happy to report I found a way to post larger photos on it since the primary purpose is for sharing pictures (and video) of our sweet pea with family and friends who may be interested. The writing will probably be minimal on the new site because I don't want it to slow down my photo output, but we'll see how things play out. Maybe I'll even open up the gates and let R post some thoughts on it if she ever gets the urge.

Midnight Toast will continue to exist in its current incarnation. It will be reserved mainly for my creative projects and musings, similar to what you have seen in the last 300 entries. My free time will be limited in the coming months and years, so I can't promise there will be a lot of activity in this department, but there will be some, and I like the idea of keeping it separate from the flood of baby photos that is imminent. There may be some gray areas in my categorization of material, but I'll try to keep the overlap to a minimum.

In summary...

Midnight Toast
Creative doings, random thoughts, and an occasional recap of events. Example of content: a scripted "Cottage Cheese 2" sketch starring the wee one.

Three Peas in a Blog
Family photos and videos, with very brief descriptions. Example of content: footage of the wee one taking her first steps.

And of course there's always Twitter. That will continue to be a more immediate and less calculated look at day-to-day life.

My time has run short. I wanted to tease some info about my "Introspection" film trilogy that I'm planning to cover on Midnight Toast in the future, but it will have to wait. Unless you consider that right there to be a tease.

37 weeks

The count up continues. For those of you not well-versed in pregnancy (I sure wasn't eight months ago), a baby's due date falls at 40 weeks, although only around 5% of them actually arrive on that day. Generally, you can give or take about two weeks... which means it wouldn't be that unusual for labor to begin as early as next week. We're hoping to have a little more time before our girl makes her appearance, but you never know.

I'm trying to take a calmer approach to the whole situation. R has informed me that nervousness is not sexy. She needs me to be calm and collected through this. One thing that has been helping is Zen. I've been meaning to dedicate a blog entry to the topic, and I still may, but the short of it is a friend introduced us to the value of meditation last winter and we've been practicing it semi-regularly since. My interest has waxed and waned a bit, but I recently reinstated my daily sitting in the mornings before work. It's a chance for me to be still for a little while and observe my inner-self. I go into it without any expectations, and I find that it relaxes me. There's nothing else quite like it in my day.

In other news, some local friends threw us a baby shower brunch last weekend. (Yes, men were invited too -- deal with it.) They did such an amazing job with the decorations, food, games, etc. You have got to see the invitations that one of the hosts, Leslie, created. (She also gave us some wall art for the baby's nursery that is so awesome I won't feel that bad replacing my David Lynch movie posters with it :-) It feels great to have such sweet, talented friends. Many thanks to our hosts, as well as our other generous friends who attended the party and brought gifts for the baby.

I had my camera at the shower but didn't take it out of the case. I'm upset with myself for passing up the chance to photograph people other than ourselves for once, but I was distracted and some other folks had cameras too, so I let them handle it. If any shots from the event surface, I'll be sure to share them on here.

R and I did have our own little shoot by the Mission afterward. I even brought the tripod along, allowing for a few shots of the two of us, including the one below. Can you tell how excited we are?