day 154: Today’s fun fact is that yes, my mom and I share the same birthday! It’s always funny when we call each other up on our birthdays because we’re both wishing each other happy birthday. Anyways, today I got a fabulous gift from my wonderful husband … an awesome macro lens I’ve had my eye on for a while. I can now get super close up shots which is so fun… even though it shows the scratches on our rings I still like this shot. This lens is going to be fun!

day 153: It seems that one of the dangers of the photo-a-day blog is that you run the risk of taking photos of the same thing repeatedly. I seem to be posting a lot of photos of food lately but I just couldn’t resist a shot of the delicious strawberries we had tonight with dinner (and delicious french cheese as well… mmm!)

day 152: This evening after work Ben and I did some much needed cleaning and filing. Oh what an exciting life we lead. Although I must admit that while not thrilling it does make for a much more pleasant home.

day 151: Ben and I were wandering around a park in Marina del Rey this evening after dinner and stumbled upon an orchestra rehearsing the ride of the valkyries complete with opera singer. It was pretty incredible to hear and they even had a couple of random spectators. What a lucky coincidence.

day 150 : I saw this box lying in the alley today and for some reason I was really struck by it. The top read “created with pride” (and actually in French not only pride but ART and pride) and it’s a box for an oily waste can. In a world where it seems like quality (and pride) is only getting more scarce it’s funny (and refreshing) to see such a simple statement declared on a box. Even if it is for oily waste.

day 149: For this month’s self portrait I didn’t want to hold the camera out in front of my face (again) so I decided to play with the self timer. I dragged Ben along as well and we had fun taking lots of ridiculous shots all around Santa Monica College. This is one of my favorites.

day 147: This is a crazy new thing, posting two days at once but I didn’t have a choice! After the late night of model building on Thursday night I decided to take Friday off and go help my friend Suzanne (who’s a pastry chef) to work on the wedding cake that she was to deliver on Saturday night. I don’t know how she does it because let me tell you that is HARD work! We worked all day Friday and when I got home I just passed out on the couch. I got this one shot (above) before actually passing out when Ben got the next one (below). Not flattering but hilarious! It totally describes how I felt!

day 148: On Saturday we got up and did it all again. The cake was a massive and extremely tasty multi-flavor, multi-tiered affair that was actually quite beautiful, and then once assembled and finished, got covered in a web of spun sugar. The bride is a sculptor and designed the cake this way so in addition to filling, stacking, and covering the cake, we also had to spin a huge amount of sugar on site to adhere to the cake. It was a huge undertaking and another EXTREMELY long day! The cake only actually existed like this for about 5 minutes before the sugar was ripped off and the cake was cut, but it was fun while it lasted.

day 146: Sorry this one is a day late. After a long week of model building I had to finish up with a late night of model building to be ready for a morning deadline. Here it is though, I’m pretty proud of this little guy and yes…. that is a dime in the front for scale. This thing is 1/16″=1′. Ridiculous tiny!

day 145: So there’s a lot of discussion these days about people describing themselves as “natural light photographers” and whether or not that means that they just don’t know how to use their flashes. I personally think that whether or not “natural light photographers” know how to use flashes, there are situations when the difference between a snapshot and a real quality photo is some killer lighting. Now I’m definitely not claiming to have killer lighting, but I am reading all I can and practicing as much as possible to make sure I know how to use my flash. These are just a few shots from today, one without (above) and one with a flash bounced off the wall (below). Maybe not the most amazing change, but I think it helps a lot.