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.

day 144: When you get married you get literally showered with gifts (that is why they call them showers isn’t it?) It’s your one chance to get all sorts of outrageous kitchen gadgets that you would never buy yourself. Ok… bowls aren’t outrageous, and they’re not really gadgets either, but these nesting bowls were one of my favorite wedding gifts. Cutting everything up and putting it into it’s own little cooking show bowl while making dinner is surprisingly fun.

day 143: So with all of this Harry Potter fanaticism going around I got curious and decided that I should find out what all the hype was about. Unfortunately Allison recommended that I not start at the last book (which probably makes sense) so here I am… the last person on earth reading the FIRST Harry Potter book. At least it’s nice and short… but I have a lot of them to go through before I finally find out what happens in the new book.

day 142: Being down in Encinitas for the weekend means lots of stops for tasty food. Yesterday was burritos at Ricos and today was dinner at Ki’s. A fabulous beach view location + tasty tofu and tempeh = one of my favorite restaurants!

day 141: Today I got the chance to hang out with some of my absolute favorite people. Valena is one of my best friends from way back and her husband and son are some of the sweetest people that I know. We ran out to the park today to take some quick family portraits for them. This is one of my favorites from the day.