Crush.

I’m obsessed with macarons again! Central Market carried them for a while (but they are gone now??) I think for Mardi Gras. They had this salted caramel flavor that was to die for. Now I need to make macarons. Photo via: Flikr

So crushing on Kaylah’s hair colors (aka the Dainty Squid!)  -  I don’t think the all over color is for me, but gosh I love her hair!  Note to self:  add pretty color soon… extensions maybe?? Hey, what can I say… I still remember the maintenance involved.  ;)

Want.

Loving this feldspar ring from MaieDae. Want! Guess which color I want??  Think maybe I’ll wear one until I get my wedding ring fixed…

Now that I have my first sewing machine, I really want to take Elsie’s DIY Dress Up e-course. Who wants to take it with me? Let’s sign up together!

Love.

Eeeeeeeeeee!!  My new Janome Magnolia sewing machine!! My mom taught me how to use it this week and I’m pretty excited about it.

Gossip Girl. I know, the show can be silly ridiculous… and I’m only in season 2.  B sometimes watches with me and likes to make comments like “um, how old are they?? are they in a bar?? what is that guy wearing??” to which I reply, “oh shh… they do whatever they want yo!” I like to yell at the tv “who cares?!!” when characters I don’t care about hook up… eagerly awaiting their love’s demise (and doing a happy dance when it happens.) Oh, guilty pleasure.  ;)

have a great weekend!! xoxo

Hope you’re having a happy Monday!!  xoxo Brandy

Instead I would have epic battles with my pop up flash and get super mad when my pictures of the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disney turned out blurry.  Then I bought my first DSLR and was determined to learn to shoot in manual.  Well, I sorta kinda had to since I wanted to be a wedding photographer. In that situation, you can’t have your camera running all willy nilly.  As it turned out, taking my camera off automatic and going into manual mode wasn’t near as tragic as I used to think.  It’s actually really easy once you understand the basics.

Still not feeling it?  Here’s 8 reasons to learn to shoot in manual (or as I like to call it… how to take great pictures!)

1.  Play with lights (say ooh and ahh)

Create gorgeous surreal photos of color and light with everyday lights, like these Christmas lights hung in a cluster on a window.  Shooting in manual let’s you paint with light, blur lights out of focus (aka bokeh) behind your subject and opens up a world of creative fun.

2.  Motion blur

Love motion blur!  Especially with lights like this midway photo from the State Fair of Texas.  When shooting in automatic mode, you might get some motion blur by accident – when you turn off the flash and the camera needs more light.  But what if you want to do it on purpose?  By using a tripod and shooting in manual you can capture awesome motion blur.  If you have a steady hand you can also get blur hand holding the camera, like the following two photos.

3.  Panning

Panning is a form of motion blur, in which the subject is in focus but the background around the subject is in motion and blurred. This picture was taken in the middle of the Hoh Rainforest outside Forks, Washington.  This is a sorta crazy way of panning since it is a spinning self portrait.  Yep, I was holding the camera out and spinning in circles.

3.  Create stunning silhouettes.

If you let your camera have all the fun, you’ll never capture silhouettes since automatic settings always assume you need more light and will adjust accordingly (hello, pop up flash or blurry photos!)  But learn to shoot in manual and you can capture beautiful silhouettes like this one…

4.  Sunflare

Someone once told me to never ever ever point my camera at the sun.  But what’s the fun in that?  Well granted you don’t want to take pictures of just the sun in the sky (wait a min, I might be guilty of that too heh) but combine the sun with your subject, adjust the settings and tada, sunflare!  By shooting in manual mode you can capture sunflare on purpose, like this image of the tree sculpture at the Modern in Fort Worth.  Oh, do I love sunflare.  But yeah, try not to stare at the sun while composing the shot. Trust me.

5.  Say goodbye to harsh on-camera flash (when you don’t really need it)

Oh on-camera flash, love it or hate it.  Sometimes it’s the only way to get the shot.  More often though, it just pops up all over the place because your camera thinks it needs the extra light.  Shooting in manual puts you in control, giving you other choices to not use flash.

If you’re shooting inside with some window light in automatic, you’ll probably get a picture like this:

See the harsh light and shadow from the on-camera flash?  My skin is extra shiny and you can see all kinds of imperfections.  The colors are also more muted, my eyes are just about the same color blue.  Talk about deer in headlights look!

But guess what?  You can take the exact same picture (same location, camera and lens) in manual mode and get softer, more flattering natural light.  Notice the color in my eyes… you can see varying shades of color.  Ditching the flash by shooting in manual mode is a surefire way to start taking better pictures.

6.  Pick your focus point

One of the best parts about shooting in manual mode is the ability to choose what you want to be in focus.  In automatic your camera usually picks whatever it wants.  But shoot in manual and you can focus on something in the background or the subject on the left or right of the photo, oh the possibilities.

7.  Bring out your subject with blurred, creamy backgrounds

When you pick a wide open aperture… the more blurred the background will become, like this purple flower above.  This is one of my favorite reasons for shooting in manual mode.  In the following photo, Brandon and I are both standing about 10 feet from a brightly colored graffiti wall.  By blurring the background you get a wash of colors that compliment your subject.  :)

8.  Capture dreamy, sun-kissed photos by shooting with backlight

The opposite of creating a silhouette, dreamy sun-kissed photos can be captured with the sun or other bright light behind your subject.  If you’re shooting in automatic the camera will think there is too much light and make the image more dark.  But if you focus on just the right spot and set your exposure in manual, you can get this wonderful hazy light filled image.

I’m a super visual learner so I hope these examples helped you too!  Do you have an awesome camera but haven’t learned to really use it?  Why not boss your camera around and call the shots?  You’ll love the pictures you get when shooting in manual!

When I started shooting weddings, I knew it was a *must* to shoot with a set of smaller memory cards.  This way if something happened with one card, the whole day (6-8 hours of shooting) would not be lost.  For weddings, we would each fill up a set of 10 – 4GB memory cards (shooting in RAW)  since our camera’s RAW files are crazy big and take up lots of space.  That being said, you could still fit a high (risky) number of JPG images on that same 4GB card.  So for JPG shooting I would recommend 2GB or smaller cards or you could deliberately switch out cards to keep from taking all pics on the same card.  We do that when we’re shooting in JPG on our 5DMii cameras with the 4GB cards.

Of course, shooting with smaller memory cards means having more to keep up with (and lose!)  To keep up with all our cards we use Think Tank’s Pixel Pockets.  I LOVE my Pixel Pocket except I don’t trust that plastic strap to hang it on stuff (say, me?) No way Jose, that baby stays in my camera bag.  The Pixel Pockets are pretty awesome though.  There are 3 different sizes / kinds to choose from.  B and I both have a blue 10 card Pixel Pocket. There’s also a 6 card holder and then the Pixel Wee (the cute red one) holds 6 cards.  Now the blue ones are actually designed to hold compact flash cards (out of their little plastic case.)  Only the red Pixel Wee holds SD cards (and only 3 of them.)  However if you keep your SD cards in their plastic case, they fit in the compact flash spots perfectly.

Remember, digital cameras are amazing but don’t shoot all your pictures on the same card! Shoot over several cards during vacation / big events and back up often when possible.  You’ll be glad you did!  Questions?  Feel free to comment!  xoxo Brandy

The original idea calls for printing with 8.5×11″ photo paper.  Since I had a ton of 4×6 photo paper on hand I just used that.  I followed the directions but for some reason when I printed the photos they kept coming out kinda blurry and not really in focus like it looked on my iPhone.  Big fat bummer!  (this was my first time to ever print iPhone pics.)  After much ado and fussing I figured out that since the 4×6 document needs to be set to 300 ppi for printing,  the iPhone pics needed to be a different size to accommodate this issue.  Confused yet?  Don’t worry, I’ll post the complete how-to at the end of this post!

Now for a little mini print eye candy:

Cutest. thing. ever.

IKEA’s Spontan magnetic boards + The Container Store’s Mighty Magnets are awesome for displaying our iPhone mini prints.  I’m going to fill the entire board with these teensy colorful photos!

To make your own iPhone mini prints -

• re-size prints to 575 x 575 pixels in Photoshop
• create a new 8.5×11″ OR 4×6″ document set to 300 ppi
• line up the images in a grid format on the new document
• print
• cut images with paper cutter (or by hand)

It takes a while to cut the prints out (you have to be extra careful to cut them straight) but it’s soooooo worth the effort.  I’m totally digging how they look in our home and our guests get a kick out of them too.  Yay!

Ever since I became obsessed with it.

So at Christmas I thought it would be fun to make the guys snack packs filled with some artisanal beer, cheese, crackers and this elusive candied bacon.  Elusive because I couldn’t find many recipes and the first couple of tries resulted in a sticky, gooey, pile of bacon.  We’re not talking bacon glazed with maple syrup.  Actual candied bacon is crispy melt in your mouth deliciousness.  Still I knew it had to be possible (somehow) and I needed my fix.  B was all the more willing to be the taste tester.  6 batches later and ahhhhhhhhh!! Crisp, amazing, candied Bacon.  What’s the secret?  It’s all in the sugar.  Here’s the recipe and how to:

Candied Bacon

You’ll also need:

I suggest putting about 1-2 cups of dark brown sugar in a small bowl.  That way if you touch the bacon while sprinkling sugar on you’ll avoid cross contamination.  I don’t have an exact measurement for dark brown sugar, but it’s about 1.5 cups.  Remember, the secret to crispy candied bacon is in the sugar!

For easy cleanup line the baking sheet with foil.  The bacon grease will still get under the foil but trust me you need the foil.  Place the cooling rack on the pan, then line up your bacon on the pan.  I only make one batch at a time (I haven’t tried 2 pans at once.)  Just fit as much bacon on as you can.

Next lightly sprinkle the bacon with some cayenne pepper!  Just a little dusting is all you need.

Now here’s the most important part:  how much sugar you put on the bacon.  Following other recipes, I lightly sprinkled the sugar.  Some recipes even called for dipping the bacon in sugar (nooooooo.)  This resulted in glazed bacon, not candied.  At first I thought the bacon just needed to cook longer but it still didn’t help.  Then I discovered you need to put a lot more sugar (don’t worry a ton of the sugar cooks off and drips onto the foil.)

So this a Goldilocks and the 3 bears kinda story.  I got the great idea to pile the sugar on, like almost 1/2″ thick.  But that didn’t work either.  Too much sugar = too sweet.  You couldn’t even taste the bacon (it was crispy though!)  I couldn’t stand it but of course B ate it anyway.  Too little sugar = too sticky.  But a nice coating of brown sugar is just right.

Bake the bacon for 20 min. @ 400 degrees.  Of course, this depends on your altitude (I’m in TX so I no nothing of mountain baking lol) so I would check it starting at 15 min.  There will be a point when the bacon looks like it does in these photos, where you can see the actual “crystals” instead of gloppy syrup. When it has this candied texture it is typically done.  If the edges of the bacon start to burn you can cover them with a strip of foil.  In the first batches when I thought the bacon needed to cook longer I got more burning on the edges.  This batch I took pictures of did not require foil on the edges.

Another important step:  Take the pan out of the oven and let the bacon sit on the pan for 1-2 min.  You need to give the sugar time to cool a bit before moving so it doesn’t slide off.  Don’t leave the bacon on more than a couple of minutes or it will break up all over as you scrape it off.  Been there, done that.

After sitting for a couple of minutes, promptly remove the bacon and put it on parchment paper to cool! I let it cool for an hour or two then put it in ziplock bags and keep it in the fridge. People might ask how long it keeps in the fridge, I’d say about a week but it never really lasts that long!

And there you have it!! Crisp, amazing, melt in your mouth candied bacon! I find it very indulgent all by itself.   I also love to break it into pieces and top my favorite cracker and some cheese ball with it (that’s another recipe!) I’m sure it would make BLTs out of this world.  Would love to hear how this recipe turns out for you and if you have any issues or questions at all please leave a comment!  xoxo Brandy

Here are our latest vintage finds:

Why hello, pretty vintage globe!

More colorful vintage Pyrex!!  LOVE the little yellow refrigerator dish and of course these two mixing bowls!  Think I’m pretty set on Pyrex too.  Sigh.  Oh… a girl should have a set of vintage Pyrex on display.  The more the merrier, right?!?   ;)

I’m crushing on these vintage Fire-King mugs.  Space is limited in our tiny kitchen and it really helps these stack together. The color on this green one  is kickin’  …….. so do you have anything you like to collect?  Have you hit up antique malls or thrift stores lately?  What are you on the hunt for??  xoxo Brandy

The next Shooting in Manual class (aka Photo 101) starts March 1, 2012.  Want to learn how to use that amazing camera of yours?   Register for the next class and join in on the fun!   xoxo Brandy