Kisses & Disses: Stardom + Veggie Burgers

I used to dream of being a singer. That is until I realized I take after my mother's singing abilities.Sigh. Pretty tragic. There is of course no need to say how much Peter loves my singing. Especially when I sing the wrong lyrics to top it all off. It makes him cringe. This being said, I was singing Rose to the top of my lungs while working on my computer...

sometimes life is like a river tada da da da... sometimes life is like a river tada da da da. And so it continued for a few minutes.  From the corner of my eye I could see Peter trying to bite his tongue. After the fifth time singing the wrong lyrics he cracked under the pressure. LOVE SOMETIMES LOVE. 


huh?
the song, sometimes love it is a river
you mean I've been singing it wrong all this time?


Story of my life. Which leads into this week's kisses and disses.

This Week's Disses go to:

- People that don't appreciate my singing (a.k.a. Peter).
- Genes, they tend to be rather unfair

This Week's Kisses go to:

+ Summer, about time it got here!
+ My sister, for graduating last week.
+ Veggie burgers, there not half as bad as they sound. Really.

In honor of my singing career here is the real song with lyrics if you want to check it out...some say life is like a river tada dada dad





Southern Oregon & Medford Wedding Photographers

FOOD FRIDAY: Ethiopian Style

We love food. There is no denying it. Especially when it come to different exotic foods.
Although half of the time is Peter the one dragging me to such places, I enjoy them nevertheless.
Let’s face it, Grants Pass is not excatly the cultural salad bowl. So when one of our bride’s proposed meeting at an Ethipian resturant in Portland, we were thrilled!  Well, Peter was thrilled, I had to do some research. You know, just make sure they didn’t eat crickets or something of that sort in Africa.  I was pretty excited to I find out that  injera (Ethiopian bread) is to an Ethiopian what tortillas are to a Mexican.

Food is served up in a big, round plate. And I mean big...

 We all shared a vegetarian combo. Which was served on top of the injera. The eating utensils? Our hands. What better way to get to know someone that putting your hands all over each others food, right?


We loved it so much we ate there again the following night. Here is Peter proudly showing he cleaned the plate up! Quite an accomplishment considering the size of the thing...

If you are anywhere near Portland  and are in mood for something a little different be sure to check out the Queen Of Sheba...

Happy Friday!

K~B

Portland Oregon Wedding Photographer

Personal: Like father like son

They sit next to each other and I stare at them. Examining their faces side by side. Every line, every smile, every detail. They are much more alike than they care to admit. Peter is trying to teach his dad something about downloading pictures into his computer. Dad looks at me with his kind blue eyes, and I smile at him. I see Peter’s calm demeanor when I look into my father-in-law’s eyes.  I fight the urge to tell them how alike they are. I know they won’t agree.

K~B

Southern Oregon & Newport Wedding Photographers

PERSONAL: GRATEFUL

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: ELINCHROM RANGER RX SYNC SPEED w/ A HEAD

    I have really been hoping to use the "hypersync" feature of the PocketWizard Power ST4 with the Elinchrom Ranger for some of our shots, but it doesn't work as I had hoped (according to all the hype anyways). Not like the sync speed of Speedlights and the Flex TT5, which by the way we use frequently right up to 1/8000 sec with no problem at all. Except for the lack of power. Thats where the Ranger comes into play.  

    After trying in vane to get 1/8000th sec sync speed to give usable results using the Ranger (I had been trying to figure it out with a photog in Seattle who has the same setup), I finally settled on the fact that, using the "A" head, it is just not possible, unless you have a camera with an electronic shutter (Nikon D70, Nikon D300s, Canon 1D-ancient!) .  I've been talking with a photog in the UK who is shooting with the "S" head, 5D markII, 50mm f1.2l and syncing clear up to 1/8000. You can check out his post on sync speeds here. 

    However, I was able to achieve usable sync speeds using the "A" head of 1/320 and 1/500 using the Power ST4 on the Ranger. I was going to post a shot at 1/1000 just to show the results, but suffice it to say that it's not usable in my opinion.  Anyhow, enough talking. Except one more thing- I did throw some speedlights into the mix too.

This shot was taken at 1/500th of a second. If you look at the right side of the frame you can see some shading happening from the camera shutter. It's less noticeable on the sky and more noticeable on the foreground. But 1/500 sec on a full frame camera using a Elinchrom strobe is pretty awesome!

Shot at 1/320 sec- you can still see the banding on the right side of the frame in the foreground, although it is much narrower than at 1/500.

Yup, you guessed it- 1/300 sec sync.  Those are four Canon speedlights firing at full power, zoomed to 70mm, about four feet away. If you look at the rim light they are creating on Kenya, you can see they are only lighting from her arms up. They have to throw a tighter beam of light to even be usable in direct sun. The Ranger was about seven feet away and had power to spare and it was throwing a MUCH larger spread of light using a white wide angle reflector....

The light is a little hot in this one- the ambient changed because of a cloud and I didn't adjust the Ranger's power for it in this shot. The Speedlights didn't even fire here- they hadn't recharged yet.  The AA batteries just can't keep up with full power firing, which makes the Canons kind of a let down compared to the Ranger RX- which is why we have some new battery packs on the way for them (: Can't wait to try those out!

1/320 sync, Ranger RX camera right, Canon Speedlights camera left at 90deg to me.

Here is my disclaimer- this is not the way things are, just my opinion, so take for what it is. With some cropping I believe that 1/500th sec sync speeds are very usable with the Ranger RX and A head combo. Some day I hope to get an S head so we can sync even faster and maybe shoot wide open during the middle of the day. If anybody has any questions about this, feel free to post them below.

~PB~
Southern Oregon and Medford Photographer

PERSONAL: FOND MEMORIES

It happened toward the end of the evening. It had been one of the happiest days of my life.  The day I married my better half.  The cake cutting was the last event of the evening before we headed out.  While our guests watched and snapped photos we sliced the cake, tres leches cake to be precise. I being the sweet wife that I am, gently fed my new husband our wedding cake.  What followed left me in shock.  Mr. Burch took his cake and smashed it right on my face. The eye area to be exact. I stood there trying to figure out if he really did what I thought he did.  He laughed. He thought he was hilarious.  Yes, that was the man I had just married.

Two years later, as I bake my own tres leches cake this is the memory that comes to mind.
I found this recipe at the food network and is by far our favorite recipe .Here is link to the original recipe

K~B

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
• 2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
• 6 large eggs, separated
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup whole milk (I use 2%)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided
• 1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk
• 2 (14-ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk
• 3 cups heavy cream, divided
• 1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar

Place the rack in bottom 1/3 of oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Lightly grease a 13 by 9-inch baking pan with the shortening. Add 1 tablespoon of the flour to the greased pan and shake it around to coat the entire pan with the flour. Shake out excess flour. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer beat the egg whites on medium speed until soft peaks form. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the sugar with the mixer running, beating until stiff peaks form.

Add the egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each egg is added. In a small mixing bowl, sift together the 2 cups flour and baking powder.
Add the flour mixture to the batter in stages, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour. (Do this quickly so that the batter does not lose its volume!) Add 1 teaspoon of the vanilla extract. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and place in the oven. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes.
In a blender, combine the evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and 2 cups of the heavy cream. Cover and blend on high for 45 seconds.
Remove 1 1/2 cups of the milk mixture, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve the cake.
Pour 1/2 of the remaining milk mixture over the warm cake.
When the cake has soaked up most of the liquid, pour the remaining half of the milk mixture over the cake, and cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight.
When ready to serve, beat the remaining cup of heavy cream in the electric mixer until soft peaks form. Add the confectioners' sugar and remaining 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla, and beat until stiff peaks form. Spread the whipped cream over the chilled cake.
Serve the cake with the reserved chilled milk sauce.

Ashland & Medford Wedding photographer

Personal: Lesson learned from hiking Smith Rock

My thighs were burning, muscles I didn't even know I had were making themselves manifest reminding me of my lack of condition. I stopped to catch my breath, mostly because my lunch was threatening to see light once again. I was so done, there was no way I was climbing higher. Why did I ever let Peter talk me into this in the first place? I should’ve known better.  

Sitting there feeling half dead I looked up. I had been so afraid of tripping and falling that I had not noticed the scenery around me. I stood there mesmerized, taking it all in. Somehow contemplating the huge mountains and the river running through them gave me a second wind. I had to make it to the top. I had to see what was up there.

Slowly I draged myself up.  You’re close, you can’t give up now, I kept repeating to myself every time I felt like collapsing.  A few painful moments later we made it to the top. In front of us stood a majestic view. Standing there, at the edge of the cliff, made the anguish dissapear. It was worth the pain.

If I had stopped when the pain kicked in, I would have missed out. I was so close, yet I was about to give up. The lesson learned can be applied to all aspects of life. Sometimes we work so hard towards something and go through the struggles and the effort but when we are about to reap the benefits we give up. We quit without realizing how close we really are to the majestic view, to success. I'm not saying it will be easy, but it will be worth it. Climbing the mountain was hard work, there was pain, struggle, doubting wether I could do it or not, and the list went on and on. I had to constantly remind myself of the prize.  As long as we keep our eyes on the prize, we can climb any mountain, no matter how big it is.

K~B

Bend Oregon & Medford Wedding Photographers