Inspired by Now

Published: Thu, Jan 31, 2019

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photography, Photowalk, Recommendations, USA

In January of 2019 my family took a 4 day trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. You can read about the whole trip in my previous blog post. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting a plantation, which is the only one focused on the slaves of Louisiana. I had planned to write about this visit in my Lensbaby Blog Circle post prior to going there, and I decided on using my Burnside 35 lens. This is the Lensbaby lens that I grab for times when I am not by myself, but rather with my family. Since we were part of a large group, and there were areas where I could not have been able to stop and focus with my manual lens, I sometimes grabbed my phone to take additional pictures. I will be showing you images taken both with my Burnside lens and my phone (always noted) in this blog post.

The first owner of the plantation was Ambroise Heidel (at around 1752), whose family immigrated from Germany. They, among many other German immigrants, settled in the first German Coast (St. Charles Parish). The German Coast became a main food supplier to New Orleans. The Hayden Plantation turned into one of the most important sugar plantations in the State, and the owners one of the wealthiest people of the area. None of this could have happened without the extremely hard work of the enslaved African people they “owned” on their plantation.

Published: Thu, Jan 24, 2019

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Categories: Architecture, Blog, Family Trips, Recommendations, USA

Need a destination for a quick family getaway? Try New Orleans, Louisiana.

In January of 2019 my daughter got 2 extra days off of school around MLK Jr. Day, and we decided to take a family trip during the 5-day long weekend. Although we considered going to New York, NY first, luckily we decided to go to New Orleans, LA instead. (The weather in NY was far from pleasant during the weekend.)

In this post I just wanted to share what places we visited (with a 14 year old), in case someone else is looking for great stuff to do there. In future posts I will write about a few of these places in detail.

First of all, after a whole day of searching for places to go to and things to do I decided, that the New Orleans City Pass was not going to work for us. Since this was a family trip and we wanted to enjoy our time in the Crescent City, we did not want to rush from one attraction to the next one all day long. I planned two major things to do every day, and we filled the rest of the time with small walks, etc. I did find many great deals on www.livingsocial.com, and I was able to get discounted tickets for 3 out of 6 places there. If you are interested in the various city passes, this article compares them very well.

Published: Sun, Jan 06, 2019

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Categories: Architecture, Blog, Double Glass, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photography, Photowalk, Single Glass, Spark 50mm

On the last weekend of November I suffered from a stress related back injury, and pain in different areas of my back has been troubling me since then. Unfortunately, this also meant fewer photoshoots in the past five or so weeks. Last week I did have a short photowalk on the grounds of one of our city libraries prior to picking up a reserved book, and I’m happy to share the images I took there with the Lensbaby Blog Circle readers.

The library is located at the Irvine Ranch Historic Park in Irvine, California. It is a replica (2008) of the Irvine family home, which was originally constructed in 1876. The park itself was established in 1996, and it houses 24 original ranch structures that represent the agricultural history of Orange County.

The double rows of palm trees seen on the fourth image were planted in 1906. The park has many trees, flowers, and it has a section where they are rejuvenating avocado trees.

Published: Thu, Dec 20, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Double Glass, Landscape, Lensbaby, Photography, Photowalk, Pinhole, Single Glass, Sol 45, USA, Velvet 56

In mid-December I was able to make another visit to the Los Angeles County Arboretum. Since my daughter started high school, visiting places that are somewhat far from us has become quite difficult due to her very strange drop off and pick up schedule. But this day provided an opportunity to spend some time farther away from home, and I chose the Arboretum for my destination.

I have been using my Lensbaby lenses a lot more than my auto lenses. One exception was a fundraising project at my daughter’s school theater program, where I documented their creation of a play throughout two weeks of rehearsals, and made the images available to purchase for the parents, which resulted in some extra funds for the Theater program. When it comes to people photography, catching moments on stage – especially with youth actors – is what I really enjoy to do.

Now back to my Arboretum visit. I first walked though the Aloe Trail, and towards the end of it I found this gorgeous succulent in the shade. (Velvet 56)

Published: Tue, Nov 20, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Landscape, Photography, Photowalk, USA

In October of 2017 I did something I had not done before: I spent 6 days away from my family on a trip to Portland, Oregon. I chose this destination because I really miss seeing the Fall colors at our current Southern California location.

This trip was super fun! I did everything I love doing: walked in the city and hiked in the forests, listened to audiobooks on the buses and during walks, visited three museums, and of course, took over a thousand pictures. But, as soon as I got home, I had to jump back into the everyday life and somehow I didn’t spend time on culling and post-processing my images. This past week I was tidying up my portfolio, and I realized that in addition to my Hungary, Colorado and California pictures I also have images from Oregon that I could share with the world. This blog post is features a few of those images, but head over to the Oregon gallery to see the rest. You never know… you might even consider ordering a print to decorate your house or give it as a gift.