my blog is one year old!

I just realized that I started this blog exactly one year ago today, so I figured I should post something in honor of it.  Since I haven't shot anything new that I like enough to share, here are some old images from when I was shooting for my final color portfolio... I kinda like them... I think they're inspiring me a little bit...

sunset

The partly abandoned Whittenton Mills Complex is down the street from my house.  I shot a little there for my color portfolio- it's kinda weird, but a pretty cool place to shoot. (And Martin Scorsese shot the concentration camp scenes for Shutter Island there!)

It gets good light around sunset time- a few weeks ago, I tried to run down there but missed all the good, warm, yellow-orange-pink light.  Tonight when I noticed that the sky was insanely pink and orange, I was already way too late.  Bah!  Even in the less than 30 seconds it took me to get my camera, and run back to the window, just to try to capture some of the color, the sky was already completely different...

sketchy playground

I went to this little playground down the street with my nieces the other night.  I had never been to it, and was a little disappointed to see that it's pretty run down.  Also, I can't say for sure, but I think there was something sketchy going on in the nearby field... I don't think I'll be bringing the girls back there...

Anyway, aside from some silly pictures of the girls, and a few funny video clips of them playing basketball, I took this one shot of the swings.  I might go back for a re-shoot when there's a little more light...

Water War

I'm really bad with posting lately!

This made me laugh- so stupid, but so funny.
I can also think of a couple people I'd like to play this with. haha


part one:


part two:

blue

The other day, I was at a friend's house, by the pool.  I took lots of pictures and I realized how much I love the color blue!  Even though pink is still my favorite! :)

But I also got a slap in the face by something pretty disappointing.  Overwhelmingly so.  It really bummed me out.  I'll just add it to the list I guess.

When I look at the photos now, they feel kinda sad and empty, which isn't what I was intending when I shot them.  But fitting I guess, after the day.

To go with the pictures, I thought I'd add the definition of "blue" to the post...  The first (obvious!) and third definitions seem to fit the best.

From merriam-webster.com:

Definition of Blue   adj  \ˈblü\

1 : of the color blue

3 a: low in spirits: melancholy

   b: marked by low spirits: depressing  < a blue funk> < things looked blue>

house guest

It's been a while since I've posted anything!

I've been experimenting with my digital point and shoot again... I have an old 50mm lens that I don't have a camera for, and by holding it in front of the point and shoot lens, it turns it into a macro!  Fun!  haven't done much with it that I like yet, but I'm sure I'll have some to share soon...

But for now, here's one of my little guest this evening:

Ladybugs are good luck right?  I'd love some luck....

i miss my couch!

I was cleaning up my hard drive today and found some pictures I took of my living room in the apartment... I miss it!  It was a weird mix of new and old and it was just starting to feel homey when I moved out... I miss my couch most though and I'm hoping I'll be able to rescue it from the storage unit very soon.

Anyway, here's a few of the pictures I found.  My curtains always made the light pinkish purple, so the colors are kinda wacky, but I guess it matches the wackiness of the room... :)  the exposures aren't the best in the world either.  Oh well.  Enjoy anyway!


My prized possession: my orange arm chair!  And the little
foot stool I painted and re-covered...

 

The Princess Bride poster, my grandmother's end tables &
old lamps with my funky Target clearance lampshades... my
70's coffee table (which is the one I grew up with) AND the
best couch in the whole world. I kinda have to say that after
all the trouble I went through with Cardi's to get it...

The curtains it took me months to find... They're plaid and one
of the colors just so happens to match my couch PERFECTLY...

GINORMOUS Foo Fighters poster that never actually made it up
onto the wall... chest filled with my mom's old sewing patterns...
my other orange chair, from Burrito Max... my lovely purple-y/blue
book shelf, and my sad, bored, little snowboard...

Buffy "Once More With Feeling" poster... paintings by my

very talented nieces, and my pretty pretty TV...

6-bee

The other day, I started watching Glee.   The creator, Ryan Murphy, created one of my favorite shows ever- Popular.  So I knew I'd probably like Glee.  And I do like it.  It's funny and clever, but it IS also cheesy.  (sometimes good-cheesy, sometimes LAME-cheesy.)

In my opinion, it doesn't top Popular, (yet, anyway) but I'll probably keep watching.

These clips aren't from Glee- they're from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  That show just NAILS any spoof it does.  This one included.  Even if you don't watch Glee, it's totally worth a watch.  SO SILLY!  :)

Enjoy!
Episode 1, part 1:


Episode 1, part 2:



The second episode features The Roots and the cast of Parks and Recreation. So funny!

Episode 2, part 1:


Episode 2, part 2:

female photographers of Etsy

I just joined the female photographers of Etsy team!
 
They've got a great blog with some cool photography you should check out:
http://femalephotographersofetsy.blogspot.com

You can also find links to other female photographers on etsy, as well as links to many of their blogs!
(including mine! woohoo!)

check it out!

fine art prints available on Etsy!

 

I finally started my Etsy shop!  

Just a few prints available so far... but a lot more will be available soon!

please check it out!  http://www.etsy.com/shop/RachaelDuMoulin

and feel free to share the link! :)

not what I expected

This afternoon, while I was watching the bonus features on the This Is It dvd (by the way, watch that movie!  AND the bonus features!  SO. GOOD.), I was watching out of the corner of my eye as the sky slowly turned dark and suddenly, it started to POUR.  I grabbed my nikon coolpix thinking I might make an interesting photo of the now flooded street.  But all those pictures were BO-RING...

These are the photos I liked the best.  Once the rain started to come to a stop, and I opened my window again, the water droplets all over the screen caught my eye...

And I took this one out on the front porch during the downpour... it might be my favorite:

Modern Family. The best comedy on tv since Arrested Development

Taking a little break from website stuff, I found this silly Modern Family commercial.  Apparently it was done as a promotion for the Oscars, and it does a great job of capturing all the characters in 30 seconds.  SOOO funny!  I can never pick a favorite, but I think Gloria is my favorite here.

I LOVE this show.  If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out!!!

Onset Beach

Kind of a last minute thing, just before 7pm, I decided to drive down to Onset Beach. I thought I'd get there in time for the pretty sunset light... I JUST missed it...  So I have some pictures I made at dusk instead. 

The plan WAS to shoot film in my Holga, (finally!) and I also brought my Coolpix and my Brownie.  But since the light was pretty much gone by the time I started, I didn't shoot any film... I knew from experience with my Holga that any negatives would be super thin.  And I cannot afford thin negatives!

So, I did some through-the-viewfinder with both the Holga and Brownie.  I did NOT like any of the Brownie shots.  They were way too distorted, even for my taste!

The light was kinda flat at this point, but I got a few I like, and some I'm still not sure about...

chippy the chipmunk!

I said I was gonna lay off the flower pictures, but the sunflowers in the backyard have been taunting me a little... so I headed out there to try a couple TTV shots, but they were all eaten by beetles and ugly.  Which, I guess would maybe make for a more interesting picture, but I didn't take any.

When I turned around, I saw this little guy (I have named him Chippy) staring at me from the cement block wall of the compost bin.  It was as if he thought if he stayed still, I wouldn't see him... We actually had a little staring contest, then I realized I had my camera in my hand.

I snapped that one, and when I took a step closer, he jumped down one of the holes in the cement blocks.

I had zoomed in as far as I could, so the quality is already not that great, but here's a little close-up of the above photo:

Cute!

brand new website is up!

hello!  just wanted to let you all know that I now have an official website!  Woo hoo!  It was hard work.  Not that I didn't have respect for them before, but I my respect for graphic/web designers has increased exponentially!!! It's seriously hard work! 

 

You may have seen some photos here on the blog or maybe on virb.com, but there's lots of stuff that I haven't posted anywhere else!

Take a look!

rachaeldumoulin.com

Also, my cousin reminded me of this photo today- it's her son... I forgot that I had scanned it.  (It is, of course, shot with actual b&w film!)  Thought I'd share it.  It cracks me up!

(It also features my new little watermark, that I made to match all my new graphics...)

new logo and banner!

So for the past few weeks I have been hard at work re-designing my logo (which hadn't actually been seen by many peeps since I didn't really like it and didn't use it on anything yet...) and a website and a business card.  I also attacked the blog tonight, fiddling with the template and layout, and also making the colors, etc. match the website, which will be going "live" in a few days... stay tuned!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! to all who've helped me with all this design business, which I'm not that great at.  Your feedback and suggestions have been GREATLY appreciated! 

TTV Morning Glories

A couple days after the first few morning glories showed up, there were several more, and I played around a little more with the Brownie.  

As I said before, since these particular morning glories have sprouted up from seeds from last year's flowers, I never know exactly what colors they'll be.   It's starting to look like these along the shed will be light pink, magenta/hot pink, and dark purple.  purple not pictured ;)

These images are "small" because when I tried to make them larger, the colors got all wonky... Thanks Blogger... (I went back to old posts and apparently this is not new.  Just hasn't been as noticeable before...)

Not only that, but the colors are already not that accurate, despite my efforts to correct them in Photoshop.  Could be due to a couple things- the fact that the flowers are in open shade, or the old/imperfect Brownie lens/viewfinder... OR maybe because of my Nikon.  I've seen a couple of mentions that some digital cameras, Nikons in particular, have some trouble accurately capturing reds and purples.  Not sure how accurate those theories are, or if that's the case here, but I guess it's possible.  One more argument for film!  (Of course, different films have different biases but at least you're not stuck with one!)

Anyway:

And one non-TTV shot:

Thanks for looking! :)

TA-DA! The first morning glories!

So, I've become a little bored with my "garden updates"... I probably won't do anymore...

BUT, the first morning glories have opened!  This is why I like morning glories.  They're easy, and they grow ridiculously fast!  So while most of the rest of my flowers were duds, I have my daisies and my morning glories, so I'm happy.  And you'll probably see photos of those once in a while...

I went back through my photos and found the ones I took of the shed at various times.  Here are a few:

Here's what it looked like just 2 months ago on April 24th:

About a month ago on May 19th:

 A week and a half later on May 31st:

A week later on June 8th, at a bit of a different angle, but you can see the BIG difference!:

Here's one of 3 buds I found yesterday:

Here's what the shed looks like today:

I guess I'm a nerd, but I think it's kinda cool to see the progress....

Anyway, a couple more photos that I took at the crack of dawn this morning:

I really love how the new twirls itself around the old.  The old vines, and the old crumbly shed.  There's something kind of beautiful about it. 

And this last one, it looks kinda cool- the light wasn't that bright yet, and I moved (only because I was being snacked on by mosquitoes) but I've never had movement look quite like this.  It almost looks like a double exposure.  Kind of.  Anyway. I like it:

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my silly flower photos! :)

Craig Robinson on Jimmy

Just watch it.  You will like it.

This one too- so good!

Brownie Through the Viewfinder

Did a little TTV experimenting today with my Brownie camera.  I tried before and failed because I couldn't get the Coolpix to focus close enough to the glass.  It might be because I've had lens issues with the Coolpix, but suddenly, it's focusing closer... hmmm... so I busted out the Brownie again.  Because of the (tons of) glare I was getting on the glass, and how still I had to be to keep the Coolpix aligned with the glass, (this isn't the case with shooting TTV with the Holga) I felt a little limited by what I could shoot, so for experimenting purposes, I took a daisy out to the front porch where there was lots of nice light this afternoon:

I really like the borders I got... but there was lots of glare on the glass... I think tomorrow I'll attempt to do some shooting with a dark cloth!  Just like back in the day with the 4x5!  At least the Brownie and the Coolpix aren't as heavy to lug around...  :)

Strawberries!

The other day after I picked my first bunch of strawberries, they looked so pretty sitting there in a pile, so I did a little photo shoot... They're a bit on the small side, but a couple of them were perfectly shaped!