Anxious

I am anxious. Tomorrow I leave for almost a week for a photography job (photographing a horse ranch in Idaho). I will get back next Wednesday and be leaving for Florida Friday. I'll be in Florida by mid-October and I am sure I will breeze right into November being busy with getting settled into a new place. Somehow October has not even started yet and it's already over in my mind. I hate it when that happens.

I am excited for the move, anxious for the question of what will I do with my life now? This should be exciting. It is, but it's also causing some anxiety. Should I get a job? Should I just do photography? I don't want to work evenings or weekends. Will I be able to find something that I can make enough money? We will only be in Florida for one year, what is that enough time to do anyway? The only reason why I get anxious about this is because I want to pay off our student loans as fast as possible and just not think about it anymore. They're not going to go away fast at all if I don't get some kind of work.

So what do I need to do? CHILLAX and enjoy the ride. This is my life. It changes constantly and I want to enjoy it. So this picture reminds me to relax and enjoy the ride. Cause that is just what I was doing :) I can't get the stupid pic the right size so I am letting it go, unperfected, cause life is just that way sometimes (or a lot of the time).

No Children Please

There has been a children overload. My goal was merely to spend some much needed time with all the nieces and nephews that I haven't seen in two years and in the process give their parents a little break along with reinforcing my birth control. All of that worked, but I also reached an overload of children. They are so cute and yet they can drive you so crazy. Two sisters, each with four children, a cousin with two kids and a close friend with two more. That many kids in close proximity can create serious madness for one who so loves her single life (and by single I mean NO CHILDREN, not single/not married... me and Brian are single together :) and after this weekend I think we'd like to keep it that way for quite some time.



Tricky little rascals that draw you in with their cuteness and then destroy you slowly and painfully over several days.

South Island New Zealand

There are many many MANY pictures from my trip. I want to show millions but I also want to move on with the whole posting of thing that happened two months ago. So here's to cramming all the South Island into one post. We went on a day tour to Te Anau and the bus made stops for pictures along the way. Very beautiful scenery. Very terrible time of day.



Beautiful Mirror lakes. Kristan got a WAY better shot with her super cool fish eye. And she also got a super cool video with her super cool 5D MarkII. Just a tad jealous :)



We went on a cruise through Milford Sound. Awesomely awesome!



Dolphins were racing our boat...



Seals waving hello...



What's a trip to the south island in winter without taking a helicopter ride onto a glacier?





Our beautiful drive from Queenstown to Christchurch





This spot was SUPER windy. The water was SO aqua blue and beautiful!





A lovely view of Christchurch. We had a great time on both islands. We saw less of the south island, but we also spent more money and did more exciting things there. Things that will likely be posted of on some random day. Actually, there is only one thing missing since I have pics of the Milford Sound and heli ride. Very very beautiful. MUST go back! Brian definitely missed out and I will have to go back with him and backpack through some bush country :)

Castlepoint - North Island NZ

Castlepoint was our favorite place to photograph. It was a small town that was real quiet and seemed like a ghost town by the time we arrived there, but it was beautiful. We got there right as the sun hid behind the hills and we ran as fast as we could to the top of the stairs to get some sunset shots (just barely catching the tail end of it).







As the sun went away I turned around and couldn't find Kristan. I thought she'd went back to the car though I wondered why she didn't say anything. I was yelling and whistling for her and saw and heard nothing. A little worry crept over me as I thought about the one man we saw once we reached the top of the stairs. He seemed nice, but what if he was a weirdo and nabbed her? We are practically in a ghost town! Foreigners! As I walked back to the car this is what I looked over to see... in case you miss it, she is that tiny speck on top of the mountain.



Beauty at dusk



We saw a lovely moon rise





Awesome lighthouse with clouds



I thought this looked like a painting



And here is Kristan in front of the painting :)

Sheep and Kiwi - North Island NZ

Sheep are everywhere in New Zealand. It's one of their largest exports. Many many sheep, many more than people even. I never got "the shot" I wanted of some baby sheepys. There was a perfect opportunity with them frolicking near the fence, but it was on a nasty blind curve with no where to pull over.





My favorite was this... I am driving along and out of no where Kristan screams about a sheep. "Ah! That was the most beautiful sheep in all of New Zealand!" Me - "What?" K - "I'm serious! She was perfectly fluffy and clean with long beautiful eye lashes. Turn around if you don't believe me!" I didn't turn around cause I didn't want to risk our lives on the top of that hilly narrow road so we never got a picture of this supposedly perfect sheep. Somewhere she is still out there, unless someone made a perfect soup out of her... :/





I love Kiwis. Kristan will tell you I am psycho about them, but really, they're just really cool :)

Rotorua --> A mountain - North Island NZ

I didn't take good notes on the locations of all my images. I'd have to ask my travel buddy cause she is OCD about note taking and having all the correct info to go with her images and life :) (which is great for me!). This first shot is some super cool orange moss that I found in a Thermal Wonderland park in Rotorua. A very stinky but interesting place with all kinds of geothermic activity.



Lake Taupo. Very nice city. We were told it is just like Lake Tahoe 30 yrs ago. Definitely want to go back in the summer time and enjoy it more :)



There is SO much beautiful country in Kiwiland. SO MUCH. We drove a lot everyday, but it was so beautiful neither of us cared. We enjoyed many wonderful sunsets along the way.





Some shots we would take from the car while driving, but many times we would pull over and jump out to get the amazing stuff! And so we could be in the pic too :)





We drove up to this lookout point. I don't remember the name of the town it was overlooking or even the name of the mountain, but it was lovely up there and a nice place to hike around and get pictures.

North of Auckland - New Zealand

Ok, ok, enough avoiding this necessity. I did travel all the way to New Zealand and Australia and have tons of images to show for it so it's about time you see them :) We landed in Auckland where my family met us at the airport. My grandfather is from New Zealand and moved to America when he was 20. The first several days were filled with visiting family that I had never met. It felt like I was discovering some long lost family. Everyone there are cousins to my granddad or mum. We drove all over visiting different family members and exploring the country. The image below was north of Whagerei in the Bay of Islands.



We stayed with Auntie Gill and Peter in Whangerei. Gill is short for Gillian and she is my granddad's cousin. My mom's cousin Joye picked us up at the airport. So, one thing I learned from this trip was where my name came from! Who knew!



This crazy girl is my best travel buddy! Somehow the horses loved her and walked away from me :( Good travel buddy, bad left-side of the road driver...



This is a shot of a road worker immediately before he gave us the "crazy foreigner" look. Only because once we were allowed to go Kristan went RIGHT around the cone and swerved to the left side when I yelled at her... I think the guy probably heard me. We made him laugh.



A random shot from a random town, and I like it :)



This is the most beautiful country ever. So much untouched land. I almost don't want to post and talk about it with people cause the more people that know about it the more people will go there and then someday it will be ugly like all the big American cities.



A lone tree.

The Smith Family

This is the Smith family and my cousins family. Being gone for so long in Japan one of my goals was to do some nice family portraits of everyone in my family. All the different families that is. My cousin Cindra was the first.



It was really fun to photograph them. I have spent very little time with Cindra's kids so it was really nice to be able to capture this time in their life. They are such cute boys!



And look at these freaking awesome blue eyes!



Cindra and Michael are unique. That is my nice way of saying they are totally weird ;) Growing up with Cindra though, I am used to it. I know what she likes and they picked this location because they LOVE rocks, nature, cool sticks etc. I do to and that is not why I think they are weird (just to clarify). I liked the shot below though cause I thought it fit them well with their love for nature.



Uriah loves leaves and stuff too :)



This one is my favorite. I would like to title it "What really happens at a family shoot" Ha!



Awesome.



And to end with one stunning image of Michael and Cindra. SO glad we were able to do this!