Wed - January 24, 2007

Great American Road Trip-Day 6 (and final) Review

Yesterday was the last day of our road trip--today we arrived home and boy is it nice to see my house again! In total, we traveled right about 3000 miles--even more than I drove when I moved out from North Carolina to California. It was such an amazing trip--I've never done anything like this and would do it again in a second (after I've had some time to recover!).

We started off the day where we spent the night, in Flagstaff Arizona. We did drive around Flagstaff and thought it was a super cute town but a bit too commercial and new for what we wanted to shoot, so we started to make our way west. Since there's really nothing off I-40, we took Historic Route 66 most of the way, stopping in all the little towns. The first stop was Williams, Arizona. It looks like it was once a real hotspot among travelers. There's tons of old hotel signs and cool stuff there, here's a few:









Since this trip was all about American kitch and quirky things to do, I made the executive decision (against Becker's much better judgement) that we should stop at the "Flintstones Village". It was, well, special. A couple of pics:







Here we are in Barney's house:



Our next stop was unexpected--Hackberry is barely even on the map, but it does have this fantastic roadside stop where we made a U-turn in the middle of the road to go back and shoot it. Here's a history of Hackberry, if you're interested:



You can see a shot of the whole station on BECKER'S BLOG , it is amazing! It's owned by a very nice guy, John, who has been collecting Route 66 memorabilia for about 40 years, he said. He was such a nice guy, and even let me shoot some portraits:



Here are some shots from around his property:

















By the time we got to Hackberry, all the snow and icy roads were just a distant memory, but the road we took to get to our next and last stop, Oatman, was really something! There is about a 9 mile stretch of road that winds all the way up and down the mountain with no guard rails to stop you from falling right off the cliff! It's a good thing Becker was driving, I probably wouldn't have made it. It was well worth the trip though.

Oatman's "claim to fame" is that they have Burros wandering randomly through the streets of town. Yup, they just hang out wherever they please. I really wanted to see the Burros, so we walked around until we found a group of them just on the outskirt of town. I said hello and walked away, but the whole herd followed me! I guess walking with the Burros is second best to running with the bulls. Shots of us leading the pack:





The burros alone:



They really do hang out wherever they want:



A couple more from Oatman:











Right outside Oatman:





We had a few minutes of light left, so we took a couple portraits. Isn't this a HOT photo of [ b ]?



And that concludes our trip! Also (and I'm reposting this from yesterday as I will for the next few days), I will definitely be selling prints from this trip soon. If you're interested in being notified about my fine art prints when they go on sale, as well as some upcoming seminars, items for sale, and a new line of products just for girls, just shoot me a quick email to info@jcsphoto.com! You don't even need to write me a note if you don't want, it's just to give me your email address so I know you're interested. I promise I won't spam you too much :). Boys can sign up too! If you sign up you'll find out about stuff I'm not going to post here, as well as get discounts. Plus,I will just like you better. :)

Feel free to leave a comment to let me know which prints you'd like to see for sale!

Thank you so much for following along with our trip. It's been really fun to post our shots every day, plus it's been motivating me to blog every day. I'm going to try to keep it up!

,

Posted at 05:24 PM    

Tue - January 23, 2007

Great American Road Trip-Day 5 Review

Today was going to be what I would have considered "the boring day". We decided to drive up from Albuquerque to Monument Valley, Utah to see the natural red rock formations out in the middle of the area. I don't really love shooting landscapes, so I knew that it would not be a big day for me picture-wise, but we had the MOST fun of our trip so far!

Monument Valley is probably best known for photos like these:







And we did see some horses:



But since they'd had a bit of snow recently, the normally rocky but dry road had tons of big puddles and rougher than usual terrain. It's a good thing we were in a Hummer! We had some fun off-roading, splashing around, and making our own Hummer ads like this:





But the real fun was when we decided to drive through the biggest puddle at full speed...well, you'll just have to look at the video in **BECKER'S BLOG** to see how fun it really was!

Here's a couple stills, one of the Hummer tearing through a big puddle, one of the pattern the dirt made on our sunroof:





Also (and I'm reposting this from yesterday as I will for the next few days), I will definitely be selling prints from this trip soon. If you're interested in being notified about my fine art prints when they go on sale, as well as some upcoming seminars, items for sale, and a new line of products just for girls, just shoot me a quick email to info@jcsphoto.com! You don't even need to write me a note if you don't want, it's just to give me your email address so I know you're interested. I promise I won't spam you too much :). Boys can sign up too! If you sign up you'll find out about stuff I'm not going to post here, as well as get discounts. Plus,I will just like you better. :)

Check out Becker's Day 5 for an amazing video of our fun in the hummer!

.

Posted at 09:00 AM    

Mon - January 22, 2007

Great American Road Trip-Day 4 Review

A couple of things before my Day 4 recap:

1. Yes, i will definitely be selling prints from this trip soon. If you're interested in being notified about my fine art prints when they go on sale, as well as some upcoming seminars, items for sale, and a new line of products just for girls, just shoot me a quick email to info@jcsphoto.com! You don't even need to write me a note if you don't want, it's just to give me your email address so I know you're interested. I promise I won't spam you too much :)

2. I got the funniest comment on yesterday's blog entry from Tricia that said "I absolutely love the photo road trip!!! While I wonder about which lens you have used, your photoshop tricks and number pf photos taken, I really am wondering if Becker and you wander around together, elbowing each other for the best angle on a shot or if you wander around solo and compare images once they are loaded on the computer?" The answer to that is yes, we are shoving each other out of the way the whole time for the best shot. Some of us (A.K.A., Becker) have been known to "call" a shot, or mark dibs on it before the other can get to it. This usually does not work. Sometimes he will walk directly in front of me--this usually does work. I have many many shots of his rear end with a beautiful photo in the background (see below). He is clearly standing in front of me trying to shoot a really beautiful shot of two gas pumps in front of a turquoise building on Day 2. Rude! We always do have a really really fun time when we shoot this kind of stuff together though!



You can click on BECKER'S BLOG to see his day 4 shots.

Yesterday was a very interesting day! We were sad to leave Taos because it was just so beautiful and there was so much to shoot, but we needed to set out in search of the truth to Roswell, New Mexico. The truth, it turns out, is that there is probably no such thing as aliens, but we had a fun time checking out all the alien stuff there anyway!

We also stopped off a few times on the side of the road when we saw interesting things to shoot. That's the kind of thing you only really do when you're on a trip like this with nowhere you MUST be on time, and is probably my favorite thing on this trip.

A great barn somewhere between Taos and Roswell:


Becker doing some podcasting and shooting from the middle of nowhere:



Roswell really is one odd town. It's smaller than I expected, and not as obsessed with aliens than I thought, but there was plenty to shoot.




Even the street lamps have been abducted:



Of course we had to go in to the UFO museum and research center, and we were greeted by this nice guy:



It is generally believed that there was a big government coverup about the UFO crash that is still maintained today:



This is one of the exhibits in the museum. I thought it might be too creepy to post on my blog, but since it's just a replica, it's okay!



Becker wanted his photo taken with the aliens:



Uh oh, a UFO crashed right into this building!



A little alien peeking out at us:



Roswell turned out to be photographically cool in a non-alien way too! We were both really impressed with some of the cool stuff there was to shoot there:







My first car was a 77 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, so I do have a special spot in my heart for Caddy's:







A potential candidate for the lock project:



Eventually, it was time for us to say goodbye to Roswell and make our way to Albuquerque so we could head to our next location afterwards. We stopped a few mmore times though and got some more roadside attractions:









And I shot this one out the window of the car:



see ya tomorrow!

.

Posted at 11:43 AM    

Sat - January 20, 2007

Great American Road Trip-Day 3 Review

Yesterday we spent all day here in beautiful Taos, New Mexico. When we got here Friday night, we arrived with no real plan, no hotel reservations, starving, and a bit cranky from the driving. In less than an hour after arriving, we had found the most amazing hotel, The Inn on La Loma Plaza and a great place for dinner, Joseph's Table. We actually sat in a little private booth just like the one on the front page of the Joseph's Table website and it was so cool!

I can't say enough good things about our hotel . It's more like a bed and breakfast, and each room has its own personality. We are in a room that looks like a log cabin, and has a real wood-burning fireplace and an outdoor patio (which is covered with snow and too cold to use!). We like it here so much we decided to stay for a second night and get on the road again in the morning! The only downside to Taos is that I've had zero phone service since we've been here. I don't think it will be much better tomorrow, so email me if you need me!

Today we didn't do a lot of driving, but we certainly did do some shooting. It was a bit of a more challenging day because of the snowy clouds and overcast skies, it was harder to find things that really stood out, but I think that we both found a few. Click on Becker's Blog for his take on yesterday!

Today, I'm also introducing new, bigger, and better than ever large photos on my site! Becker's were looking so big and delicious I had to have big photos too, so here they are.

A view of Taos:



The first thing we did was check out the Pueblo. There are a lot of people living at the Pueblo who are very friendly and the doors are open. Here's some shots from there:

The Pueblo itself:



The Pueblo Church:





Some details:

























After the Pueblo, we just drove around town for a little while, looking for cool stuff to shoot. We came across the most awesome pink truck ever. How cool is this!





We also found a great mural and took some shots of it and of us:





My cousin Steven is a chef in Boston (I believe that in the Boston area he is known as "Chef Nookie"), and he's been following along with our trip. He asked me to pick him up some chilis from here, and lo and behold, there was a whole chili store!



More stuff from the outskirts of town:





















It snowed this afternoon! I miss the snow from my East Coast days, and I absolutely love this shot Becker grabbed of me:



Tomorrow is going to be great. We're headed somewhere very interesting, and although we've heard it's under quite a bit of snow right now, we're going to make the trek anyway!

.

Posted at 11:11 PM    

Great American Road Trip-Day 2 Review

We made it to Taos, NM where we spent the night last night! You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the stats from yesterday, because it's about 20 degrees out here and I left my folder with all the info in the car and there is zero chance I'll be running out to get it.

I suppose I should begin this entry with where we stayed last night, which coincidentally has helped me to tick off one more item on my list, #89, Spend a night at the Wigwam Village Hotel in Arizona. I'll tell ya, it lived up to every expectation!





The owner of this fine establishment owns a fairly extensive collection of antique cars which he parks in front of the wigwam's. Here's a couple shots of the cooler ones:







The Wigwam Village Hotel is in Holbrook, Arizona,which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We drove around the outskirts of town to see what else we could find, which turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, but we got some pretty sweet shots anyway:







The next stop on our trip is probably the most quirky piece of Americana I have ever seen: Stonefridge, a.k.a, Fridgehenge. Yes folks, that's right, a Stonehenge made entirely out of refrigerators. You will not believe your eyes:





Fridgehenge is located about 1.5 hours outside of Santa Fe up a mountain road that would make you think you are never going to find anything. But behold! Fridehenge is known as "a post modern, post apocalyptic temple to waste and consumerism". Made up of 200 fridges, it actually faces an electrical power plant. I don't know what this means, but it must be significant.









After leaving this piece of beauty, we saw the most perfect little house off the side of the road and just had to go check it out:



Next stop: Tiny Town. Tiny Town is actually a small piece of property a couple miles north of Madrid, NM. An artist lives there, and her motto is, "If it's not dead, broken or rusted, I just can't use it!". She has made a miniature town entirely out of bones and discarded things. It is very very strange. We did not meet the artist, but apparently she encourages passerby to bring her roadkill and scraps:









After leaving Tiny Town, we still had about 45 minutes left of daylight, so Becker suggested we check out the next town, Cerillos. It was no match for Chloride, but we did find some awesome things to shoot here:





















Today we are spending the day in Taos, NM--it's going to be great! Go to BECKER'S BLOG to see his take on yesterday!

.

Posted at 09:09 AM    

Fri - January 19, 2007

Great American Road Trip-Day 1 Review

Yesterday morning at 7am we kicked off the first leg of our big road trip and it was amazing! We took it slow for the most part, stopping along the way whenever we saw something interesting off the side of the road. That is something I have never done on any long car ride--usually the main goal is to just get there as quickly as possible, but aside from our semi-planned route, we really have no obligation to be anywhere! Before I show you the photos, just a few quick stats from yesterday:

Miles Traveled: 676
Money Spent on Gas: $138.76
Locations Visited & Photographed: 3--Amboy, CA, Junkyard on side of road, Chloride, AZ

You can also check Becker's Blog to see his shots and thoughts on yesterday!

Amboy, California is (as most things we will see on this trip) dead out in the middle of nowhere. We actually did see another person there, but I have no idea what they were doing! Amboy is right off historic route 66, and was probably once a bustling little rest stop for the travelers. In any case, here is what is there now:







So we left Amboy and continued on our way to 40 when we saw a huge junkyard off the side of the road. It was so absurd--someone had plugged a radio directly into the pole where electricity comes from, so even though it looked like nobody had been there in ages, there was music playing. It gave it a very surreal quality. Here's a few shots:





From an Apple fan:



There wasn't too much else to do at the junkyard, so we left and headed towards our real destination of the day, Chloride, Arizona. Chloride is mostly a ghost town now, although there are still people that live there and maintain its weirdness. It is also heavily populated with unfriendly dogs, which we made a point to avoid! The people that live in Chloride either maintain or contribute to the relics of a better time for the town, as nothing has been torn down, it is all still there, ripe for shooting!



There are a number of odd things about Chloride. One that we ran across was this area of rock paintings, done by (according to one of the paintings), someone who was doing some soul searching and ended the search right outside Chloride! It was a good thing we had the Hummer or we never would have made it up there. It was so cool to see what that Hummer is really built for--it ate up the rugged terrain, it was awesome! A few shots of the rocks:






The town of Chloride is so photographically cool that it was worth the trip to wherever we go next in itself! Everywhere we looked there was more to shoot than we could even cover. Lots of shots coming...



My favorite shot of Chloride:



This is the local firetruck--it is from 1933:



The Dead Ass Saloon:









The bank:



The Undertaker:



The diner:







creepy indented paintings that follow you with their eyes:

















The unfriendly dogs:



Chloride graveyard (check out Becker's absolutely SICK shot of the graveyard on his blog )





Becker and our trusty truck:



It was such a fun day, I can't wait to show you what we're shooting today! By the way, the reason these images look so rockin' is that I got to play with the new TOTALLY RAD BOUTWELL ACTIONS (click that to buy them). They are killer! Boutwells, if you're reading this, we don't really have an internet connection where we're staying so I tried out Becker's, but I am buying these ASAP when we get back.

In other notes, as stated above, we don't really have internet (save for this quick trip to a starbucks to blog) and my phone is dropping calls left and right, so if you need to get a hold of me, shoot me an email--I can download them on the phone.

.

Posted at 08:03 AM    

Thu - January 11, 2007

Shooting Houses

This past couple of days, I have been up in LA working on a project for some clients of mine--shooting their amazing houses for coffee table books! Unfortunately I cannot show you one of the houses for privacy and security reasons, but believe me, it was quite incredible! It took an entire day and a half to shoot and included the main house (about 20 rooms), landscaping, cars, guest house, tennis court and pool areas. It is going to make the most amazing book.

The other house I can show you some photos of, because the owner, Bill Gordean who also owns both of the Villa Melrose Antiques stores, will be moving into his new pad soon and this one will be gone for good! Bill not only owns these gorgeous antique stores, but is also an awesome decorator (he did a big part of the first house I mentioned above), as well as his own home, of course. His eye for style and detail is unmatched, and in going over these two homes with a fine tooth comb, I have so many great ideas of things I'd like to do in my own home one day. I can't wait to visit Bill's store!

The house exterior shots:



Bill had all this killer stonework done by hand:





I love a good intimidating door-knocker:



My favorite area of the house--the dining room. The walls are done in real silver and were painstakingly installed square by square. Then an artist came in and painted the trees all around the room. The table is a legendary piece--rumor has it that it actually belongs in or to a museum but Bill somehow acquired it:



Another priceless room--this is the main-level bathroom--too pretty to use if you ask me! The walls are done in real gold leafing with the artists renderings over the top as in the dining room:



An idea I am going to use--these beautiful little antique frames with portraits of beautiful women:



A bowl from the living room--so gorgeous!



This bathroom is upstairs--I love the classic tub and the simplicity of this shot:



Probably my favorite piece of furniture in the house, this chair is one I would love to have!



Don't you just want to lounge around out here for dinner and drinks in the evening? It is right off the pool:



The pool:



The tiling in the pool is also very intricate:



It was even important to have the perfect rusted window grates:



One last detail of the front gate:



Hopefully I will be able to show you all the finished book of Bill's house soon!

.

Posted at 07:06 PM    

Sat - December 30, 2006

Thu - December 28, 2006

Wed - December 27, 2006

A Christmas Review!

Hey all you blog readers out there--as you can see I'm on a bit of a blog (and work) vacation, hope everyone else is too!

This year was a very different Christmas for me. First of all, it was my first one ever away from home. Although I did live away from home plenty of other years, every Christmas eve was still spent at my parents' house and Christmas day was spent together or with other family. This year, I decided to take a break from all the traveling and hang here with Becker for my first So. Cal Christmas.

I was a little dubious at first when I found out that instead of the traditional ham or roast dinner we'd be having mexican, and instead of bundling up in our sweaters we would be playing games outside in t-shirs and sunglasses, but you know what--it was great! Although I missed my family a lot, Becker is so so lucky to have the most amazing, warm, kind family who are just great fun people to be around.

Christmas morning started off at Becker's house, and we opened up our presents to each other there. I got this killer watch, which I had been asking my dad for for about the past 10 years!:



I am so excited, I am never taking it off! I also got the cutest skirt from the Stephanie James Store--I saw it when we went to a party about a month or so ago and loved it. I would have bought it that night but there was a party going on so he went back and got it for me. The other really great gift was a jacket from Ted Baker that I saw back in October when we were in Vegas and fell in love with. Score!

I got to give Becker his main gift a few weeks ago--the trip to Hawaii to see U2, but I wanted him to have something fun to play with on Christmas so he got the Canon G7 camera he's been wanting:



Here's a shot of us with that little camera:



By the way, I bought myself a little gift too--the 50 1.2 lens--it's amazing! All the shots on here that I took were with that lens.

I love wrapping presents--the more elaborate the better!



April & Matt opening their gift from Becker--you can CLICK HERE to see it:



We took a break to play a little 80's trivial pursuit--the pieces were a care bear and a trapper keeper:



His new little camera takes great self portraits:



But my new lens does a nice job too:



check out how much becker's grandma, mom & sister all look alike:



April & Matt, Caden's parents:



It is so cute how much Becker loves his little nephew Caden:



He is pretty cute:



Look who else made an appearance--Bludomain's Jack!



The real star of the show was Caden! I took a walk to the park with April, Matt & Cade and grabbed a few shots:

jessica claire

Posted at 10:51 AM    

Sun - December 10, 2006

U2 Concert in Hawaii!

I am so exhausted from my travels lately that I will post my Turks & Caicos when I get home, but I just have to blog about the U2 concert here in Oahu that Becker and I went to last night.

First of all, anyone that knows Becker can imagine that he is a difficult person to buy a good gift for. Of course he loves stuff from the Apple store and itunes gift certificates, but I felt like I should probably get him a better Christmas gift than that this year. His favorite band is U2, so I figured, what better way to celebrate Christmas than here in Hawaii seeing this killer band rock the house! I've never been to a U2 concert myself, and it was so much fun to be there. I don't think I've ever been to a concert as big as this, and to top it off, this concert was the last stop on their very very long world tour so they gave it a great effort, playing for almost three hours!


These photos and videos are courtesy of Becker--I didn't even bring a camera on this trip!

We had awesome seats, but decided to make our way down to the floor to get closer (and some photos!), and look who we saw--the guys who play Hurley and Locke from Lost (sawyer and charlie were there too but not in this photo, unfortunately) and some other friends we knew in town for the concert as well:



us:



I love that U2 preaches love, peace, and unity, becker got this great shot:





Here is an awesome little video becker shot of everyone singing along:



Merry Christmas Becker!

u2 concert in honolulu hawaii

Posted at 04:16 PM    

Tue - December 5, 2006

Turks and Caicos is Awesome!

So I'm down here in Turks and Caicos to work with the crew at Tropical Imaging and I can't believe how lucky I am to get to come and work for a few days in such a beautiful place! The truth is, I was dreading getting back on a plane before I left, but the second I stepped out of the plane when we landed here I have felt like I was in heaven! The people at Tropical Imaging are all amazing (more on them tomorrow), and Liana and I are having a great time shooting and teaching. Today we had a little break in the afternoon, but all I really wanted to do was check out some other parts of the island and see some sights.

It turns out that there really aren't many sights--the island is still largely undeveloped, although it is getting more and more built up each day. I wanted to get away from the resort areas and see where the locals hang out to get a feel for the island. We went to Blue Hill and I found it to be rustic and beautiful, and the people extremely friendly.

One thing there is no shortage of here is Conch--I'm sure you've heard of and seen the large pink shells, but there's an actual animal that lives in there that the island people say is quite delicious! In fact, there used to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the island, but it was shut down a few years ago for serving Kentucky Fried Conch. Apparently that was not up to speed with company standards.

Some Conch-related photos:

1. Where all the conch goes:



2. Particularly beautiful conch shells:



An islander, also known as a Belonger:



4. They're all over the place, just like this:



I shot a few other colorful details too:







Look, I found my logo!



and my colors:








There are several graveyards right overlooking the water:




The supermarket stood out to me for some reason:





Very friendly Belongers:



Twins!



check back tomorrow to see what we're up to here!

jessica claire, turks and caicos, wedding photography

Posted at 08:27 PM    

Tue - November 28, 2006

Thanksgiving Wrap Up

Ah, a blogging hiatus! No, I have not been in a turkey coma for the past few days, just enjoying my time back home in North Carolina with some family, friends, and Becker. Becker is an original California guy, born and raised here in So. Cal, and although he has traveled the world, he somehow overlooked a wonderful place, Cary, North Carolina!

We made our way back there to hang with my family for a few days, and although I was too busy eating to take many photos, I did manage to snag a few.

My dad, in typical form zoning out in a cozy chair watching some football on TV:



My brother Jonathan is a chef and works all the time, but he made a cameo as well:



My cousin Sonja & her new fiancee Shane:



After dinner, we had some extra special entertainment, and my mother and cousin steven were obviously having a great time:



Becker couldn't believe his luck getting so many hilarious photos and videos:



Warning: I am not taking any responsibility for this scene



Every year, we take a family photo. Becker was kind enough to shoot it for us:



But we were all so sad he wasn't in the picture, he did some trick moves:



We had some time to drive around town a bit and shoot, and we came across a farm with tons of old cars to shoot. We will definitely be coming back to this place when we have more time:









In all, a great week, great food, great fun, and great times! The blog will now resume it's regularly scheduled programming. :)

.

Posted at 08:17 PM    

Fri - November 24, 2006

Thu - October 26, 2006