Here’s a super cute digital camera bag styled to look like a retro camera! (This is the one Appi showed me first.)

So, I went to further investigate Fred Flare, and found several more photography-related goodies that I just have to share! (Because I can’t afford to go splurging on them now, haha!)

First, how adorable are these mini camera zipper pulls?

They even come inside a little old-fashioned film canister! I love it!

Along the theme of mini cameras, here’s a couple of tiny wooden cameras that are actually rubber stamps for old-fashioned camera graphics:

Of course, vintage camera love is never complete without Polaroids. Here are some beautiful notecards inspired by Polaroids, using actual Polaroid images:

And finally, an actual camera, and something I intend to get eventually, an action sampler camera that shoots 35mm film!

I love that retro-camera-inspired things are so in style right now!

I even got to capture a near-perfect circular rainbow!

Having seen my dad don his flight suit for various helicopter operations for the National Park, I was quite proud to put one on myself and join him in the sky. Plus, it was just cool!

One of the best parts of the experience was getting to fly with no doors!  Being 10,000+ feet in the sky and looking over the edge is an amazing thrill. (And my dad is posing in the pilot’s seat in the following photo – he’s not a pilot himself.)

(I don’t care how geeky those helmets look, it’s totally awesome!)

Fast-forward three years to 2010, and I’ve finally taken my first helicopter tour of Oahu, my home-away-from-home for the last six years.  I was joined by my father, naturally, as well as my great-aunt, for the tour provided by Blue Hawaiian Helicopters.

It was fascinating to see Oahu from the air!  Unfortunately, because this was a tour helicopter, there were doors present, and thus my photos were of an infuriatingly degraded quality than they would have been otherwise.  The aircraft was also moving very fast, so if I missed a shot, the opportunity was gone within a few seconds.  The tour was a good refresher in being aware of keeping my shutter speed fast enough to compensate for the movement of the helicopter. I was using my 5DMKII with a 24-105mm f.4L lens for its focal range and Image Stabilizer. Here’s a sampling of some of the practice shots I took today:

Finally, here’s a shot of Kaʻaʻawa Valley, though there is some glare from the helicopter’s plexiglass. This is the valley, a part of Kualoa Ranch, where several productions, including George of the Jungle, Jurassic Park, and parts of LOST have been shot!

Hopefully the next time I’m flying, I can do it doors-free for optimal image quality!  If any of you ever have a chance, take a helicopter tour and practice some aerial photography! I highly recommend bringing a polarizer and swift reflexes for balancing ISO with aperture (for as much depth-of-field as possible) and shutter-speed (for compensating for hand-holding in a moving helicopter).

Finally, check out my 365 Photo Blog for one more shot from today!

Overall, I feel the G11 is a great alternative for taking photos when you don’t want to haul your DSLR around!  It might not have the tonal-range or sensor size of my 5DMKII, but it’s definitely capable of taking nice, fun photographs.

Fast-forward to two months later, specifically Valentine’s Day.  On this day, he left for his year-long deployment to Afghanistan.  I never thought I would be a military girlfriend dealing with deployment, but when you know, you know, and he is completely worth the wait.  To help document my experiences over the next year on being the significant other of a deployed soldier, I’ve started a 365 Photo blog over on Posterous.  I’m already 3 days down, with at least 362 days left to go, but it has already helped me get through these first few days.

Ed himself is also blogging his deployment via Posterous, so please check it out.  I have contributor permissions for his blog, so I may post something once in a while from the POV of the ‘girlfriend back home’.  His father, Mark White, is also blogging there from a fatherly perspective, so you, dear reader, will get the full deployment experience!

I’ll leave you now with a preview shot from our portrait shoot together with the fantastic Lisa Hoang of Windwardskies Photography!

In short:

Ed’s Twitter

Ed’s Deployment Blog

My 365 Photo Blog

There are a few more announcements of projects and such on the horizon, and I will hopefully be blogging a lot more now, so stay tuned.

Seriously, I couldn’t help myself when their balloons got tangled!

I love the dreamy look of this next image, and the slight smile she has:

We took a break from standing on rocks to get a few photos with the rising moon:

And then Reid joined Erin on the rocks.

All in all, it was an amazingly fun random shoot!

I’ll have prints of some of these images for sale soon in my brand new Etsy shop, so stay tuned!

“Burano” – The island near Venice, famous for its brightly-painted houses.

“Remember Venice” – Gondolas on the Grand Canal.

“Meet Me At Como” – A cafe on the shores of Lake Como.

“Switzerland” – Somewhere near Interlaken.

The best part of these photographs is that while the first picture, “Burano”, was taken with my old Canon Digital Rebel/kit lens, the last three were taken with my old Canon Powershot SD400…and that last shot in Switzerland was out of a moving bus window!  It’s looking back on photos like these, when I was still very new to the art of photography and had the most basic of equipment, that remind me I can be more than my equipment.  There have been many times where I have taken a photo, and people’s only comment is “Wow, you are  so lucky you have such a nice camera!”, without any credit given to me as the eye behind the lens.  A few of my photographer peers have had similar experiences, so I know I’m not alone in noticing this.

In other news, there’s apparently a Wildlife Photography Contest going on over at deviantART, and it’s the first photography contest in ages that has interested me.  Luckily, zoo photography is allowed, so maybe I’ll be able to figure something out before December 15th.  Of course, it’d be much more impressive to go back to Maui’s rainforest looking for honeycreepers, but if I do that I’ll be wanting to rent a super-telephoto from Hawaii Photo Rental, and didn’t I just say I want to be more than my equipment?  Plus, I’m a very small girl, and hiking one of those monster lenses into a rainforest is rather daunting.  Where’s my entourage when I need one?

I also might be posting more fashion-related entries as time goes on and my interest in fashion grows.  Check out this shot of Sarah Jessica Parker from Elle:

I’m in love with the styling here! (Matte jersey crepe top with cage shoulder, $295, leather vest, $1,190, both, Alexander Wang, at Barneys New York. Cotton tank top, Michael Stars, $38. Stretch briefs, Chanel, $900. Leather boots, Bess, $385.)

Finally, I wanted to promote my dear friend and travel partner,  Cameron, and her new blog, Eyes on Etsy!

As a huge Etsy fan, like myself, Cameron puts together awesome themed collections made up of the best handmade and vintage items she finds!  In her own words:

Etsy is a magical, bountiful land of online creativity and commerce, specializing in handmade and vintage goods. I discovered it one day while wandering along (virtually), and fell head-over-heels in love. Now, just like any realistic love interest, Etsy is not 100% awesome 100% of the time. However, with a little patience, you can find some true gems… and I have.

So, seeing as I spend at least some part of every day browsing Etsy – and seeing as my list of Favorite items is approaching 300 – I thought I’d share my finds with the world. Maybe you can afford to actually purchase something…

Happy browsing,
Cameron

So there you have it! You can follow her on Twitter too, for all the great finds she doesn’t post on her blog!

There, I’ve been a good blogger now.  May I have a cookie?

This is a photo of Kuulei from Niche that I did a little experimenting with.  We were shooting indoors, and it was kind of dark so I was pumping up the ISO with all the lovely nostalgia of film.  Sadly, the noise of digital photos will never have the same romantic quality of film grain.  Sure there are programs like Exposure 2 that will attempt to emulate the qualities of film, but it’s still not the same.

This is a self-portrait I took with Ilford Delta 100 last year, and printed it on matte RC paper.  That’s the actual border of the print too! (This image ended up being used for making inter-negatives and experimenting with various hand-applied emulsions.  So old school!)

I really need to start shooting/making small prints again.  With my access to the UH darkrooms about half a mile from me, what’s stopping me? The laziness of digital is. Heck, I’m too lazy to edit a lot of the digital photos I have, let alone go venture into the darkroom again.  But, my romance with the nostalgia of film grain keeps tugging at me to get out of my chair and back into the dark, so maybe…

But, Kaeo made off with my camera after these shots to take advantage of its gorgeous HD video capabilities (and I’m still waiting to see video, Kaeo!) So, I decided to experiment with the capabilities of my Canon G9 while photographing Chloe and our male model, Joe:

And finally, Koda got to be a model for a few shots that Daeja took. I’ll post a link to her images from this shoot once they are online!

I wanted to post a shout-out to Hawaii Photo Rental today for being such a wonderful service to have here in Honolulu.  I love it so much that I even signed up for Yelp today just to post a review for them.  Josh, the owner, is extraordinarily helpful in getting you the equipment you want, and offers great prices too!  Before Hawaii Photo Rental started, I had only dreamt of being able to rent high-end gear, as I would have had to order it from California, but now with their partnership with Imageworks in Kaimuki, they are a 5-minute drive from my apartment.  They are always expanding their stock, and besides lenses and camera bodies (both Nikon and Canon), they are even offering underwater housings, lighting equipment, and more!  I cannot be enthusiastic enough about having this service available to us local photographers on Oahu, because it gives us the opportunity to try a lot top-of-the-line equipment without spending thousands of dollars on it.

So, local photographers or those planning on visiting, be sure to check out Hawaii Photo Rental!  Look them up on Facebook and Twitter too!