holiday road pt. 1

January 4, 2009 | Filed Under Fine Art, Lifestyle PJ, Miscellaneous, Relationships | Leave a Comment

For years, we’d fantasized about traveling for the holidays, but myriad reasons (excuses?) kept us from seriously contemplating it. Five years ago, when we were living in Arizona, we had visited Santa Fe, but our brief stay (less than a day), was little more than a tantalizing teaser. It was time enough to fall hard for the enchanting City Different, but not nearly enough time to really experience it. This year, we resolved that in lieu of traditional gifts, we’d embark on an extended family vacation and realize what had been the stuff of daydreams for too long. We’d fulfill that vow to return to Santa Fe. We’d take that cross-country drive with our children that we always talked about. We’d escape the din, the stress, the anxiety and the shallow trappings that always seem to threaten hostile occupation of the season. We’d take a long overdue hiatus from work, enjoy substantial, quality family time, and make wonderful memories together on a holiday of equal parts shared adventure and sojourn. While life never perfectly follows the script in one’s mind- and let’s face it; “unscripted” moments and serendipity are potent ingredients in the making of lasting memories- this vacation was, at its core, everything we hoped for and more. Tomorrow we resume work, school, and routine, and there’s comfort in that homecoming and return to normalcy. There is also, however, already a longing ache for a wonderful time we didn’t want to end… a time that brought us closer together and delivered a sum total of peace, love, wonder and joy unmatched by any other holiday in recent memory.

A comedy of errors led to a late start on Thursday. I’d managed to tear my very last contact lens, and didn’t want to be relegated to wearing glasses for two weeks, so I stopped by the optician’s for a loaner lens and had them adjust my daughter’s frames while I was there. I also picked up some last-minute essentials (and some completely non-essential but desirable accoutrements) for the trip. While in the early stages of loading up our rental vehicle, my husband accidentally locked the keys inside, so we had to call AAA to help us out of that pickle, while we continued the process of “vacationizing” our home- unplugging everything, disconnecting computers, et cetera. When we finally got on the road early that evening, we’d driven probably fifteen miles before turning around and driving back to do the one thing we forgot- drop off our house key with our neighbors, who graciously agreed to keep an eye on things for us. I neglected to photograph much on the way to St. Louis that night, as it was late, pitch dark, and raining/ sleeting most of the way. I did regret not having my camera on me when we passed the Gateway Arch; an always striking figure, it was particularly stunning that night with its top third vanishing completely into a very dense cloud mist. The next day, we made our way to Oklahoma City, where we spent some time at the National Memorial and visited the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

holiday hiatus

December 9, 2008 | Filed Under Free Offers, News | 1 Comment

I’m not sure where the past few months have gone, but here we are at the end of 2008! I am leaving town next week for a long overdue cross-country family vacation, and all business correspondence and orders will be held until I return the first week of January. There are some exciting things in the works for 2009 here at Kim Long Photography; an online boutique will feature fine art photography for sale, as well as photographer resources including press print templates, Photoshop textures and overlays, and several new Lightroom preset collections. While I’m gone, you can help yourself to a free sampler of Lightroom presets from several soon-to-be-released sets. I want to thank everyone for a wonderful year, and wish you all a very happy holiday season and new year! P.S. It’s probably best to hold any blog comments until after the first of the year, when I return. I am not planning on logging in here while on vacation and can only imagine the amount of spam I’m going to have to moderate when I get back. I will probably not have the time or the inclination to sort through it all for legitimate comments, so yours may end up getting deleted!

holiday decorating and adventures in “custom bokeh”

December 8, 2008 | Filed Under Conceptual | 1 Comment

We scaled back on decking the halls this year since we are going to be leaving for vacation and won’t be home for the holidays. I did still put up the tree, though, and snapped the obligatory “This is what the place looked like in 2008″ pics. Then, well past the hour I ought to have been sleeping, I was instead playing around with homemade filters. I cut out some star, heart, pine cone and diamond shapes and then moved on to experimenting with cake decorating tips to some interesting effects.

Our tree: