A fall day at the park

Fall Portraits

Fall is finally upon us. I only had to wait until October 24th for the temperature to drop below 80 degrees so we could finally get some fall foliage. Thanks a lot Al Gore!

But all bad global warming jokes aside, now is the perfect time to get your family together outside for some great fall portraits. The colors are popping and the sky is blue, and the temps are still well above chilly. So please contact me at mail@mycranephotography.com to schedule your fall portraits and your Christmas card pictures. I'm only available on weekends now that the days are shorter, so be sure to lock in your session appointment while I still have availability. Sessions are held either at my home studio in Medford or on location at your home or local public park.

Looking forward to creating beautiful portraits for your family in the coming weeks!

Here are a few of my favorites from a recent fall portrait session. Thanks so much for your time "F Family"! I hope you like your pictures!

The Solution

See "The Problem " in my previous post if you haven't read part one of the story yet.

What are we to do? I have mountains of laundry to do for the week but we can't use the washing machine until we fix this drainage pump problem. So we're standing in the basement looking down into the deep murky waters of the sump pump bucket thingy and as I shine the flashlight down into the bucket I too see the black shiny scales. The only solution is to reach down into the 2 feet of dark water and pull this writhing, slimy creature out of the bucket by hand...without getting bit or strangled.

So who reached down into the bucket to dislodge the dark, angry serpent monster??

Yours truly of course. I searched for some sort of rubber gloves and found one blue one and a gardening glove. I strapped the gloves on and went down into the basement to solve the plumbing problem.

I reached down into the dark, dirty water and pulled out....
...
...
THIS!






Yep, I pulled a giant 4 foot black rat snake out of my plumbing system while my husband stood back and took pics. The trick is to pick the body of the snake up with an unfolded hanger while you quickly grab the neck just behind the head before getting bit. Rich was a trooper though. He did pet the snake before we set it free and he got some good shots of the excitement before I rushed off to my photo shoot.

Nothing like wrestling with a giant reptile to boost your confidence before a shoot.
So next time you're struggling with a plumbing problem...
...Call a plumber b/c I think toilets are yucky!

The Problem...

So my husband calls me last weekend while I'm out scouting a location for a shoot l have planned for that evening at 5. He sounds quite anxious in telling me that he found a problem with our sump pump in the basement. He said that he grabbed a flashlight and shined it down into the dark muddy waters and saw...
...undulating scales in the thickness of a man's arm...a large man. Now keep in mind, this is the basement that has only one working lightbulb and where fellows like this live:


Check back tomorrow to find out how we solved this spooky problem...

The Watercolors Answer

My very talented film photographer cousin Jessie was kind enough to post her guess as to what the purple blob in the last few Watercolor pictures was. Nice guess Jess...but wrong.

If you look at my first post ever, you'll see that silly Mr. Noodle shows up as purple when I don't properly expose or when I set my shutter speed super slow to capture the creative effect in watercolors.

Thanks so much for playing and commenting though! Don't be a stranger!

~Cara

Stranger Danger

I have a new photography hobby: Street Portraiture. When I travel with my camera I try to scope out interesting looking subjects and approach them asking if I can take their picture. Every person I've approached so far has been friendly and flattered. I even collected their email addresses and sent them copies of the pictures. So thank you to the folks below who I can no longer call "strangers."

Watercolors

These pictures were all taken on the same day in early September around 3pm in the afternoon. They were all shot on our dock overlooking the same 30ft x 30ft area of the creek. The different colors and effects were all achieved simply by adjusting my aperture, shutter speed and angle. The only post processing done on these photos was a quick crop and border-add. I love how different each of these pictures turned out. Can you figure out where the purple areas of the bottom photos came from? No one on the dock was wearing purple. (There is a hint in my first blog post) Add a comment to this post of you can figure out the mysterious purple areas.

I call this series Watercolors. Enjoy!

A Trip to the Alma Mater

We took Jack over to Penn's campus for a walk down memory lane



The sky was so pretty this day and I loved being able to set the proper exposure to capture the blue sky, buildings and Jack all in vivid color.







Here we are with Ben Franklin. Jack was not a big fan of Ben but we got one cute picture.




This is the Furness Fine Arts library. I love the way the red bricks look with the bright blue sky.


Thanks for visiting Philly with us!

As an aspiring photographer, I am so lucky to be blessed with the most photogenic family in the Philadelphia Metro area. I've got 9 gorgeous kids from the age of 6 months to 13 years old at my disposal and I always have the camera in their faces. They're turning into quite the little models for me.
Here is 'A' working the fence for me.

And crazy 'J' loves to make funny faces for me and see his picture in my LCD.




















I caught 'D' in a rare quiet, pensive moment on the playground. I guess the sugar high from the party was wearing off.
I love this shot of 'D's shiny shoes with her little nails painted light pink!

Here's 'J' again showing me another one of his millions of silly faces.













Here is my little guy 'J' scoping out the candy 'D' had hidden in her party hat.

















This is 'D's' older brother 'A' showing me his "over the shoulder model look."









And the crazy boys 'P' and 'D' are never shy when I ask them to "show me angry" or "give me gang signs."





It helps to know the current lingo when trying to get a good shot of pre-teens. I wonder how many pro's out there ask their subjects to "give them gang signs, LOL" If you can cut out the hands, you can usually get a pretty facial expression on the "gang shots"